Nathan W (Naetor) Tournament Report - 2E 2012-09-08 - 11:30 AM New World Borgder Introduction Dubbed King of the Ring, this glorified local was set to rival any of the other level 3+ events that have taken place in the past few months. With more former and reigning champions attending than any other competition, players traveling from across the US, and hyped as the 2012 US Worlds championship -- or more appropriately called 2012 new Worlds order -- I knew I had to play something highly competitive just so that I wouldn't get blown out of the water. My first options were Borg assimilation or solver, big Romulan, Maquis stall, or Cardassian solver with light capture. Maquis got cut after I saw Timmins won at GenCon with them; Cardies got cut after I bombed online with them; and Romulans lost out after I thought they were too fresh in people's minds. It ended up being a debate between an assimilation build similar to my Continentals deck last year; or a solver like the one I played in Minnesota two years ago. In the end, I felt like assimilation had kind of fallen off the map, its a deck I play a little more uniquely than others (more solving potential, less reliant on assimilation), and would be a good meta choice for the decks I expected: speed and/or dilemma avoidance. With the draw deck, more or less figured out, I went back and forth on the dilemma pile. I ended up playing Tragic because, as of late, I had been playing dilemmas terribly and wanted to play something easy. Having a good use for Uninviteds and Endangereds made a lot of sense given what I expected to face. Round 1 Steve Nelson FW (+100) Steve was playing Bajoran Resistance and was kicking himself for not going with his reliable Maquis after seeing I was playing Borg. He had a rough draw, being unable to find a ship for 6-7 turns. That was more than enough time for me to solve missions. I think I scored on Locutus once, Annexation Drone twice, a One With on the guy I assimilated after AR, then REM to hit 100. I think Steve got one attempt off, but I killed all 9 of his personnel after popping two ACEs and finishing him off with a Tsiolovsky. Round 2 Nat Kirton FW (+30) Nat was running the all-new Ferengi dilemma avoidance deck. I had seen it and thought about it, but never played against it. I pulled 2 Quintessences, but his Brunt quickly emerged and took care of them. I built a crew while Nat was hiding at home and getting lots of free draws. He had quite a few one-drop stops but Adaptation Drone and the Queen started to wear his dilemma pile down. I think sometime after I solved AR and nabbed a free assimilatee, Nat headed out with a monster crew and went for Falsify. I SI'd Ulis to stop that part of the combo, but he ended up solving as my 5 or 6 dilemmas I gave him weren't enough to prevent the solve. My saving grace was that he needed to use Reyga 2 times and Suck Up once or twice -- thus wasn't able to get the necessary 6 cards under Ferenginar. I didn't have a battle card, and Invasive Drone wasn't out for my Abduction in hand, so I busted TPTT with the Two of Nine I had been holding and continued working on REM. Nat's turn he dropped a second TPTT, Grish (who is big trouble for my pile), double attempted his 40 point mission. I killed some on his first, but his Grish/Reyga/Suck Up party cleared his second, though I think I was able to He Wasn't Nice Reyga -- but he was out of range. Figuring out I needed to assimilate 3 more people to hit 100, I flew over, battled his ship, Harvest Droned a guy on the planet, and Unrelented another. This ended up being big as I took out a lot of his mission skills for Geo Survey. On his turn, time was called but I went second. He went to Geo Survey, and I was able to rip out his last mission skills to stop him from solving. On my turn, I popped One With, essentially autosolved REM, and grabbed the win. Round 3 Kevin Jaeger MW (+5) Kevin was playing a K'mtar/wild dilemma avoidance deck that he had won a regional with earlier this year. However, 2 of 9 blasted his Energize, then Call to Arms, so he was going slow and was going to end up needing 3 missions to win. A few turns in the game turned strange and stayed that way throughout. I had a large crew (10 or so) out and was building up in anticipation of his strategy. He had Tea Ceremony out so I was being cautious about my downloading when I inadvertently shuffled my entire crew I had played into my deck, thinking they were half my draw deck. DUH! I ended up conceding down to the 7 personnel that we could both remember I had in play. I kind of went minor tilt at this point, thinking this blunder had mostly cost me the game, and went to REM with the 7. Kevin gives Hard Time followed by Dal'Rok. I would have been able to pass, then solve, but he Hard Time'd the Queen which wouldn't let me sub in a Harvest Drone for Cartography Drone and bypass that dilemma. It was a risky play, but it pulled off for him. He then flew over and put 3 dilemma beneath his space mission and 2 beneath a planet after TDWP, 2 Jachuqs, and Kerla. Next turn I flew home, tail between my legs, and assumed I was on my way to a loss. Despite my huge blunder and Kevin's dilemma break at REM, he probably made the biggest mistake of the game when he sent 5 to attempt his planet mission. TCS triggered, a few important personnel died, and I was able to pull back dilemmas from his other mission with Bold Plan. From here on out, he was kind of stuck. With Endangereds, Uninviteds, and my regrowing hive, quite a few more key personnel of his died. Meanwhile, I think I nabbed Locutus points and solved REM. On his turn, time got called and he didn't have the skills