Matthew Zinno (commdecker) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event (Mission to Talos IV) 2012-12-03 - 12:00 AM Locar'mor returns (to Talos) Introduction Online Talos tournament, from the First Anthology era. I recall that before First Contact, the deck to beat was a Romulan all-space deck where each mission could be solved by Telek R'Mor and Nick Locarno. So that's what I tried to build. But the Shades of Gray cards included in the pool threw off my plans -- I felt I had to include many more personnel with large numbers of the more useful classifications, which led me to treaty with the Federation for cards like Scotty and the Enhanced Premiere dual-personnel. Round 1 Christopher Coyle FL (-65) I had a Q-Net and a SWB in my opening hand, and played them early. The SWB was Kevined soon, and the Q-Net went right between his two outposts, which were at the adjacent Quash Conspiracy and DipConference, which were all he needed to win. I should have put more dilemmas at those. He suffered my space dilemmas there, losing Vekor to Unsci and his ship to Nitrium, and strength to IPC. But then he solved with Rakal, and earned his Cryo with two VIPs joining her -- and they each had Dip to pass the Q-Net. On to DipConf, where he passed a doubled Barclays and was stopped for only a turn by Sticky(STA)/MalfDoor. He reported a VIP-STA next turn to win. Meanwhile, my side was less interesting; I redshirted past filters, losing Takket to Hippo, Sirol to MLI, Bev+Will to TPS [5]. Needed to tent for Dathon to pass Shaka, then needed to tent for Nick to solve Secret Salvage so I could pass an Edo at Lonka ... which led into Cytherians, to resolve long after the game's end. Round 2 Andreas Limmer FL (-60) I got Nick and Telek in my opening hand, plus Sirol and a scout ship who went redshirting on turn 2. With a few more people, he passed an Unsci, to hit BOJ and Scow. Passed that with a few more card plays, and solved with Telek. 6-space worked, in that each combo I hit opened with a planet-dil misseed. The other combos had me stuck, though: Hippo and I had no MED, Shaka and only one Dip. Ancient Computer had me stuck until I got Mirok, which gave me enough SCI to pass if I committed Telek to the attempt (them plus T'Pan). Unfortunately, the Love Interest dragged Telek away before the TPS killed everyone else -- if only someone else were selected, I could have played one of the two other copies that was in my hand! Alas, Nava went through my combos more quickly than I could rescue my few remaining cards -- with Troi and Riker passing Shaka, and Tasha's gun passing MalfDoor. I got Geordi with MUG though, leaving a STA aboard the BOJ/Cyth ship, unable to fly it alone and it blew up from BOJ. FL 100-40. Round 3 Rem Boon FW (0) Rem also had all space missions. So there were no planets, rendering useless not only the planet dilemmas but also the love interest combos and Hippocratic Oath. I helpfully got out a Traveler early, and a Mordock soon afterwards. Rem and I used different attempting strategies -- he waited many turns for a good enough crew, while I redshirted early. Twice, my 1- or 2-person redshirt crews found walls, then I'd send a 4-person team to pass those, and they got killed by the followup (one Barclay's, one TPS). But the missions were then clear, for Telek to solve. After I had one mission solved, Rem ventured out from his outpost mission, and got his entire crew subjected to Tsiolkovsky Infection ... which took away Spock's Diplomacy so they couldn't pass Shaka. My next turn, or course, had to be a Q-Net, to keep the no-Diplomacy crew away from base and his other ship. He recovered later by playing other diplo and Medical, and then he solved that mission and the next (which had the same combo). We each solved a mission a turn for a while, getting to a score of 107 (3 of my missions, -3 from THTF) to 130: his 4 missions + 10 from my BPD ... and the 4th mission solve was Test Mission, for which he had played a Timicin early but he gets discarded at 60 points! I planned for one more mission, which I knew started with a MUG, and I figured the followup to be BOJ/Cyth. So I planned to hit it with a ship of busters, who'd lose Sirol to MUG, then Wormhole (3 in hand, 1 in tent) to solve Cyth, but then my remaining Nick&Telek were on the ship with Tsiol (couldn't do the ships the other way due to Nick's restriction box), taking away the Astro to solve... so I'd need an extra turn to play another ship and fly them there to solve. And then it turned out that I predicted the combo wrong. BOJ yes, but then my busters were hit with Conundrum. Bad news, that would kill my Mordock points; good news, I left the ship without staffing (Pasteur, only AU in play was Telek who's on the other ship) so it actually can't fly and finish the dilemma. Still needed the extra turn to get Telek another ship for his Astro back ... and got that turn, Rem didn't get anything with his last chance. Final FW, 157-130. Closing Thoughts Oh well. Last place going into the final round, 6th of 7 afterwards.