Joel Bray (Lejo) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2011-02-12 - 02:00 PM Delta Source Introduction A large Extreme Measures release event attended by several local and non-local players. Lots of fantastic prizes and I *finally* got to play folks from the San Diego group (after three tournaments of not being seeded against any of them). In fact, all four of my rounds were against players I'd never had the pleasure of playing against. I had a blast! Also, after weeks of play tests and tweaking, I finally gave my "Delta Source" deck a shot, and ended the day with a 2-2 record. Round 1 Thomas Kamiura FL (0) Thomas laid down the covering fire with his Bajoran Resistance deck. While I was prepared for these new personnel to make an appearance, I struggled with skill tracking unfamiliar Bajorans. Dilemmas became an issue for me and Secret Identity proved non-conclusive with the speed of his personnel entering play each turn. The Resistance finally beat me. Round 2 Matt Kirk FW (0) Matt's Dissident deck struggled early on, but his Jake Sisko began to devastate my draw deck. Matt's Back to Basics didn't make an appearance until the game ended. Fortunately, I started the game with a great hand, and I was able to power-through Matt's dilemmas to complete my missions. Three mission solve for the win. Round 3 Thomas V MW (0) Thomas played a large TOS deck that, fortunately for me, did not get going until late in the game. I initially expected a Deploy the Fleet deck, but quickly realized his was designed for dilemma manipulation, eek! Doctor McCoy is brutal! Luckily, some key large away teams broke through his stalls and I was able to solve both planet and space missions for the modified win. Without a time limit, I have no doubt that his deck would have outlasted mine. Round 4 Rogue Shindler ML (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report This Section 31 member brought an uncanny deck that I *thought* I understood before Rogue's personnel quickly became Android Central! I had to quickly improvise my dilemma play-style with his Androids being able to gain skills and the availability of micro-teaming for his missions. Unfortunately, while I steadily played cards, I spent too many turns trying to complete Caretaker's Array; Rogue got some wonderful dilemma drops on me. Although a tough loss, with feeling time ticking away constantly, I really enjoyed playing against a deck I hadn't expected. My loss was Rogue's gain, as he took the tournament win (and the sweet Latin-script play mat). My final game was against the Delta Quadrant. Joel was using the 40 nucleogenetic retrieval mission, so I was expecting Equinox and started gearing my mindset for them. Imagine my surprise (and drop in respect) when Joel dropped a VOYAGER on the second turn. How disappointing. He was using a mix of Voyager and Equinox personnel, just enough to throw me off, which luckily caused me to pay a little more attention. Instead of writing off Caretaker's being solved, I did the math and realized only one stop with Polywater was going to let him stop Ransom, and then have exactly enough integrity to solve, so I threw in another dilemma at the last minute. I continued to have success fending him off at Caretakers with little or no dilemmas under, thanks to D&W, and give myself some time to build up and catch up. Joel did a lot to slow me down by Secret IDing Graves on my first attempt. Even with the free Lore, it was not enough to bash through. The addition of Kes and Tuvok and another ship (the Equinox, finally) eventually made it impossible to fend him off of his 20 pointer, and choosing dilemmas got interesting once Ransom had fuel for his abilities. He headed for his big 40 point planet while I continued slugging away at my space mission and finally managed to solve. Unfortunately Graves is not an android, and I didn't have enough range-boosting fuel (on the Reliant this time) to pick him up and still have androids in hand. I opted to push forward without Graves, as time was winding down and I needed to get going. I managed to soong-type passed one dilemma and use Rayna to prevent a Goran stop, but was then short on androids in hand to get past The Launching (had plenty of physics, but no Astro, and couldn't draw my equipment). Meanwhile I had to drop a truckload of dilemmas in a specific order for fear of Ransom unstopping people, and I only barely noticed in time to add an extra dilemma that he'd had an Ent-J in play the whole game, and it only now became relevant. I forget the combination of cards, but it managed to just be enough to stop him. I added Lal back into my team and drew a bunch of cards to get back above three or more androids in hand, then attempted again. Time was winding down to about five minutes or so, and I was getting worried about my ability to stop him if he got another attempt at his mission (he went first). Fortunately for me, he was equally worried about me getting another mission before him (if we both scored, it would have been 65-60 in my favor), so he took a great deal of care in his selection, even burning an Unexpected to try a new set. In the end, it both helped and hurt, in that he pulled the right combo of filters to stop Lal and again stop me with The Launching, but didn't do it quickly enough to beat the clock. Time expired while I was facing his dilemmas, and that ended the game. Final 35-20. My modified win ended up tying me with TK for Victory Points, but thanks to my head-to-head victory, I won the day, and more importantly, the Terran Empire playmat! Thanks to everyone who game out and played, Chris for hosting a fun day, and TK for driving. Until next month...!