I explain the build and how it works in the actual deck listing (for once), so we'll skip all that. My announced goal these past six months has been to run — and get good at — obnoxious interference decks of various kinds. This was my second try at a battle build, and it went much better than the Klingon/Son'a thing I tried in September (or whenever). I really like Starfleet, as an affiliation: they are cool, they are highly flavorful, they're crazy skilled, they play differently from everyone else, and frankly I liked Enterprise a great deal and enjoy spending time with these guys. However, since this was the most complicated deck I'd ever played (its only rival is the four-time-location Klingons + Enterprise-E deck I ran at last Regionals), and because it takes four turns just to get rolling (far more than I like!) I went into the event much more nervous than usual.

Barry was running a Terran Rebellion shindig with Emblem of the Empire, with no help from the I.S.S. Enterprise gang. And, folks, I don't mean to blow your minds or anything, but Terran Empire is good now. Between We Need You Here, Crossover: An Invitation (downloadable with Smiley, it turns out!), and The First Stable Wormhole, they can get out a diversity of dudes, when they need the dudes, and they can move about unmolested. I worry about the upcoming Mirror Block now, because I don't want to see Terran Empire suddenly becoming *over*powered! (I can't believe I just wrote those words.)

Anyway, Barry played quality dudes and drew at a good clip for quite a few turns -- cautious, I guess. He lucked into an early Morn for extra draws (well, not that lucky; he had two in the deck and drew quite well), and grabbed a crucial Ablative Armor with it. If I recall correctly, he only attempted the one mission -- his HQ mission, which had Ferengi Ingenuity + Dejaren. Ferengi Ingenuity turned into an opponent's choice because of several high-cunning C.S. personnel. I took out Bareil, because he couldn't attempt without the Bajoran. Then I came over to shoot his ship.

I had had a lot of time to build up personnel, but could only damage the Defiant, not destroy it. I had hoped that this would be enough; I had hoped that one of the damage cards would be Target Warp Field Coils. He was 5 RANGE from Terok Nor, so one TWFC plus one other -1 RANGE Tactic and he'd be stranded. But it was not to be; Defiant limped home with all aboard and docked.

At this point, I meditated on different ways to get to him. Defiant with Ablative with Mirror Terok Nor extended shields? No, not in a million years. So the next idea was to blow up Mirror Terok Nor. This was... kinda stupid, honestly. It took time. I needed to fetch I.S.S. Avenger, load it up, fly it out, and then I forgot to move my personnel from Avenger to Enterprise. If I had, I would have hit the station, despite the Evasive Maneuvers Barry had. But it wouldn't have mattered, would it? He still had Ablative Armor, so he'd have just moved it to the station proper. As it stood, Barry took full advantage of the situation. I couldn't bolster Avenger's stats during his turn, so he undocked, fired on, and destroyed it with the Defiant and the station's weapons. I returned fire, could not (quite) destroy, as he had repaired one of the Tactic damage cards.. and then next turn he exercised that Call For Reinforcements that had been on the table since the dawn of time and was just fine and dandy.

Fortunately for me, I'd realized how silly this trip was and left by then, figuring I'd blow up anything that came to the Alpha Quadrant. Plus, time was running very, very low. I swooped over to my 35-point mission and solved without TOO much trouble, with a mission specialist. If I recall correctly, it was also a Ferengi Ingenuity + Dejaren. I had to cheat through it with a Vulcan Mindmeld (again, IIRC), which was fine. The big guns were presumably under the 50-pointer, but I didn't need the 50-pointer, in theory: I had 20 Arguers points, a Phoenix in my hand, and Whales at the ready, which I think adds up to 105. Barry, now unmolested and fully repaired, finished his HQ mission, then beamed everyone to a waiting Rebel Interceptor in the Alpha Quadrant, which immediately attempted again. He couldn't pass Shades of Gray Anguish + Menthar Booby Trap + The Cloud, because nobody can pass that. Damaged and stopped. I beamed down several small teams to Excavation II -- keeping Enterprise itself out of orbit in case of God -- and, hey, they hit God, behind a Clown: Bitter Medicine so that was lucky. The last card of the combo, however, was a Love Scow, so that was a problem. My Avenger had a Tractor Beam. Sure, I had a Grappler in my hand, but time was nearly up, and I was sure I would only get one more card play... which I needed to use on the Phoenix. Oh, well. Had to do what I could. Time was called on Barry's turn, it went back to me, I played the Grappler, moved the Scow, solved the mission, then threw myself into a last-ditch attempt at the 50-pointer, I think. Didn't work: Personal Duty + Friendly Fire. If he selected Maxwell Forrest to continue, I'd be fine... but he didn't, so I was stopped and that was that. MW, 70-35, if I recall the final score correctly. I had a great deal of fun here, and Barry was a good sport about an incredibly aggressive deck.