to solve his second mission. I went second, but had more points so I pulled out the win. It was a strange game with both our blunders. Kevin later pointed to me that his deck wasn't a good meta choice since he needed some of his events to stay on the table, but I would have rather we both not made these mistakes. Still, I think it would've been tough for him since I was rocking many of the cards that hurt dilemma avoidance. Oh well. When you can get a win over a world champion, you take it. Round 4 Joel Skon FW (+95) Joel and I were both 3-0. Fortunately for me, he was playing a Romulan deck I know very well. He was originally planning on playing this deck at GenCon and we had talked about it beforehand, but ended up playing Voyager and brought this deck to nWo: KOTR. Despite giving him ample Viceroy downloading, I knew very well how to pick the deck apart. He played 3 Energizes that never reached one decay, GUYS and P&P both had their turns as well. Joel elected to FSE me 2-3 times, but I never felt the wheels coming off. That's generally why I prefer to omit FSE from my Rom builds, or at least use it as an event destruction decoy. Joel was essentially a mission and a half behind when he finally made his way to AC. I stacked a few dilemmas, but I was able to hold off the solve, drop him down to 1 Anthro, then nuked Power Shift the following turn. Solving REM put me a second mission ahead. Joel decided to go to space. I had a great killing combo for him, but Joel made a nice play when I SI'd Donatra, and he brought in Picard to disrupt the big part of my combo -- he avoided the 3 Tsiolovsky kills which were coming at the end. However, I was too far ahead. With the Queen and both my Unyieldings I was able to power through HR for the win. Given Joel would end up losing to Nat in the next round, I was happy I ended up choosing Borg over Romulan. Round 5 Mike Harrington FW (+100) Despite being 4-0, I needed to win (or tie) against Mike to make it into the final confrontation due to my MW against Kevin. That wasn't good for me since I consider Mike to be the best player I've ever faced and gotten my ass handed to me the previous times we've played (once at Nationals and one test game). However, he was playing a dilemma avoidance deck that needed ASFSE on table to get working. All things considered, I had probably the most favorable matchup against his deck that I could ask for. Because of that, the game ended up being fairly one-sided. I went after HR 2nd and was able to beat his Accelerated Aging as my Appraisal and Archival drone interlinked mission skills. Closing Thoughts We ate, then Nat and I gathered for our final confronation rematch. I went into our match with a different strategy. I decided to forego Quintessence since it would just be Brunt'd. Instead I nabbed AWC? and Assimilation Techniques to speed up my solving, grab the cheaters to get through dilemmas, and Uninviteds to break up his dilemma avoidance. It worked very well as I was able to build a crew quickly, BOT a wall at AR, and had stacked a bunch at REM by the time his combo was set. Like our first match he attempted with 14. However, unlike the first he now had Grish for even more challenges. I decided to try and decimate him. I burned am Endangered to draw 17. I was hoping to SI Ulis and He Wasn't Reyga out of the gate, but didn't draw my He Wasn't. Instead I used an Entanglement and set up to inflict as much damage as I could as I felt there wasn't many turns left in our game -- for either him or me. Over the course, I ended up stacking 19 dilemmas beneath his mission -- killing off (I think) 7 people and stopping the others. On my turn I drew to set up assimilation on the next turn I'd get, downloaded Uninvited, solve REM, and work on HR. He then attempted with Falsify again. I used my Uninvited to grab Bold Plan. With only 10 dilemmas in my pile I hit one of the two ACEs left, killed off the last of one of his mission skills, and destaffed his ship. Time got called. There was some confusion if we use time in a final confrontation, but Nat ended up scooping. I think I could have, mostly, finished his crew off with assimilation and bonus points. Or been able to get through HR now that there were 4 or so under. After that I went back to Kris' and lost money to Nat playing poker, so he got some revenge. Just some observations about the tournament: 1) I'd like to see Quintessence become unique. In nearly every game I grabbed two with Fourth as its the best play. With two it is very tough (other than Brunt) to shut down. In the same vein, I'd like to see Locutus' cube be changed to NON-UNIQUE drone. I don't do it -- because I think it is a weaker, yet more consistent play -- but I've seen others who continually bounce Fourth to build their core, but do not have to venture from Unicomplex and risk dilemmas or interaction. I think the only way to replay Fourth should be via Queen-swap; and 2) though I was able to beat them, I think the Ferengi build needs to receive some errata as well. I think I K&E'd twice over the course of the tournament. But the Ferengi build has a lot more potential to bypass dilemmas. What's worse is the setup really doesn't require anything more than drawing cards. Even with my deck teched against dilemma avoidance, it was almost unbearable. Certainly others would (and apparently did) fair much worse. Finally, big props to Kris for hosting one hell of a weekend. I would've had a great time even if I hadn't played as well as I did. The competition was, obviously, World-class, but the comraderie was new World-class. Expect a blog post highlighting the non-Trek aspects of my trip, shortly!