Second Edition European Continentals winner Stefan Slaby |
Stefan's Commentary: Cardassians have become extremely strong & versatile (especially with The Enemy of My Enemy), and I just love having an excuse to actually use One in a competitive deck (whose ability makes him useless in Borg decks, except the kind I don't touch). But they do have certain weaknesses, and I was expecting people to come prepared against them, so I chose to play them on day 1 where a lost game or two shouldn't hurt me much. Among all my options, Romulans felt best equipped for day two. Both of the other decks are pretty much lost if you prevent/destroy the right events/interrupts at the right time. The Romulans have so much going on that you simply can't kill everything, and I'm pretty much happy to play with whatever I get through. I was right, I ended up winning one game completely without bonus points, and two games without Deliriums. 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? I also learned that both my decks perform quite well against Dereliction of Duty (because both have major cheating options that aren't abilities on personnel). 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? The Romulan deck has quite a few situational cards it can download. Expedient Opportunity doesn't seem to do much in this deck, but is a lifesaver against certain Damage cards, and enables hilarious range-saving by using an opponent's Stakoron missions. Sent Back got rid of peeping T'Pol when needed. Some of the other one-offs didn't see any use this day, but I wouldn't cut them. Why do you use new Romulus and D'Deridexes instead of Birds-of-Prey in your Romulan decks these days? What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? |
My Commentary: They haven't changed a whole lot lately. Even this deck, with "with tiny adjustments for the 2018 meta" doesn't have any cards from a set later than A Time to Stand, and those are dilemmas. There's just not much else to give Romulans these days. They've got kill prevention and stop prevention and prevent/overcom and attribute gain and point gain... there's not much to want. Skill gain is the main Romulan weakness, but having seven skill monsters like Ptol around means they don't need to gain too many of those. I usually review day two decks here, but I'm going to switch my focus to Steve's day one deck, since we haven't looked at this version of his Cardassians before. It's about as small a deck as I've ever seen him run - he likes to have plenty of options at his disposal. But there's still room for the trademark three copies of Delirium - if you see this in another player's deck, they likely netdecked Stefan (though I've definitely been converted to the church of Delirium too). I like seeing just a little bit of capture here too. All-in capture decks risk being blown-out by Number One or her ilk, but just having three copies of Trap is Sprung, an Ensnared, and a couple Eveks gives you a chance to inconvenience the opponent without assuming too much risk yourself. Where this deck does look like it goes all-in is on The Enemy of My Enemy. However, both of the cards that seem to show up for that interrupt have alternate uses. Data (Battleship Offier) can also be used to generate skills on Garak (conveniently putting him in the discard pile for use with Enemy). Garak can't use One (Peerless), but Gorgan can, and is only beatable by Rule #144 or another copy of One! |
First Edition European Continentals winner Stefan de Walf |
Our Commentary: What do you think about the power level of the deck? Is there an element that you think should be considered for errata? Also, the 5 points are ridiculous, this is the easiest way to start errata - I don't know how this mistake could be made again after the TNG Ferengi backlash. This card is amazing without the 5 points already - yes please, I want to move to my opponent, draw two cards, kill 2 guys and cripple the ship. Wait, I also get points for that? Thank you very much! Removing the points and maybe only allowing a single battle per turn might be a reasonable errata that does not just remove this card or the second drone ship. Benefactor is also way too strong and an auto-include in most decks - even without the skill sharing ability. I use it in this deck only for the first Almanac draws and the free downloads of amazing personal, adding 6 skills to people as some of the other decks can do, is frightening. Is there more that your opponents could have done to adapt to the deck, either while playing or while deckbuilding? How do you feel about Smuggler's Rendezvous? (My personal concerns with it are more flavor-related than power-related, hence asking about it separately.) |
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