But my Enterprise chased him down and blew up the Defiant early. Lucky for him, his crew was on a planet at the time, stopped by my Chula: The Game combo. I also happened to draw into Quinn, and nullified his Treaty: Federation/Romulan the moment it hit the table. This didn't paralyze him, but made it very difficult for his forces to operate.

I then tried blowing up DS9, and did damage it. He damaged the Avenger in response. My next attack had a rather unlucky Tactics draw (actually a redraw, since I'd let Kevin take back an initiated counter-attack on his turn -- frustratingly, I would have succeeded had I prevented the take-back), and I ended up falling just short of the necessary firepower to finish off the station. So I retreated in good order and went solving, on the theory that I could destroy him as soon as he put a decloaked ship in space. (This was true: I had Wormholes in my hand and Excavation II nearby, so I could get to him anywhere, anytime.) Kevin grabbed a Romulan Shuttle and fled the vicinity, but was forced to remain cloaked while I tried to solve stuff.

...which I did with only some success. I wish his decklist were up, so I could remember the combos, but I only remember the last mission that I solved, Excavation II (wasn't for the win, because he had given me zero Arguers points). I threw a few people at it at first, but time was running down and there was a Land Eel there, so I figured I'd better just take it on the chin, with the thinking that there is nothing down there he could use that could actually stop me solving the mission. I attempted with 23 personnel. As I mostly-suspected, the dilemma was Denevan, so I took heavy casualties, but we still solved right after. Throwing myself at another space mission, I failed, and time was called. Kevin got another turn, tried to attempt a space mission using his Romulan Shuttle, and fell short to Menthar / Cloud. MW 70-30. I think.

Oh! I remembered the other combo! Or at least part of it. It was at my 50-pointer. Spaceborne Entity / Precision Piloting / The Three Vipers. There was one more underneath, but I've forgotten it. I had some great Nav personnel available, so I could choose one to continue and would be able to bypass The Three Vipers OR Subspace Shock Wave, but not both. Kevin likes Vipers more, but I thought Shock Wave would be worse if I hit it, so I teched against Shock Wave and it was Vipers and Enterprise was damaged.

Kevin hoped this would reduce me to RANGE 5 and take away all my attribute modifiers (so Spaceborne Entity could pick me off), but, under the damage and attribute modifiers rules, none of that happens; it just kills a Cloaking Device that Enterprise doesn't have and reduces the printed RANGE to 5 (the effective range therefore dropped from, like, 25 to 24). I had no way to repair the ship, so had to live with this the rest of the game.

So I was moving slooooooow as molasses. Kris was not. His Hirogen got online in a couple of turns and started diving into tag-team attempting as soon as his Ancestral Vision was running. He came prepared for my Matriarchal Society combo (I really should dump the Scow and just use Love Interest as a lead-in), clearing it in two turns, and my Do You Smell Something Burning / New Advancements / Dead End combo just plain whiffed, as he now had both 50 points (40 from his first mission + 10 from requesting the item) and, I believe, a cook. He wasn't moving swiftly, and had actually made a significant error of his own (he accidentally took Dr. Nydom away from Ancestral Vision), but why did he need to? He was up 90 to nil.

