Matthew Zinno (commdecker) Tournament Report - 1E - Romulus Regional 2019-05-26 - 11:00 AM Regional Control Introduction For the Romulus Regional, I brought an update of my “Distant Control” deck that I had played online last year. And I met and faced some visitors from out of town! Round 1 Chris O'Connell FW (+100) First up, Chris O, playing Sona/EE Insurrection. I got my attempts going early and took some damage from his dilemmas (Cloud and Gomtuu), but the tactics couldn’t kill anyone, and I just picked up the drone and re-reported it to get rid of the damage. So it wasn’t too long before I had two space missions. Meanwhile, he was mainly attempting Insurrection, but I landed Raptor One there to lock out the Collect Metaphasic Particles objective. So he attempted with just Feds. I used Rules of Obedience there to target Troi and other high-INT people, then Enemies of the State with Tal’Aura to get rid of Gallatin (high INT, Sona for the objective before I landed, and Anth for his Duck Blind). After he battled the other dissidents to re-attempt, he failed Apollo and lost his Enterprise-E with all hands. He tried poking at other missions, where I recall him losing Ruafo to Quantum Leap, and then having absolutely no officers left for Maglock. I got to Romulus and through the dilemmas there FTW. Round 2 Austin Chandler MW (+30) Austin, playing Dominion battle. Around turn 2 or 3, he brought a battleship to my time location, and massacred my people with two rifles. Oh, first he flipped two copies of Captured. I retaliated by continuing to play people and do my remote attempts. I sometimes passed one dilemma at a location, but I was always stuck by the Botany Bay dilemmas, with so few people. After a few massacres, I realized another strategy to try: play Raptor One at the far end of the spaceline, and Raptor Two to the TL, then zoom my people away from his forces. And he pops to me again with Quantum Slipstream Drive, and blows everybody up. He also did the QSD again when I gave him Cytherians with a Disrupted Continuum. Eventually I did get a mission solved (3 people with Diplomacy is doable with my Benefactor), and he tried racing to get one of his missions solved (but Nanobiogenic Fugitives was difficult for him), and finally time ran out. I had 30 mission points, and he had 25 bonus points (Cyth and some VILs). Round 3 Lucas Thompson MW (+40)View opponent's ReportView original Report Lucas, Illegitimate Klingons. And every side deck. We soon determined that very few Tribbles cards affect how my deck works. 1 Tribble at the time location succeeded in excluding one person each turn. 1000 there would lose a skill, so I reported the non-Drone and beamed it aboard. 1 and 10 on my drone did nothing; if it had actually mattered, I probably would have brought them to hand. Lucas battled and blew up one of my Drones, before deciding that doing that was probably a larger resource commitment for him than for me, since I lost no personnel and would just replay another copy of the ship. So we both went for missions. I got one done fine, but at another I needed 2 Exo (for Shades of Grey) and didn’t have it. At another I hit a Q-Flash and Fighting Words, which sapped all of my Leadership. (Tallus was not in play, and had possibly even been discarded first turn to get a drone.) That meant I couldn’t control my drones remotely, and also couldn’t solve either of my planets. I attempted Romulus anyway (or earlier, possibly) to find a Scow, but for that I could use my Colyus ship to tow it to the time location. The Fightin Words lasted until time was called, but Lucas got nowhere with my dilemmas, so we ended at 40-0. At the end of the time limit, there was only one solved mission on the table. Our dilemmas were just brutal on each other - my Illegit Klingons just couldn't seem to pass Rules of Obedience (they're normally good at it!). And he also had Exobiology troubles, compounded by Fightin' Words. Tribbles caused quite a mess down at his Time Location, but he managed to sort that out by dumping them onto his ships that he flew back there. Edit: In response to Matt's report: I considered blowing up a raptor, and decided against it. Probably the right move since Fightin' Words shut them down anyways. Round 4 Robin Honeycutt  FL (-1)View opponent's ReportView original Report As anticipated, the final came down to my 22 deck, and Robin playing the infamous “Sykes” Vulcan 22 deck. This uses Koss as Benefactor to several Vulcans, some of whom are also Bluegills, and IDIC/Power for matching commanders and MIS unstops and battle. I exposed a Dead End at my first mission, and had both drones dodging his ships to solve two others (but Mission Debriefing slowed me down). Bonus moment: I passed Chula