Commandeur's article was interesting to many of the members frequenting this board, and it got me thinking about the many World Championship Decks that went before it.
I'd love to know what people's decks were like before the CC, OTF, etc. - especially before Voyager was released! Does anyone have any lists from the past?
I know Frakkin and Tomek are still around, so perhaps they can recall the decks they previously used at worlds and why they chose to play them (meta-game issues)?
Although I've never been to Worlds in the US, I remember Mike Harrington (or was it Eric Johnfauno?) winning Worlds 1998 (1999?) with a Romulan/Android PNZ deck against Brian Sykes Jemmie/Beware of Q/Birthing Chamber Deck.
Caretaker's Guest wrote:Although I've never been to Worlds in the US, I remember Mike Harrington (or was it Eric Johnfauno?) winning Worlds 1998 (1999?) with a Romulan/Android PNZ deck against Brian Sykes Jemmie/Beware of Q/Birthing Chamber Deck.
Cool. Any idea if listings of those decks have survived?
You never went to the US to have a crack at the $10,000? That surprises me Seb!
Bill Chien 98: Bajoran Q-Bypass
Mike Harrington 99: Romulan Armada with Wormholes
Eric Johnfauno 00: Romulan Android PNZ with Senior Staff Meeting
(Ian Vincent 01): DQSS Supernova
F 02: DQSS Hexany/Ref Provocation
My account is inactive, please email me to contact me.
MilesStuntDouble wrote:Summary of Winning Decks...
Dave Bowling 1997: Klingon space-solver with Cryosatellite
nuttersuclan wrote:Cool. Any idea if listings of those decks have survived?
I can construct parts of several 1st- and 2nd-place decks from memory (Bowling '97, both of Todd Soper's '97 decks, Soper's 2nd-place '98 deck, Harrington '99, and Sykes 2nd-place '00). By 'parts' I generally mean verb proportions, key strategy cards, and tactical notes. Personnel would largely be guesswork, and I wouldn't have a clue about dilemmas.
"Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise."
1997 Worlds: I've scanned an old Scrye article which include both Dave Bowling's winning decklist (Klingon space redshirt, back when you could attempt space missions from outposts and just discard anything that affected ships) and Todd Soper's runner-up deck (Romulan space redshirt based on Telek R'Mor). Top 12 standings are also included on the second page.
Page 1 (Decklists): http://webspace.utexas.edu/~sdb382/Scrye1.JPG
Page 2 (Strategy): http://webspace.utexas.edu/~sdb382/Scrye2.JPG
1998 Worlds: Once upon a time Decipher posted decklists for everyone. I managed to download them when they were still available, and have put them into ZIP files which you can find here. Particular highlights for me from Day 1 are Evan Lorentz's Borg Gamma swarm strategy (the first competitive Borg deck ever played; he used it to win GenCon that year IIRC), Ken Tufts' Black Hole deck (with no less than 7 Black Holes), Thomas Becker's stasis build (which, near the end of the game, would have an enormous hand of 40-50 cards which turned Masaka Transformations into a "draw anything you need" card), and, just for fun Sean Wiedemann's Wrath of Sito Jaxa. Day 2 was won by Bill Chien's Q-Bypass deck against Todd's Federation megacrew, designed by Ken Tufts (hence the deck name: Ken's Remodulation Infatuation). At one point Decipher posted a transcript from the final game, but I don't have that saved. Interesting trivia: Bill actually won the game because of a misplay... Todd's Roga Danar was killed by a Common Thief, a dilemma which can't target him. If Todd's Roga had stayed alive, he would have solved the mission on that attempt and won. For me, the Day 2 highlight was Jason Drake's Thought Fire/Kova Tholl+RBM/Diplomatic Conference megacrew mashup.
1999 Worlds: I've only uploaded Mike Harrington's winning Romulan battle deck for now. I have Dan Allman's runner-up AMS deck somewhere, let me look for it. (Incidentally, Dan's deck archetype was similar to the one he used to win GenCon that year, I think I have the top 8 decks from that saved too if anyone's interested in seeing them.) This was the one Worlds I played in. I've re-uploaded an old tournament report from back then, but you won't see any of the top strategies in my report -- I didn't playtest my deck and it was basically unwinnable. (Yeah, that was stupid. I was 17.)
