Tournaments | trekcc

Thomas Vorwerk (Borgified Tribble)
Tournament Report - 2E
2013-03-16 - 10:30 AM
Loaded for Grizzly
Introduction
It had been almost 15 months since my last tourney. Or my last game. Most of the new expansions I hadn't even printed out, but I did a card search to look for Future TNG personnel that work with the new Relativity deck and thought that that was not as good as I liked (see round 3 to read about my mistake concerning this miscalculation). So I scrambled together a weenie deck with the "Loaded for Bear"-Enterprise, first I wanted to mix that with "Deploy the Fleet" and a Phoenix propelled by "Expand Engine Output" ... but - uncharacteristically for me - I thought better of this.

Round 1	Marc Schütze	FW (+50)
My first opponent was Marc Schütze - or, as I like to call him: Shark Mütze. A guy I've been playing with since the middle of the 1990s, but - even more than myself - he doesn't have as much time as then and he was probably off the tourney circuit for two or more years. He played one of the nine decks Thorsten brought with him - a Bajoran Resistance deck, which wasn't very much to his liking. But at least Marc was able to use the "Arena" dilemma to get my lonesome Lopez to a forlorn planet where he was visited by a small group of Resistance fighters - after Marc played 3 copies of "Just like Old Times" in one turn. He than delivered one, two and - ouch - three black eyes to Lopez and made it to 50 bonus points (5 had been sponsored by my Guinan). Alas, we wasn't especially lucky with his missions and was a bit flabberghasted to see my minions of TNG weenies overflood the game, finally solve a second mission and then cowardly get their bonus points for my unexpected Full Win in the first round.


Round 2	Marwin Wanek	MW (+20)
Marwin played another of his big brother Thorsten's decks - but like his sister-in-law Sandra he had put it together single-handedly. It was an Equinox deck (I never played against one before, but had some vague ideas about that sort of things) and when I had played about eight peeps, he played his first personnel in round three (!) Good for me! I was also lucky to catch a glance of a "Grav-Plating Trap" in Marwin's hand and played a copy of "At What Cost" earlier than I normally would have (also it was a bit of a risk to play a Guinan that early and give my opponent a five point present) - just because I didn't want to wait for him to report an equipment and thus being able to use that interrupt. Because I hate to pay five hard-earned points - and get nothing in exchange but an increasing discard pile. When Marwin made a space mission attempt, I drew (among others) "An Issue of Trust" and played only that because I knew that the Equinox works with Treachery peeps and Marwin had played only one non-aligned so far. He somehow gave me the impression that he had the means to cheat around that dilemma, but then didn't do that (in hindsight probably because he hadn't played that darn beeyotch able to make all those treacherous tendencies "disappear" for a while. Next turn, he did another mission attempt, I again drew "An Issue of Trust", but this time - just to be on the safe side - I played a second dilemma, and boy was I relieved when AIOT didn't stop a single person but the second dilemma thwarted Marwins ambitions. P-U! Apart from a slight temporal miscalculation (one more turn and I would have won with the easy 15 points for stopping 18 of my TNG guys) the game ended with two solved missions on both sides and 85 to 70 points. [Edit: the differential above says otherwise - so it must have been 85-65 or 90-70.]


