Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser) Tournament Report - 2E - Worlds Day Two 2013-10-20 - 09:30 AM Das Voyager Introduction I was fully convinced my TOS deck from Day 1 would not be up to the task, so my choices were Klingon speed, DS9 speed, Voyager, and Discard Romulans, a deck which I hadn't had time to refine, as I was trying to find a balance between the Timmons build, and some ideas that my partner in crime, Flo, came up with. In the end I went with Voyager, as it's the deck I know best and has vastly superior dilemma support then two pure speed decks. Round 1 Amber Van Breemen FW (0) I had the pleasure to play Amber again, and after our Day 1 match, in which she gave me a good run for my money, I didn't see any reason for her to change her deck for Day 2. Consequently, I tried to tech a bit against her without changing too much. In the end, it came down to things like adding a second Moral Choice, putting back in Coolant Leak, running two copies of Accelerated Aging against the planet missions I had seen on day 1 (requiring Anthropology and Archaeology respectively), and adding Dukat. In our first game, I was lucky that Amber pitched a Temporal Transporters early to pay the cost of one of her cards, and I was able to Grav-Trap the two remaining copies, which made things a lot easier for me. I managed to set up triple kills with both Whisper and Tsiolkovsky, while my Voyager crew did IAD on the first attempt thanks to various stop prevention abilities and monster attributes. Amber simply lost too many resources to stage a comeback, even though she had made good progress on two of her missions. In game two, again, I was able to Grav-Trap two copies of TT, but I lost my third Grav-Trap to Energize and wasn't able to Dreamer it away, so I couldn't keep Amber from getting in power players like Data and Kirk. Dukat was doing his thing, though, so at least people didn't simply bounce back once they had been killed. I made a misplay in this game, stopping 8-skill Janeway to a stop-or-killer using a skill she doesn't actually have, but Amber pointed it out to me and brought us back on track (I realized later I could have given the skill to her with Navaar, which is probably why I considered her as my stopper in the first place). In the end, I needed three turns to make it through IAD this game, but the other two missions were done faster. Still, Amber had already completed Navigate Xindi Corridor and was close to getting through the next mission, too. She has built a great deck, and fully deserved that spot in the bracket. And it bears repeating that Amber is classy player and one of the greatest ambassadors we have in this game, so thanks very much for those great games! Round 2 Jirka Paska FL (0) Fun fact: This was a re-match of sorts - three years ago, Jirka and I had also met in the Quarterfinals of Worlds. Back then, I prevailed with Weyoun Headset Cheese against his Walk the Liners, so it was payback time! He brought the big guns, Romulans with Donatra, Neral, Navaar at Assess Contamination. Brainaches, here we go... I can't remember much of the details, as the three games have already mixed up in my head, but I do remember that I won the first game 100-90, as I was able to keep Jirka from scoring points for two or three turns with GPT and Tacking, while he was struggling to get kill dilemmas to go against my superstar team (I think I failed an 8-coster only one time out of five or six tries over three games). In the second game, Jirka decided to go first. And what a first turn it was! He dropped The Viceroy and an Energize, downloaded an AWC with Straight and Steady, and had his engine running on turn 2. By turn 5, he was already through all his At What Costs, while I was struggling to find the right personnel. A bad dilemma draw with no manipulation out meant he scored AC on the first try, and by the time he went to space, I had already given up this game. It ended in a blowout win for him. The third game was closer again. He still had a good start, while mine was horrible. Almost only personnel, which shouldn't happen in that deck - and Jirka was able to score points off P+P every single time, so he had enough fuel to Power Shift his attributes through the roof. Somehow I managed to claw my way back into the game and complete IAD, then got the miracle stop at Transport Crash Survivor. Jirka did not use Picard to shuffle my dilemmas, and in the end had to take a hit by WNOHGB. That gave me two turns to catch up and win. I got through RNC and had put 2 under Caretaker's when Jirka's ship came back. The score was 80-80 when time was called, so unless Jirka could score his mission now, I would move on the semi-finals as I was the higher seed. He had 13 personnel in play and four under Transport Crash, so we debated the pros and cons of going small team vs. large team. In the end, he went with the 13, giving me 9. Jirka used Picard to shuffle the dilemmas, used Navaar to laugh at Jurassic Worf, took the stops from Oracle's Punishment, and brought in a good guy when I SI'd out Neral (who had gained Acquisition from Navaar). The last dilemmas was Acclerated Aging. Even with the skill loss, the Star Empire still had about 20 skills remaining, and Jirka deservedly went on to meet Stefan in the Final Four. Good games, thanks a lot! Round 3 Missed Game MG (0) Round 4 Missed Game MG (0) Closing Thoughts First time ever I didn't make the final four, but the competition is definitely getting tougher. All the more credit to players like Stefan who manage to perform consistently on such a high level!