Dan Van Kampen (Iron Prime) Tournament Report - 1E 2023-12-31 - 10:30 AM How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tox Introduction The annual Andorian New Year's Charity Draft is always a blast, and this year was no exception. This year we had some sealed Premiere fun with a Tin Draft thrown in for good measure. To offset some of the, uh, "less useful" premiere cards, our host arranged for a random assortment of mystery virtual cards to behind such picks to spice things up. After a couple of key picks for dilemmas and personnel I decided to lean into the mystery virtual cards to see what I could get. This ended up being the right gamble as it shored up my dilemmas and even gave me a couple clutch personnel to short up my skills and keep the normal play vs free play numbers balanced. By far the most humorous - to me anyway - was drafting a Tox Uthat but not the Supernova (Supernova was one of my WB rares that I was initially disappointed to pull during sealed, before remembering I could draft the needed Tox...). Having the Tox gone but the Supernova remain caused some puzzled conversation and drafting. I believe one player knew, or suspected, but kept quiet on the issue... (Note it has a been a busy few days and I am returning a tad late to write this - my apologies for any errors in memory, please PM with corrections) Round 1 Robert Petersen MW (+30) Robert used his warbirds to good effect here. Luckily I had Escape Pod so I could be a tad brash. While I was being proud of rescuing my crew, Mr. Petersen decided to even the playing field with an Anti-Time Anomaly! We both started to rebuild but ended up being mutually stalled by dilemma walls and/or cleared missions that we no longer had the final skill to solve. Had the Supernova, couldn't dig up the Tox... Round 2 Jason Tang FW (+100)View opponent's ReportView original Report Jason started off very quickly with his Romulan enhanced Klingons. This this the game where my gamble during the draft of trying to get virtual cards came in most handy: by drafting some dilemmas early, and then grabbing some virtual cards, I was able to build some-what robust* dilemmas to slow Jason down. A couple mis-seeds meant I was able to cruise through many of the dilemmas for some early points (I had grabbed a fair number of medical personnel and that saved my bacon here). Near the end I was able to use The Devil to stall Jason for a turn to steal the win (nuking the treaty put the needed Romulan under house-arrest ). Was able to grab my Tox almost right away - but wasn't able to get the Supernova into my hand... *robust for sealed Premiere anyway... I couldn't seem to get much going this game either. (Will add more later) Round 3 James Heaney FW (+15) A previous engagement meant time was of the essence and James and I jumped into Round 3! Playing quickly we managed to squeeze in a complete game just James had to be going. There was some general back-and forth, with the threat of Romulan warbirds again looming over me. At the end James was stalled at a cleared mission where he had no archaeology. He had 85 points if I recall correctly, and I had 100 points but no space mission yet. So the race was on, could I clear a space mission before James could find some archaeology? Except, as James realized a turn too late, the race was not James' archaeology against me completing a space mission - it was James' finding archaeology against me using a normal card play to to blow up this cleared mission with my WB Supernova! A mission that happened to also have his outpost and a very fully Romulan warbird. Time was ticking away, and with no meaningful options for James to rebuild, my completing a space mission was just a formality after nuking his mission. James conceded so he could be out the door on time. At last I had the Tox Uthat AND the Supernova. Childhood goal fulfilled. Closing Thoughts If you are in a limited environment, and have a chance at good dilemmas and/or virtual cards, be sure to go for it. I had a couple of Shades of Gray dilemmas from my starter and packs, and once I got Shades of Gray: Despair I made sure to go back to round up Junior and Nitrium Metal Parasites during my next turn in the draft. Super fun day - the Annual Charity Draft never disappoints. I hope to see everyone again next year!