First Edition Austrian Regional winner Stefan Slaby |
Stefan's Commentary: I've wanted to use Declare New Sovereign since I first saw it. Of course, with the homeworld requirement, that card had been strongly faction-locked, and I'm not too keen on actually playing a [MQ] faction. Plus, solving a specific mission involving a specific personnel made the whole thing slow, risky, and unreliable... kudos to everybody who did this the intended way. But now there's Empress, so both shackles are off, and I'm finally free to establish an empire wherever I please! What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? However, I had to face (almost) none of the above. Julius' amazing new [1E-TNG] deck was going for the 2 mission win, but walked into my Disrupted Continuum trap, losing a ship with around 10 good people to "God". Alex played his powerful deck from last year's continentals, but against only [MQ] missions I could go for the 2 mission win myself. And Martin always tries new and interesting decks that unfortunately need more than the 4-7 turns competitive games last these days. Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this deck (or decks like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time? I was amazed how well this deck can recover from certain bad starting hands. I crowned my Empress twice on turn 3 and once on turn 4 (for lack of a commander to kill on turn 2). And on two of those games, I've had starting hands with NO playable personnel (but got lucky with the combo pieces instead). Starting with 40 reliable bonus points, and having the best drawing engine in the game, was more than worth it. However, I quickly regretted my decision to cut [Ref] cards. I've missed at least Containment Field, Mirror Image, and Obelisk of Masaka. Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again? Daniels with his special download of Out of Time is also pretty amazing. He's the only general purpose dilemma evasion I can think of that doesn't even stop you. There and back again. An auto include, as long as you're planning to do a mission with a corresponding time location (which just got) and have a way of reporting him. The Revised crew themselves haven't really convinced me yet. Between their low (for ) skill density, their unhealthy reliance on holodecks and Holo-Projectors (which they can download only once), and how rarely Holoprogram: The Voyager Encounter's swap actually does something useful in a 5-turn game, I don't feel they're worth the trouble. The cheating potential of their special downloads for other personnel, Reflection Therapy, and Fitting In sounds good on paper, but in reality I often had the necessary personnel in play already (just not there), or could only cheat one skill when I would have needed two. What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Anyway... if you're asking for my 2nd MVP, exluding the whole Empress chain... I'd probably go for Temporal Benefactor. With Launch Bay and one shuttlepod in the deck, you can reliably download Disrupted Continuum and Timepod Ring in ANY non- deck. Which, in my opinion, makes these 1-2 seed cards significantly more valuable than 1-2 extra dilemma slots. Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? The [1E-TNG] and [1E-DS9] cycles were a bit of a disappointment for me because all their interesting abilities were tied to having those icons, which are going away as soon as you report anything else, which completely blocks these cards from inclusion in other decks (and blocks those decks from including other interesting cards), and pretty much ensures that I'll rarely, if ever, use them. The [22] cycle on the other hand does not use such strong faction-locking mechanics too much, and I'm glad. Although I shudder to think what Temporal Benefactor can do in the kind of deck that it's actually intended for; one that can actually report some of the downloadable agents, and share skills with more of their personnel. I think that card was made a bit too strong. |
My Commentary: That's a lot of play engines! Even more impressive, one of them is New Arrivals! Now, that means that you're not really using all of them every turn, but Holodeck Door, Nanoprobe Resuscitation, and Full Complement of Shuttles can all be stacked on top of the single allowed free play per turn. The Door downloads, the 'probes simply "report" (after being rigged in the discard pile by Process Ore and Admiral Kirk), and the Shuttles report with crew, so none of them technically count as a free play, while still getting multiple people into play per turn. There are also a lot of draw engines! That means that, especially by the time Declare New Sovereign activates, you can probably just forget about the draws from New Arrivals and spam with Home Away From Home/Kyrian Museum. Four cards per turn just for stopping someone can make you reckless like that. And that's after the Empress-crowning chain filled the "Bonus Point Mechanics" field in the deck summary with more cards than I can remember including there for years. I'd like to point out that Stefan has included a detailed "how to play" in the strategy section of the decklist, which I'd recommend checking out since this deck looks like a blast to play. Stefan is right that there are some decent counters to this deck out there, but if you're having this much fun, who cares if you lose a couple games. And if one of the winningest players out there has a bit of Timmy in him, I think we probably all do. |
