Manuel Rupprecht (Gul Dakar) Tournament Report - 1E - The Neutral Zone Regional 2024-04-15 - 12:00 AM Wo zur Hoelle seid ihr alle? Introduction For this Regional i wanted to play something different from the regular solvers i normally play. So I tried a Dominion Battle Deck which was inspired by one of Hoss-Drones youtube videos using the classic Deyos draw engine combined with the new Battle Bridge Door and Know your Enemy. As it turned out, i should have playtested the deck a little bit before the tournament. Also, literally everyone wasn´t in the Alpha Quadrant, so this made it even harder... Round 1 Florian FL (-30) First game vs. my friend Flo. I knew he would play Hirogen, he knew i would play Dominion. So he added a Ref Deck, which hampered me quite a bit (White Deprivation). It also was harder to go get him as he started in the Delta Quadrant and i struggled on wether to go through the wormhole or if I should use QSD. In the end it came down to one Mission in the Alpha Quadrant where i should simply have put the Dead End - but didnt. Round 2 Nathan Flaming TT (0) 2nd game. This time my opponent was in the Mirror Quadrant, so same "problem" as before. He also had a Tantalus Field and some ships with Captains Log so i struggled again on "going over" in the right moment. I was lucky to pull some critical skills from his people when my dilemmas killed some which hold him up. So neither of us solved a mission. Round 3 Mathew McCalpin ML (-49) 3rd game. Again...Mathew literally played the same deck as Nathan did before. This time he also boosted his ships with some Objectives played on missions. Thats why my Dominion people just couldnt risk going to the Mirror Quadrant without getting shot down as well. I tried solving some missions, but had the poor luck to try exactly those missions where i lacked the skills to pass the final dilemmas. I also didnt draw into a QSD until very late in the game, so he could build up in the beginning. Little bad luck here as well. But also well played by Mathew. Always a pleasure playing and talking afterwards. Round 4 Sebastian Kirstein FW (+100) Couldnt get contact to Seppl this time, so this acutally was a missed game for him. Kazon battle vs. Dominion battle would have been interesting again i suppose. Closing Thoughts The Deck would have performed better if the match-ups would have been more..alpha quadrant probably I don´t know. I realized i couldn´t actually go for two of my missions (only one NA, and one Mission didnt even have a Dominion Icon). Also i have to tighten the Deck a little bit and just be more patient to wait with the Peeps on my ship and then QSD to my opponent. Most of the time i was too far dispersed and couldnt QSD to my opponent when i had to. So i definitely need to improve my timing skills here when playing that deck again. Nevertheless it was quite fun playing something different and with a few tweaks here and there i might perform better next time. Also a big thanks to Kris and Jon for running this tournament and giving me a week extension when i needed it.