Mike's winning deck: http://webspace.utexas.edu/~sdb382/1115 ... ngton.html
My report: http://webspace.utexas.edu/~sdb382/DCON1.TXT
2000 Worlds: Decipher posted the top 12 decklists from this year, let me see what I can dig up.
1997 metagame summary:
There are no cards or magic bullets of any kind. Nearly all competitive decks use 6 space or 6 planet missions. Space is slighly more popular to avoid The Sheliak, and players are allowed to attempt space missions from their outpost (thus space-mission decks prefer to seed two outposts).
Most dilemma strategies involve the same few space/planet dilemmas that are effective against any opponent: Outpost Raid Shaka, When the Walls Fell Barclay's Protomorphosis Disease (with red-shirting, it was a good killer and unlikely to provide bonus points) Empathic Echo (this was ruled, or at least played, as a wall requiring MEDICAL and SECURITY even without an Empathy trigger) Cardassian Trap
There was also some Yuta, Parallel Romance, Armus, Radioactive Garbage Scow, Alien Parasites, Coalescent Organism, Borg Ship, Q, and a few I'm not remembering.
The Traveler and Kivas Fajo were used extensively-- Red Alert! less so, because you just didn't need it as much (and it wasn't a good idea to rely on it).
Deck Archetypes:
* Space mission speed-solvers with red-shirting (The Romulans were most popular, thanks to the availability of Dr. Telek R'Mor and high-point missions; Federation was next most popular)
* Planet mission speed-solvers with red-shirting (often coupled with a Horga'hn or Betazoid Gift Box)
* Q Bypass (because of the limited dilemmas, this was not an overwhelingly powerful strategy compared to the others, but one such took 3rd place at '97 Worlds)
* Planet mission supercrew (typically with Red Alert and Genetronic Replicators)
* Borg Ship hunter (with Kurlan Naiskos)
Bowling's 1997 Championship Deck
a rough reconstruction
(I'm posting this one first in case Dave has an actual list, so I can see how well I remember it)
Title
"From Qo'nos with Honor"
Decks should always have a title for major events.
Missions Wormhole Negotiations Warped Space
And then 3 or 4 of these:
Investigate Alien Probe, Seek Life-form, Pegasus Search, Study Hole In Space, Survey Mission, Secret Salvage, Explore Black Cluster
The first two listed were the primary strategy for 90 points, to be supplement by 10 from Sam Clemens. Other high point missions would be valuable to draw away excess dilemmas, and Klingon-only missions would be preferable because they are less likely to get stolen (again, Romulan and Fed were the popular space solvers).
Dilemmas
(15 total, if my math is right; missions counted toward your 30-card seed limit)
See above list of popular dileamms. Someone claimed that Dave used six copies of Shaka, When the Walls Fell, but Dave pointed out that he did not own that many, so I'm going to guess that he used 4 or 5, typically followed by an Outpost Raid for best effect against space-mission redshirt decks.
Strategy
Try to seed the prime missions next to each other or, failing that, at opposite ends of the spaceline (Lakanta will allow wrap-around movement).
Play Travelers & Kivases for card draws if your opponent isn't loaded with Kevins; otherwise, start getting out personnel. Red shirt at Warped Space.
Once dilemmas are cleared, call a Devidian Door and put out another personnel. Solve mission on the next turn; fetch the Devidian Door with the Gift Box and score 10 points. Move on to Wormhole Negotiations.
EDIT: hidden, I see that Rachmaninoff beat me to it. I was pretty close, though.
Last edited by Wambundu on Sun Sep 25, 2011 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise."
I, for some reason, have Todd Soper's '97 "Innerspace Romulator" deck from the Decipher site, saved an aeon ago, but I guess I don't need to post it as it's on the scan from Scrye.
The other things I've discovered on my drive are:
"Playing In A Star Trek CCG Warp Speed Tournament" by Neil Kirby, which is associated with the Enhanced Premiere product,
"Rarity in Star Trek CCG: Reflections: The First Five-Year Mission" and "Topper Cards in Star Trek CCG Reflections: The First Five-Year Mission", talking about relative rarities of the foils and a little comparison with Star Wars Reflections.
And Reflections and EP cardlists, which are available in other places these days.
There was no Worlds in 1996, but Decipher did run a "National Championship" in Huntsville, Alabama that year.
Here is the deck that won the very first Decipher Star Trek Championship in 1996.
Some comments of explanation:
- This was back in the 60 card deck era. I had 28 seed cards and 32 draw deck cards.
- I've always tried to find some sort of gimmick. And in this deck the gimmick was seeding two outposts. Back then you could attempt space missions from an outpost, but you could only have one outpost per affiliation. So in order to seed two outposts I included Major Rakal in my deck, so I was 'officially playing two affiliations (Fed and Rommie) and could seed two outposts (Fed and the brand new Neutral Outpost)
- You'll notice that all my missions were Space missions. There was no rule back then about solving planet and space missions. This is also why all my dilemmas were planet/space.
