Second Edition Australian Continentals winner Kieren |
Kieren's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? What was your toughest match-up of the day? What made it so difficult? 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? I built the deck a while ago (save a few changes for the new cards) so in the meta now I would take out A Klingon Matter from the pile and drop in something else new. I was always happy to see The Phase when I drew it, so maybe another copy of that (never fired BTW, just a regular 2 cost stop) What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? What was your best play of the tournament? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your experience? |
My Commentary: I think that really works to the deck's advantage. The downside of the TNG cost cheating options is that they're symmetric, and there are a lot of popular decks that can take just as much advantage of them as you can. And the downside of weenie decks is low-cost personnel-hate is very common in the form of In Development or the 6-cost dilemmas. This deck side-steps all that by focusing on three-cost (58% of the deck!), skill-rich personnel that just slip right past the weenie hate but don't also enable the opponent to drop Donatra into play for free. I'd like to highlight a particular three cost personnel I'm excited to see. He's great at returning dilemmas from beneath an opponent's incomplete mission, but it isn't Shran (who does also appear here). Earth-icon Sarek has, in addition to nice attributes and skills, a "symmetric" ability that returns dilemmas, they just have to be Consume or Persistent. The use of those keywords these days is low enough that there's a good chance of him not being symmetric, and really increases the value of those already nice one-cost stoppers. Not only can their stops not be prevented, but Sarek makes them bounce just like their more expensive brethren. Another point of interest here is the dilemma pile. Kieren points out that it's a little polarized (better against non-Intel/Treachery-rich affiliations), and that's a language I speak fluently - often I find my piles either running over people or being very ineffective (see: my match-ups this past weekend). But even more interesting here is the planet/space/dual balance. Fully 44% of the pile is planet or space, which is rare these days. What works well here is the planet and space dilemmas fully leverage the fact that they're naturally lower cost than duals, and have a great stop to cost-ratio. It helps against Dominion Stakoron decks to have good non-dual options, and it helps against everyone else that, even if you draw fewer usable dilemmas, they make up for it by stopping efficiently. |
Second Edition Space Coast Masters winner Daniel Matteson |
Daniel's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? What was your toughest match-up of the day? What made it so difficult? 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? By the way, Icheb actually got assimilated in one game. That's something I've never seen before. Also, before it gets pointed out to me, yes, I included a Sarek that I didn't realize I couldn't play to my headquarters when I built the deck. However, he stayed in my hand long enough to pass a Royale Casino: Craps dilemma, so it wasn't all bad. What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? What was your best play of the tournament? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your experience? |
My Commentary: With a deck like this, you get out of the gate real fast with the draws from the TOS headquarters text and Rigel X. With 38% of the deck being one cost (or less!), those draws help refill you with cards that you can just drop right on the table. Three Oberths also help with the early draws, but with a fast deck you really want a bunch of cheap ships anyways. Timescape is the bane of decks that want to be attempting with 2-3 crews early on, and the way to beat Timescape is the ability to crop dust multiple missions in the same turn. And you don't really worry too much about your personnel dying when you can just resurrect a mission worth of them by solving Starbase 718. You take the board early, and the control elements really gum up the works for the opponent. Sisko and Worf take turns beating up on the opponent's verbs, and Coordinated Counterattack directly block skill gain. In the meantime, Kirk makes the opponent overthrow dilemmas, which is a futile strategy against a deck that can flood the board. For good measure, assimilation is futile with Icheb around. Go ahead, try to assimilate, make my day. This deck's highlighted personnel is Non-Aligned Dukat. He hasn't seen as much play since the arrival of Metron Arena, but really, there's a lot of reason to want to wipe out just the verbs from the discard pile. He's great against Cardassians (who don't use Metron), systematically removing the best targets from The Enemy of My Enemy (and preventing Ocett from resurrecting The Central Command). And even against Relativity (who does use Metron), you can get a decent amount of mileage out of intentionally stranding key personnel on Metron, forcing the Relativity player to choose between running over to pick those personnel up or try to fly to another mission. |
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