Joshua Sheets (prylardurden) |
Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Deep Space 9 Regional |
2011-04-16 - 11:00 AM |
Avoidance |
Introduction |
Where to start? I had been considering going to Chicago for this one since Regional schedules came out. But then life started getting in the way. Work started needing more hours and some other assorted things. At 3 AM, Friday Night/Saturday Morning, I made the call to make the drive. I had a deck I had fishbowl'd and gotten some comments on, so I felt I would do OK. Apparently, these feelings were slightly misguided :)
I show up about 20 minutes before the tournament starts and there are 14 ppl. Not bad. Al gathers everyone's paper work and makes the first round pairings and I get: |
|
Round 1 | | Michael Van Breemen | FL (-30)View opponent's ReportView original Report |
Well, there goes my CVP tie-breaker :) Seriously, I see him lay down Quonos and am actually somewhat relieved (I was unaware of any insanely goofy strategy for Klingons and I have TCS on the table). Knowing that Riker is probably lurking somewhere, I try to get as many TOS'ers out so I can drop Coordinated Counterattack. Strangely enough, I dont ever see a Riker til very late. I did catch MvB with an early Dreamer to give me some extra time, and he gives me just An Issue Of Trust at my first attempt at AC (he mentioned he was going to be skill-tracking earlier) and thru some random luck I only had 1 Honor and 1 Treachery so I get the mission first try. Then I have to go to DE where he holds me off for quite some time before I get thru (he caught up and got 2 missions done). I end up burying Brute Force to stop him (he attempted with 15 and I didnt get my Fractured Time or other useful items), so I know I have about 1 turn left. I draw cards looking for FtB and dont find it. Hmmm. Ironic that the mission meant to curb MvB's Goval Madness actually won this game for him, I had no skill-cheating out and apparently every TOS person has the same skills as every other TOS person. Attempt fails, and, on his turn, he gets BF for the win. |
Donatra + Original Thinker + Favor the Bold + Assess Contamination = Josh's deck. During his first attempt, I'm an idiot and somehow manage to forget the skills of everyone that he plays as I just give him An Issue of Trust. After giving me a look like I'm nuts, he shows his two Honor or Treachery people and walk through the attempt on the first try. Meanwhile, he nails me with a Dreamer at Investigate Alien Probe, taking away my lone Sword, a Baht'qul challenge and five other cards that I miss. Thankfully, my dilemmas were doing their job at Deliver Evidence to help catch me up so that by the time he solved Deliver Evidence, I'm also through Investigate Alien Probe and Secure Strategic Base. He never drew a single Favor the Bold so he has to do Transport Crash Survivors, an attempt that was not successful. I use every Klingon Riker/Gowron/Promise trick in the book to get through Brute Force for the win. 100-70 |
|
Round 2 | | Amber Van Breemen | FL (-30) |
Not a fan of Bloody Archer. 40%-ish (?) of the dilemmas in the game dont require skills. I didnt have that many that dont require skill in my pile but it seemed like that was about all I drew. Amber played a great game and even tho I got two missions, I couldnt hold her off long enough to get thru the third. |
|
|
Round 3 | | Mike Burke | TT (0) |
Oh, goody - EuroBorg! Mike gets Quintessence out very early (turn 2?) but seems to catch some bad beats on the cards headed to the discard pile (lots of interrupts and events), so I feel a little better. I get out and go home and back trying to make sure I dont leave ppl where they can be taken. I get thru a mission and head back to the HQ to decide how to do the space mission. Mike decides its time to get the queens cube. So much for hiding at my HQ. He comes over and shoots me and gets Rich Daystorm, who is one of my actually smart ppl and not one of the redshirt squad. Then Mike attempts with a couple too many and a BioNeural Device (couldnt draw my fractured time) and I get Fifth and the Queen. I get thru DE but still cant find FtB so I make the call of going to TCS for the game (since time got called and I went first). After a few dilemmas worth of carnage, I have Cunning of 33 and 15 skills. 1 short with no way to cheat so Mike gets a last turn. He gets thru mission 2 (had to K&E) and we are tied with Mike getting another mission attempt. I stop just enough ppl to stop him on attributes and we finish deadlocked. Amazing game against a great guy. |
|
|
Round 4 | | jason bales | MW (+5) |
This started of slightly different than my previous games - I had 2 FtB in my opening hand but no cost 4 or more personnel. As we fight back and forth thru the game, I still have not seen hardly any 4 or more cost personnel. I get thru my 2 missions about the same time Jason gets thru his so we are at 70-65, me. As time gets called on his turn (I went first), I decided im sending every dilemma at him when he attempts. He has quite a few ppl out so I hope the I draw into my Timescape but he decides to go with 18 (Timescape was the first dilemma drawn, Fractured time was #2). I pop 9 w/ fractured time, Issue of trust catches and couple more and a few more dilemmas do the trick. The Ferengi have some very impressive tricks for spending extra counters and Jason made good use of most of them. |
|
|
Round 5 | | Al Schaefer | FL (-30)View opponent's ReportView original Report |
Hmmm, 3 missions duplicated. Al is doing something similar to what I'm doing but neither of us gets a great draw. We are both going slowly and at th ehalfway point of the round, there are a total of 6 dilemmas under missions (3 for each of us). Al almost immediately after that breaks thru AC. I get thru mine about a turn later but get held up in space for a while. I get thru DE but have to hang at the HQ for a while looking for FtB or Navaar so I can cheat past TCS. I get them a little too late and Al gets his third mission. Great game with some 'oops' moments on both sides (his forgetting FSE and mine being not replaying Tal to get past Telepathic-whatever-it-was). |
Rule #5: It's a game, have fun. This is the one rule that my deck didn't break. Josh is a super nice guy and was obviously drinking similar Romulan Kool-Aide when we laid out our missions for the game. He used TOS card drawing instead of TATV, but was potentially hurt by dual hq hate. I was able to keep his EXO and Telepathy off table and was playing Telepathic Deception at will. He eventually got Navarra (who I should have played but went with Spock instead) and was able to cheat a few dilemmas and make this very close game. His dilemmas were stopping me cold as well. 30 minutes into the game, neither of us had a mission done and only had 3 dilemmas (each) stacked under missions. After I finally got Assess Contamination done I was able to get my last 2 missions completed relatively easily. Josh is a great guy and we had quite a few laughs in this game. He kept forgetting to play an Exobiology guy that was in his hand and I kept forgetting to use FSE even though it was in play. |
|