Well, part of that was true, but, since Kris had managed to ruin his own prediction by steamrolling us both, this match turned out to be for second place, not first. We spent a good portion of our time and energy cheering for Dan Van Kampen, who (we believed) was still in mathematical contention for first place, and was playing against Kris (and his own Block-winning deck) for the final round. (Nothing against Kris! Certainly, better Kris win the regional than my archrival! But since Kris seems not to care all that much for 1E, by his own profession only in it for the achievements, our sympathies were naturally with DVK, a passionate and regular 1E'er from way, way back.)

I lost this game 100-0 (spoilers!), but I don't feel bad about it. I didn't fail my deck, and my deck didn't fail me. We just got unlucky.

To explain: When I put together a deck, I usually include a spreadsheet that calculates the probabilities of certain cards getting drawn by a certain turn. For example, in this deck, William T. Riker had a 74% chance of being drawn by Turn 4, and an 83% chance of showing up by Turn 5 (excluding the salutary effects of Mutation and/or Handshake). I generally make sure that things I really want to happen have an 80% or better chance of happening, and things I really need to happen have a 95% or better chance of happening.

In this game, I did not draw to a single Federation personnel (needed to staff the Enterprise-E) until Turn 4. At the time, I said that this was a 1-in-10,000 chance. When I went home and double-checked, I found a spreadsheet error. The actual probability of this happening, according to Excel's Hypergeometric Distribution function, was only 1-in-1,000 (0.106591%, to be precise). I also got no Handshakes and no Mutations (cumulative probability: 0.018%, or 1-in-5600). This prevented me from staffing the Enterprise for several turns. No deck can be blamed for falling victim to a freak accident of probability, and, given the circumstances, I played what I consider to be an immaculate game of cards.

But Matt (also suffering from some slow draws) played an equally immaculate game of cards, and never gave me a chance to catch up -- and quite frequently tripped up my several attempts at rallying. First, he pointed out that Assign Support Personnel couldn't download Cardies directly to my Enterprise, but only to Terok Nor -- something I'd been doing in every game that day and every test game prior to it, but the gametext was very clearly on his side, and that killed one of my reporting strategies. He wiped out a nine-person away team at Insurrection with Ferengi Infestation / Denevan Neural Parasites / Caretaker's Guests / Artillery Attack, then closed the combo with Dead End, just to add insult to injury. The contingency plan came into play, and I started running pell-mell for Alter Records... but the incredibly bad card draws I'd had earlier were still making their presence felt, as the only card in my hand was Injector Assembly One (which I wasn't yet willing to sacrifice), which left me unable to process ore. I needed to expend card plays and draws getting Emok out of the draw deck. And I still needed to restaff the Enterprise-E. Still, I managed to put it all together pretty well, and made it over to Bajor in surprisingly short order.

...and we encountered almost the exact same combo (Infestation simply became Hanonian Land Eel here), with almost exactly the same Away Team, which was again wiped out. The E-E was left in orbit, unstaffed and unable to dock to pick up Emok. My hand was still not in good shape. Finally, I got hold of a Handshake. I desperately needed to get three other cards in hand so I could use it to get a fresh start... so I did the only viable thing, choosing to draw two cards from Process Ore rather than one, knowing full well that Matt would Reactor Overload me, killing Telle and destroying my draw engine. This gave me what I needed to Handshake, and I got a new Riker to power Federation Flag: Renewed. I spent the remainder of the game trying to staff the ship and draw out the one additional Computer Skill I needed to complete Alter Records. Even taking his time, though (as he did late in the game), Matt was able to build up huge crews, deployed Ocular Implants, thwarted my favorite combos, and won the game. If I had had one more turn, I would have solved Alter Records, as my Computer Skill arrived in hand, and flipped the outside-the-game card I'd brought to the match in case I needed a late-game rally: I Don't Like To Lose. With two more turns, Characterize Neutrino Emissions would have followed (thanks, City of B'Hala!). With four more turns, I would have won the game. Of course, this assumes Matt would have moved as patiently as he did if I'd been doing better. Surely it would at least have been a closer match.

To be sure, I did make some missteps. For the first time all day, I managed to Access Deny my Ferengi Ingenuity / Dejaren combo by drawing to Q the Ref, which was great... but then Matt attempted, and I learned that I placed Ingenuity and Dejaren down in the wrong order! Plus, he earned Mission Specialist points from it. I managed to catch Matt with a Remat Detonator, but I failed to use it before the game ended. I seeded a Spaceborne Entity stupidly (not that he encountered it). Most annoying to me was, upon realizing that my Dominion War Efforts strategy was not entirely legal, I simply sacrificed Assign Support Personnel for a Turn 1 Martinez, rather than more wisely deploying my support personnel to Terok Nor over several turns for free. But these turned out to make very little difference in the final result -- in particular, most of those support personnel showed up in my opening hand, so downloading them would not have solved my freakish problems drawing blue personnel. In another game, I'd be really beating myself over them. In this case, I simply congratulate Matt on a solid Hirogen build and one of the most truly vicious dilemma combos I've ever come across, with a highly strategic Dead End seeded in exactly the right place to be a setback of the highest order for me. Even with my bad luck at the opening, this game could still have been winnable, but Matt's smart play ensured I never got the chance.

So now we're 3-1, and Kris is regional champion. Stranger things have happened. We'll see what happens in Fargo.