Matthew Hayes (karonofborg13) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2011-09-20 - 05:30 PM Beg Introduction The achievement race is on! What with former World Champion, Neil Timmons, building 'monster achievement' decks, I've got my competition cut out for me. The original build of this deck (a few weeks ago) went for at least 11 dilemma achievements in one shot, however, I decided to pare it down from a 72 card dp to the one I ran here. Those I was going for, included: Ghost Stories/Persistence of Memory (play/win with a Persistent pile), Skilled Labor/Skillz to Pay the Billz (play/win with only skill requiring dilemmas---which is funny, 'cuz in such a deck, you can't use Legacy, built just for such, bummer), Tillman Pile/Target That Explosion and Fire! (play/win with a Damage pile), Can't Have It Both Ways/The Right Tools for the Right Job (play/win with no dual dilemmas, or as I like to call it, the 'Make It So 2010 Opening Challenge' themed dil. ach.), and Our First Catch of the Day/I Want Prisoners! (play/win with a capture pile, part of that I had to excise in order to nab Can't Have It Both Ways and Skilled Labor, as there are only four planet or space dilemmas that require skills and therefore you can only use 12 of the 15 necessary, to fall in line with Can't Have It Both Ways, that is. {originally, I had three Broken Link and two Cardassian Processing to round that out, and I would've nabbed Our First Catch.} I also toyed with going for Sticky Situation/All-Consuming Evil (play/win with a Consume pile), however, the skill based consumes really suck, no really, I mean it, they suck...so there went that idea after about a day or so. The one dil ach I willingly nixed, was Tacking into the Wind, as I've already earned that one. Also, I was going for Dominion Master (win 5 times with Dominion, of which I'm on the cusp of, just need one more Dommie victory), and Victory Is Life (play Dominion 10 times, of which I'm now at 9, so also, one away. This deck was a lean mission solver and NOT a variation on my recent recurring 'ic Dominion, U.C. high-cost dilemmas' deck that I've been running. So, in summary, I missed all the win achievements I was going for, but, acquired the play categories. The race is on, oh yes, indeed! Round 1 Chris Volk FL (-20) Chris broke out his We Are Back deck in it's most recent iteration. Using MotW (Deep Space Nine) as a second hq, probably for short jumps back/forth to/from Explore Extradimensional World. His three non-hq missions were all 40 pointers, so he could hit hard with SI, SO, and UT. And boy, did they hurt me, as most of my deck is 2 cost peeps. It was a close game, though, as when he defeated me, with about half an hour to spare, I had 80 points from my Study Rare Phenomenon and Deliver Prisoners (both earned with my Distant Exploration on FH) and I'd been working on Mine Vendarite, having four dilemmas under it when the game ended. Believe I could complete it in 5 peeps. Oh well, it was a good/fast game all around. Round 2 John Western FW (+100) John asked me to bring a different starter for him to play, so I grabbed the Romulan one, and cherry picked a few good dilemmas from my excess box, along with a few support NA peeps to round out the deck. This was over pretty quick. My deck rolled exactly like it should have, so no complaints. Round 3 Dan Peterson FW (+30) Dan's getting the hang of things, nicely. This was another good game. He re-ran his DS9 deck from last week, but, my lean Dominion solver just plowed through mission attempts like there was no tomorrow. Dan did complete two of his missions, so his skillz are improving.