- I believe this was a two and out deck. I'd solve Pegasus and whatever mission was close to Pegasus. The Barclay's was a self seed for 10 points. I honestly don't remember if the Cytherians were self seed points or not.
- I'd seed the cryo under mission 1 which I would attempt and solve from the station. With the Betazoid Box I'd grab a ship and whatever else I needed and run over to mission 2 and solve from my second outpost.
Star Trek CCG has certainly changed a LOT from the 'old days'.
FED/SPACE - H
SEED DECK
Outposts
Federation
Neutral Doorway
AU Door Missions
Explore Black Cluster
Fissure Research
Investigate Disappearance
Pegasus Search
Study Hole In Space
Study Nebula Artifacts
Betazoid Gift Box
Cryosatellite Dilemmas
Borg Ship
Cytherians
Barclay's ... Disease
Edo Probe - 2
Frame of Mind
Outpost Raid - 2
Q - 2
REM Fatigue...
Shaka, ... - 3 Personnel in Cryo
Beverly Picard
Major Rakal
Lakanta
PLAY DECK
Personnel
Beverly Crusher
Data
Jean-Luc Picard
Jenna D'Sora
Morgan Bateson
Neela Daren
Rachel Garrett
Wesley Crusher
Worf
Dathon
Dr. Reyga
Jo'Bril
Roga Danar
Vekor Ships
USS Enterprise
USS Galaxy Doorway
AU Door Events
Kivas Fajo ... - 2
Red Alert - 2
The Traveller ... - 2 Interrupts
Distortion of S/T Continuum - 2
Kevin Uxbridge - 3
Palor Toff ... - 2
Q2 - 2
"I used to be quite a card player in my youth, you know"
I played DQ Hirogen Holograms. It was a mix on the Hirogen and DQ Non-Aligned. I've made many changes to the deck since I first played it, but I believe this was the deck that I played in '06.
Delta Quadrant Holo Hell
Seed Deck:
Missions:
Reinitialize Warp Reaction - Voy
Liberation - Voy
Establish Home Planet - HA
Study Protonebula - HA
Answer Distress Signal - Voy
Seal Rift - HA
Hirogen Outpost
Holoprogram: 221B Baker Street
Caretaker's Array
U.S.S. Equinox
Holoprogram: Fortress of Doom
Home Away From Home
Q The Referee
Q The Referee
War Council
Assign Mission Specialists
Delta Quadrant Spatial Scission
Dual:
1) Dead End
Lack of Preparation
The Weak Will Perish
2) Your Galaxy is Impure
Chula: The Dice
Chula: The Door
Planet:
1) Horta
Misguided Activist
Executive Authorization
2) Denevan Neural Parasites
Founder Secret
The Clown: My Festival
Draw Deck:
Doorway:
Holodeck Door x4
Equipment:
Starfleet Type II Phaser
Hirogen Disruptor Rifle
Hirogen Talon
Event:
Holo-Projectors x2
The Big Picture
Revolving Door
Fair Play
Incident:
Feedback Surge
Hirogen Hunt
In The Zone
Obelish of Masaka
Rituals of the Hunt
White Deprivation
Interrupt:
Escape Pod
All Threes x2
Data, Keep Dealing x3
Mutation x3
Alas, Poor Queen
Kevin Uxbridge
Distortion of Space/Time Continuum x4
I've Been Waiting For You
Personel:
Hogan
Ayala
B'Elanna Torres x2
Icheb x2
Arachnia x2
Lonzak x3
Chaotica x3
Captain Proton x2
Buster Kincaid x2
The President of Earth
Equinox Doctor
Weiss
Tanis x2
Kes (Borg) x2
Pralor Unit 3947 x2
Marla Gilmore x2
Wodek'idan
Sumek x3
Harath
Karr x2
Kejal x3
Iden x2
Karon x2
Decaren x2
Nimira x2
Sherlock Holmes
John Watson
Madam Pulaski
Ship:
Olarra x2
(Looking this over, this may be an earlier draft because I'm not sure where the tent is ) The basic idea of the deck was to play people as fast as possible and solve whichever mission you could. As I recall, I never bothered to attempt Establish Home Planet (it's hard to do with only holograms!) and never encountered Dead End as a result. Looking this over now though makes me cringe as there are obvious flaws in the deck that I would correct (though I've never won Worlds again, so perhaps I'm wrong now).
