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Unjustly Banned (RedDwarf)
Tournament Report - 2E - British National
2013-11-17 - 11:00 AM
Starfleet Speedy Death Mirror [v1]
Introduction
Not having a deck I was 100% happy with for the 2013 UK Nationals, I decided to go achievement hunting instead. The Mirror Starfleet achievement and the Consuming dilemma pile achievement were in my sights.

Round 1	Niall Matthew	FW (+50)
Niall, a First Edition player, was playing in his inaugural Second Edition tournament. He wanted to play Borg, so Nick had lent him his Assimilator. It is not the easiest deck to play - by a long shot - but I knew it was still a threat to me in Niall's inexperienced hands. While I was off attempting my first mission, Niall hung back a turn to collect more resources to attack me with the following turn. When he came over, he assimilated two personnel, and left two stopped drones aboard my ship. Being "evil" James (I was playing a mirror deck after all), I advised Niall I planned to fly that ship home the next turn, so he wouldn't be able to rescue his two drones without wasting a bunch of range. Only having one ship in play, he abandoned them and went about his own mission attempts. This is when I had one of my few good dilemma draws, and managed a combo that killed six (I think) personnel. The Borg Queen was one of the first two to die, and Niall had no points to spend on Knowledge and Experience. He was then de-staffed, and left digging for a second ship to continue the game. While that was going on, I continued to work my way through my missions. I finally completed my space mission and then completed Secure Strategic Base on my first attempt. I only had four personnel remaining, but those personnel could really pump their attributes up! With one attempt already stopped at my final mission, Niall played his second ship, and was able to complete Assimilate Resistance thanks to the number of dilemmas I had already consumed. He then assimilated Obrist from my discard pile and burnt a One With the Borg for 15 points before heading to his second mission. Once again, I managed to kill a few personnel (including Obrist, who I was targeting) and stop the attempt. I completed my third mission on the next turn, just as time was called. FW: 100-50


Round 2	William Hoskin	FW (+65)
I travel 200 miles and I end up playing my brother! Fortunately, Will was the only London player I had to face the whole day (unlike Will who faced three London players in his four games). Anyhow, Will was playing a Cardassian Central Command deck. He'd gone a bit over the top when building the deck though, and told me later it was around 70 cards - just too big to reliably get the cards he wanted when he wanted them. I was out attempting fairly early. I'd been lucky and had already played Watchdog and two copies of Standard Punishment on it. I had to use both at my first mission attempt. The first to prevent a 6 cunning personnel from being killed by Traitor Exposed, and the second to prevent two personnel from dying to Ardent Predator. I then ran into a Tactical Disadvantage, and was fortunate to have two ships in hand to Will's one. I overcame the dilemma and took the mission on my first attempt. While I was working on my second mission, Will made his first attempt of the game in Space. Of the eight dilemmas I drew, I found myself looking at three copies of Bold Plan and two Planet dilemmas I couldn't play. In the end I practically gifted Will the mission with overcome dilemmas whilst only stopping a few personnel to end the attempt. Naturally, he took the mission on his next turn, but his luck turned at his planet mission. Tragic Turn, All-Consuming Evil and The Clown: Guillotine combined to kill off all three of his Law personnel - at least one of which he needed for the mission. That bought me a couple of turns, and was all I needed to take the victory. I thought Will had me at the third mission when he revealed Necessary Execution. I knew I only had one personnel with Science - a mission skill, and was hugely relived when Will didn't pick him to die. It turns out Will thought D'vela could replace any skill I lost so he didn't bother stripping the skill. Yay for not reading the cards! FW: 100-35


