Matthew Zinno (commdecker) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2014-01-07 - 12:00 AM The Walls Have Auditory Implants Introduction I was ready to sit out, and only run this X-List tournament. But only three other players signed up, so I threw together a deck for the NA Borg and NA-TNG achievements. I was not alone in this. I think for once, the deck choices in this Standard tournament were motivated less by it being Standard and more by the recent release of new affiliation achievements. Round 1 Daniel Matteson FW (+100)View opponent's ReportView original Report Dan seemed to have been done in by his mission placement, with his Son'a planet and his Borg planet at opposite ends of the spaceline. Just after I solved my Q's Planet to acquire the Telescope, he had computer problems and felt far enough out of it that he conceded rather than re-engage. Hate it. Round 2 Jon Carter FL (-95)View opponent's ReportView original Report (Played this game first.) Jon's deck looked rather like mine ... but it was optimized for battle. His Data killed my Duck Blind people, and he used NeedWithAStarship to get my ships to either not move or become outnymbered. My Husnock ship managed to avoid battle only to get destroyed by Apollo, stranding my low-integrity personnel. I did get 5 points from TWHE when I finally reported the Assimilator, but then he demonstrated his ability to solve missions too. I foresaw that the rest of the game would be more of the same, and conceded. 3 duped missions tightensup the spaceline. He tries to q’s planet, I statagema. I then kill his ship with god. He is pinned down. So I am able to just do what I need to from this point and slowly solve. Round 3 John Paul Veasey FL (-95)View opponent's ReportView original Report Yowza, never have I had such bad drawing like I had in this game. In my other games and all my test draws, I was able to play 1-2 personnel consistently for the first many turns. This time, I had none in my opening hand, and only about 6 more in the next 7 turns. Still, I scraped together enough to solve Q's Planet (worrying about the 1 dilemma that JP put under there; turned out to be Balancing Act 'cause he thought QP unbalanced me), and eventually threw 7 at a mission attempt for Investigate Raid -- but I lost 5 of them to WeakWillPerish. Meanwhile, JP's Son'a/EE teams had plenty of time to build forces and get through my dilemmas. Invasive Procedures stalled him because he waited out the countdown, and he lost 2 people to MUG and 4 people to Spatial Rifts, but retained plenty and started passing Rift with Geordi+Joachim. This went pretty well. I got Ocular Implants out early and was able to peek at the first seeds and prepare accordingly. Matthew got a really bad hand and had trouble finding people. He busted out Q's planet and I realized I forgot Strategema. I put balancing act under there to see if it would throw him off but he just charged right in and got points from a self seed dilemma and his artifact. He really got backed up when he hit a combo after the first dilemma of The weak will perish followed by In the Pale Moonlight. The spaceline got set up in a way that he had trouble using Zef's magic peeking scope and when he did he saw a some combos that made him rethink his plans. Felt like I finally got the deck working well in this game. Closing Thoughts Three out of the four players were playing Non-Aligned Borg. I think for once, the deck choices in this Standard tournament were motivated less by it being Standard and more by the recent release of new affiliation achievements. (Though they did all pair it with War Council.) My lessons for the future: (1) Prepare for a battle deck, and for a mirror match. (2) I need to drop my attachment to Spatial Rift. It's just not as effective in practice as it looks on paper. (3) Masaka would be a good card to include.