Soren Ramme Nielsen (s_ramme) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Omarion Nebula Regional 2011-04-23 - 10:30 AM Deck idea I stole from Chrissy Zonesteraby Introduction This is going to be a long rant. You are now warned. The Big Danish Regional. 12 people registered. Awesome! Those including Johannes Klarhauser, Will Hoskin, Nick Yankovec and Peter Van Der Helm - even more awesome! I was really excited about this tournament. Getting 8 danes together for it is pretty cool, but getting the above metioned guys to travel all the way to Aarhus just to attend is just ... well, awesome. I've played against them all before and we've always had tons of fun and I consider them good friends. With all the people attending and James naming me as favorite to win I felt the pressure. I was really tempted to crawl right into my comfort zone and just play Borg. They're versatile and I know them well. I quickly decided, however, that I'd try something new. So I made a DS9 deck with the Vastly Outnumbered crew. I also started to modify my damaged Starfleet deck to include the non-human personnel and Samuels, but couldn't really get a deck that I was happy with finished in time, so the only really new deck I had was the DS9 deck. I wasn't 100% happy about it's performance, though. It was fairly versatile with both interrupt prevention, event destruction, skill gaining, stop prevention and kill prevention, but I new that it might not be fast enough. Especially since I knew that Peter would be playing his super fast TNG deck. Also, I feared that my dilemma pile would have a hard time (pardon the pun) against Kirk, Donatra and Assess Contamination without any support from my draw deck. And I really expected to see those three cards a lot (turns out not that much). When the day arrived I was still uncertain. Will suggested (probably already tired of my whining about it) that Johannes would draw cards from a pile of random rares, that Will had brought as additional price support, and the first card turned that I had a deck containing would decide the deck I'd play. When Johannes flipped over the first card and revealed the U.S.S. Ganges I took it as a sign. A sign that the Universe wanted me to shut up and play some Trek. So I did. DS9 here we go ... Round 1 Johannes Klarhauser FL (-35)View opponent's ReportView original Report Ok, though start. Johannes (J) is just a super cool guy. I really enjoy hanging out with him when we get the chance at Euros or whatever. He's a really good player and a good deck builder, so I knew that this wouldn't be easy. When J layed down his hq I knew what to expect. TOS Earth. J had won a Regional in Germany a couple of weeks earlier with a TOS deck so it had to be some version of that build that he'd brought. Kirk and Assess Contamination. Puh, just what I'd feared. J being the one playing it didn't exactly help. I got off to a good start. Primmin, Bashir and Sisko out fast. Attempted Automated Repair Station and J playing Inequitable Exchange + Polywater. The exact details are a bit hazy, but I belive that he could actually have removed a mission skill (I think that I only had one Astrometrics in there), but he choose to get Primmin probably forgetting about the Centaur's attribute boost, so I walked right through on the first attempt. I also managed to keep J from completing Deliver Evidence for some time using Gomtuu twice and a lucky draw of Personal duty when I had 2 to spend and draw (no Kirk out yet). I had trouble getting through Avert Danger, though. Primmin was in the Brig and Odo wasn't out yet. It didn't help that I forgot to name In Development (w. Sisko's ability) on my third go at the mission (I had named it on my two previous attempts) and flipped the first dilemma just to see ID staring back at me. Futhermore, I was stopping Shran each time J attempted, so I wasn't getting a lot of dilemmas under. Meanwhile J was finally getting through DE and moving on to Survey New World. I caught a bad dilemma draw, but figured that In Development + Healing Hand would do the trick. I forgot, however, that Helen Noel, his only medical, is a cost 2 and was stopped by ID. So, Healing Hand did nothing and J had enough guys left to complete. Ugh. Now I was far behind and he only needed to solve AC. To make matters worse, he now had Kirk and Navaar out. I did quickly get back into the game, though, solving AD with help from Walk the Line. I also got to work on Survey New World. Twice J stopped me with a wall (Rogue Borg Ambush and Infinite Diversity naming Archaeology). In both cases I was looking at Bridge Officers Test in my hand (and Security Drills in my core for the second leadership), but knew that it'd get cancelled by J's Sisko. Damn! So close. I made a plan, though. I figured that stopping J more than once at AC would be hard with both Kirk and Navaar out. So when he attempted I choose to play Timescape, An Issue of Trust, Secret Identity and We’ll Never Know (and topped it off with a Center of Attention that I shouldn’t have played – but I figured that I only had the one chance of stopping him so one dilemma more probably made little