Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Vandros IV Regional 2011-05-28 - 11:00 AM The Graduates Introduction The deck recently made the transition from a dual HQ (+MotW) build to this version. Some credit has to go to John Corbett; I blatantly made some adjustments to my deck after I saw his recent build (e.g., a second copy of Melora Pazlar, a card I had serious underestimated; or to go all-out Living Legend where I had 1 LL and 1 OT in before). Round 1 Florian Ott FW (+100) I placed Nathan Samuels on Holding Cell on turn two, forcing Florian to pay full price for his non-humans. By the time he went to space, my core was big enough to hit him with a filter, Tsiolkovsky Infection and Where No One Has Gone Before. Florian killed some people with dilemmas, but it turns out that DS9 can even be schooled while they're on Medical Teams, so I played an At What Cost and quickly recovered to complete my missions before Florian got one of his done. FW, 100-0 Round 2 Thomas Schneider FW (+65) Ah, Even Bigger Borg, the match-up I dreaded. With a Holding Cell in my starting hand, I decided against going after the Queen, but instead took out all 3 Annexation Drones after Thomas had had his 21-counters turn. In space, I captured the Queen with Inequitable Exchange so Thomas had to play another ship to bring her back in after he Rescue Captive'd her. Thomas forgot to set up his Back to Basics with Interlink, so that took away one his go-to dilemma options. I used Vastly Sisko and Kirk to protect against other signature Borg walls like Tactical Disadvantage and Gorgan, while my own dilemmas (Formal Hearing, Whisper) did a good job of slowing down Thomas long enough. FW, 100-35 Round 3 Tyler Fultz FW (+70)View opponent's ReportView original Report Ah², the even more dreaded Borg Assess Assimilation deck. I knew what was coming, though I didn't know how to handle it. I used Luther Sloan to destroy an Abduction and Holding Cell to hopefully delay the Assimilation loop for a while. Two things worked in my favour: I attempted first, so Tyler played a combo starting off with Unfair Comparison - only to see me reveal an Unfair Comparison and two expensive dilemmas from my own pile. We revealed the exact same total, so the dilemma fizzled and I completed my mission straight away. Then, while I worked on The Last Outpost, Tyler slowly got his assimilation stuff ready and took my Jareshhh!!!! away, but lost him immediately to The Caretaker's Guests. I played an At What Cost to draw more events, since Tyler's Two of Nine kept destroying events (which are a much needed support for my dilemma pile), which meant I was down 5 points. Tyler had killed/abducted a lot of mission skills, so I was forced to complete a short-stacked Track Survivors with high-attribute people and didn't get the bonus points for the mission. I was out of Range and on 95 points. Luckily, Tyler was only able to complete Assimilate Resistance, getting Living Legend James T. Kirk for his efforts. I had already drawn into another Promenade School, so I limped to 100 before the combined power of Kirk, Knowledge and Experience, and dilemma-screwing gametext of Assess Contamination could be abused. FW, 100-35 Johannes dropped DS9 E, which I am still impressed by. This is probably the first time DS9 E has ever won a regional. The game started on a bad foot with Johannes and I playing the same dilemma pile. This meant my Unfair Comparison fizzled at his firt mission attempt and he auto-completed. The second error was to not play my K&E when Johannes played Caretaker's Guests. The result was me losing my only assimilated personnel and never really recovering. From there, I couldn't keep Johannes from completing his missions. So, ultimately, I committed several errors in this game that ultimately cost me the victory. Johannes, on the other hand, played flawlessly, so the loss was entirely deserved. Note to self: deck needs more event destruction. Round 4 Tjark Ott FW (+70)View opponent's ReportView original Report As in the game against Florian, I hit Tjark early with a Where No One Has Gone Before. While his ship was on ice, I completed Mediate Peace Treaty , then started working on my planets. When Tjark came back, I had personnel at both of my planets (Timescape!), a ship at Track Survivors and an empty ship at home. Naturally, Tjark first completed Protect the Escapees, and flew over with another ship and took my Excelsior with Kruge. This wasn't too bad for me, because I had 3 weenies in hand who could immediately staff my second ship, as well as Holding Cell. I played it and named Kruge, destaffing Tjark's Battlecruiser. Then my weenies flew to The Last Outpost, completed that misson, then moved on to Track Survivors and completed that one as well. Just in time, as Tjark had the pieces in hand to play another Kruge and battle stuff on his next turn. FW, 100-30 Johannes run through his missions very quickly. I managed to kruge one of his ships - but he was able to staff a backup ship with his one-costers too fast - This time all out war came too late Round 5 Marco Puelsch FW (+70) Marco churned out lots of high-costers, starting with Croden, Picard and Rekar on turn 1. I had 6 events (the one-shot variety, not the useful core ones that help my dpile) in my starting hand, and came out slower than in the previous games. Marco actually beat me to the first mission attempt, and completed right away, as I didn't have the event support for my high-cost dilemmas. Down one mission for the first time in five games, I had to hustle. I attempted without waiting for the Under Siege/Vastly Sisko/Vastly Bashir, and got stopped repeatedly by Moral Choices and Chula: The Chandra. Meanwhile, Marco was already working on Restore Errant Moon, but I managed to hit his team of six with a lucky Hard Time into Occupational Hazards combo. I somehow managed to eventually get enough people past a Chandra to get Investigate Destruction done , and this marked the turning point of the game. Now things were going my way again. First, I captured Rekar and Picard with a Sylvia - after Hard Time and Unfair Comparison had stopped all four of Marco's Science personnel (in fact, Marco had used Picard to shuffle the 3 dilemmas, only to face them in the order I had wanted all along); then I put two copies of P'tol into my Holding Cell. I burned the 5 bonus points I had from a second Promenade School to make Melora Pazlar gain Worf's huge Integrity. That meant I was able to complete my last mission with the four guys that made it past all the dilemmas for the win. FW, 100-30