Barry Windschitl (JamesValEson) Tournament Report - 2E 2016-07-16 - 10:00 AM Give Up, Give Up! And Feed The Machine!: Borg Snatch and Run 2.3 Introduction With the impending errata to key Borg Assimilation cards, I decided to take the deck out for one last run before it needs to be retooled. It earned me a bit of flack, but the epic gamesmanship in the last game at least let me leave it behind with some good cheer. Of course, When I was about 20 minutes out from the gig, I started getting texts asking where I was; It turns out that while I normally start gigs at 10:30 if first of the day, I accidentally put this one to start at 10. Round 1 Kris Sonsteby FW (+35)View opponent's ReportView original Report Kris was playing a Tain/ Central Command/ Telle deck meant to turn dilemmas into blanks whenever possible. He got to two missions done, before I got to getting missions via K&E and five of his guys. Lost to a deck I hate playing against and over reacted. Round 2 Steve Nelson FW (+100) Steve was playing his Classic Bajoran resistance/ JLOT deck, and I was looking to keep my guys out of the arena. He had a pretty rough draw the first few turns, and went out with 9 peeps aboard the Kitara to take a crack at a planet mission. Once that was going, I swooped in and got five of his guys. After that, he was trying to rebuild while being hamstrung by Imperfect Replacement, lack of the Taluno, lack of Paenol, and lack of weapons/ assault events. After that, it was B-A-U dodging Arenas and getting to 100. Good Game, Steve. And, yeah, Your Romulans would have given me fits. Round 3 Jeremy Benedict FW (+100)View opponent's ReportView original Report This game was Much closer than the score makes it seem, as in Double Deck-out, with only my Annexation Drone points getting me the win. Jer and I were playing it cautious, with him not wanting to give me the chance to spring the trap. Lot's of drawing, and playing, and him nerfing my events was had. I eventually got... Bored, maybe, and decided to head out to AssRez to take a crack at it. While this was going on, there was more drawing, and me recycling my deck as I was discarding a Lot (no GreasyDukat, so that was good). On one of my last turns, I got enough guys out to try crop-dusting some missions; this resulted in my hand of Assimilation interrupts going bye bye thanks to some bad Dreams. After that, Jer's deck was looking a bit thin, so I decided to draw up after recycling, and drew up my, then, three-card deck. On Jer's last turn, he needed to spring out and get points, as he, at that point, had One card left in his deck (score 15-0, Me). I drew dilemmas, including one Secret ID, and That certainly went in the stack. At that point, Steve asked if he could see what the one card was. Jer showed him as I placed the stack down (once the stack was down, Jer made a comment to Steve about needing the last card for his ability), only to flip the top one, and get a secret ID. He laughed, and called it "Good Game". This was one of the most epic games of Trek I have ever had played, and I will remember it for some time. Great Game, Jeremy. The dreaded Borg Assimilator that shut me down early at Regionals this year! This time I did everything that the Assimilator hates: I played an early ship and got everyone off the HQ as soon as they were played. I spent 13 turns just playing personnel and trying to slice off bits of Borg infrastructure: Tacking into a One With the Borg, Our Sacrificing another. After 15 Annexation Drone points, Barry finally went to try missions since I wasn't going to give him any personnel until both our decks were almost gone and I had no other options. Dilemmas locked him out of missions with full stops coming from Personal Duty and An Issue of Trust, also Captian's Guest calling out the drones. Barry leaves his deck empty before my 14th turn and I'm down to one card with enough in my hand to play without needing to draw. I split up the teams and go for broke at missions. The first dilemma he gives me is Secret Identity and the last card in my deck is a personnel I do not command - game over! We had a good laugh about it, even though I effectively broadcast it to him, but he would have done it no matter what to remove a person from the attempt if it wasn't a personnel. The best way the game could have ended and yet another in the long history of weird and wild games Barry and I have shared over the years. Closing Thoughts Perhaps it's a good thing this type of assimilator is looking to get toned down. The visceral reaction by my first opponent was telling, and if the last game hadn't gone the way it did, this would have felt like a more hollow win while saying goodbye to a rather ruthless partner in crime (who, while ruthless, is really cool to hang with, is female, and looks good in a cat suit... but I digress). Personally, I'll just look to go back to a deck model more like what I used to run before trying the speedier version. As for future Borg decks besides Assimilation, I'll make a try at some kind of Mega-Team thing in the future, but they have enough dilemmas that hate on them that once K&E is gone, we'll likely see Borg once again go back into the shadows of history.