Second Edition Fargo Regional winner Kris Sonsteby |
Kris' Commentary: What tough choices did you have to make when building your deck? Did you find that your deck had any surprising strengths or weaknesses through the course of playing it? What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? |
First Edition Fargo Regional winner Kevin Jaeger |
Kevin's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this deck (or decks like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time? Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again? This version goes for the 2 mission win on the back of AMS, Kir'Shara and Arbiter. I would like to say Kir'Shara exceeded expectations but that would be a lie, it's been a known power card for awhile. What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? Big thanks to my protégé and testing partner Mark Muston for helping me find the cracks in my 1.0 versions of decks in order to get them ready for serious play. Huge thanks to my brotha from anotha motha Kris for the many, many strategy discussions. Shout out to everyone in the Andorian meta for playing hard, providing quality competition and pushing me to stay sharp. |
My Commentary: Now, you may ask how Assign Mission Specialists plays into the two mission win (per Kevin's interview) when one of the specialists he downloads is a Greed specialist. None of his missions require Greed, and he's only packing one copy of Specialists, what gives? Well, sometimes I forget that Nanoprobe Resuscitation isn't just usable as a play engine of personnel. It can also get key verbs back, including an Assign Mission Specialists that you discarded at the start of your turn. He can do that and replay it after 'probing it, then pull out Kathleen Tonell and Norah Satie for more skill coverage. Speaking of skill coverage, sometimes you don't need it. Even in a deck that uses the most flexible play engine in the game in order to play the best of the best, I see two copies of The Genesis Effect. That's a great answer to a lot of the nonsense dilemmas that I've been complaining about lately. And, unlike Computer Crash, there's no seedable card that can just block its effect. It's an incident, and nothing's going to stop it from doing its thing, other than your own actions of course. It requires a good knowledge of what's out there in order to use it effectively, so, well, keep up with The Road to Worlds! Oh, hey, and this is a deck without Temporal Benefactor! Yeah! |
Second Edition Northern California Regional winner Richard New |
Richard's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this deck (or decks like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time? Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again? What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck? |
My Commentary: I got a chance to witness the power of Harried and Harassed along with Parallel Course when I was in Atlanta for Nationals, and I'm looking forward to trying it myself the next time I play Romulans. It's bad enough to stare down a T'Met packed with people like Enabran Tain and Retaya, knowing that if you try to run away, a dilemma will return to the pile (and another might die due to an Archaic Snare). You're likely to need to do that anyways; on account of the kills/captures from Retaya, Unsound Logic, and Tain, you'll probably need reinforcements after a failed attempt. Worse is that, even if you try to go somewhere else, Harried and Harassed will pop up and put that T'Met right back in your way. Unsound Logic and Harried and Harassed are pretty tied to this draw deck, but the rest of the pile looks like a good kill pile - and there's no Tragic Turn or The Clown: Guillotine. Those two have been the centerpieces of kill piles for so long that it feels like we've lost sight of the fact that there are other ways to do it. This pile likely works particularly well in this deck because of the effectiveness of Unsound Logic and the extra counters from the T'Met (many of the dilemmas involved are pricey), but would probably still be a good starting point if you're looking for an alternative kill pile. But my favorite card to see here is definitely Shadow Operation. That's a card that I remember seeing when it was initially revealed and thinking "that can't possibly ever be useful." I'm glad to say I was wrong. While, at the time, the investment of getting a ship and crew out to an opponent's mission just to get a 3 cost personnel for 1 cost, Face of the Enemy gave us just enough good new tools for lurking Romulan decks that I think the balance has tipped enough for this card to finally be useful. |
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