Matthew Hayes (karonofborg13) Tournament Report - 1E 2013-07-14 - 12:00 PM Phil Schiffly and the Fist of Goodness have returned Introduction Originally, I wanted to run KCA to try for the one elusive Victor achievement I don't have, but, as they cannot compete against neither the TNG mechanics, nor the DQ shenanigans, I knew that they'd have to sit this one out. Unfortunately, my TNG decks of late also seem not to be competing. My TNG Rommies in IA and now my second version of TNG NA in MN are dismal failures. Though, I did have fun here, for the most part, sort of. Round 1 Kevin MW (+5) Kevin's a very good, very fun opponent. He plays different stuff, well, variations on the DQ decktypes, thus far. This one only had Liberation as its sole DQ mission, so he was planning on making inroads to the AQ. cool. We had dueling FNC/FotO going on. An early Data led my faction to decimating his faction and robbing his Vidiians of their allies. It took three successive combat ground parties to do so, wiping out something like 5 or 6 of his NA peeps. Once he journeyed into the neighborhood, my Murasaki Effect succeeded in damaging his primary Vidiian Cruiser and he lamented that I was going to come blow him up. I reassured him that, at least, initially, that wasn't my goal, nor my desire to do so, unless he got way ahead on points, at which stage all bets would be off. Sure enough, as he got ahead to 50 points from two missions, and I was still working on getting my first, I changed strategy to just that --with a War Games on his ship that was Cytherian-tripping down the AQ spaceline, I jaunted over with the Assimilator to first grab my 5 points off the dilema and proceeded to wipe out Cruiser #1 (he only had that one in play at the time, but, indicated he had more in the deck), giving me the time to get ahead. And I did, just barely. Between getting my QIIR with the Gol Stone beneath it, I netted 30 from the mission, 5 from Farek's greediness, 5 from War Games, and 15 from MR, giving me the MW, 55-50. Round 2 Justin Kaufman FL (-15) Justin's another good player. He took a full victory here. Well deserved. It was back and forth, though I don't remember much at this point. I look forward to our next match, certainly. Round 3 Jason Tang ML (-18)View opponent's ReportView original Report Jason, yet another good player. I was glad of the game, as he's moving to Norway for school for 2 years. In fact, I must credit Justin, our TD, as being diplomatic enough to take the bye (which admittedly, should have been mine). Going into this round, James was willing to take said bye, as I had driven 4 hours down to Mpls and would be driving the 4 hours back on the same day, with work at 6 AM the next morning, but, Justin realized this would clinch the tourney for James, so that was overruled. Justin, being the gracious host, (and I'll state I made it known that I was fine with the bye should I receive it, as both an Ambassador for the game, and that it was their local scene so no hard feelings would be had in any case) sat out this round and I had another good game, the final one for some time with Jason. His Borg deck ran well and while I certainly had a good amount of personnel out, I couldn't keep up...hitting my head against some wall dilemmas that required skills I couldn't seem to draw into fast enough, even though said skills were included. Oh well. This time I get my draws going, since I start with We Are The Borg in hand. I also take advantage of Obelisk of Masaka/Masaka Transformations to draw into some spheres. I start scouting my Cryosat mission with spheres, and bait out a Cytherians as planned. (The funny thing is that with a range of 4, the sphere couldn't make it pass my 5 span missions, so it moved a few locations and just chilled out.) I soon have Dukat and my Orb. Meanwhile, Matthew assembles a monster crew at The One's outpost, and breezes past my Matriarchal Society combo + Outpost Raid. He even had the STRENGTH>81 for Outpost Raid. Matthew then attempts Raid Ancient Burial Site where he loses 18 points to The Higher, the Fewer and then something like 6 personnel to Firestorm then gets stopped for two turns playing Chula: The Game. At this point I'm in high gear. Dukat + Orb + Service the Collective + multiple spheres scouting are accomplishing my goal of completing objectives in a single turn. I do this twice, bringing me to 75 points. Unfortunately, for some reason I had been hesitant to scout my planet because Anya was chilling out with her lover and I was worried about her battling and stopping me from probing. This hesitation caused me to go back and forth along my high-span missions instead of just moving along in a line, and it probably cost me a turn and some time. Alas, time was called when there was a good chance I would have completed my 4th objective in the next turn or two. Closing Thoughts Let me just say that 7 range ships suck in 1E. considering that that's most of what the nonaligneds have, it's not surprising. little note: while I have included the Zalkonian Vessel in decks previous, having thrown this deck together fairly last minute, I was intending to include John Doe and didn't want my ship ganking my shipboard medic. So no ZV, and for some perplexing reason, no JD either. ha ha.