Round 3	Thomas Schneider	FL (-55)View opponent's Report View original Report
At this stage, four of us are undefeated and I got paired with Thomas. Before we sat down, I feared the worst, as I'd used his Mirror Starfleet deck as the basis for mine and assumed he would know all the ins and outs of the deck. Once I had sat down and Thomas revealed his missions, things got worse. Thomas was playing his Romulan deck that utilized Donatra and Assess Contamination to stop his opponent from playing non-skill dilemmas. 28 of my 29 dilemmas didn't have a skill. In short: I was screwed. The first card Thomas played was Ptol, and any surprise my dilemma pile might have had went out the window when he looked at my top four dilemmas. Over the next few turns, my draw deck was kind to me. Thomas only scored 5 points once from Getting Under Your Skin and/or Prejudice and Politics. Partly because I had the "wrong" card on top of my deck when he checked it, and partly because I managed to blow three of them up on the turn after they were played. I was reluctant to fuel the fire though, and since Thomas had played The Viceroy, I didn't want to play my own events and let him download what he needed. I didn't bother with A Sight for Sore Eyes or At What Cost? I did succumb and play a Watch dog, but that was it. When it came to mission attempts, I made my first (and thankfully, only) huge mistake of the day in this game. Thomas attempted Assess contamination first, and knowing that two of my dilemmas would be overcome before any were faced I declined to play any. With hindsight, I should have played at least two to force Thomas to return Donatra to his hand. As it was, he completed the mission and moved to his next. There I had a similar problem, but did stop the attempt once. Thomas completed it the following turn, and then moved to his space mission with six personnel. Faced with the Donatra problem again, I played Tragic Turn and then Final Adventure, hoping Thomas would use Donatra on the first and I would kill someone with the second. As expected, Thomas used Donatra on Tragic Turn. Sadly, when it came to Final Adventure, I named 4 (aiming for Spock), but Thomas hadn't taken any 4 cost personnel and completed the mission anyway. At my own missions, I'd taken a couple of attempts to get through my space mission, and then ran into a lonely Whisper in the Dark at my first planet mission. With not enough events in play, I couldn't use D'vela to gain the skills I needed, and lost three personnel. That set me back long enough that even if my dilemma gamble had worked at Thomas' third mission, I don't think I could have won the game before his next turn anyway. FL: 45-100
James was playing Mirror Starfleet, a deck I know very well. An early P'Tol revealed a kill pile, so it looked like Donatra would have a busy day... James managed to destroy all my bonus point events very soon after a played them, so all I got was one At What Cost... I started attempting at Assess Contamination and to my surprise James did not play a single dilemma and I completed. With all my personnel (most important Donatra) unstopped, alive, and still in play I continued to Survey New World. Thanks to Donatra I ended up with six dilemmas under and acceptable losses and could auto-complete next turn. Meanwhile James did complete his space mission and started to attempt his planet mission. Secure Strategic Base + two copies of Standard Punishment on Watch Dog + the usual above average attributes on mirror Starfleet personnel means I had to take a gamble. I played a lone Whisper in the Dark, being pretty sure he was missing one very likely two skills. His team included D'Vela but his only event was Watch Dog, so I decided that even if he was missing only one skill getting rid of his Standard Punishments was a fair trade for letting him solve the mission. It turned out he was missing two skills, so three personnel died and the survivors could not solve. With James having only one ship in play and not enough personnel to solve his mission I was pretty sure I would have at least two more turns. I thus send a team of six to my space missions to get enough dilemmas under to solve it next turn. First dilemma was Tragic Turn, which I prevented with Donatra after the Consume. The second and last one was Final Adventure which James wanted to use to kill Spock who was not in the attempt. Neither was any other personnel costing four, and with not a single All Consuming Evil consumed during the attempt five personnel remained and solved the mission.

Round 4	Meinhard S. Rohr	FW (+70)
Stefan, another First Edition player, was also sitting at two wins and one loss. He was playing a Cardassian two mission solver, with a little capture to earn extra points. An early Energize, Surprise Party and Enabran Tain meant he was throwing out more personnel than I could - and that was saying something. While I lost T'Pol to Evek and someone unimportant to Ensnared, I never felt threatened in this game once I got my buzz-saw working at Stefan's first mission attempt. I played The Clown: Bitter Medicine naming Medicine to make all Stefan's Medical personnel attributes-2, and then killed Crell Moset (who could prevent the death of others) and Mila (who could prevent interrupts) with The Clown Guillotine. An overcome All-Consuming Evil also added to the misery. Stefan recovered a few turns later and completed the mission, but he ran into another massacre at his next mission. Tragic Turn, All-Consuming Evil and Overburdened combined to kill four personnel. This, coupled with my using evil Phlox every turn, was limiting the number of personnel Stefan had in play, and was also increasing the size of his discard pile considerably. On the next turn, I stopped another attempt by using the Manheim Effect to fetch a Toe to Toe. My own mission attempts weren't going as smoothly as I wanted. Stefan used He Wasn't Nice to kill two copies of D'vela I took to my first mission. He also stopped another attempt before I finally completed the mission on my third time of asking. At my planet mission, he one-stopped me with An Issue of Trust, but I completed the mission on the following turn when I used Travis to exclude someone from a random selection to that a Temptation would whiff. At my final mission, Stefan stopped half of my eight personnel, but the four left over included Archer and Hoshi (pumping my attributes) and I could still complete the mission with the help of a Standard Punishment from my Watch Dog. FW: 100-30


Closing Thoughts
Thanks to everyone who participated in the UK Nationals this year. 12 players for First Edition and 13 players for Second Edition made for a fun weekend (even if I could only be there for half of it.)