Tournaments | trekcc

Kris Sonsteby (LORE)
Tournament Report - 1E
2015-01-24 - 02:30 PM
He Didn't Eat a Car... Did He?
Introduction
Embroiled in a job search that left little time for much else, I reworked the dilemmas of a design I had lent to The Beast from the East earlier and hoped for the best as Act 2 of Royal Rumble took center stage. In building towards the elusive play 5 and win 5 medals for Hirogen, I claimed another trophy for the hunters on this day.

Round 1	Kevin	FW (+100)
Kid Kash was angling on abusing Gamma Quadrant Feds, but without a Q's Tent: Civil War had no answer for my significant wave of first turn personnel downloads. With Exobiology in spades for DNA Clues and his Medical drain dilemma combos, this old school / new school clash wrapped up rather quickly. FW 100-0.


Round 2	Justin Kaufman	FW (+100)View opponent's Report View original Report
Crimson was attempting Kazon, and picked off Dr. Nydom to keep me from getting the bonus draws from Ancestral Vision. Duplicating missions made attempts on both sides tricky, though I eventually nailed down the win over our resident ambassador at Investigate Quantum Singularity courtesy of Cytherians. FW 100-0.
We duplicated 4 missions. Kris was able to wrap up his two missions which we didn't duplicate and I had foolishly put a Cytherians under Kris' unique space mission. I got stuck by a Combo Scow at the one mission I attempted without engineers and I was too concerned by my ships getting attacked to make sure they were landed.