Trickery, ID-ing Riaan! He blew up a drone or two, and also decided to send both his ships to my time location, and we had some personnel battle. He MW a few of my people, but I had enough people to win the battle and kill one of his, which I think turned out to be one of his bluegills. At this point, he thought I had basically won the game, since I had 80 points from the two missions, and an imminent 35 more once I went after the Dead End. But, I pointed out, I hadn’t done a planet mission. So he got back in the game. Like Lucas, he decided that battle was not going to hurt me much (not knowing I only had 4 drone cards in the deck), and went after missions. On my side, Romulus had Buried Alive (which leads to a Mission Debriefing stop), and a Scow (MD again) … which I couldn’t tow: only one Tractor Beam and it was somewhere deep in my deck. I even tried the Orion planet, which I never do, and was stuck there too, thanks to Jol Yichu and no Transporter Skill to be found. Meanwhile, Robin cut through many of my dilemmas well — his choice of benefactor worked very well with my choice of dilemmas. Koss gave his people Physics against Nanobio, Geology against Rules of Obedience, Honor against that and Forsaken. His Vulcan Databases (on most ships) and Vulcan PADD (downloaded by Strom) aided with the skill cheating too —- he would get stopped by a dilemma, change the ship’s skill to what it needs, then he has two copies of it (the ship, and someone from the PADD). Eventually I remembered I could get victory conditions with all 4 space missions, but I didn’t pull that off in time. Time was called, Robin had his last turn, and it all came down to one planet mission attempt. Solving would give him FW, failing would give me the MW at 115 points. And he did make it through, for the FW in a game he thought he had lost at the halfway mark. This was a match up I knew was gonna happen if I beat Austin.I wanna point out how Matt’s knowledge the game is insane, I learned a lot in this game. Matt was playing a distant control drone tower deck, that was incredibly and brutally efficient to get missions attempted within the first turn of the game. In the the final 25 minutes this game I really felt that it was going to be over , Matt had a huge crew out solved 2 missions already and all I was able to do so far was get two ships out to blow up his raptors to slow him down momentarily. I forgot that the rule in OTF tournament play, having to solve a space and planet mission which Matt did not solve any planets him having 115 points did not matter to a victory until he solved a planet I thought the game was over, then we had to take a break in play due to me feeling some symptoms of my PTSD I needed to take a few minutes to get myself back together, I really appreciate Lucas, Austin and Matt for calming me down and getting me back into the game it was very appreciated. Now here comes the part that I never saw coming, Matt needed to solve planet in order for him to win the game so he first started Romulus to solve, he hit buried alive and mission debrief,next turn i hit him with the combo scow/love interest. Then he went to free Orion slaves and I stopped him with Jol” had no anthropology left and he had no transporter skill he was trumped for four turns, Which gave me the time to do this on my last turn I had 2 ships out with limited personnel on all of them. I was able to solve a plant mission with four people on the far end of the space line for 35 points I had ran into a cyth with that crew for 15 points earlier so that put me at 50 points, I used IDIC finally to download a ship and it's captain, then I picked up the crew I built at the time location and solved the first space mission which I cleared out the delimmas the prior turn and then which put me at 85, with mission debriefing in play, I used make it so to unstop my crew .So I went to the next space mission and then on to the final part of the game just as time expired, I was able to finish my turn I had one space mission with a crew of six people that I attempted and I somehow, someway got through these three delimmas and my ship had the extra navigation which was my second navigation to solve mission and I won the game. after solving that mission I still did not even comprehend how that happened , solving 3 missions with 2 different crews on the last turn of the game! WHAT!!!!!! The luckiest ending ever Closing Thoughts It was a fun time! Robin won the tournament, and the championship belt he had brought. Most of us went out for dinner afterward, and spent hours talking about the history of the game, the direction of the game, and ideas for errata and design. It was great to meet and talk with our visiting players, Robin and Austin. Thanks all!