For years and years, I have wanted to try making a "simplest possible seed deck": a basic play engine, and basic draw engine, a reporting location, and nothing else. This would make room for lots of dilemmas. I was already tinkering with it when North Dakota Trek came back from a hiatus to host a regional tournament on short notice. "Simple" seemed like a good fit for the event, which would feature at least one new player and several who hadn't played in quite some time. This deck is very easy for an opponent to understand, it doesn't do anything complicated, and it doesn't play a lot of solitaire. It just has a WHOLE LOT of dilemmas. This deck is also extremely vulnerable to battle, but I knew there wouldn't be too much battle at Fargo.

My original build, which I worked on for weeks (I planned to play it at a May local but had to drop out at the last minute) seeded only Attention All Hands, Continuing Mission (downloading Finest Crew in the Fleet), and Starbase 247. But this build never quite gelled. It was playable, but I needed many card plays for Kivas Fajo and Handshakes and Assign Mission Specialists, and so was basically limited to playing 2 personnel (maybe +2 mission specialists) on most turns. Despite consulting with Lucas Thompson on the Nostalgia deck from which I stole the basic structure (thanks for your help, Lucas!), the deck ran too slow. TNG Feds, without extra bodies via Cybernetics Expertise/Office of the President/Holodeck Door, just don't have enough skill density to overcome modern dilemma combos quickly. In test games (thanks, James Monsebroten!), they could not slow TOS Feds down long enough to catch up, even with all those dilemmas.

Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Having lost both test games to TOS Feds in 100-0 shutouts that lasted six turns or less -- even after cutting Starbase 247 to seed 28 dilemmas -- I decided last Thursday to throw out all the nouns in my deck and rebuild with TOS nouns. My new seeds were The Final Frontier, Five-Year Mission, and Alternate Universe Door, with all reporting going to a built-in Outpost at Investigate Anomaly II. This left room for 27 dilemmas: 5 under three missions, and 4 under the other three. Though this build was untested, I hoped it would hold its own, win me enough games to keep my rating more or less intact, and give everyone a good time.

In the meantime, I lanced through some dilemmas on a fairly favorable spaceline. A Rules of Obedience seeded at the bottom of Explore Dyson Sphere held me from Turn 2 through much of the game. I ignored that and gradually pinged my way through Access Archives, using [OS] skill cheats and emergency downloads liberally. It turned out that I solved Access Archives for 70 points, which surprised me (I thought I only had 60 there), and then threw my by-then hugely redundant OS personnel passed Rules of Obedience and solved Dyson Sphere for the win.

On my end, I was able to clear dilemmas from Explore Dyson Sphere and Aid Clone Colony fairly quickly, despite Jason seeding Reported Activity next to my outpost to mess with my (already serious) RANGE issues. Explore Dyson Sphere was left with a Ghost of Cyrus after a Faux Pas / Cytherians combo sent one of my Starships Constitution down the spaceline. Aid Clone Colony had me special download Lt. Bashir to pass Hippocratic Oath, leading into a Love Interest / Plague Ship combo dilemma (which I predicted, because Jason likes this combo). Fortunately, only two people in the away team: Captain Kirk and Yeoman Rand. Kirk ran off, Rand died. I was certain the final dilemma was Medical Crisis.

But it turned out that the Cytherians at Dyson Sphere had taken all of my in-play Physics and Computer Skill -- not to mention ALL 4 of the 5 surviving Diplomacy in my deck. The 5th? Captain Kirk, now living with his love interest on the far end of the spaceline. (The 6th Diplomacy, Mea 3, had been killed by The Power.) Physics, Computer Skill, and Diplomacy were all required mission skills. So I had these two almost-clear missions, with just a Ghost of Cyrus and Medical Crisis left, but nobody who could actually solve the missions! Big problem with the Starship Enterprise flying down the entire spaceline, 6 span at a time.

I got my Physics and Computer Skill and tried setting up to solve Explore Dyson Sphere, then hoped to make a lightning blitz of Access Archives, even though it had four dilemmas under it. That should get me the full win. By now, Jason was one dilemma (Maglock) away from a win of his own, though he, too, was dealing with a Cytherians-induced OFFICER drain.

Instead, the long-lost Cytherians team actually made it back to my end of the spaceline (thank goodness they got started on Turn 2), and I was able to card-play a third Starship Constitution on my final turn to ferry those personnel back to my outpost, on to the Enterprise, and thence to the final two missions, for which I now had full skills.

