James Booker (Shooter McGavin) Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day One 2013-08-16 - 09:00 AM Tobias likes REM, I figured he liked the Scorpions. Introduction I always look forward to GenCon. It’s one of my favorite times of the year. I get real excited to play Trek in addition to many other games over the course of the weekend. For the most part, all of the Trek folks are great people and they are enjoyable to be around. It’s the one time of the year I get to see folks I really like, such as the Brits, Corbett, Charlie, the Van Breemans (or Van Breemen?), Phil, Ben, Neil, and assorted others. Due to my bar exam studying, knee rehabilitation, and playing Star Wars LCG, I didn’t focus too much on Trek this year as I did in previous years. I wanted to play something new and different, but the advice I received from many was to play a deck I was confident in on Day 1 and then maybe get wild on Day 2. I’ve been playing a version of Tobias’s Cadets for a few years now, and I determined that was going to be the deck I would play. I was thinking about playing Romulans, but they appeared to be too fragile and couldn’t race the strictly better Klingon decks. On Friday, I show up to the card hall before 9 and fill out a deck list. Fortunately, I had an earned bye for round 1 so I used that time to meander around the convention hall and talk to some people. Eventually the round ended and pairings were announced. Round 1 Earned Bye EB (+100) I bought some LOTR cards. Round 2 Michael Van Breemen FW (+25) Great! I get to play against one of the best deck builders in the game for my first real game. We reveal our starting stuff and he drops a bunch of guys, including 2 Rixx and he eventually has enough to go to his first planet mission. I wiff on good dilemmas and he solves the mission on his first try and then goes to his space mission. During that attempt, I draw He Wasn’t Very Nice and name Rixx and hook both of them. Unfortunately for Mike, this caused his ship to be destaffed and his ship was stuck in the middle of nowhere. This gave me ample time to solve my missions defeat the master. Round 3 Nicholas Yankovec FW (+30) I thoroughly enjoy playing games with the Brits and this game was no exception. I recall Nick getting off to a pretty quick start as he was able to find a ship and head out into space to attempt a mission. I started building up my crew and I was able to play a few TATV to really get my deck going. Nick solved a space mission fairly easily and went onto a planet mission, where he was hooked by a Sylvia and I was able to capture Gowron and a non-unique Klingon. Nick said he made an error and shipped the turn to me. Eventually I was able to solve the cadet mission and then went down to my planet mission with a solid crew. Nick couldn’t stop enough guys and I was able to win. Round 4 Matt Kirk FL (-100)View opponent's ReportView original Report I was expecting a lot of Klingons today, but my plan was to try to out race them and use GPT to cancel their interrupts and to use Inequitable Exchange to pick off Gowron or Worf. Unfortunately in this game, I got off to a really slow start and Matt was able to get things going pretty quickly. This was a pretty ugly game on my end as I couldn’t even score a point. Matt crushed me 100-0. Ah, Cadets. I saw Practice Orbital Maneuvers hit the table and I was confident in my dilemma pile's ability to hold the little buggers at bay while I cleared out my missions. I was a little slower out of the gate than Booker, but I eventually started hard-charging through both my planet missions, and wrapped up the game neatly without allowing the Cadets to score. Round 5 Joel Skon FW (+20)View opponent's ReportView original Report Joel is a terrific opponent. We always seem to have pretty close games and I enjoy playing against Joel because he is one of the world’s best dressed gentlemen. I joked with him that my wife thought he was out of place the last time she saw him at a local Trek tournament due to his dapper appearance. As fate would have it, Joel was playing against a poorly dressed slob wearing basketball shorts and an Ohio State t-shirt. All I remember was that I was able to pass the cadet mission on the second attempt and I got out a Data on my next turn and I was able to solve my planet mission pretty quickly. Joel’s deck was quick, but I got pretty lucky on my draws and he got unlucky on his dilemma draws. I ended up winning this game quickly. HATE CADETS. He was so fast and solving a mission with 5 people that cost a total of 6 cost to play is just unreal. Round 6 Jared Hoffman FL (-50) This game was pretty important for me. If I won, I would be guaranteed a top seed in Day 2. If I lost, I would be at the mercy of tie breakers for a second straight year. I ended up going first and was unable to pull Picard with my Pull-a-Picard mission. Hoffman was struggling to get things going because I cancelled his strong events with GPT. I was struggling to solve a mission. Hoffman would use his interlink drones to place 16 personnel and ships in his discard pile to turn on his Back to Basics. It took me forever to solve the cadet mission because Hoffman hit Back to Basics on two consecutive attempts and I didn’t get a second ship to try to do the mission twice. Hoffman ended up capturing Guinan from discard pile somewhere along the line and was attempting missions with her. Due to the nature of the Borg deck and my inability to solve a mission, Hoffman and I were running out of time. Hoffman went to his last mission with Guinan in the away team (he was using his ship to represent her so as to not take her out of her sleeve, which was very considerate) and hastily choose some dilemmas – one of which was An Issue of Trust which I was sure was going to stop him dead because I had captured the Queen and Locutus was nowhere to be found. I totally forgot about Guinan being in the away team when I selected personnel to be stopped. I don’t remember if Hoffman gave me the ship when I selected someone to be stopped, but I should have asked. However, Hoffman also forgot about Guinan and ended his turn. Right when I was playing cards during my turn, Hoffman discovered he had Guinan and could have stopped her and was able to solve the mission. Talk about a moral dilemma! Here’s the approach I take to Star Trek – it’s a fun game that is meant to be enjoyed. It’s out of print and a lot of people put a lot of time into making sure people can enjoy the game. I could have scumbagged Hoffman real hard, but I told him I would hate to win that way because it goes against my beliefs and values. I like Hoffman and has always treated me with respect, so I wasn’t going to be a giant tool. After Hoffman shows me that he could have solved, I extended my hand and congratulated him on his Day 1 performance. It’s always great to see Ohio guys do well in big events and I have no problems losing straight up to somebody who outplayed me. Closing Thoughts See my day 2 report!