Did I say that whiffing I'm A Doctor Not A Bricklayer was my biggest mistake of the game? Not actually true. My biggest mistake was that I forgot AGAIN to get Q the Ref on the table. So I couldn't In The Zone Kris -- not that I had In The Zone, but you don't really need In The Zone because just the *possibility* that you have it makes it too risky to cross paths with it -- and I couldn't remind him that You Are A Monument and force him to go to 140 points. So Kris quite sensibly went on and tried to attempt his 45 point mission. The orange one. You know the one I'm talking about. Quantum something.

And Gravitic Mine + Null Space was enough to stop him. (New Advancements whiffed AGAIN. It desperately needs more setup to hit.) But he had cleared the mission, and had the requirements aboard his ship. He would win next turn.

By this time, I'd finally crawled out of my hole in the past and dove into Fissure Research, because everybody puts the weaker combo at Fissure Research the moment they see Investigate Anti-Time Anomaly. (I think my mentioning that IATA is "unsolvable" during the Mission Phase -- which is generally true for most decks, as its requirements are brutal -- actually made Kris MORE worried that I was going to attempt it early.) I'd survived Arsenal: Separated / Ankari Spirits on a previous turn, and there was only one dilemma left. I was torn about what to do, but settled on a plan, and (finally!) executed my plan correctly.

We attempted. I brushed aside Emergency Conversion and solved the mission. My specialist was dead of the Spirits, so 35 points. Then I legged it to the DQ, using Excavation II and Aftermath II. (Lucky for me, I had drawn into a Wormhole interrupt two turns before, so had a way to get home.) I fired on the Equinox. Already damaged, it was easily destroyed. The Equinox had headed far down the spaceline, and the cleared-out mission he had been trying to solve was just out of range of his two Venatic Hunters. This meant he could not reach the mission during his turn. (That mattered most of all, because he would surely solve if he got there, ending the game; given Enterprise's SHIELDS, now well over 20, I was not concerned about his ships actually destroying me, even if he got a third Hunter to the table.) He spent his turn regrouping, having lost many key personnel and two play engines on the Equinox. Then, on my turn, since it was Fed / Non-Aligned, I stole the mission. No dilemmas, no stops.

Suddenly 90 to nil became 90 to 80. I ran for the Alpha Quadrant and tried to pound through missions for the win. Solving Excavation II would give me the win outright; alternatively, I could solve IATA to get 130, then play Phoenix (or fetch Whales) to get 140. Kris was also now moving at full speed. And my real enemy became the clock.

I couldn't clear out Excavation -- I don't recall what was underneath Volcanic Eruption, but whatever it was scared me away (Friendly Fire, maybe?) -- so instead I had to solve IATA. I cleared it, but couldn't solve it, because the last dilemma was a Love Scow. The Avenger was not on the table (I don't think it had been destroyed, but the guy who could download it, Dan Leonard, I think was stopped on Excavation II). I had a Grappler in my hand and could play it next turn, then immediately solve, zoom over to Earth, and Temporal Vortex to 1986 to get my winning whales. But that depended on Kris finishing his turn in less than (I believe) four minutes.

Kris was about to attempt Liberation, but I put Access Denied on it before he started the attempt. This was non-optimal, but I needed Q the Ref back on the table immediately, because I still didn't have You Are A Monument out (and would need it if he got to the point of solving the mission), and I hadn't figured out a good way to generate a card draw to convert to a Q the Ref during a mission attempt. So I had to go fetch A.D. before the mission attempt, and M.A.C.O. + Arguers or something meant I got Q the Ref back. Unfortunately, A.D. scared Kris off the mission, resetting him to zero on the attempt setup, which cost some time off the clock. He also realized he needed to solve a space mission, so trucked off to do that instead. Both my remaining space combos held off his two teams: Menthar / The Cloud and Chula: The Game. But, just as he resolved The Cloud -- the last action of his turn, other than his inevitable card draw -- time was called. I had had first turn, so that was it. MW 90-80. A very topsy-turvy game that was a lot of fun. I didn't win, but I did for the first time manage to blow up one of LORE's ships, and it was very close, so I am overall happy with the outcome. (And, of course, Kris is always a pleasantly challenging opponent.)