Unjustly Banned (RedDwarf) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Danish National 2012-03-04 - 10:00 AM Covenant thy Putsch Introduction In preparation for the Danish Nationals, I tried scouting the opposition to see what I might have to face. Unfortunately, looking through the past tournaments, the Danes hadn't played much, so I had no idea what to expect. My first thought was to build a Bajoran Covenant deck, but after looking through the Bajoran cards, I came across Political Putsch. I figured that would screw over any deck relying on events, and I could fill my dilemma pile with anti-weenie dilemmas to cover any speed decks. It was a sound theory, and turned out to be a good choice for the meta. If only I had thought about my deck a little more when I was building it... Round 1 Bye BY (0) Peter and his wife Nina were kind enough to put all three traveling Londoners up in their flat while we were in Denmark. I was left with the snoring machine that is my brother about one foot away from my head, and just couldn't sleep the previous night. During this bye, Peter offered to find me a sofa I could sleep on, but I was worried that if I fell asleep, I wouldn't wake up until the next day. Instead I surfed the Internet for a bit, and posted on the forums. My sleep-deprived rambling is here. Round 2 Soren Ramme Nielsen FL (-100)View opponent's ReportView original Report My first game with my new deck (which at this point, I thought was going to work well) was against Soren. He was playing a Starfleet Nathan Samuels/Damaged hybrid, so he'd get his personnel out insanely quickly with Samuels, and then screw with my dilemma pile using Damaged Archer, Lorien and Karyn Archer. I would have had more chance of winning this one if I hadn't been so tired. Mistake #1: I forgot to use my Historical Research download. Mistake #2: I forgot to use Non-Aligned Dukat to clear an event from Soren's discard pile the turn before he dropped A Sight for Sore Eyes. Mistake #3: Soren double attempted at one of his planet missions. After I stopped the first attempt, he moved the personnel to the side but very clearly said "they're still at the mission, I'm just moving them over there to make space". I knew Lorien would be in the second attempt, but when picking dilemmas about 10 seconds later, I looked at the mission and thought to myself "there are no stopped personnel on the planet, so Lorien won't make a difference." All in all, not my finest hour. Unsurprisingly, Soren won this game with ease in under 25 minutes. I was focusing on playing my 5-cost high integrity personnel, and hadn't even played a ship by the time Soren had completed all three missions. FL: 0-115 Second game against James. Totally awesome that he was finally able to make it to Aarhus along with Nick and Will. Even though I've meet James at quite a few times over recent years I had only played him twice before. James told me that he hadn't actually play-tested his deck, but only made test draws, so he was a bit anxious about how it would perform. It was a bajoran solver with Basso and Covenant, and Political Putsch to mess with the opponent. James quickly got PP out and dirty Duka, but I was able to get some events in the discard pile and got the whole ASfSE/AWC? thing going. Before long I had a lot of people in play and started hitting my missions with dual attempts. I don't remember much about the dilemmas James played against me, but I believe that I pulled off the Lorian "trick" again in this game. That guy can be really, really good (Karyn Archer too). I don't think James ever left his Hq. Full win 115-0. Round 3 William Hoskin FL (-70)View opponent's ReportView original Report I came all the way to Denmark to play Will. Great! Will was playing a skill-denial deck with all sorts of ways of killing skills in play, and removing them from my deck before I could play them. I'd faced the deck before though, and knew that I had plenty of those particular skills in my deck. What I didn't have was much death prevention (I'd removed 2 ETUs and an Escape a few days earlier to reduce the deck size and help me get Political Putsch and Dukat into play quicker.) My opening hand consisted of two Treachery Bajorans and Political Putsch. I was going second and if I remembered to use my Historical Research download to get Dukat, I thought I was set. Sadly, Will had the best opening hand he could have wished for against my deck. It contained an Energize. Normally, he'd spend his first turn playing a few personnel so that he could play events requiring 3 Romulan personnel to play. Unfortunately for me, he played Energize on his first turn and then over the next four turns, placed three more events on it. Putsch did slow him down for a few turns, but when Energize was discarded, he dropped a handful of events before I could remove them from his discard pile. To make matters worse, Will played Surprise Party and Bochra early on. He was spending nine counters a turn, while I only had seven. Given that he often couldn't play any events, he was hording them in hand for use with the stooges, Ruwon and Karina. My dilemma pile just couldn't cope. I did manage to complete a mission, and use Krim to remove three copies of a dilemma from Will's dilemma pile, but my lack of death prevention was slowing me down, as I was having to replay personnel every turn. It wasn't long before it was game over. FL: 30-100 Things were going ok until the Putch hit the table. "luckily" according to James I already had energize in play and in decayed three events onto it allowing me to be able to play events for the next two turns. A couple of goes later I played a power shift, James asked if I had any events in my discard pile I checked and the answer was no. James being his usual gracious self said that it HAD to go out of play. At that point I decided to play my deck slightly differently, I completed 2 mission in a turn and slaughtered as many of James people as I could with Parting Shot and Sabotaged Transporter. FULL WIN to me. Round 4 Jakob Madsen MW (+30) Jakob was playing a DS9 weenie deck. He did manage to play a Promenade School/At What cost? combo and Under Siege the turn before I played Political Putsch, but I was able to play it the next turn before he could run away with the game. Despite Outnumbered Sisko naming dilemmas that couldn't kill or stop any personnel, I was able to hold Jakob off his missions for a number of turns. Jakob did eventually destroy my Political Putsch with a Grav-Plating Trap, but I had another in hand to replace it. My own mission attempts were steady, but not impressive. I used Covenant on 5-cost Odo to get around Mugato and complete my first mission. I then completed my next mission a few turns later and was working my way through my third mission when time was called. At that point, I was leading by 30 points, but Jakob had the final turn and enough personnel for two attempts to complete a 35 point mission with three dilemmas already overcome beneath it. I can't remember what dilemmas I played, but both times I luckily stopped/killed a personnel with mission skills. My first (and only) win with this deck! MW: 65-35 Round 5 Morten Sandberg FL (-100) Morten was playing a Cardassian Groumall deck that was very similar to the one I had brought with me and wished I was playing at this point. While I did get Putsch and Dukat out early, I just struggled with my missions so much. A Necessary Execution killing two 5-cost personnel on my first attempt didn't help either. Morten kept me at my first mission for the whole game, while he used The Central Command to power through his missions. At least I actually made some mission attempts in this game! FL: 0-100