difference). Ok, the rationale was this: Timescape was Kirk fodder. If he Kirked it: Great. If not, well then at least I hadn’t wasted any points on it. An Issue of Trust was in there because I knew that if he didn’t Kirk it, it would stop at least one of either Kirk or Navaar and that was crucial to my wall hitting. I was following this with SI because it would take out either Kirk or Navaar if any of them was still in the mission attempt. If both of them were stopped I planned to SI Sisko and thus enabling me to play BOT at what I figured to be my last chance at Survey New World on the following turn. We’ll Never Know requires 3 physics and I knew he had none. He would need Navaar and she was going to be out of the picture by then. (The final CoA was just a panic play in case he had BOT and Driven in hand to overcome WNK, but I think that he had plenty of security left anyway). My plan worked! Kirked took out Timescape. Navaar got stopped by AIoT and Sisko had to reveal himself and turned out to be Evans instead. Ok, one more go at Survey New World. Now I had to figure out what to name with Sisko. I chose Infinite Diversity. The reasoning behind this decision might have been a bit convoluted. I was hoping that J didn’t realise my reason for using SI on Sisko and was going for another wall. He knew I had no way of gaining Archaeology and not naming Infinite Diversity might have led him on track. Unfortunately, he either realised what I was trying to set up or didn’t draw into any walls. He played Coolant Leak (I think) stopping just enough to make me unable to complete even with Walk the Line. So that was it. Stopped with 4 under and J walking right through AC on his next turn for the full win 100-65. Good game. Having played DS9 Walk the Line myself for a while, I knew what to look out for. Unfortunately, it also meant that a lot of my dilemmas wouldn't be very effective as soon as Walk the Line, Odo and Primmin were in play. I had a brain fart when I played Inequitable Exchange + Polywater on Soren's first attempt, capturing Primmin instead of a mission skill, so Soren walked right through thanks to the Centaur's bonus, so it was an uphill battle for the rest of the game. Soren stopped me a couple of times at Deliver Evidence, while he worked on Avert Danger. I shamelessly used In Development to stop an attempt when Soren forgot to name it with Benjamin Sisko (he had done so the turn before). Still, he completed it eventually. However, I caught a lucky break when I dodged a Dreamer and walked right through Survey New World on my first attempt. At Assess Contamination, Soren played a combo putting six under that was guaranteed to stop me, even with Kirk. With Secret Identity he removed Sisko to get a chance of playing Bridge Officers' Test, but luckily I was able to hold him off with other dilemmas before he got a chance to play it. Danish Fun Fact #34: This was the first time ever that a game between Soren and myself did not end in a Modified Win. Round 2 Christian Tusborg FW (+100) Second game against Christian's (Chr) Equinox. Chr is a fairly new player with a limited card pool, but he plays a decent game. He's doing 40 point missions and plays the 6-cost dilemmas for free. Lucky for me my guys were prepared for kill dilemmas with high printed cost that do not require a skill. However, that didn’t stop Chr from totally pwning me with his dilemma pile. First he killed Ezri with Spatial Interphase (Stupid Ezri with only 3 skill dots and who can’t protect herself). Then he picked my only other geology personnel with a random kill (1 in 8!) and topped it off with Breaking the Ice which I was now, even with Security Drills out, unable to pass. He then stopped two consecutive attempts by randomly picking out my only transporter personnel (again 1 in 8!). Finally, on my fourth attempt, he randomly stops Sisko – my only officer/leadership – followed by Personal Duty which then stopped everybody cold. I couldn’t stop laughing. That was just too awesome. From then on things started to go my way, though. I managed to stop him quite a few times at his first mission and put two Gomtuus on his Equinox in the process leaving him stranded at that mission until he could find B’Elan (which he didn’t). I solved ARS in 5th attempt and his kill based pile struggled to stop med on my two planet missions with Odo, Bashir and another Ezri in play. FW 100-0. Round 3 Nicholas Yankovec FW (+55)View opponent's ReportView original Report Third game was against Nick. I’ve played Nick 3 or 4 times before. He’s a super cool guy and tons of fun to hang out and drink beers with. Nick was playing an updated version of his Dominion two-mission-win solver. With the new Eris the strategy has become a bit less risky and he won a couple of the last tournaments in London with it. In my opening hand I had Primmin and the Centaur and it wasn’t long before I was out attempting at ARS and I believe I solved in 2 attempts. Meanwhile, I managed to stop Nick at Eliminate Sphere Network with AIoT and Inequitable Exchange capturing Duran’Adar his bonus point scoring Jem’Hadar and only engineer. Or so I