In the dilemma phase of my first game, I choked hard. Jason seeded a bunch of Neutral Zone cards, just like me, so we had a long spaceline. I immediately started trying to figure out how I was going to deal with other TOS Romulans, whom I could not shoot. We both seeded Patrol Neutral Zone, making mine stealable. Then Jason decided to seed no dilemmas under my PNZ (I had seeded several under his). Clearly, he's planning a steal, I think to myself... but is he nuts? I won the coin toss, so I have the first turn! I'll just seed my outpost there, drop Gal'Gathong and Keras, and score 110 points before he starts his first turn! So I let it sit naked and self-seeded no defenses there.
Then Jason seeded They Will Be Coming, and I physically choked on how hard I had just choked. Of COURSE it was a Borg deck! But, hey, at least when he tries to Establish Gateway there, he won't get anything from it, right? I'll steal the points with Feedback Surge!
Wrong again. Feedback Surge steals points from Establish Gateway, sure. It doesn't give a crap about Harness Particle 010.
Thankfully, I had been watching and waiting before seeding my outpost, and now, having realized the depths of my error, I fled to the far end of the spaceline, where I had Shattered Space and Talos IV close by. His Cube was the J-25 Cube, theoretically destructible, but who knew how many Fed Flag Recovered he had seeded, and he might Regenerate if I damaged him... and I pointedly did not see a Continuing Mission on the table, so he could possibly multiplex if I attacked him. My only hope of recovery was to speed-solve.
That is, in fact, what I did. To my great and eternal good fortune, Jason was unable to probe successfully for HP010 on his first two turns, so decided to bail out and try a different mission on his third turn. He cleared that one in short order. That would have been it, had it not been for those bad probes.
But he did have bad probes, and I was able to score a LOT of bonus points, with The Keeper's Obelisk points and Test For Weakness going off without a hitch and Getting Under Your Skin firing on all cylinders. I never approached him to offer battle, and held Gal'Gathong mostly at my outpost to help mission solving efforts. He had no interest in fighting, either, especially once I had enough ships out to score serious hits on his Cube. So we both lunged for missions, and I went faster. |