Edwin Latrell (Latrell) Tournament Report - 1E 2013-03-24 - 12:00 PM First (possibly last) atempt at SF: BLOCK FY 2013 Introduction This event marks the first event for myself and Bo Pulliam in almost 2 years. We were last able to play in Afghanistan shortly before my return to the states. As Marines we are constantly moving from one place to another and decided that while I was passing through Jacksonville NC, it would be a good idea to make an event happen. Fortunately, a buddy of ours, Matt Deardorff is in town visiting his sister and was looking forward to another game. Our new player is a long time Magic player who enjoys the concept of blowing up ships as much as the next guy. I modified two of the Starters that the TNG design team have (FER) and (KLG) for Bo and Den Decker respectively. Matt wanted to play ROM but I he was unable to get the starter to a point that he was happy with, and so opted to use my Forcing the FED in block to some pretty good results. All in all, the event was a major learning point for all of us. I am so out of practice that the seed phase caused me many problems and ultimately prevented my third full win. :( that aside it was a great learning experience for Den Dekker and a reeducation for the rest of us. Round 1 Matthew Deardorff MW (+45) Playing with Matt again was loads of fun. He is a long time ROM fan, mostly because of the cloaking tech and the ability to avoid a fight if necessary. Setting up the space line was interesting as both of us a very similar builds for the seed phase (I wonder why :P). as Matt was borrowing my FED TNG Block Deck, he was focusing on racing me to both Espionage Mission and Host Metaphasic Shields. I was continually stopped when attempting a space mission (at HMST by my own RAGS!!!!) and was unable to complete a space mission before the hour time lapse; resulting min the MW. Matt did a fair job of seeding the dilemmas a knowing which of my personnel to remove using the ACE and Armus dilemmas. Nice to see it work, even if it was against me :) Round 2 Bo Pulliam FW (+30) Beginning my game against Bo I paid more attention to how I was seeding. Again I was playing an ACE engine (I need to diversify my designs when modifying existing starters :P) and that created an interesting scenario for the race in completing the mission. I took the TNG FER starter and added several dilemmas, notable the Armus dilemma engine vis-a-vie ACE and tried to use damage dilemmas with a battle bridge for Bo. He has never played with a BB before and I thought this would be a good environment to introducing him to that aspect of the game. As it turns out, he was able to use the BB DMG markers to devastate my first Columbia and forced retreat for the better part of the hour from his D'Kora ships. (Hard to do once he completed Resupply II !!!) Managed to pull out the FW by racing with the Saravjo to last mission needed! I love Transporter Skill !!!! Round 3 Den Dekker FW (+37) Side Note: I think I need to make a policy to NOT do random parings the first round when I am introducing a new player to the game. I did that here and wound up playing the least experienced player last. I have been teaching Den Dekker the game for a few days and we have walked through several games but in hindsight speed game. While I was able to answer questions and both Matt and Bo were very accommodating to him, I felt as though his very first learning experience should have been against me. It was painfully obvious that I failed him in that regard. Despite that he was happy with his performance and is looking forward to the next time we can get to play together. (God knows when that will be...) On to the game... ALRIGHT I need to be admitted to TrekCC design dependent's anonymous... It seems that I built every deck around ACE and Save Stranded crew. This created for some interesting space-lines and dilemma familiarity. On the positive, at least SSC isn't a mission where facilities were dependent as that could have been disastrous... Also, everyone here today knows how to effectively build ACE engines and how to use them :P I walked Den Dekker through the game taking my time and helping him see obvious plays. His intuitive feel for the turn based strategies and the deck interaction likely acme from his Magic gaming experience, but it wasn't helping him through the seed phase. He kept mis-seeding and poorly organizing Away Teams/Space mission Crews and was stopped almost every time. Despite this he know what he needed to do to rectify a wall dilemma or a slain key personnel. he liked the learning curve and the use of the Dyson Sphere Door. End of the day it was an easy three mission win, but I am happy to say I finally got my Royale Casino: elevator 7 points! not as goo as I want it to be for getting Bonus points, but I like it all the same... Closing Thoughts Today was a good learning day for everyone. I learned that I need to be a better TD and that I need to TAKE NOTES FOR REPORTS :P I want to personally thank Den Dekker (Aaron) for playing and being a good sport about learning the game on the fly, as it were... I want to get this group together as often as I can, but that may be difficult as three of us are Marines and all and another three of us live in different areas of the US. Oh well. Now that I am back from Cuba and have 'real' internet connectivity, I plan to get these guys on the Lackey as soon as I myself figure out how to make it work :) Was finally able to give some prize support. Matt got a VP DS9 / Terok Nor and a CIVILIAN skill badge, Bo got Guardian of Forever and Aaron received three skill badges of his choice. (Transporters, Geology and Biology) he said if he can't bury someone (geology) he could try to poison them (biology) and if that didn't work he could always space them (transporters). ASIDE: I hope he isn't holding a grudge... :P SOOOOOOO happy to be playing again!!!