thought. On his second attempt I decided not to play any dilemmas. He hadn't brought in a new engineer for the mission and I knew that he was also short on navigation for the other set of requirements. I figured that it was a fake attempt to lure me into playing dilemmas so he could use Dominion Hierachy to gain the missing engineer. Turns out I was a fool. Not only did one of the Vortas stopped by AIoT before my Inequitable Exchange have engineer; Nick also had Explicit Orders in hand that makes you gain skills during a mission attempt. So Nick walked right through on his second attempt. Fortunately, I was making good progress with my planet missions and Nick was having trouble stopping me. I think he three times in a row sat staring at an Unfair Terms that he couldn’t play because I’d named it with Sisko. FW 100-45. Having just been burned by Peter's TNG speed deck, I then get to play Soren's DS9 Vastly Outnumbered speed deck. I was too slow setting up, and had some awful dilemma draws. Thats about all I remember from this game! Another FL, 100-45 IIRC. Round 4 Jakob Brun FW (+35) Jakob is also one of the newer Danish Trek players. I’ve played his Bajorans a couple of times before, so I knew what to expect. He’s gotten the hang of the game by now and plays the deck well, so I knew that it wouldn’t be an easy win. Jakob got of to a good start with Energize in hand and quickly got some of the heavy hitters in play. Stopping these guys multiple times in a row would be tough. So I decided to go with personnel removal. I used Occupational Hazards, Secret Identity, The Dal’Rok, He Wasn’t Nice and when he was digging for mission skills and ended up with a hand of 10 cards Hard Time, a stopper and the Dreamer. I figured it was worth putting a little exstra under his two planet missions, and so allowing him to complete a couple of turns earlier than had I played my dilemma pile like I used to, since I now had his draw deck emptied of personnel. Now I could remove key personnel with SI when he attempted his final space mission and sent him Where No One Has Gone Before while I completed my final planet mission for the win. FW 100-65. Round 5 Peter H. Møller FL (-65)View opponent's ReportView original Report Final game. Versus Peter. I have the edge on record, but this was the match-up that I was dreading. Peter’s super fast TNG solver. It got him into day 2 at Euros 2009, 2010 and at Worlds 2010 (with modifications along the way, obviously). A couple of days earlier Peter and I had played these two decks against each other. I lost that time. I think that my DS9 deck has more versatility, but when it comes to pure speed it Peters TNG definitely has the advantage. I didn’t find the Centaur for 5-6 turns which didn’t help. So I went planet first. Sisko was no where to be found too, so In Development and Coolant leak stopped me cold a couple of times. Not a good start. I stopped Peter cold on his first attempt with In Development and then my brain stopped working. On Peter’s second attempt I drew a Dreamer and saw my chance to get the edge. I decided to play the Dreamer followed by AIoT. I knew that Peter had only two honor personnel in play and that stopping one wouldn’t cut it attribute-wise. Lwaxana Troi was one of the honor personnel, however, so there’d be a 50 % chance that he wouldn’t be able to solve Encounter at Farpoint since she was the only one with Telepathy. At the last minute I changed my mind, though, and played Chula: The Chandra instead. That was a great plan as it stopped two guys and made Peter unable to solve and would have made him discard his hand including two copies of At What Cost?. Problem is that I only had five to spend and played the Dreamer first. That meant that C:TC was overcome and Peter walked right through the mission. FAIL. Peter played 21 counters worth of weenies on his next turn and chewed his was though his two easy space missions for the win before I could even get my second planet mission done. FL 30-100. Wah … tears. I should’ve played Borg Assimilation with a Tragic Turn pile like Ben Hosp told me to … Last game. I had to play my good friend and nemesis Søren. Both me and Søren knew each others deck pretty well, having tested them the week before at my place. We both knew my deck would be a little faster but that his DS9 Vastly Outnumber guys had lots of unstopping and kill prevention tricks. Søren was first to get an mission I really felt like this would be yet another nail bitter. Søren made a critical mistake playing dilemmaes at my first mission. He mistakenly played an overcosted Chula the Chandra after having played a Dreamer and the Dream. That gave me the mission and let me keep my two At What Cost. This meant I could quickly get more people into play and solve the last two missions before Søren got his 2nd mission solved. A very exciting conclusion to a great tournament. This helped my abysmal tournament record against Søren (2-9 in Sørens favour) improve a little bit, won me the tournament, but more importantly it would give me an hours more sleep at Euroes. And that is worth gold when you played a Beirmeister the night before :)