Tournaments | trekcc

Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser)
Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event
2013-12-01 - 12:00 AM
The Big Treaty Project, Episode 2: Qaptured (Cardassian/Romulan)
Introduction
I went for achievement grinding and decided to go for the Cardassian/Romulan treaty, as it can be seeded. Nava's suggestion of a Cardie/Romulan capture deck served as a template, though I changed lots of things to be eligible for the achievement and try out some dilemma ideas.

Round 1	Dan Hamman	FW (+50)
Dan's TNG Borg steadily worked through my dilemmas by getting stopped and adapting next turn, and he completed two objectives that way before my guys found the right skills to make it through his combos.


Round 2	J	FL (-26)View opponent's Report View original Report
J did a great job at seeding dilemmas in this game. At two missions I just couldn't find the correct personnel to pass the initial walls, and to make matters worse, I didn't draw into a second ship or HQ: Secure Homeworld until it was much too late, so the other missions were either out of Range or unattemptable for a long time. I scored lots of points from Labor Camp and completed one mission, but couldn't catch up with J's solver powerhouse.
Johannes was running a modified version of his Romulan TNG deck that qualified as a Romulan/Cardassian Treaty deck, a pretty solid one as well which also went for a Q Flash side deck achievement. We ended up seeding the spaceline with his six missions on one side and my six on the other where my stealable Meta Shield Testing and his Kressari Rendezvous were the bordering missions. For this reason, I decided to self seed The Nexus in a place where I could easily set it off and it could spend much of the game dicking with him on his end of the spaceline. I wanted to do Shield Testing and Revenge Plot (50 points each) for a two mission win with The Nexus as a buffer for 20 points worth of point loss, but decided to put the Nexus at Ferenginar, which was likely to have the weakest dilemma combo, so that I could set it off when I needed to. I was most concerned about a Dead End at either of my two best missions + point loss making me need two missions complete before triggering The Nexus. Johannes went first and while his deck played well, he was playing personnel to three different missions (likely why he wanted his missions as a Region) and wasn't pulling a ship. My deck pulled a staffed ship on Turn 1 and parked it at Kressari to trigger the free Equipment at the start of Turn 2, I sent only three sacrificable personnel in case Johannes could suddenly pull two staffed ships on his turn two, but that was not the case and I got ahold of a free ETU for my trouble. On my Turn 2, I attempted Revenge Plot, as I had drawn into good planet D busting skills, but failed the Now Would Be a Good Time as my deck only has one Transporter skill. This netted Johannes Suna as a Captive (great pick). Johannes burned his AAH once per game DL to get a D'deridex and headed out, but due to the placement of his personnel, was not able to mix and optimize his mission scouting crew, as such they did not have the skills to bust the first seeded dilemma at the mission he chose: Undercover Agent. Around here in the game, I cleared Meta Shield testing down to the Dead End. Johannes attempted his Outpost mission and found the Dead End, this left his only ship thus far two from the end of the spaceline, so I decided to throw down at Ferenginar with a big dilemma busting crew. I failed a first seeded Lack of Prep but then cheated around it by using the Kurdon's special download on The Trois, but got hit with 8 Q Flash cards due to a big crew and managed to get into the hole pointwise. I did clear down to the last dilemma, after losing a decent number of personnel to Flapjacks (but saving two with ETU and a handgun). That final dilemma was a Captain's Holiday (great dilemma) and I only had one Arch and one Geo in play, but my end of turn draw that turn was a Holodeck Door (very lucky). I had missed my opportunity to set off The Nexus, and Johannes moved away from the spaceline end. But I decided to continue on with Ferenginar anyway as I could solve it and the point loss pretty much meant that I needed to solve 3 missions. The Holodeck door got me Prot, which meant that I now had 2X Arch and 2X Geo, so I solved Ferenginar putting me on 19. Since neither of us had a mission debriefing in play, I decided to red shirt Revenge Plot and clear out more dilemmas. In the Zone was not an issue as I did not send the mission solving skills, and point loss wasn't an issue as 3 missions + The Nexus would put me on 150 scored that game anyway. I found the other Q Flash, but this time it worked in my favour by taking two prisoners (from my red shirts) and gave me back Suna. Combo Plague Ship bounced Prot out to the farthest planet such that he immediately got pickup and delivered back by The Nexus. Beverly was sacrificed to the Plague Ship for the 5 points. The team managed to clear all the way down to the final dilemma, which was a Medical Crisis. With The Nexus now blocking one mission and about to move to another, Johannes opted to hop it and attempt the farthest mission on the spaceline, which had my best combo, IMO. He lucked by the Trilithium Raid due to having Data and Sirol hanging around and then hit the Cytherians. Since he'd spent all of his range to hop The Nexus, he wasn't traveling anymore this turn and chose to STP the ship as it would just crash into the Nexus on a subsequent turn (or luck by and get blown up by Ferengi ships.) He then recommended that I Scorch his 15 card hand, and I complied thereby putting him down to just 6. By this time, Johannes was doing a decent job of scoring points even without mission complete, thanks to a (pre-errata) Labor Camp on Cardassia. I had tossed a couple Biologists away early game to keep the draws going, so only had one in play. But I had recently regained Suna, so I used him to give a non-Medical person (a Gozar) Biology and then hopped Medical Crisis. That dilemma did randomly stop a mission specialists, so I only solved this for 40. Due to random pointloss/gain from dilemmas, I was at 60 here. I couldn't solve Meta Shield testing, thanks to In the Zone, but could finally hop the Dead End. However, it was no longer cleared out as Johannes had reseeded the Ferenginar Q Flash there. I sent a minimum attempt of 4 personnel (all wearing red) and they cleared it with maximal loss of personnel who did not matter. This should have meant that the game was locked in my favour, but on my next turn, Meta Shield Testing would be blocked by The Nexus (finally working against me). Johannes did not get his 10 Labor Camp points here, as The Nexus had picked off his Camp Warden. He attempted Cardassia with a big crew and then failed The Clown: My Festival. He also tested the waters on Meta Shield Testing, by forcing me to reveal the HQ; Defensive Measures and confirm that it couldn't be stolne. But he managed to get 4 more people together to red shirt past The Clown and cheated through the Friendly Fire combo with the special download on the Bralek. He couldn't solve the mission this turn, due to not enough personnel to get a stat over 35. I opted not to attempt another mission this turn, as my In the Zone would prevent Johannes from winning on his next. So I simply sat out and let the Nexus eat my last ship thereby putting all my people in the afterlife. Johannes completed Cardassia and decided to go after one more mission. He had the choice of the Dead Ended Outpost mission or the farthest mission (using a Hidden Fighter to get a Pi and more range) and opted for the one at the end of the spaceline. This crew failed The Cloud and were stopped. So all I had to do was AAH download a Marauder and fly everyone to Meta Shield Testing but I had forgotten to Oof! cancel his Fighting Words and was a bit concerned that some of the mission skills would be unusable, but luckily, most of the skills on that mission are also Classifications.

