Chris Clarke (ZodoJats) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Australian Continentals Day Two 2011-07-03 - 10:00 AM Maquis Ih'valla Introduction I had originally planned on playing different decks on the two days, but decided that I'd stick with the Maquis after all, given that I would have to play my brother in the first round and if everything went to plan, play him again in the last round. Round 1 Lee Clarke FW (0) Lee was playing a Big Borg Assimilator. I quickly (and prematurely) set up Biogenic Weapons and Strange New Worlds on his space missions to lure out the 2 of 9s (I downloaded them with Amaros). I didn't really try to do the normal Maquis lockout, because I knew it wouldn't work against the Borg events. He started making me burn my Cascades on 2 of 9 and then would sometimes get them back with 3 of 9 before I could Dukat them away. I managed to get a Deploy the fleet off early before he could assimilate me, which allowed me to use Kira later on and get another two cascade viruses back. He assimilated Kira, and attempted with her (I forget what he wanted to get back) but I caretaker's guest-ed her to leave him with no assimilated personnel again. He would also GPT my CV, but I Alarming Rumors-ed it (still has to discard equipment) to keep 2 of 9 off the table. At one point he attempted Restore Errant Moon with 2 of 9 in the discard pile, so I gave him zero dilemmas so he couldn't queen swap him in. Instant solve for him. I knew his deck pretty well (naturally), so I also targeted Anthropology to try and lockout Historical Research the old fashioned way. Most of his Anthro was on 2 of 9, and his other was one 2 of 2 and 3 of 12. Nothing much I could do about 3 of 12, but I CV 2 of 2 once I had removed all the 2 of 9s from the deck. Luckily for me, during his initial quintessence-ing, he discarded a lot of his assimilation stuff, including all three One with the Borgs (which promptly got removed from the game). Eventually I was satisfied that he was lockout out of solving, but I still had to worry about the assimilation. By then I had around 25 people sitting on my HQ. I went out and tripple teamed Rescue Prisoners, which he stopped (they are sucky solvers). I had purposefully left behind my Anthropology so he couldn't get Historical Research. He came over and assimilated a bunch, but there wasn't much he could do with them at that point. At this point he was long decked out, and I was getting low. I managed to get through Rescue Prisoners eventually, and had played a couple more Deploy the Fleets. In the end I won 45-25 (he had used endangered and reborn a bit to try and slow me getting the mission). Round 2 Bye BY (0) Thanks to the bracket format, I skipped this round. Round 3 Matthew Townsend FW (0) Matt was playing a similar deck to the day before, and he knew what he was up against. Rather than throwing out personnel as fast as possible, he tried to disrupt my disruption. He targeted Deploy the Fleet with his Grav Plating Traps (I think he used three Fajo's Manageries early too to get Trellium-D and draw bonus cards). There were several turns in a row which were basically me trying to get a DtF through. Sometimes he would cancel it, or I would cancel his GPT with Alarming Rumors. I had to download another DtF with Amaros too. However all this time he wasn't actually getting people out, so even though he was disrupting my engine a bit, it wasn't getting him anywhere. I did actually run out of Deploy the Fleets in the end, but by then I had Allegiance out with Defiant + Reides so it didn't matter anymore. From that point on, he had nobody in play (I don't think he ever left his HQ), and I slowly worked through the missions. Round 4 Lee Clarke FW (0) Best of three against my brother. Game 1: This game played very similarly to the start of the Round 1 game. I forget a lot of the details, but here are some of the highlights. I again played no dilemmas at Restore Errant Moon to keep 2 of 9 in the discard pile. I actually got one of my Assimilated personnel back with a Shocking Betrayal when he was attempting Transport Crash Survivor (before I had got out Strange New Worlds) at one point. I had successfully locked him out, but the race was on. He was on 45 points, and I was on 25 (after completing Rescue Prisoners and then attempting with Kira. But I had maybe 15 or so cards left in my draw deck. He had a four card hand and nothing in his draw deck. I decided to go for it, and try to win off Allegiance points. That meant discarding four cards every turn with Reide (he had two A Few Minor Difficulties out targeting Defiant I think) to score five points. Thanks to Rebecca, and five quick turns later, I managed to empty his hand once again and go up to 50-45 just before I decked out. Game 2: My brother went an entirely different tactic this time. Rather than building up the normal Energize/Fifth/Unimatrix Zero etc. stuff, he went double quintessence to download as many 2 of 9s and 3 of 9s as possible early, and go out hard and fast. And it worked pretty well to begin with. I did manage to destroy Strange New Worlds. I started having to rely on my dilemma pile (unlike any other game up til this point). I got off a Gomtuu at Assimilate Resistance (and the BW it). And I got off a WNOHGB at TCS. He was always pulling out 2 of 9, but I finally got into a Stalling For Time to get rid of him then cascade him away the next turn. On a very tight turn, I went and attempted with Kira to get my Strange New Worlds back (which this time I was using on Restore Errant Moon and not TCS). He chose not to kill her (so he could assimilate her), so I beamed down all my Honor and Leadership with her at the end of the attempt - which unfortunately was a grand total of one of each. This was to screw with Abduction. And it worked. He got Rebecca Sullivan instead. That one random selection probably actually one me the game, because if he had been able to start using Kira the I would probably have been super screwed (no chance to Dukat anything). Even though there were no events on TCS, he couldn't solve it because the Borg are so skill narrow (and I could weed out the one person he needed each attempt). Again he ran out of deck pretty quickly, after he had interlinked over two thirds of his deck one turn to find a 2 of 9 to queen swap in. During that interlinking he lost pretty much all the assimilation stuff, so I was relatively safe to got out and solve Rescue Prisoners, and I won. All three games against the Borg I won with only one mission completed. The first two (more normal) games were very close, where if I had been one Cascade Virus short he would have just steamrolled and won easily. It's by far the tightest matchup, but it is definitely winnable.