Paddy Tye (KazonPADD) Tournament Report - 1E - Omarion Nebula Regional 2017-05-13 - 11:00 AM Safe Sexecution: Making Niall lose via teethshattering Coital based Headbutts Introduction Ah regionals again. And no time to build a deck! Time to pull old faithful TNG Feds back out of my CCG closet, splash in some new Broken Bow dilemmas, adjust the personnel (better add some Archaeology!) and a small bit of anti-2-mission-win-tech to try and delay Alex (A Real Game). It didn't slow down Alex, but it was fast enough to outpace Niall and Gary... Round 1 Niall Matthew FW (+15) First up, Niall. Our 29th encounter. The man I'm working on getting that "Eternal Struggle" achievement against. And my fellow set designer from Broken Bow. I knew in advance he was playing MACO (he'd already told me as much) and if I'd had the time I would have been playing 22 Klingons (maybe next time). I also owed him some revenge after a mission stealing incident at Manchester Masters. I'd known TNG Feds would be versatile against the new Broken Bow dilemmas and the classics like QI, so had hoped to surprise him with speed. Nope! I attempted turn 2 and cleared the first 2 dilemmas with relative ease (sending Lieutenant Ballard off in a Runabout with the Cytherians after hitting Buried Alive). If I could get past QI I wouldn't need to bother with a Space mission! While I built up my full QI skill matrix (where were all my Physics? Oh crap - Ballard on the Runabout!) I moved next door where the last dilemma was... another QI! Meanwhile Niall had been beasting through dilemmas with the unkillable MACOs and their Combat-Ready downloads. He needed one more mission for the win (the low 25-point Moon mission combined with not passing Gold! back to him had forced him to attempt a fourth mission) and attempted a space mission he could just about get to - but forgot to leave someone free for Combat-Ready: Tactical Reserve. Edo Probe, Personal Duty and Friendly Fire pushed him back down to 85 points, allowing me one turn to make up the difference. Playing Daniel Kwan and Kamala (gaining Kwan's Physics) finished off my QI full set - so cleared and solved the two QI missions straight away. What to go for next? Well, I could definitely get past my own QI, so headed for our shared mission. Set my QI crew to one side, and red-shirted the remainder until I just had QI left to go, cleared and solved. 3 missions and 3 QI's in an epic last turn. Phew! Round 2 alex dixon FL (-100) Alex had done the same as me and reverted to an old classic. The same old classic! His version was tighter than mine - not downloading Holograms/Barash personnel, but playing Scientific Diplomacy people instead. I had a bad start with no Holodeck doors in hand. Next turn I had no personnel so was just chain-downloading Enterprises! The spaceline also meant two shared planets, so had to push through the remaining one. Founder Secret plus Denevan plus Jol Yichu cost me 7 people (drew two type I phasers at end of turn annoyingly). Alex had struggled against Quantum Leap (losing Jean-Luc) and Khan had kept him from being able to pass Dead End where his Artifact was waiting, so he was forced to do a third mission (a small victory for me at least!) before he picked up the win, having enough Transporter Skill personnel to get past Miley Cyrus. Round 3 admiralgary FW (+100) Gary was playing Double HQ Romulans, but the 5-span mission in the middle of the spaceline was really hurting his ship movement. I managed to get going pretty swiftly, but a Gomtuu combo damaged two of my ships - putting them at the outpost without a Spacedock! Moving them would leave them exposed to attack so I left them to repair and returned to solve using my Love-café-housing USS Galaxy before popping back to safety. Gary was having issues finding the Archaeology to get past Quantum Leap, leaving me time to play USS Pasteur, get across to a third mission and solve. Closing Thoughts Good fun tournament and great opponents as always. Broken Bow dilemmas have definitely shaken up decks (more Archaeology, SCI/Geo, MED/T-skill needed). MACOs are really hard to kill in concentrated form. TNG Feds are still a good option though...