Brian Sykes (Armus) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2021-04-02 - 12:00 AM Dogs_of_War_Release.txt Introduction I had deckbuilder's Block for this event. Took me awhile to cobble something together, but I was finally able to get a Staging Ground deck built and optimized for achievements and fun! That would be my downfall in this shark tank of an event... Round 1 Michael Van Breemen FL (-100) Opening hand Devil. Fuck that noise. MVB had a solid deck and very well may have won anyway, but the fun was sucked out of this game from jump. Round 2 Maggie Geppert MW (+15) Great game! Maggie and I had quite the chess match, with each of us solving one mission. I got the win because my mission was worth more points. No idea if I would've won in a full untimed game or not. The best part was we had so many virtual cards in play we couldn't see the virtual table! Round 3 Mr.Sloan FL (-58) 999 card deck with 90 Devils? FFS people! Fortunately the Lackey gods were merciful after punching me in the dick in game 1 and all of Christian's Devils that I saw got burned to Habit of Disappearing. Honestly, he didn't need them. He had a very good TOS solver with basically all of the answers, so he was able to get a "clean" win despite loading up on the Devil. Round 4 Stephen R Sanders FW (+100) No Devils in sight! Yay! Stephen R was rocking Here by Invitation, which is a deck type I'm a fan of after my Nationals run last year. He was running 5 Gamma Quad missions and we Duplicated his one Alpha Quad mission (Characterize Neutrino Emissions). He only seeded one card at our shared mission and overloaded Bajor and Evade Borg Vessel. I seeded Lack of Prep -> Scout Encounter -> Dead End at the shared mission with a hope of knocking out two other missions and finishing that off for the win. Since Stephen won the coin toss he got DS9 down first and I got to find out how well my preparations for this contingency would work. They worked pretty well, as I was able to get 2 Resistance people out on turn 1 and start cranking out the Espionage cards for draws. Unfortuntely, while I could still report my ships, I couldn't actually staff them or beam to/from the station since I didn't control it. I eventually find some command stars and start actually moving around. My first mission attempt is at Research Historical Accident, where my first crew triggers a Volcanic Eruption -> Hanonian Land Eel combo, with one unknown behind it. Next turn I get Shakaar and some Lower Decks-enhanced Bajorans and take out the eel, and then run into Captain's Holiday. At first I think I'm in trouble, as I left my 2nd Archaeology on the ship, but then I see that Lauren and Shakaar have Geo so I solve and get everybody off the volcanic planet of doom. I then throw some randos on one of my ships and go next door to attempt Verify Evidence, where I run into an A Fast Ship Would Be Nice -> Romulan Mind Probes -> V'Ger combo that does not end well for the redshirt crew, but they did their job, as the mission is now clear and I can solve it on my next turn. Meanwhile on Stephen's side of the table, he's spitting out DS9 mains and drawing cards. He actually goes for Characterize Neutrino Emissions first, and it turns out his seed is an Orb Artifact, but then he gets stopped on one turn by Lack of Prep, then the next Turn with the Dead End, giving me an extra ship and 2 free people in the process. Next he goes to Access Relay Station where my Unscientific Method -> Spock's Brain -> Scientific Method both Science Drains him and de-staffs him. He gets one turn to try to hail mary his way into a comeback, but he needed one more turn to get a second ship out and staffed, and on my last turn, I play one more ship of people, solve Verify Evidence, then play musical ships to get my crew over to Characterize Neutrino Emissions, Where Jadzia Dax and Laas solve for the win. Round 5 Matthew Zinno ML (-15) Another chess match game. We were both playing Staging Ground and each solved one mission. He couldn't find the science to get past Spock's Brain and I took heavy casualties powering through Research Historic Accident. I took a last turn shot at Characterize Neutrino emissions, which would have given me the mod win had I gotten it, but I needed 2 Security to get past his last wall and my solving crew only had one (I needed everybody else to clear the Strength > 70 Region Wall). Matt tried to do not fun things like Telepathic Alien Kidnappers and Devil on my Treaty, but they were one-offs, and I actually had some Quinns to police the table. Fun match against a quality opponent, even though I came up on the short end of the scoreboard. Closing Thoughts Rolling out multiple devils in a release event is a great way to kill any fun factor associated with playing new cards. It's unfortunate that people feel the need to do that in a L1/Release event setting. On the Merits, I'm not sold on Staging Ground as a tier one deck, though balancing affiliation count, skill matrix, and drawing engines made it an interesting deckbuilding exercise. In the end, I'll take my participation trophy achievements and move on to better builds.