Round 3	James Heaney	MW (+10)View opponent's Report View original Report
Heavy Metal was utilizing Starfleet, but was comparatively slow out of the gate as I warped through a gender combo at Assist Cooperative early. A big lead suddenly turned into a small one following the destruction of the Equinox and a mission theft, but I held on for the win at time thanks to a well-placed Edo Probe. MW 90-80.
The Old Pro was co-chairing a Delta Hirogen build, revised from the deck my Klingons completely failed against back in Septemberish. As the game opened, it looked like we were headed to the same ignoble finish, as I made a series of costly mistakes. I had drawn a rather bad opening hand (had nothing that I needed, no Temporal Shifting, and relatively few AU cards) and knew right away that (without some very good luck), I would need to draw like gangbusters AND use Masaka for the first time all day. First, I failed to force Kris to pull out General Quarters on my first turn. Instead, I had to do it myself. But (second) I had forgotten to put Q the Ref on the table by the end of my turn. I had to execute a tricksy download / draw / convert thing using a special download on his turn to make up for it and prevent a Major Turn of Downloading. I had also (third) forgotten to get Emory Erickson to my hand, so would go without a probe on Turn 2. Then (fourth), when I Masaka'd, Kris Mirror Image'd it, but I forgot that Mirror Image affects all players, and so failed to take advantage of one of his Kivas Fajo Collector plays next turn -- passing up draws I desperately needed. Finally, and most seriously, I showed I'm A Doctor, Not A Bricklayer without checking that I had Medical and Officer present. Turns out I didn't, but it was ruled that I had initiated play of the card and so had to use it for its useless second function. This cost me Hoshi Sato and We're Ready. Visit Cochrane Memorial was giving me "meh" probes -- single draws of personnel (rather than the reports I craved) and, bizarrely, the Phoenix. (I had only two bad probes in the entire deck -- Phoenix and Ready Room Door (Reflection Therapy was a wash) -- but, in roughly 20 probes I took all day, three of them were bad. What are the odds? So I was moving slooooooow as molasses. Kris was not. His Hirogen got online in a couple of turns and started diving into tag-team attempting as soon as his Ancestral Vision was running. He came prepared for my Matriarchal Society combo (I really should dump the Scow and just use Love Interest as a lead-in), clearing it in two turns, and my Do You Smell Something Burning / New Advancements / Dead End combo just plain whiffed, as he now had both 50 points (40 from his first mission + 10 from requesting the item) and, I believe, a cook. He wasn't moving swiftly, and had actually made a significant error of his own (he accidentally took Dr. Nydom away from Ancestral Vision), but why did he need to? He was up 90 to nil. Did I say that whiffing I'm A Doctor Not A Bricklayer was my biggest mistake of the game? Not actually true. My biggest mistake was that I forgot AGAIN to get Q the Ref on the table. So I couldn't In The Zone Kris -- not that I had In The Zone, but you don't really need In The Zone because just the possibility that you have it makes it too risky to cross paths with it -- and I couldn't remind him that You Are A Monument and force him to go to 140 points. So Kris quite sensibly went on and tried to attempt his 45 point mission. The orange one. You know the one I'm talking about. Quantum something. And Gravitic Mine + Null Space was enough to stop him. (New Advancements whiffed AGAIN. It desperately needs more setup to hit.) But he had cleared the mission, and had the requirements aboard his ship. He would win next turn. By this time, I'd finally crawled out of my hole in the past and dove into Fissure Research, because everybody puts the weaker combo at Fissure Research the moment they see Investigate Anti-Time Anomaly. (I think my mentioning that IATA is "unsolvable" during the Mission Phase -- which is generally true for most decks, as its requirements are brutal -- actually made Kris MORE worried that I was going to attempt it early.) I'd survived Arsenal: Separated / Ankari Spirits on a previous turn, and there was only one dilemma left. I was torn about what to do, but settled on a plan, and (finally!) executed my plan correctly. We attempted. I brushed aside Emergency Conversion and solved the mission. My specialist was dead of the Spirits, so 35 points. Then I legged it to the DQ, using Excavation II and Aftermath II. (Lucky for me, I had drawn into a Wormhole interrupt two turns before, so had a way to get home.) I fired on the Equinox. Already damaged, it was easily destroyed. The Equinox had headed far down the spaceline, and the cleared-out mission he had been trying to solve was just out of range of his two Venatic Hunters. This meant he could not reach the mission during his turn. (That mattered most of all, because he would surely solve if he got there, ending the game; given Enterprise's SHIELDS, now well over 20, I was not concerned about his ships actually destroying me, even if he got a third Hunter to the table.) He spent his turn regrouping, having lost many key personnel and two play engines on the Equinox. Then, on my turn, since it was Fed / Non-Aligned, I stole the mission. No dilemmas, no stops. Suddenly 90 to nil became 90 to 80. I ran for the Alpha Quadrant and tried to pound through missions for the win. Solving Excavation II would give me the win outright; alternatively, I could solve IATA to get 130, then play Phoenix (or fetch Whales) to get 140. Kris was also now moving at full speed. And my real enemy became the clock. I couldn't clear out Excavation -- I don't recall what was underneath Volcanic Eruption, but whatever it was scared me away (Friendly Fire, maybe?) -- so instead I had to solve IATA. I cleared it, but couldn't solve it, because the last dilemma was a Love Scow. The Avenger was not on the table (I don't think it had been destroyed, but the guy who could download it, Dan Leonard, I think was stopped on Excavation II). I had a Grappler in my hand and could play it next turn, then immediately solve, zoom over to Earth, and Temporal Vortex to 1986 to get my winning whales. But that depended on Kris finishing his turn in less than (I believe) four minutes. Kris was about to attempt Liberation, but I put Access Denied on it before he started the attempt. This was non-optimal, but I needed Q the Ref back on the table immediately, because I still didn't have You Are A Monument out (and would need it if he got to the point of solving the mission), and I hadn't figured out a good way to generate a card draw to convert to a Q the Ref during a mission attempt. So I had to go fetch A.D. before the mission attempt, and M.A.C.O. + Arguers or something meant I got Q the Ref back. Unfortunately, A.D. scared Kris off the mission, resetting him to zero on the attempt setup, which cost some time off the clock. He also realized he needed to solve a space mission, so trucked off to do that instead. Both my remaining space combos held off his two teams: Menthar / The Cloud and Chula: The Game. But, just as he resolved The Cloud -- the last action of his turn, other than his inevitable card draw -- time was called. I had had first turn, so that was it. MW 90-80. A very topsy-turvy game that was a lot of fun. I didn't win, but I did for the first time manage to blow up one of LORE's ships, and it was very close, so I am overall happy with the outcome. (And, of course, Kris is always a pleasantly challenging opponent.)

Closing Thoughts
While far from overpowered due to the existence of You Are a Monument, the mix of Holograms and skill dense DQ denizens is tough to deny once the build starts rolling. Coupled with "item requests" courtesy of The Office of Dixon Hill, opponents are constantly faced with tough in-game decisions that have no clear right answer.