German National Championship winner Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser)
Deck Title: Perverser Obelisk (Johannes' Nationals deck is also attached to this article below.)
Deck Archetype: Midrange Solver
Play Engines: The Final Frontier
Draw Engines: Five Year Mission, Risk Is Our Business
Bonus Point Mechanics: Preserver Obelisk, Process Ore: Mining
Dilemma Strategy: Let Me Help

Johannes' Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
I wanted to play with some of the new cards that came out in The Cage and included things like Let Me Help, the 23rd Century missions and several dilemmas. personnel and ships have always been very strong due to the special downloads on some of their personnel and ships, so while this deck does not put out as many personnel per turn as others, they are very flexible when it comes to clearing dilemmas. I also wanted to include the Obsession/self-controlled dilemma engine, but could not find a convincing way to fit them into this deck and balance it, but it's card I'm looking forward to using soon. My other options were a Vulcan Kohlinar deck that I felt was too slow moving around the spaceline, and a Bajoran all-planet deck.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
I was hoping to play against decks with a lot of alpha quadrant missions. I was hoping not to have too many mirror matchups, for one because I'm simply not very good at using my dilemmas to good effect on shared missions, and also because I much prefer to play against as many different decks as possible. I was pleasantly surprised that I was the only one weak enough to succumb to the allure of the hot thing of the month.

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 familiar with how powerful individual cards are, but it was the first time playing a pure deck for me. I've really come to appreciate Where No One Has Gone Before and General Order 7.

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?
Bluegill Infestation and the personnel in Q's Tent were really mostly included for laughs to pull off the Entertaining Display / Koon-ut-kal-if-fee / "God" combo. The idea was to let the new heel stable of husband-and-wife martial arts act Worf and Jadzia, their enforcer Seven of Nine, and manager Mila (or Tasha) set up camp at a mission they secure with Transport Inhibitor (or Post Garrison), and pearl harbor everyone who relocates there with Primal Urges or the Love Interests (that I eventually ended up cutting for fear of everybody teching Lumba or Hoshi or Uhura). Captain Kirk (The Trouble With Tribbles) was never played, but as one-off he's worth a slot.

What was your toughest matchup of the day?
None of my games were easy, but Meinhard's Kazon were the tough matchup I expected.

You used several new cards in your deck, General Order 7, Let Me Help, Risk Is Our Business, Five Year Mission, plus several older ones like Bluegill Infestation and Taking Charge. Was it just trying everything to see what stuck, or was there method to the madness?
Bluegill really was just for fun. Let Me Help was nice, but I wouldn't hesitate to cut it if I need the seed slot(s). (Also, it wasn't really a factor in my two games against Borg. Both my Borg opponents struggled more with other dilemmas, but the fact that they could not simply immediately discard Primal Urges was certainly useful.) Risk is our Business was used primarily for the card draw and the download of Where No One Has Gone Before (it allowed me to pacman-move to a mission 26 span away and steal Verify Legendary Journey in one game, and gave me some breathing room against the Kazon armada). Five-Year Mission provides a very useful play phase draw, and General Order 7 is super strong. Its dial-a-skill service (including Vina's skill-of-choice) is great for clearing missions; other uses were to guarantee a first turn Pike for Taking Charge/Process Ore/Prepare Landing party (Pike + Taking Charge means essentially attributes +2 on planets for the entire game); to guarantee having the 3 Preserver Obelisk personnel for Talos IV out by the time you complete it; to get out multiple Lt. José Tylers to shoot back at stuff - this was useful against the Kazon, I was able to take two of their ships with me when my Constitutions were inevitably destroyed, and I think only taking a hit instead of a direct hit in some situations made a difference, but you would have to ask Meinhard if that assessment is correct.

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
General Order 7, together with Starship Enterprise for its download, and To Boldly Go. Having ships with 9 range that can be staffed by one personnel each was huge, and it was also part of the reason to turn this into something of a mini battle deck. Two Federation ships might look small, but they were often operating at 11-10-14 and 9-9-11 before Tactics, and could easily scoop in for the kill if a ship is hit by a damage dilemma.

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
The flexibility to seed The Final Frontier at your facility and not be forced to work from a time location really improved the appeal of playing pure for me.

