Brian Gondek (Escape Artist) Tournament Report - 2E 2015-06-28 - 12:00 PM TOC 2013 Introduction The deck list is actually one card off- I swapped in Guinan for Aaron Conor before the tournament in order to better face any of the new Dominion HQ. It ended up not being particularly impactful. This deck is basically the same deck I always used in 2006. For the 2013 TOC I gave it a slight overhaul, adding Miles O'Brien, Morgan Bateson, and Polywater Intoxication, but it's still essentially my classic deck. Round 1 Corbin Johnson ML (-50) Corbin was rocking the point loss Dominion HQ. Between the Future Enterprise and Guinan, I was ready for it, but we had a bit of a war of attrition, resulting in a 70-20 timed win. This was my first time seeing a deck based around Chula: The Game. I got through my first mission quickly, but the second mission got 2 Chula: The Game on it with only 3 dilemmas underneath. In retrospect, I should have just gone for a very large crew to mitigate the effect of the multi stop. Instead, I abandoned the mission and went for my other planet, which got hit with Insurrection. I had a chance near the end but got some bad luck against Chula: the Chandra stopping most of my crew, but even then, a victory would have been a long shot, since I would have had to clear another mission that had two Chula: The Game, and Corbin was still holding onto an Uninvited Guest. I would have liked to see how the last mission would have went, but given how things had been going, I'm confident Corbin would have stopped me. Round 2 Mike Dahlstrom FW (+30) This was my chance to get a bit of vengeance against the Dominion. Mike started by aiming for the 30 strength easy Dominion mission, and he cleared it before I finished a mission, so I didn't need to worry about the 5 points. When Mike went to space, I managed to keep him at bay with some walls like Tactical Disadvantage. I got 4 dilemmas at my space mission early, but Mike got a Kira Founder on my ship and I was uncomfortable leaving my people there, so I switched over to a planet mission. Mike was planning on using Anything or Anyone, but I got Sloan out early, and he acted as a deterrent for the event-based strategy. After some jank at my first planet mission, I had both the Enterprise D (future) and Enterprise E (Kira Founder aboard) out. I went to my second planet mission and made two groups- the first got stopped with a Timescape. The second group was actually designed for the incomplete space mission, though, so they flew back there to finish it off. It came down to the very end at time. It was my final turn to see if I could get a full win. Mike hit me with Racial Tensions, taking out a necessary skill, but in a strange use of him, I had Fractured Time Kirk die to prevent the dilemma, because the same race part is bolded as a requirement. Interesting finish. In both games against the Dominion, my dilemmas worked well, but my personnel got slowed down dramatically by my opponents' dilemmas. Sloan was MVP for stopping Mike's main strategy, though Mot was involved in enough fun shenanigans to serve as an honorable mention. Round 3 Michael Moskop FW (+60)View opponent's ReportView original Report I had played against Damaged Starfleet once before and lost, so I knew to be worried about it. Michael got to an early advantage with two At What Cost, and he had a loaded crew including Damaged Archer. The pivotal moments happened early. I didn't know that Archer only worked for dilemmas with no skill, so when Michael attempted his first mission and I drew all cards with random selection, I thought I was toast. I knew he didn't have any treachery so I thought that the random selection part of Back Room Dealings would bounce. Despite that, I played Back Room Dealings, Personal Duty, and Hard Time just to clear some random selectors out of my deck. It ended up working better than I possibly could have imagined. Back Room Dealings killed Archer, so then the other two dilemmas worked. Go figure. I got through the first mission quickly by cheating with Gav (whose 5 points fed an At What Cost, but I got a mission out of it, so I'll take it). Gav and Kirk were major helps in cheating through dilemmas. On Michael's next attempt, I played The Caretaker's Guests and He Wasn't Nice. He had enough skill redundancy that I couldn't stop the mission, but He Wasn't Nice was able to wipe out the second copy of Archer. Michael immediately flew to his next mission and attempted, where my Dreamer and the Dream + stop discarded the 3rd Archer from his hand. After that, I was in decent shape with all 3 Archers toast. Crazy how one lucky break can affect the outcome of a game. I had insane luck that bailed out my misunderstanding of Archer. I can't rely on this every time, but I'll take it when I get it. Brian was playing a TNG solver. This game all came down to luck. Brian got lucky and killed Archer on a 1 in 9 chance with Back Room Dealings which cost me the mission attempt. Then he got rid of another with Caretaker's Guests. Then made me discard the third with Dreamer. I was done after that. Closing Thoughts My dilemma pile is functional, but my draw deck is in dire need of an overhaul. It's far too slow for what it is. Ideally I'd get something like Picard, Rixx x3, Riker, and McCoy out early to get an incredibly cheap Enterprise E into play. It works well when I get Lwxana + These Are The Voyages early to find my TNG leadership personnel, but when I can't get that, my deck slows dramatically. I do like how versatile the deck can be, with event destruction from personnel and ships, and I have a few cheater gimmicks (Gav, Kirk, Bridge Officer's Test), but I should really start from the drawing board again and find a way to make this faster and more effective.