Mark erred early by forgetting to flip Quite A Coincidence when T'Pol (his Betray Captain target) entered play. This ultimately cost him the game by 1 point. Lots happened in the interim, though.

Mark realized when my Borg Cube came through the Gateway and targeted Charles Tucker III for Assimilate Counterpart that it was about to be a bad time. He pulled Strategema and retreated to the past. Then, noticing my Tac Cube's low range, he ran off to Vulcan then flew down a bit to a space mission, triggering my Borg Ship / Contingency Plan / Dead End combo. When I Retasked the following turn, I was able to reach him. His large crew needed to be handled urgently, so I skipped the Counterpart step and just Assimilated Species, taking all his humans as well as his Contender. He took Columbia back in time to ShiKahr, but had to abandon it as Comm Officer Sato of Borg assimilated it for 35 points. I was fine with that, since it was excluded from battle there, and I didn't bother (or, honestly, think of) moving it to Earth with his One Small Step and time-traveling with his Protect The Timeline. Sato sat out the rest of the game, and I scored no more points. This put me at 54 points total. (35 Assimilate Starship + 19 Add Distinctiveness)

I needed both cubes to keep Mark pinned down, given his broad access to the spaceline via One Small Step, so I started attempting a planet mission, but EXTREMELY cautiously.

Mark solved Earth but not before hitting Higher/Fewer for -14, which meant he still couldn't quite pass my Dead End, even with bonus points from completing the Emperor Tests up to Consolidate Power. His plan was to hurl everybody at a space mission and hope for the best, just to pull ahead for the Mod Win, but my -- frankly slow -- attempt to arrange a mission attempt meant time was called just seconds before I ended my last turn. He went first, so that was the game. Genuinely felt bad about that, though we later saw that the dilemma combo would have stopped him.

MW 54-45

Here I let myself be psyched into a crucial error: the deck was built so that I wouldn't have to attempt missions against Kevin. But I figured I wouldn't have time for Counterpart assimilation by the time he was back in the Delta Quadrant before he got a full win, so I needed some real points, then I could Add Distinctiveness a bunch and either catch up or (for the first time in a long time, maybe ever) have some points on the board at the end of a game. And what's the worst that could happen? Cytherians on a short spaceline with my Cube range at +3? I scouted a space mission.

Boom, Emergent Life-Form. Kevin tried mightily to destroy my Cube in the Black Hole, but the magic of FGC-47 Research (which is 0 SPAN for a decent Borg player) protected me long enough to get a Transwarp Network Gateway built and transited. Unfortunately, I was still a turn away from the Life-Form counting out when Kevin powered through my final combo (having once again intuited nearly all of it) for the Full Win.

Lesson (re)learned: Never attempt missions against Kevin!

He was running They Will Be Coming. I went first. He drew the First Contact Queen but not the SoG Queen, and could not QUITE staff his higher-RANGE Cube before I was on top of him.

I assimilated Gowron of Borg as my counterpart (didn't even need to get out the counterpart overlay!) and Talon Drone'd enough Borg in that battle to destaff him. Paralyzed, I returned the next turn to Assimilate Species and took his entire crew.

While he rebuilt, I fetched a second ship with Spacedoor, returned to the Delta Quadrant, and scouted Expose Plot, where patience, Ocular Implants, and cannon fodder allowed me to pass a Defrosted Menace / Founder Secret / God combo without harm. Eventually, Dan rebuilt and started moving again, although it was very tough to do, since he couldn't persona swap for Borg Queen (Shades of Gray) to start his draw engines or play a fresh copy of his counterpart.

I was having none of that, so saddled up the Borg Cube, which had just enough RANGE to meet him at Qo'Nos, and assimilated all his personnel again. The Tac Cube followed, and we then chomped through the shared mission -- FGC-47 Research -- for the full win 100-0 just a little under time.

Dan was extremely pleasant and took it very gamely when I denied him the ability to do anything for the entire game except help shuffle my giant deck. He straightened out the cards so they were all pointing the right direction. Not EXACTLY how I planned our reunion, but it was pretty fun to see this aggressive deck work as well as it did.

No public deck in history has been played in an OTF Constructed tournament while stocking more than 75 copies of a single card. (Congrats, James Monsebroten, previous record holder, for Deck #1710 from 2012.) My deck stocked Awaken x80, a new OTF record! (The record in Open belongs to Michael Van Breeman, who stocked Nirata x93 in Deck #15143.)