It was a four round tournament. I had a timed loss against Dave in the fourth round but I had full wins for the first three rounds 100-0 and my differential put me over the top to win the tournament. The prize this year was a sealed box of All Good Things.
I was able to find an electronic copy of my 2005 Worlds deck, so I'll go ahead and post it.
At the time I was playing quite a bit of 2E, and the 2EBC Recon Drone single handedly renewed my interest in the Borg and the creation of this deck.
The fundamentals of this deck are pretty simple:
- Four of Nine and the Recon Drone were a scary probe rigging team.
- Service the Collective and Locutus let me probe on the same turn I completed scouting.
- Horgahn for double turns... I typically didn't take more than two double turns due to Writ... and because I really didn't need to.
- With Service the Collective and Horgahn it was faster to solve 4 objectives where I could probe same turn than solve higher point objectives where I had to wait a turn between scouting and probing.
- Of course I used DQSS to let me play two copies of the unique Borg personnel.
- And this was 1E Open format so I did include some key Referee cards.
1E Borg
SEED DECK
Facilities
Transwarp Hub
Unicomplex Doorway
Q's Tent
Spacedoor
Temporal Micro-Wormhole Missions
Acquire Technology
Expose Plot
Revive Settlers
Stop Bombardment
Battle Reconnaissance (2E)
Inversion Mystery Dilemmas 18 Dilemmas
* New Essentialists
The Weak Will Perish
In The Pale Moonlight
* Edo Probe
Personal Duty (2E)
Friendly Fire
* Hazardous Duty
Your Galaxy Is Impure
Maglock
* Dangerous Liaisons
Unscientific Method
Scientific Method
* Spatial Rift
The Higher... The Fewer
Dead End
* The Clown: Guillotine
Kelvan Show of Force
Implication Artifacts
Horga'hn Hidden Agendas
Mission Debriefing
Q the Referee x 2
Service the Collective Other
Delta Quadrant Spatial Scission
Make It So
PLAY DECK (92)
Personnel
Borg Queen (FC) x 2
Borg Queen (Bo) x 7
Locutus of Borg x 2
Seven of Nine x 2
Two of Nine
Three of Nine x 2
Four of Nine x 2
First
Second x 2
Third and Fourth x 2
Eight of Fifteen (Antitoxin Drone)
Eleven of Nineteen (Bio-Med Drone) x 2
Eleven of Twelve (Connectivity Drone)
Four of Eleven (Guard Drone)
Nine of Eleven (Interlink Drone)
Nine of Seventeen (Multiplexor Drone)
Six of Twelve (Sentinel Drone) x 4
Sixteen of Nineteen (Survey Drone)
Thirteen of Nineteen (Tactical Drone)
Two of Nineteen (Transwarp Drone)
Two of Twelve (Xenology Drone)
Reconnaissance Drone (2E) x 2 Ships
Borg Cube
Borg Tactical Cube
Locutus' Borg Cube
Queen's Borg Cube Objectives
Assimilate Planet x 3 Incidents
Cortical Node Implant x 2
War Council x 6 Events
Alas, Poor Drone
Metaphasic Shields
Nutational Shields
The Traveler: Transcendence x 2
We Are The Borg x 5 Interrupts
A Change of Plans
Adapt: Negate Obstruction x 2
Awaken x 10 Doorway
Q's Tent x 7
Ready Room Door x 3
Space-Time Portal Q the Referee
Containment Field
Fair Play
Feedback Surge
Obelisk of Masaka
Operate Wormhole Relays
Panel Overload
Q the Referee
Strategema
Temporal Vortex
Q's Tent
Borg Data Node
Borg Nanoprobes
Borg Vinculum
Maturation Chamber
Establish Gateway
Lower Decks
Masaka Transformations
Nutational Shields
Distortion of Space/Time Continuum
Oof!
Alternate Universe Door
Ready Room Door
Transwarp Network Gateway
I was unable to find an electronic copy of my 2007 Worlds deck, but I'm sure I have a hard copy somewhere. In quick summary my 2007 Worlds deck was a Voyager deck that used the evil 2E Voyager Holos from the In a Mirror, Darkly 2E expansion.
"I used to be quite a card player in my youth, you know"
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cards or magic bullets of any kind. Nearly all competitive decks use 6 space or 6 planet missions. Space is slighly more popular to avoid The Sheliak, and players are allowed to attempt space missions from their outpost (thus space-mission decks prefer to seed two outposts).
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