There's just something about this deck that I love; it's so much fun to play and you really have to craft a win. Also, after playing Dabo in the final of worlds, I wanted to get Leeta on the table more often and make her shout when I revealed skills from the top of my deck.

For this tournament I lent him one of the fastest speed solvers I've put together - Splatterday Night Fever, which tries to maximise draws from the Handshake/Isomag play engine and free report as often as possible. Unfortunately for Kev, I obviously knew the weaknesses of the deck and it was easier for me to put effective dilemma piles together that it probably was for his other opponents. Also unfortunate for him is that the deck I was playing was probably a little bit faster, less reliant on solving Insurrection and more consistent with its draw engine. Added to this mix was a favourable coin-flip for me and going first is obviously an edge in a solver v solver race.

Fortunately for Kev, despite me absolutely murdering him in no time at all (his first Handshake wasn't a kind one and my draw allowed me to drop 5 people on both turn 1 and 2!) I was able to go through a few more of the deck's subtle elements and tricks, which Kev took on board and subsequently used to murder his next three opponents! Congrats on taking second place mate.

The beauty of Niall's deck is that it doesn't need many personnel in play at all, but enough to batter through a few dilemmas, locate Dead End and then breeze to 50 points from another mission, Arbiter and Death Yells. It was going well for Niall too, as he smacked into Dead End early, used Isolinear Rods to get a non-aligned Data and then gave it a 3rd Computer Skill with Suna's download of Reflection Therapy. This allowed him to laugh his way though my Ingenuity/Dejaren set up and score 35 points before I was even close to a breakthrough of my own.

Grim

I too had located Dead End and then immediately set upon Insurrection in order to try and claw back the situation I found myself in. I almost solved at the first attempt(s). Away team one made light work of the first dilemma but were then stopped by Blended. I suspected a God would follow that, but gambled on a 50/50 with my Injector Assembly in orbit and attempted with my second crew anyway. Anij had integrity 8 and so did Bareil, but my one other diplomat was Kai Winn. If Niall picked her to continue, bang goes the Assembly and my mission attempt. If Bareil was to go on, I'd walk by (through?) God and solve that turn.

Of course, Bareil was stopped and Winn ensured that I failed God at the expense of my floating model kit. I was in some serious doo doo now.

Thankfully my dilemmas held Niall off for a moment and on my turn I managed to get a bit of luck and turn the tide back in my favour. I opened with a rather desperate KFC and the subsequent KFC, Mutation and Sam'po didn't help any. By after mutating KFC from my hand, BAM! There he was...Ranjen the saviour! I used his special download to Dig out my Injector Assembly, replayed it to the Observatory and the preceded to collect some particles and grab an extra turn in the process.

Even then, I was still behind, believe it or not! Another attempt at a space mission (Neutrino Emissions) had me stopped by a garbage scow and I lost a ton of people to another quasi-desperate lunge at Relocate Settlers. So, I passed the extra turn having completed only 1 mission and thus at the mercy of Niall still.

Niall then made a bit of a balls up of the situation. He opted against killing Anij when he had the chance and then made some poor choices when attempting a mission, which stopped a lot of his key personnel. This would come back to haunt him a turn later as he was the one now behind (I played a Son'a Battleship and moved that damn Scow out of the way to solve Neutrino Emissions) and Anij would make it impossible to score bonus points in my turn with Arbiterand solve a mission in his next turn for the win.

That allowed me to swoop in, solve Relocate Settlers and win. Phew! We've played against one another many times now, but this has to be the best game we've ever had. Amazing fun.

Anij was again my woman of the match. I think I got her out on turn 3, waiting a turn to play her in order to ensure I could collect her from the Baku planet and protect her from Paddy's nearby forces. She would go on to prevent a Loss of Orbital Stability (apparently this is anti-Nuttall's Daisy Chain from wasting an entire turn for me and, more critically, it stopped Paddy getting bonus points from Arbiter. I then managed to use The Juggler so that Paddy's draw from Continuing Mission didn't bring it right back.

Paddy made some good crew decisions which allowed him to solve a planet mission, but he was already behind and I had 'scouted' some dilemmas at two further missions. During one such attempt, I finally got to use Ken-tech in order to avoid my ship getting a Cytherians slapped on it. Sure, I could have used The Gift to score 15 points, but the far end of the spaceline was a LONG way away and I had attempted with a very large crew. Instead, I reattempted on the following turn with 4 less important personnel, drew out Cytherians, and then sent in another small crew to get battered by The Cloud. That left a single dilemma at the space mission and although Paddy scored some points in his final turn, I finished the job to win with some room to spare.

Das Kaiser is sehr gut, ja? The European champion was my last opponent of the day but, like last year, I entered the last round knowing that no-one could overtake me on points now. Yahoo!

The round brought a few firsts for me with this Bajoran deck. My opening hand was the first at nationals to lack a Resistance personnel. After a KFC, still nothing. However, a Mutation finally gave me what I needed to ensure the draw engine would get going from the 1st turn, as always. The extra cards and Mutation allowed me to set up two huge drops on turn 1 and 2. Coupled with the Kaiser's terrible turn 2 Handshake (I think he drew into very few free plays and a bunch of ships) I had the upper hand.

Johannes had done his howework and seeded 3 x Kobayashi Maru Scenarios (still one of my fave cards) at my most frequently attempted missions, so another first came in the form of going for completely different missions to normal. For the first time in 4 tournaments, I actually went for Clash at Chintoka! And I solved it too!

Despite a KMS hovering above Insurrection, I also went for that as I had so many personnel. A few expendable troops had made their way to the second dilemma, but were stopped by Medical Crisis. With Dr McCoy in hand, I had that one covered next turn (unless I lost out to a 1-in-13 random draw to KMS).

Leeta's dabo points and subsequent jiggles had taken my points total over the 50-mark, so the Dead End at Insurrection was null and void and all the bonuses of Collect Metaphasic Particles took any remaining hope away from Das Kaiser.

Still, it was a good game, Johannes did well with the plays he could make and on another Handshake it would have been a closer contest. We had time to discuss some finer strategy points, timing of cards and downloads and the Kaiser's impressive start to life as a 1e player.

A great weekend overall - thanks to everyone for coming, especially the nomadic Scots and Germans. Thanks to the venue once again too; Dave @ FanBoy3 is as accommodating, understanding and helpful as a host could be. Thank you, sir.