Anastasia Kalashnikova (Ashbey) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Delphic Expanse Regional 2012-04-07 - 10:00 AM Mirror, Mirror Introduction It was my second tournament so far and the very first one, where I played my own fully-legal non-virtual deck. I am the only person in my whole province who have ever heard about Star Trek CCG and my only chance to get prepared for upcoming Regional was to play on-line using LackeyCCG. I have played half a dozen test games and lost majority of them 70 to 100. So I understood that, though I had not-too-bad deck, I was definite underdog and my target was to fight for 4th place. I traveled over 700 km to Moscow but thanks to Oleg’s and Nastya’s hospitality I was well-rested and had very nice breakfast. Round 1 Nastya Ryzhikova FW (+40) It was very nervous game. Nastya is good player and she was doing pretty well, building tons of extra-cheap and extra-smart androids. I hoped that Doctor "Evil" Phlox will do all dirty work for me, decimating all these non-unique offsprings of Dr. Soong. But, regrettably, all his brutal experiments ended in my very first mission attempt, when he was moved to discard pile by Nastya’s Secret Identity. Luckily for me, Nastya had couple of events, which reduced cost of personnel for BOTH players, so I was able to build up pretty fast. We went neck-to-neck, stopping each other very hard, and my "disgusting" mirror guys did their work well. When match time was running out, we both were on our last missions and I was leading 70-60. She attempted her mission first, and I managed to stop her, but only because she forgot to use one of her interrupts. Phew, it was close! The next turn I completed my last mission, barely escaping modified win point deduction. Round 2 Nickolay Korotya FL (-30)View opponent's ReportView original Report I has very long and very unsuccessful record of games with Nickolay, who is very experienced and very good player. He is also very ambitious one and hates to lose even friendly games (and he is also known around Moscow for throwing down green guys all over Red Square). So for me it was a matter of honor to beat him in this major tournament. I and my deck performed surprisingly well and I managed to reach my final mission two turns before Nickolay did the same. But there is an old Russian proverb: "When Nickolay Korotya draws a random card, all your personnel are killed". He was damn lucky with dilemmas and all my beefed-up sexy crew went where no man has gone before. It was deadly strike, though I tried to comeback with my remaining personnel on Sarajevo. I lost to Nick again (and again 70 to 100). But it was very thrilling game and I have got a lot of fun. This round was much more intense. Alexey is relatively new ST CCG player with 1.5 years of experience, but his skills and vast experience in mind sports/intellectual games make him a very worthy opponent. We both were progressing head-to-head and each had 1 mission left in the end. However, at this pivotal moment luck of his Mirror team ran out: they had to venture Where No Man Has Gone Before. Sarajevo with her skeleton crew wasn’t able to outrun fully staffed Romulan armada, and in 2 turns I won the game. Round 3 Dyonis Rakhl FW (+25)View opponent's ReportView original Report Another thriller. There is an old Russian fairy-tale about "super-fast klingons" of Dyonis, who "were able to prevent or overcome any dilemma in your stack and always won exactly at sixth turn". So I knew that I must somehow compensate his pace advantage. So I tried to stop him very hard, sometimes giving him excess dilemmas, for example No Kill I at first planet mission and Outclassed and Breaking the Ice in the same dilemma stack (I knew that he always could overcome one "wall"). I literally buried his brave klingons under my dilemmas and killed 3-4 of them with my Doctor Evil to even the odds. He had already failed his first attempt at his final mission, when my squadron, consisted of ISS Enterprise under Capt. M. Forrest and USS Defiant under Cmdr. J. Archer, arrived at Evade Samaritan Snare Mission. I had Running Tight Ship in my core and two ships with their corresponding commanders on board. So I attempted the mission with two teams, because I knew he had no Timescapes. He drew 4 dilemmas against Forrest's crew and only 3 against Archer’s, and he managed to stop both teams with his "outdated dilemma pile". In his next turn he had 8 klingons in mission attempt and I had only 5 dillemas to draw. I was doomed. But guess what? I drew In Development and stopped 5 klingons at once. In my last attempt I completed the mission almost automatically. It was very-very close win against very impressive deck. And I suddenly got a chance to win Regional... A neck-to-neck run. I would have really completed the next turn. Good fast deck with a cmplex beefing-up of staff. Lack of control over opponent's Events in my deck made those 3-4-man mission attempts easy as a pie for Alex. One of the directions to think about when preparing for the next tournament... Round 4 Andrey Larin FL (-60)View opponent's ReportView original Report …but I had to face and beat Andrey Larin first. He is great player, who also made excellent piece of software called Nebula, which allows to create great decks in no time and with minimal efforts. We knew each others deck well and both were determine to win in this final confrontation. But that game was very short and his victory was flawless. Things were not that bad in the beginning, but when the score was 40-40 he completed two missions in one turn. At first, he attempted a space mission and I gave him Reflections to stop 2 of his personnel with key skills. But he used abilities of Tasha Yar and Worf and I had to stop wrong personnel. And then was a planet mission... and epic fail. I decided to give him Rogue Borg Ambush and Occupational Hazards to kill 2 personnel and stop the rest, because these dilemmas worked perfectly against his deck in our test games. But I was unsure about skills of personnel in his attempt, so I decided to play safe and gave him Secret Identity first to neutralize Intelligence and Treachery personnel. He's got neither of them, but downloaded Sloan into attempt. This guy never showed up in our previous 5 games, but this time his timely arrival won the Championship for Andrey. Great game, Andrey, but there is old Klingon (not Russian) proverb: "revenge is a dish best served cold". Great tournament and I hope the next one will be even better! It was a match for the first place, so i was really well concentrated on the game, determined to win. We're playing a couple of games, preparing for the tournament, so we knew each other's decks pretty well to the moment. The turning moment of the game was at the last mission attempt when I brought my Luther Sloan to the game with Ashbey's SI(first of three dilemmas in stack) and what do you know the next 2 dilemmas were: Occupational Hazards and Rogue Borg Ambush. With Sloan around i've passed them like hot knife through butter winning the game and the Regional.