Unjustly Banned (RedDwarf) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2012-03-25 - 01:30 PM Minimum Putsch [v1] Introduction Political Putsch, take 2. Following version one's total failure at the Danish Nationals, I dropped the high-Integrity part of the deck for Cunning missions and personnel. I'd also cut the deck down to the 35-card minimum, so I figured I'd do the same to me dilemma pile and go for the minimum deck achievement. Sadly, my deck bulding skills have declined (or maybe its just because I keep building the damn things at the last minute?), and those 20 dilemmas just weren't good enough at holding off my opponents. Round 1 William Hoskin MW (+20) Will was playing Equinox. After I won the Rock/Paper/Scissors to go first, I had an evil thought: If I could play 2 Treachery Bajorans and Political Putsch on my first turn, he'd be unable to play Finding Our Way to download Voyager/Equinox, and could potentially have to burn through more than half his deck to find a ship. I revealed my hand slowly. The first card I saw was Tahna Los, the third was Political Putsch and the sixth was Dukat. I was thinking about the win already! Sadly, I didn't have another Treachery Bajoran in my opening hand, and the top two cards of my deck weren't Treachery Bajorans either. I was this close to a first turn win! Knowing that Rudolph Ransom was the bain of my life when I faced Nick's Equinox deck, I made it my goal to capture him as quickly as I could. It meant giving Will his first mission, but at least Ransom wouldn't be bothering me later on. Will had used two Forcing Their Way and two Neucleogenic interrupts on his first proper turn, and Dukat had wisked them all out of the game as soon as he could. I'd also got another couple of Neucleogenic cards out of the game and figured the game was mine. Sadly, the other Equinox bain of my life, the Equinox Doctor, raised his ugly head soon after. I played Secret Identity to remove Marla Gilmore from the team, but Will brought in the Equinox Doctor to replace her, and then saved her. That screwed over my Issue of Trust next, and he completed his second mission there and then. My own attempts were going quite well in this game. I have absolutely no idea what dilemmas Will played, but I was working on my third mission when time was called. This was revenge for my Modified Loss in the first tournament. MW: 80-60 Round 2 Nicholas Yankovec ML (-65) Nick was playing Borg. I don't want to bore you, dear reader, but I HATE THE BORG. One of the cards I'd cut from version one of this deck, in an attempt to make it as small as possible, was Flaw in the Plan. I knew my only defense against Nick was Political Putsch. While I did get it into play early, I just couldn't find the Talnot to protect it. It ended up being the second to last card in my deck (mental note: add more Talnots next time). Nick was able to download and use Two of Nine to destroy it early on, but I had another in hand. That went the way of the Negation Drone (I think). My third and final copy lasted for several more turns, but Nick eventually destroyed it. Sitting alongside my Talnot at the bottom of my deck was Winn Adami and Ranjen Koral - two cards that I needed to help me past Nick's deck. I only saw them on my final turn, so I blame the shuffle gods for this loss. Nick had had to spend a lot of points assimilating my personnel, and when it came down to the end, he had one mission complete (assimilating Basso Tromac from my discard pile only to see him assassinated by Neela a turn later), and a second mission all but completed (only stopped by a 1 in 8 random pick stopping the Borg Queen). I was about to auto solve my first mission on the next turn for 50 points, and Nick needed a second mission to take the modified win. Unfortunately, my dilemma pile was down to 8 dilemmas by that point, and armed with two copies of Knowledge and Experience in hand, I knew Nick would blow through whatever I played. To make matters worse, the mission was Earth (Stop First Contact) and Nick got to remove 5 of my personnel at Bajor from the game. They were the guys who were going to win me the game. Nick's earlier assimilation had stranded my Xhosa (it only needs one command icon!), so I was left with no way to play another ship and the staffing for it in one turn. I HATE THE BORG ML: 5-70 Round 3 Rich H FW (+65) After starting the day playing Rich, I got to end it playing him again. His deck didn't rely on events that much. Even though I got Putsch out on turn two, it didn't really slow him down. He hadn't completed a mission in either of his first two games, so I took it easy on him. He completed one mission and almost completed his second by the time I had finished all three. FW: 100-35