Andoria Regional winner James Heaney (BCSwowbagger)
Deck Title: Whom Gods Destroy They First Make Mad (Or: No Gimmicks, Only More Dilemmas)
Deck Archetype: Direct Solver
Play Engines: The Final Frontier
Draw Engines: Five Year Mission, Isomagnetic Disintegrator, Kivas Fajo - Collector, Handshake, The Power
Bonus Point Mechanics: None
Dilemma Strategy: 4- or 5- Card Combos

James' Commentary:
Why did you choose the deck that you used? What other decks did you consider using?
After playing my brain-hurting Borg assimilator at two regionals in a row, I wanted to play something simple. Just play cards and solve missions. I had the original idea for this deck almost four years ago, when I read Andreas Rheinlander's (Dukat) article about a 29-dilemma Dominion deck and thought, "Hey, a Next Generation Federation deck could do that!" I just hadn't gotten around to making it yet. Since the Fargo regional was going to feature a lot of players who were either brand-new or hadn't played in a while, I didn't want to play anything that moved intimidatingly fast or that interfered with opponents or that used any of the rules from the advanced rulebook. That ruled out a lot of options, but fit this design perfectly.

I didn't really look at anything else until, during testing, the deck failed. It was just too slow, and lost both test games 100-0. I briefly considered switching to my Assemble Rescue Team deck -- but it was both too complicated and too unfinished for prime time. All I had to hand otherwise was my reliable Chef deck (which relied too heavily on the complicated Hologram rules for this event), or my Borg assimilator (which would ensure that nobody in Fargo ever wanted to play 1E ever again). So I stuck with the basic model and just went to find an alternative to Next Gen Feds. Original Series Federation, with the new cards from The Cage, fit the bill.

What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face?
I absolutely did not want to face any kind of battle or even simple interference like Orbital Stability and Warp Rift. My deck has zero resilience against it. I also wanted to avoid any really well-refined two-mission win speed solver decks, since those decks can pour out resources like water. One lucky break on my dilemmas and they win. In testing, James Monsebroten's (Orbin) much more refined Future Pike at K-7 crushed me 100-0 in six turns flat.

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'd never played the final, -based version of the deck, even in a test game. Fortunately, this is the platonic ideal of a simple deck to play, so it wasn't hard to pick up. I learned that, holy heck, having a 4-span outpost mission with a fleet of 6-RANGE ships is HARD, even if the rest of your spaceline's short. :)

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?
There's one or two, but, without a Tent, every card has to really make a case for itself. Emergency Evacuation was my big situational card, and, fortunately, I didn't have to use it. I might cut Isomagnetic Disintegrator, but it gives me a lot of peace of mind in case of mass casualties. I nearly used it in my game against Jason, when all the Diplomacy in my deck was either in the discard pile or on a Cytherians-affected ship.

You made a last minute switch from to for your nouns. If The Cage hadn't come out, would you have made that switch? How much, if at all, did working on The Cage impact your decision?
Not a chance I would have switched without The Cage. Since my goal was simplicity, I really really needed dead-simple play/draw like The Final Frontier + Five-Year Mission. A time location was right out. Even as it was, I was very reluctant to switch, because it meant going from two seed cards (Attention All Hands + Continuing Mission --> Finest Crew) to three (thanks to that Alternate Universe Door).

I didn't want to be "that guy who shows up with the new tech and knows how to use it 'cause he made it and wipes the floor with everybody," so I restricted myself mainly to the new personnel and left out the fancy new tech like 23rd-century missions, Let Me Help, Obsession, and draw-deck Preserver Obelisk.

If The Cage had not come out, I probably would have tried to slap together a Next Generation films version of the deck. You can just about make that deck work with just Federation Flagship: Relaunched and an early Federation Flagship: Renewed. But it's been a long time since I played [EE] Enterprise-E, and I didn't think I could pull it together in time.

What 4 or 5-card combo are you proudest of?
Most combos don't synergize as well as I'd hoped, but I thought Buried Alive / Punishment Box / Authorized Access / Cytherians / Maglock was pretty clever. Hope you've got seven OFFICER!

What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck?
Your Galaxy Is Impure, with Volcanic Eruption a very close second. An early version of this deck was just a lot of walls, which became ineffective by late game, because opponent could punch through every wall. But put YGII in front of three or four other tough-to-pass dilemmas, and suddenly you can get four, five, even six kills out of it, plus it psychs out your opponent.

Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your deck?
It's a nice deck for a beginner. You only need to understand two and a half cards to get started. (The AU Door is the half.) I might remove The Power and replace the Isomags with Regenerate and hand the whole thing to my father, who hasn't played since 1996 because the game got too complicated.