Matthew Zinno (commdecker) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2014-07-07 - 12:00 AM Chess Masters Introduction An online tournament with prizes? Yeah, sign me up. I'd like that Defiant Volee. I brought a TNG Romulan deck, since it worked better than the Maquis deck I also built. Round 1 Niall Matthew FW (+100) Niall was playing TNG Feds, with Scientific Diplomacy. I got going early and attempted Amnesty, getting it down to a Dice for which I didn't have my good integrity yet. Another ship went far and past his OP at Host to another space mission, redshirting past Chandra and starting a LL countdown. Niall then ventured out and tried his Host; the first ship got stopped early, and the second one discarded the first three dilemmas but got damaged by 3Vipers. That left things open for my big move. I flew Tallera over to Host, and attempted. (Niall neglected to flip HQDM.) The next dilemma was Gomtuu, which took out his damaged big ship, and damaged his smaller ship, while also moving it to within range of my D'Deridex, which destroyed it. Niall worked on rebuilding, with help from an Isomag, but I had plenty of time to walk through those two space missions (drawing Spock and waiting out the LL), then solving Q'onos (passing FdrScret with Mr. Tricorder) FTW. Round 2 Ben Hosp FL (-45) Ben was Here by Invitation, with DS9 at the Bajoran Wormhole. He milled about for a while accumulating resources, including stranding some people in GQ so that he could then Rescue them for 10. I redshirted to clear dilemmas from missions. (Well, and I picked off Jace Michaels before he could Cowboy, but was punished by losing Tomalak to Ilon Tandro and also boosting a Protestations of Innocence which turned up later.) He eventually headed over to GQ in earnest, around the time I solved two of my missions for 65 points. At this point I had a 35-point mission cleared, with a Linguistic Legerdemain with one turn left. I had A Missing Day in hand, so I could solve it now and be at 95, and I also had Explain Your Presence, so I could zip to DS9 and recover the last 5 points. But Ben ended his turn with all his personnel at GQ planets -- out of reach!!! So I couldn't win this turn. He would have another turn, and he only had 10 points now, so it was unlikely (not impossible) for him to win before I could. Now, if I had been a master strategist, I would have noticed that he could not both get 90 points on his turn AND stay in the Gamma Quadrant. And I therefore would have gotten to 95, and parked at the wormhole/DS9, so that when he came through (or even reported) on his turn, I could play AMD and win. But I did not notice this, and gambled that he wouldn't get 90 points in a turn. He reported people to DS9, flew in a spare ship to GQ, and passed the remaining dilemmas (Cultural/Linguistic) to solve his planet for 35. Then returned to DS9 to score 15 bonus points from EGQ and FMR. Then he threw a large crew in a long shot at a 40-point space mission -- and after losing several people to Precision Piloting, he nullified 3V with WNS, and passed Gomtuu with Bareil, then solved: 90 points! Round 3 Chris A. Mead FW (+100) Chris was a relatively new player, and we had a good game. He had a Here By Invitation deck, with DS9, COM, and the Celestial Temple. He seeded We Need You Here and Prophets, but not Contain Boarding Parties or Sisko Subroutine, so on turn 2 I reported Data to his OPU, docked my Science Vessel (DLors), and commandeered DS9. This set him back a few turns, during which I started poking at missions. He kept reporting people (from hand; no ops dls) to COM and his Defiant (dl'd before I commandeered), but couldn't undock until he reported Tandro. At that point, I abandoned the station, to keep Data safe from Tandro ... But first I used ops to get tomalak, for mission skills to solve Amnesty Talks. More poking found a second Dal'rok, killed several red shirts, and started countdowns on FF and LL. He retook the station, then started poking at missions in gamma. Waiting out the FF countdown, I tried a new mission and cleared it to a Dead End ... With me at 45. I just needed to wait until next turn and solve the FF mission, then the Dead End mission, except I couldn't solve that FF mission now. It was Revenge Plot, and most of my casualties had been my medical people (syrus, Kharic, a TJev). Chris, in the GQ, ran into dilemma problems ... With a LL counting at one mission, he threw several waves at a planet, losing an OFF each time to the Box, to the point where he couldn't pass DTE. Back to me, he conceded, seeing my upcoming double solve and not noticing I had no medical in play. Turns out I would have indeed gotten it on that turn, by reporting Spock, then using Get It Done to return Kharic to the deck, and downloading her. Closing Thoughts Fun to play, fun to do well, fun to play someone new. And an achievement for me even though it's block (5th time Romulan).