Ever since We Need You Here came out, I've wanted to use it to get a Hero of the Empire deck rolling early. And, since even before then, I've wanted to get I Miss This Office working correctly. These two goals dovetailed neatly: Here of the Empire is incompatible with Alliance for Global Unity (because you are required to play Captain Kirk), and playing Here By Invitation made very little sense with Hero. So (after considering various Mirror Quadrant builds for a few days), DS9 Cardassians won by default. Unfortunately, DS9 Cardassians struggle mightily, as everyone knows full well by now. Their draw engines are limited and unreliable; their play engine is starkly limited (unless you're willing to burn those draws you don't have downloading sites with I Miss This Office). So I supplemented them with Bajorans, using Bajoran Resistance Cell for draws. Not really sure what all the fuss is about BRC, now that I've used it: it's a fine draw engine, and a decent play engine, but the Resistance personnel are, on the whole, terrible cards -- few skills, one of which is the useless Resistance, and a very limited pool. Chamber of Ministers came to the rescue, though, and -- after much agonizing -- I was able to cobble together a skill matrix I could respect. The rate at which this deck disgorged personnel was peerless, even compared to my Enterprise-E / Time Locations deck, so I was really pleased with that... even though, on balance, most of the personnel were pretty sucky.

On the dilemma front, I was playing a straight-up point-loss strategy, because it dovetails well with Hero of the Empire. (If I faced Borg, the idea was that I would just win really really fast.) Any two-mission A.Q. deck would be forced to three missions; a three-mission deck might realistically be forced to solve five. All my ships were zero-staffing and landable, which afforded me tremendous protection from battle decks of all kinds (nobody uses Orbital Bombardment (FUN FACT: Kevin Jaeger was.)), and Morn could fetch me Transport Inhibitors if I faced Kevin Jaeger's fearsome capture deck. Of course, with all these crappy ships, we didn't have much range to go on, but I was counting on getting Orb of Time by Turn 4 (maybe two of them!) and using it to ping-pong around the spaceline. Finally, since I was already using Bajorans, I decided to speed things up even more with City of B'hala, using Riker Wil (who discards Reshape The Quadrant) late in the game to add the Bajoran icon to missions.

Although the deck was not very well tested (my wife went into labor just before my official playtesting session!), I felt good enough about it to bring it and see what happened. Above all, though, what I looked forward to at Continentals was playing against decks from other metas, decks I'd never seen before, decks played by some of the best players in the world.

So, of course, I ended up playing against the three people I've played more than anyone else on Earth -- Ben, Matt, and Kevin -- playing three of their most typical decks. I won't deny it: I'm still pretty bitter about my bad luck on that front.

To be perfectly honest, at the time, I was pleased to draw Ben as my first game. All the exciting players were on the sidelines with earned byes, and I'm undefeated against Ben. I figured on a quick win before going on to play somebody new, like a Van Breeman. In a typical game, his Romulan solvers move very quickly, but Ben usually hesitates to take risks, and his dilemma combos suffer from serious optimization problems, which has always given me the edge.

Not so this time! Quite simply, Ben acted decisively, attempting Pegasus Search with relatively few personnel on the table. Even losing 10 points to an Edo Probe, he could still walk off with 55 points thanks to mission specialists. While I was able to punch through Bajor by Turn 3 (the combo could have been good in a different order, but couldn't stand up to a huge team), Ben was just behind me, with Friendly Fire timing out on Turn 5 and scoring him the Mad Points at the aforementioned Pegasus Search.

I admit I made a tactical error, predicting the wrong location for his outpost, which meant he faced weaker combos than he might otherwise have done. The big one here was Dead End: I seeded it naked at Iconia Investigation, on the theory that my point-denial strategy would make it very difficult for him to climb past 50 points (especially once the Tribble Bomb went off). But his huge profits at Pegasus Search meant he walked through it and another 40 points basically for free (IIRC Hazardous Duty denied him mission specialist points and the win). But mostly Ben's win was thanks to Ben, who simply, and with great determination, went and solved stuff. Sitting on 95 points, Ben simply proceeded to the third mission and -- despite heavy point loss from The Higher The Fewer and Edo Probe #2 -- pulled out the win because he only needed 5 points! Tribble Bomb was still a turn from going off when he finished; had it gone off, it might have bought me a critical turn -- but I went first, so that's a pretty poor excuse. It's amazing how much difference a single turn makes in these solver vs. solver games.

On my side of the spaceline, I was busy solving at Characterize Neutrino Emissions when Ben won. City of B'hala was kind of meaningless, because the combo was in semi-random order anyway, but I simply couldn't find the Diplomacy to beat Gomtuu Shock Wave. After the game, I recognize that I might have been able to get it with We Need You Here, but I don't think so -- I could have (should have) downloaded Quark for Natima Lang and (then) Dukat, which would have been enough, but that takes two turns. In a game of this speed, that simply wasn't an option.