Round 3	William Hoskin	FW (+100)
Will's Hirogen/Equinox guys were all in the Delta Quadrant, so at least my missions were close together this time. My engine ran very smoothly in this game, almost every turn I was able to use all my four free plays and had Handshakes at the right time. Will reported lots of good personnel early, but was set back when his crew of all Officers was killed by Crystalline Entity. He had also cleared one mission to a Dead End. Myself, I ran into a nicely set-up V'Ger, which destroyed my ship, but thanks to Bralek > Joret Dal > Escape Pod, my crew survived and the backup ship flew in to complete the mission. I then got lucky when I happened to have the skills to beat Linguistic Legerdemain, and could then move on to do the Dead Ended Kressari.


Round 4	Danny Nuttall	FW (+100)
Danny downloads Son'a to Duck Blind on his first turn. Hilarity ensues. I download Lore and a Ship, fly over to Insurrection, flip Captured to grab a captive and kill the other Son'a. Danny responds by wormholing his Kazon ships over to the alpha quadrant, and flipping his own copies of Captured to get my Lore and mission specialist. That pretty much screws over my dilemma strategy, as Danny now was in the alpha quadrant with two space missions that could each be scored simply by having some Officers there. Luckily, the Kazon are more interested in stealing ships and blowing stuff up. I quickly lose my Outpost and two Warbirds, as well as several people. Thanks to triggering Defend Homeworld with one of his attacks, I get a handful of people into play and use them to rescue people from the Escape Pod (yay!), then attempt Romulus with ten people. I make it through the Land Eel/Flapjacks with only three kills, thanks to two guns, and complete the mission. Danny then proceeds to attack my Office of the Proconsul and damages it. I fly my survivors to my space mission and again attempt with everything I've got. Thanks to Anya > Salia, I make it through the PDuty/FFire combo to complete that mission. 80 points now thanks to early Labor Camp points. Danny then returns my ship (with the captive aboard) to my hand to deny me further Labor Camp points, and attacks me at Romulus again, triggering Defend Homeworld again (with a replenished deck now). I dl lots of guys to the planet, but keep a ship in hand, at which point Danny conceeds, as he simply couldn't draw into the next Outgunned he needed even after cycling through almost 20 cards.


Closing Thoughts
A very flattering 3-1 record. Neither the capture/point gain/point loss strategy nor the OFFICER denial dilemmas were particularly effective, probably because I'm still rather useless at predicting were my opponent is likely to attempt. A fun deck nevertheless.