I started solving (as usual) on Turn 1, with a two-person redshirt attempt at my closest planet mission, 5 span to my left: Aid Clone Colony. Lt. Uhura (Through The Looking Glass) and some mook (Dr. Boyce, maybe?) faced Talosian Cage, which Uhura nullified. Then the mook died of Denevans. Turn 2, Kevin Riley came to visit and found an Entertaining Display that prevented him from solving. So he beamed up to the Constitution and flew 5 more span to the left to attempt Repair Mission alone. The TOS dilemma theme Matt was using was thematic, but was vulnerable to exactly this kind of redshirting. A Space Amoeba / It's Green / Routine Physical combo almost whiffed, with only the "2 Computer Skill to pass" requirement holding Riley back from clearing the mission. I spent Turn 3 moving ships back to base for reinforcements -- I really, really struggled with the interleaved spaceline, and would have had to spend *another* turn on it if I hadn't thrown up my hands and used the Enterprise to download Chekov for the RANGE boost.

Turn 4, I sent teams back to both missions to solve. Entertaining Display was cleared by then, so I solved Aid Clone Colony easily, and then I sent Ruk, Mea 3, and Captain Kirk (The Cage) with a card-played Classic Communicator (sharing ENGINEER to Kirk) to pass Routine Physical and complete Repair Mission.

Meanwhile, Matt picked up his gals from Aid Clone Colony and attempted the neighboring mission, Transfer Vaccines. Scotty died to Your Galaxy Is Impure, but Matt saved him by special-downloading Lt. Grant to replace Scotty. He lost two more to Spatial Rift... but passed it. Lost another to Rules of Obedience... but passed it. Finally, facing Misinterpreted History, Matt had zero Treachery and highest CUNNING was Scotty... who now died once again. But he still passed it! Cleared the whole combo in one turn! So this dilemma combo, designed to stop you *at least* twice and kill people with YGII along the way, basically failed in its goal -- but succeeded in depriving Matt of mission skills. He'd lost some MEDICAL, and never drew into more MEDICAL during the rest of the game. No points from Transfer Vaccine.

My Turn 5 was spent getting everyone back to my outpost. Turn 6, I traveled to Control Plague, 8 span from my outpost, to try a megateam attempt for a full win... but Matt used Nilz Baris's special download to get Incoming Message - Federation on me, even though my ship was at a different location. (There is some dispute about what his special download means, but I agree that Matt's use was correct, not to mention clever.) Unfortunately, it was 8 span TO Control Plague but 10 span back to my outpost. Time was called during Matt's Turn 6, so I never even started the trip, much less got to start attempting my last mission.

Matt managed to thwart my Punishment Box / Authorized Access Only / Cytherians / Maglock trick at Eminiar VII by having two printed Acquisition and adding a third via Communicator. But he still couldn't quite get past the Maglock, thanks to the Punishment Box, so he jigged over to the 5-dilemma combo at Amerind and did his best with a megateam, acknowledging the huge risk of Denevan but needing to solve immediately. A Founder Secret / Denevan combo killed seven people, then In The Pale Moonlight stopped him. And that was the game! Mod Win me.

After eight years and at least a dozen attempts, including more than one where I was favored, I'm as surprised as anyone to have finally won a higher-level event. :)

The deck outperformed expectations. The dilemma combos, which had been revised after test games to be increasingly deadly, drained a lot of resources from opponents, and even managed to hold down Jason Tang's Unstoppable Finest Crew (motto: "I'm not saying they can't be stopped; I'm saying they CAN be unstopped!") long enough to secure a win. At the same time, it wasn't a lockout. Every opponent cleared missions and/or scored points against me. They just couldn't score them quite fast enough!

Change notes: this deck is realllllly hurting for RANGE, SHIELDS, and repair facilities. Switching to Test Mission II for the outpost mission could help a bit with the RANGE problem, and Ready Room Door could get To Boldly Go -- but there's no tent, so it's easy to draw into the now-useless event. Tricky! That said, I can probably bear it; I only once during the day on a single turn had any trouble playing my two free personnel to Final Frontier. Another complication: needing to seed actual 23rd-century missions, which I was reluctant to do in this event because I feared heavy mission duplication. Still, it's DARN lucky I only faced non-battle Federation all day. The inflexible outpost location made me very vulnerable.

Rules errors: in more than one game, I realized this morning, I played Lt. Bashir for free to The Final Frontier, instead of as a card play. This was an example of me mixing up the actual released version of the card with an earlier version (which did allow it), and is why I stocked so few of the DS9 OS personnel in this deck to begin with.

Rules questions: if there is 0 Treachery in the Away Team, what happens on Misinterpreted History? It struck me as much too powerful if that gives you opponent's choice selection from the entire crew or away team, but Jason pointed out that zero is a number. We played it as if the Treachery part whiffs if there's no Treachery present. There was another rules question, I think in my game with Ian, which I've forgotten.