Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser) Tournament Report - 2E - Worlds Side Event 2016-09-04 - 03:30 PM The only thing lower than my standards are the attributes of your personnel Introduction The best thing about 2E is the deck lottery. It is not enough to just win games, no sir, after each round, you and your opponent exchange decks and see if you can pilot them to victory in the next round. Knowledge of how to play the deck will get lost with each round, as by the last round, the arcane wisdom of how the decks works, what cards are in it, or even the name of its creator, shall be lost. I brought Dominion Infiltration, fully expecting the poor souls who end up having to use it to come at me with torches and pitchforks. Round 1 Thorsten Wanek FW (+100) The best thing about 2E is getting the perfect matchup. Thorsten was using TOS 8472, and did a fine job of getting 8472 dilemmas in my core. I must have had about 14 in there by the end of the game. However, those dilemmas are useless as long as Terrasphere is not completed, so I had a crack commando of Founders and the Tenak'talar just camping there, denying about 15 attempts and comfortably winning in overtime. Round 2 Fritz Meissner MW (+20) The best thing about 2E is the mirror matchup. Just like myself, Fritz had beaten a TOS player. He had the better start, but had only 1 Astrometrics in play for a long time, so multiple The Caretaker's Guests forced him to waste several turns to fly back for reinforcements. I was one 8472 dilemma short of getting the Terrasphere win when time was called, so only the mod win here. Round 3 Josef Lemberger FW (+100) The best thing about 2E is the unknown dilemma pile. After winnning in round 2, Josef now had to play a Terok Nor dilemma mill deck with a dilemma pile of about 100 cards. His Terok Nor mill engine was working early on, but he struggled to get good mission solving people into play, while I got through two missions easily. When I went for the last mission, Josef chuckled, gave me Unfair Comparison, and said something like, "neither of us has much of an idea of what's in our piles, so let's just try this" - I won thanks to the random six-coster. Of course, that meant now I had to play that TN deck myself... Round 4 Soren Ramme Nielsen MW (+45) The best thing about 2E is playing Soren. While I had to find out what exactly it is the TN deck does (the dilemma pile seemed too big to have a clear theme anyway), Soren ended up playing the TOS two-mission win deck that I lost to at Worlds 2014. Now, playing someone else's deck without practice is always a disaster waiting to happen, and of course there were some facepalm moments like playing Well-Prepared Defenses without checking whether it actually works, or me playing a four-card combo that allowed Soren to simply fail the first dilemma and get three freebies. Positive highlight was finding Neural Parasites AND Necessary Execution in a 100 card pile when I had seven to draw and spend against a planet-first deck. Still, I didn't have much business winning this. I took the lead in overtime and was ahead now, but I didn't get a third mission done and so was ready to congratulate Soren. It turned out he was a skill short and had no way of getting another Science to his shortstacked last mission. Well done both of us. Also, in this game I was literally discarding cards left and right due to War of Attrition and Pest Control in my core. Closing Thoughts The best thing about 2E is winning a full set of Necessary Evil, because both Stuart and Thorsten managed to get a modified win with my deck, which together with the player VPs was enough to secure the overall win.