Round 3	sascha kiefer	FL (-100)
My third opponent I didn't know - but I heard or read his name before and that was probably not because he is such a bad player that everyone is talking about. Also he just won against Tobias Rausmann (2010 World champion) but told me it was more of a "luck" thing. Well, to cut a long story short: he acted all naive although he knew that his killer Relativity deck eats Borg for breakfast ... okay, maybe he didn't know what a poor player I am and so wasn't sure what to expect - I had won my first two games just like he did. My initial draw wasn't very good: for example two copies of "These are the Voyages" and my Lwaxanna (or a four-cost peep) didn't come along before something like round five. But even worse was the fact that he played a "Tampering with Time" in turn 1 or 2. And there's nothing I hate more than to draw dilemmas that my opponent knows better than I do. And so I played Luther Sloane and "Machinations" just to get rid of that stuff. AND I had to do that once more later. I don't know how important TWT was for his deck in the other games - but I lost 0-100 anyway. Because of simple things: I was all about stopping him, all ANTI - and didn't even play a ship all game. I threw away 2 or 3 ships for two copies of "Outmatched" (two seperate attempts), played the nice combo "Necessary Execution" plus "Neural Parasites" in an earlier attempt and was a bit miffed when he explained the "for each headquarters"-part to me ... For his third mission he needed the extra points for double Physics or double Science - and for some stupid reason I thought I just had to kill his double-science-Data to get him to solve a fourth mission ... and maybe getting beat not by me, but by the clock. But no such luck. The worst thing was when I had a surefire stopper-combo (that was before his second solved mission, I believe) and then read about the event-destruction possibilities of the drawn dilemma "Gangster's Welcome". A nice way to get rid of his second TWT (which I later killed with Luthy). Since I'm no skilltracker I just played a "Secret Identity" before that and examined his crew. No Law whatsoever but 3 Officers and 2 Security, both of which were named Marris and had obviously nothing at all to do with the mission he was about to solve. The thing we all fear happened: Marris ripped off the mask he was wearing: and underneath he was ... Keira Knightley! The horror! The horror! NO, actually he exchanged the discarded Marris with his third copy of that insignificant person and significantly solved that mission. One other thing that irks me to this day: Every time I drew "Rogue Borg Ambush" or "Center of Attention" I had a vision of that collector's item Sheldon Cooper sometimes carries around to intimidate computer hackers: That effin' Bat'Leth! Well, I did what I was able to do. And as it turned out: that wasn't nearly enough to make a difference. Sascha continued to win this tournament undefeated.


Round 4	Benjamin Liebich	MW (+15)View opponent's Report View original Report
My fourth opponent was another guy I knew only by name. Or better: vaguely remembered to have read somewhere on this site. The tourney not only had a spectacular attendance, but an interesting mix of new players (for at least one guy it was his first tournament ever) and old friends I hadn't seen in a while and will hopefully see again at the Weltbiermeisterschaft in Möhrfelden-Walldorf later this year ... (Hau wech die Scheiße, Daniel and Tobias!) Benjamin also played TNG-Earth (he even had the same Enterprise twice in his deck), but was all about the Battleship-crew and Rachel Garrett and her new playmates. High-cost personnel with many skills - almost the exact opposite of my deck. Benjamin played the only copy of "Timescape" in this tourney (at least that I got to see), but nevertheless I later had three mission attempts in one turn. At that time I commanded about 22 people, had my space and planet mission solved and was just waiting for my mercy kill with twice 15 points while Benjamin was still scrambling with his first mission. Since we had to cut the fourth round a bit short (we knew the game shop wanted to close at four p.m.) and I was quite well informed about the time left, I did a - to my mind - outrageous thing. I had started this game (I just realized: I started every game I won, only against Sascha I was second player) and I knew: If I would have another turn it would be a Full Win, since there's only so much you can do against that 15 bonus points. Benjamin finally had managed to solve his first mission, flew to the other one and I knew two things: a) Benjamin had no range left in his ship(s). b) The time-out would come in the next one to two minutes. And so, after Benjamin had assembled a team of seven people and attempted, I just said: Okay, solve it, no dilemmas. He solved and then surprised me with Geordi La Forge, Battleship Engineer. Damn it, you really have to know about some of these newer cards! When he was at the other planet, the time-out came, and even though he had not the ghost of a chance to solve that mission (I think I played six dilemmas, I had three copies of "Shared Problems" on the table since mission solving isn't everything in life) and I won modified 85-70, it was a sobering experience to do a really clever thing in one minute and then witness that some blind miracle worker can blow all your innovative tactics to smithereens.
Thomas played the classic Weenie/Loaded for Bear TNG deck, solving Caretaker's and Survey New World and then overflooding you with low cost TNG personnel to excessively score points with the Enterprise-D. As I feared Insurrection eluded me for the whole game so he was able to flat outpace me as I fell victim to some of the Federation's weak spots like Issues and Moral Choices. As time was ticking and him having to make only a few more bonus points he decided to choose no dilemmas for my second mission leaving me to solve it. As my Range was used he assumed that I was out of options. But then I pulled a little rabbit name Geordi LaForge out of my hat who enabled me to attempt my third mission. But it was a long shot as at that point time was called so he threw everything he had at me which was quite enough to stop me and left me lose this game modified 70 - 85.

Closing Thoughts
It was a really nice tournament! I not only got a promo I did not even recognize, in both of my prize boosters I also found a foil card (and those were no Reflections-boosters!). Next time I print out (and bring with me) that darn "For he's a jolly good Klingon"-event that enables you to get eight counters each turn (I encountered that card in two of my four games). And maybe next time I don't have to play sober and during daylight ...