So, long story short, I played fine, my deck performed fine, my errors were relatively small, but Ben simply outplayed me. He's really got this TNG Romulan speed solver thing down to a science -- I might try my hand at it myself in the near future.

EDIT: Something I only remembered today, two months after the event: I had The Wake of the Borg in my ref pile. Since Ben's outpost was at Pegasus Search, not in the Neutral Zone, this may not have been decisive, but it could surely have made a difference, had I remembered it. One of my worst weaknesses in this game is not just remembering to keep Q the Ref on the table (see my loss to Hobie at Regionals), but remembering the lesser-used cards in my pile and deploying them.

Deeply annoyed that I was now playing my third local player in a row, I threw myself at missions as quickly as possible and scored my hundred in exactly the same way I'd done it against Matt. Unlike my test game against Kevin, I seeded my freebie Cardassian outpost between the Wormhole (where Kevin had erected DS9) and Bajor, saving me some critical RANGE on ferrying runs.

Matthew McClain hails from the wild fens and tumbleweeds (???) of Indiana. We had actually met earlier in the day. I was pointing out how many out-of-towners were present and pointed in his direction. “For example, I have no idea who that guy is. Who are you, guy?” But Matthew was very involved in his food and did not hear me. “Hello, friendly outsider, who are you?” At this point someone nearby said it was Matthew McClain. But Matthew still did not notice. “Hi, Matthew! Nice to meet you!” Still nothing. So I looked him dead in the eye and shouted from across the room, “FUCK YOU, MATTHEW!”

At this, he finally looked up, startled that he was being cussed out by a complete stranger, and the look in his eyes was so funny I had little choice but to forgive him his hearing lapse. Besides, he’s a friendly guy who plays a good game of Trek, so I couldn’t have held a grudge long if I’d tried.

So I was positively chuffed when my last round assignment was to Matthew. Finally, someone new to play against! A wee taste of a meta from outside Andoria! And Matthew did not disappoint.

The Twin Cities/North Dakota meta is focused aggressively – to the point of exclusion – on solver decks. This is partly because of the players, partly because the environment has been so solver for so long that it’s an ingrained habit, and partly – I’d even say largely – because there are fairly heavy social costs involved in playing any flavor of interference deck. Andorians struggle, at times, to be good sports against battle decks, and often treat them as inherently unsporting. (A telling moment from a tournament I played this weekend: after a game where I blew up a lot of my opponent’s ships, someone asked “Did he do anything to deserve it?” Yes, of course he did: he was trying to solve missions and win the game. I did not want that to happen. So I blew him up.) The result is that many Twin Citiers have faced some of the most powerful decktypes only once or twice, and badly underestimate the amount of tech they need to bring to neutralize them. Is it any surprise, then, that our two most aggressive players (by far!) finished first and third respectively, while our four most solve-oriented players (yours truly included!) all finished in the bottom half? If we want to compete on a world-class level, I believe we have to end the stigma around highly aggressive decks, and we have to get much better at fighting them. If you blow up my outpost on Turn 2, we have to start blaming me for not defending myself well enough, not you for trying to win. I promise, here and now, that I will be packing heat at your local tournament, until I either get good at blowing things up or ya’ll get good at stopping me. (An report on my first effort is forthcoming.)

I’m sorry; that started out as a little explanation of why my game with McClain was more fun than the average bear, and somehow it turned into a manifesto. I had a point, and it was this:

Matthew was playing a decktype I’ve literally never seen before. No doubt many others have, and so this doe-eyed report will not be very interesting, but we have a one-note meta here. Matthew was running a straight-up lockout shindig. Two Scows, two Edo Probes, two Higher Fewers, two Quantum Fissures, and a few tanks to keep me making much progress against them.

Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I just saw him seed a spaceline that deliberately placed his facilities near mine. I saw Varria III and assumed I’d be up against Followers of the One beaming through my shields, and I saw a Husnock Outpost with seeded Husnock. I saw a lot of hidden agendas, a Tactics deck, and way too few dilemmas. I drew some very swift conclusions: (1) he would Dead End Bajor (because everyone Dead Ends Bajor), and (2) he would be in striking range of Deep Space Nine and Characterize Neutrino Emissions early in the game, probably with an armada ready to take on Deep Space 9. I needed one of those missions to get my Orb of Time, the sine qua non of the entire deck (interceptors can’t run up and down the spaceline, and I only had one ship with 6+ RANGE in the deck... which wasn’t downloadable). So I needed to attempt and solve Characterize Neutrino Emissions by Turn 2 or – at the outside – Turn 3.

