Unjustly Banned (RedDwarf) Tournament Report - 2E 2013-07-14 - 10:30 AM Relativity Small [v1.1] Introduction For the first tournament of the day, I was using my updated Relativity deck. Last time I played it, I noticed a few areas that needed improving. The first was a slight shortage of Astrometrics for my first mission, so I threw some more personnel with that skill in the deck (and when I was playing I made an effort to play one as soon as I drew them). The second problem was one of my planet missions. Once completed it would give me cheap Temporal events, but I figured that it was my second mission and I'd only get to use it for one or two turns before completing my third mission and winning the game. I was struggling for mission skills for that mission, and decided to simply switch it out for a mission I could complete much easier. Finally, I wanted to use the events that were in the deck, so I added extra copies of them so I'd draw into them quicker. This "small" deck, was now sitting at 55 cards. Round 1 Mr Slade FW (+55) Matt was playing a Starfleet solver. On turn one he dropped a NX-Prototype and a dude to staff it. He then flew the ship to Agricultural Assessment and triggered the damage download to get another NX-Prototype. At the start of turn two he drew one card for the ship he had at Agricultural Assessment, and then played another NX-Prototype, with one more dude to staff it, and repeated the process again. Long story, short: from turn four onwards, Matt was drawing three cards at the start of each turn from the three NX-Prototypes he had sitting at Agricultural Assessment. As the game went on and he got more ships out, he'd dump extra ships there for even more card drawing each turn. Matt was putting those extra card draws to good use, fuelling Fesarius Bluff and then Excalbian Drama to one-stop me at my mission attempts. Unfortunately, I had worked my way through five of the six copies of those dilemmas by the time I drew into a Kirk (who would force Matt to play more than one dilemma). Despite this, I was leading in the game. This was probably because I was able to blow up Matt's A Sight for Sore Eyes the turn after he played it, and it took him a long time to get a second copy. Without the extra counters At What Cost? would have provided him, Matt wasn't outpacing me as much as I expected he would have. A few lucky dilemma draws and a few lucky random selections on my part meant that Matt had only just completed his second mission by the time I won the game. FW: 100-45 Round 2 Daniel Giddings FW (+95) Danny was playing his Bajoran battle deck. I knew this because he dropped two hand weapons on turn one, and had a couple of copies of Just Like Old Times out shortly afterwards. His dilemma pile seemed to revolve around Forsaken, and it held me up for a number of turns. All except for the first time I faced it though. I'd played the Revised Doctor (with 2 Treachery), and Danny had forgotten about him when he tried one-stopping me with Forsaken at my first mission. The Doctor went under my deck and I completed the mission. Sadly, that left me with only one Honor personnel in play and no Treachery personnel, so future attempts were short lived. Even more so when Danny played Inequitable Exchange to capture my only Honor personnel. Eventually though, I was able to get Kirk into play. While his dilemma nullifying ability was nice, his 2 Honor was even better! While this was going on, Danny seemed to be struggling for a ship. I even gave him 5 points for Croden rather that give him extra counters to play a ship, when I had the chance. Eventually Danny got a ship out, but he only had time to make a couple of attempts. The Caretaker's Guests (with no personnel in the discard pile) and Hard Time took care of the first attempt and required a re-staff before the second attempt on the next turn. I stopped that too. Danny never made a third attempt. At my final mission, not being able to rely on Forsaken, he gambled on a dilemma combo that didn't work and I took the victory. FW: 100-5 Round 3 Nicholas Yankovec FW (+100) Nick was playing a Maquis deck with the aim of learning how it worked before he might have to face it at the European Continentals a week later. When I saw the mission selection and the small dilemma pile, I figured Nick was playing a consuming killer pile, and responded accordingly. I took out one copy of Tragic Turn with Ohhhh! Nothing Happened! before I attempted, and made sure I had a couple of copies of Chakotay in hand (to power Revised Chakotay) too. At my first attempt, Nick was very unlucky with his dilemmas. He played five (I think), and consumed nine. Not one of those consumed dilemmas was All-Consuming Evil. To top things off, Chakotay prevented one death, so Nick only killed two personnel from all of that. What made things even worse for Nick was that he had consumed another Tragic Turn, and two copies of Bold Plan. He was able to hold me at the mission for another two turns (thanks to Uninvited fetching a 0 cost dilemma each time), but I was able to keep my personnel count high enough to complete the mission after that. Completing the mission let me take a discarded event back into hand so I took Ohhhh! Nothing Happened! and played it again to remove Nick's last Bold Plan from his dilemma pile. By this point, his dilemma pile was looking rather small (6-8 cards), and I knew that I still had two copies of Ohhhh! Nothing Happened! to remove two dilemmas from that pile and I had two copies of Kirk to get rid of another two. While waiting to draw into those cards, I attempted my second mission, knowing I'd force Nick to use some of his precious remaining dilemmas. He killed one personnel with an All-Consuming Evil and a couple more with The Clown: Guillotine, but I was fortunate that Overburdened whiffed and didn't kill anyone. That left Nick with four dilemmas in his pile, one of which was the returned The Clown: Guillotine. With luck still on my side, I drew my copy of Overburdened at Nick's next mission attempt, and got to see his other three dilemmas. There was another Overburdened, a Final Adventure and a second copy of The Clown: Guillotine. I used my last two copies of Ohhhh! Nothing Happened! to get rid of both Clown dilemmas, and then used Kirk to overcome Overburdened at my next mission attempt. I took the mission there and then, before moving to my final mission knowing Nick could only play Final Adventure against me. Double checking I had multiples of every skill I needed, I attempted. Then Nick pointed out that Final Adventure doesn't work against Relativity decks because they don't have headquarters, so my effort was unnecessary. Nick had spent so much time trying to disrupt me that he hadn't come close to completing a mission. Losing three personnel to my Overburdened hadn't helped in this regard either. FW: 100-0 Closing Thoughts This was my first tournament win since January or, if you prefer, my first win in 15 tournaments. It was loooooong overdue.