Fortunately, acting quickly was what this deck was all about. I had a decent draw and there was only one dilemma under the mission, so on Turn 1 I probed from Science Lab. Quantum Incursions, a dilemma I’ve never seen outside a binder before. Huhwhut? If I had a brain, this would have demonstrated McClain’s strategy to me – there is no dilemma in the game that is more explicit about depending on a lockout. But I don’t have a brain, and figured he was just not very good at dilemma selection (the mission requirements INCLUDE the dilemma’s requirements, and I wasn’t paying much attention to the second half). On his first turn, he got his Husnock hauling toward me. But it didn’t matter. I had mission skills, I had dilemma skills, and I used a card play to download a ship. We wouldn’t even need to stop at Bajor; we could undock from the station, solve, then fly to Bajor and land safely before his Husnock could even think about blowing up the shuttle. He didn’t have the WEAPONS to blow up Terok Nor this turn, and I only needed it for one more turn anyway (for Barry Waddle) and then I’d be time-travelin’ to get my Tribble Bomb ticking.

So I loaded up my gang of scientists, undocked, attempted, cleared the dilemma, solved, and acquired the artifact. 35 points! A clean escape! We’re going to point-deny this battle-mongering son-of-a-gun into next Tuesday! Huzzah!

Then Matthew activated a seeded Mission Debriefing.

In retrospect, I really should have seen that coming. There’s a lot I should have seen coming. But this wasn’t a decktype I was familiar with. Even if I had seen it coming, I probably still needed to attempt the mission this turn, because once that Husnock ship arrived I’d be out of luck.

But ouch.

My crew was stopped, and I had no means to unstop them. I ended turn. Matthew flew his ship over to Terok Nor and blew up my crappy little shuttle, with the Orb of Time onboard. Then he proceeded to try to get his (finicky) report engine running (it involved a lot of shuttlepods), because I was kinda sorta done.

Sure enough, Bajor was Dead Ended. Happily, I had Engage Shuttle Operations out, so I could prevent any more ships being blown up. I had already solved a space mission and had a healthy lead, so all I needed now was another planet mission. That would bring me over 50, and I could then swing back to Bajor and clear it (probably easily) for the win. If it didn’t close things up, I’d then have a time travel device, Barry Waddle, and the City of B’Hala to make it real easy to do so.

Problem was crawling up and down a deeply interlaced spaceline with just a Bajoran Interceptor, especially one that needed to take off AND land every turn to avoid getting blown up. Andoria tends to have very segregated spacelines, with each player owning one side of it like a 2E board, because interlacing spacelines gives no benefit to the solver decks our meta favors. This one felt much longer than what I usually faced. Bajoran Resistance Cell meant I continued to get personnel at those planets, but other reinforcements were out of the question. I got crawling.

Meanwhile, my own point-loss oriented dilemmas proved annoying for Matthew, and he was still having trouble getting his reporting up to pace. This bought me a little time.

I trekked down the spaceline with the people I had and attempted some planet mission. I faced an Edo Probe, but the trip had taken so long that I decided to press on – I could spare the 10 points, as long as I stayed in a position where solving this mission would keep me over 50. The next was a Higher The Fewer, which made that position very precarious. Last was a Garbage Scow. Crap. This ship had no special equipment. Only one ship in the deck did – the aforementioned undownloadable one. Mission failed, points lost; I think I’m at 15 or something at this point – just barely enough. So I started drawing desperately for my ship. My team pressed on, but faced the same combo at the next planet. (There, we could no longer afford the Edo point loss and abandoned mission.)

And we spent the rest of the game digging for that ship. It turned out to be the second card from the bottom. Wasn’t drawn until two turns after time was called, giving Matthew the Mod Win. Matthew continued following me around the spaceline with his Husnock, just in case I slipped up and got caught in space at the end of a turn, but mainly he tried to solve things with a Federation crew he magicked into existence down the line with shuttlepods. Although my point loss hit him fairly hard, as I recall, it simply didn’t have the necessary bite without Hero of the Empire feeding it.

So this game was actually decided on Turn 2, but the fallout of that fateful turn led me into some really interesting – and increasingly desperate – scenarios I’ve never faced before, especially as Matthew wasn’t able to immediately capitalize on his success to score the win. Honestly, in retrospect, I have no idea how I held him to a Mod Win, but it was a thrilling end to a quiet Continentals tournament. I certainly hope to play Matthew again someday – he was a friendly opponent throughout, and I believe we both had a great deal of fun even as our decks became hopelessly tangled up and paralyzed in each other’s interference.

Great tournament overall, lots of fun to put some faces to names, and I found Ken Tuft's facial hair awesome. Thanks to CrimsonRavage and flrazor for a wonderfully-run event, with a real cool timer display and some terrific prizes. And congratulations to the Andorians who won the day with some very impressive decks!

Until next time!