Mega-thanks to Jeremy Huth. While making some frantic last-minute changes the night before the event because of a rules question about Visit Cochrane Memorial, I accidentally disincluded a critical Alternate Universe Door, which I noticed was gone only after arriving at the event. Jeremy lent me not just any AU Door, but a fancy foil AU Door, which I imagine is worth something like 13,000 regular AU doors (or about 10 bucks USD). This saved my bacon, or at least kept me from a frantic run to the FedEx near Fantasy Flight Games.

As usual, it was the player, not the deck, that led to my single defeat and my third third-place regionals finish in as many years. Unusually, though, the error I made was singularly visible and dramatic, and really underlines how no amount of prep can save you if you lose your head in a tense match. We'll come to another installment of self-flagellation in Round 2, though -- first, there was a very exciting game against Hobie... the least expected game of all!

I actually enjoy playing Hobie, but made it known prior to the event that I would "murder" him if I played him first-round, simply because we've played quite a bit lately. So, of course, I was immediately paired with him. We often design similar decks -- our minds work in similar ways, I guess -- so we were already joking about playing "exactly the same deck" when it turned out (a few cards into the mission phase) that we were literally doing that.

I started out trying to get my engines going. Visit Cochrane Memorial was immediately shut down -- it only works while "unopposed." Of course. Then I tried to Parallax Arguers on his turn for an early M.A.C.O. download. This was countered... by Hobie's own copy of Arguers. I'd never seen that before, but smugly smiled and played my second copy, nullifying his. He responded by playing his second Arguers. Twenty points to Gryffindor!

Then he played Jonathan Archer (Enterprise Collection), because Hobie is evil and does not care about the headache of having to Add 1 To All X. We spent the next five or six minutes reading the Glossary entry for Parallax Arguers to try to figure out what the current score was, given the interaction with Cap'n Archer. It turned out that the score was 26-2 (each nullified Arguer still goes to the point area, but X=0, so it's normally moot, but X=1 because of Archer).

So. So much for my draw engines! Good news was that I was able to Kevin Uxbridge an early Temporal Shifting, so we both sat there miserably trying to build up our forces. I still played Condition Red, because the boost to Enterprise's RANGE is extraordinarily helpful. Eventually, we got moving, and then the game turned into a standard solver-vs.-solver. Hobie was faster out of the gate than I was, but suffered nastily from my dilemma combos, with Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome killing all his personnel on his first mission attempt. This bought me the time I needed to chew through a couple combos of my own and score some points while Hobie rebuilt. He succeeded, bringing Columbia into play, and solved the mission that had killed him... but lost everyone to *another* Barclay's on his next attempt. Time was running very low, so I anxiously cheered for him to finish his turns fast so I would have enough time to knot up the full win, and he generously complied. I managed to end my second-last turn with literally one second left on the clock, and then I had all the time in the world to organize my last attempt and win the game.

The score zigzagged a bit because Archer kept dying and coming back to life (which, I believe, changes the value of X even if already in the point area), and we were only putting more and more X in our bonus point areas, but we're pretty sure we got it right by game's end. :P

In this game -- I think Kris would agree -- both players played like lobotomized cows.

The spaceline was a bit weird for Kris, who had Romulus at one end of the spaceline and his outposts (both hovering ominously next to Earth) at the other. My start went smoothly, as Kris never allows points from Parallax Arguers, so I got my events out and had a competent force online by Turn 4. Nothing marvelous, but it hit my benchmarks. Meanwhile, Kris had parked a Romulan warbird (Haakona? I don't recall) two missions away. It had been drawing cards with Let's See What's Out There on turns 2 and 3, but on turn 4 he decided to head back to his outpost, pick up some dudes, and head down the spaceline to start attempting stuff. He forgot to cloak the warbird. This was a really grave mistake; he attributes it to the fact that he was focused on stealing Earth from me. (A bit more on this at the end.)

Anyway, there's a Romulan warbird parked 8 RANGE from Earth and I have the NX-01, Captain's Log, Condition Red, 15-some dudes, and Jonathan Archer aboard. I did what seemed obvious: I flew over there and blew up his warbird, along with nearly everyone he'd played so far (there was a scout ship down the spaceline carrying some dignitary from Romulus). As soon as he saw me coming, Kris knew he had lost his ship and thus the game, but damned if he was going to give up.

Feeling relaxed for the first time ever in a game against Kris (my first mistake!), next turn I flew over to my Neutral Outpost at Evade Borg Vessel and attempted. A smart The Arsenal / Gomtuu Shock Wave combo caught me off-sides -- partly because I had dropped off Archer at Earth to probe for Visit Cochrane Memorial (second mistake). At this point, just in case of mischief, I should have suspended play and used Daniel Leonard's download (still available) to grab the I.S.S. Enterprise and leave it at the Neutral Outpost (third mistake). But I can't overstate how unworried I was at this point. I had modest damage, but the Enterprise's attributes were all still well over 20, and Construct Starship was on the table, ready to give me a Spacedock next turn.

But Kris, at this point, saw a desperate opportunity. He played a new warbird, and managed to get its matching commander aboard. Captain's Log came out (and was protected) with a Ready Room Door. The scout ship from down the spaceline whooshed in and decloaked -- at which point I realized it had 7 WEAPONS, not 4 as I believed before. Kris was going to take a shot at the Enterprise... and, with 60% HULL damage already on her, I wasn't entirely certain I'd survive.

When all was said and done, I didn't. Kris's two-ship armada was enhanced enough by attribute bonuses and Maximum Firepower to score a hit. Two damage markers later, I was at 120% damage.

At this point, I made the defining mistake of the tournament: panicked by the surprise battle, I forgot that I had The Needs Of The Many sitting in my hand. I failed to play it, though it would have saved my ship. I discarded everyone. Kris drew to end his turn, which definitively ended the "just" response window. Then I looked in my hand and realized what I had just thrown away. I am not so pathetic to ask for a takeback at a regional, especially against Kris, but I confess I did throw my hand to the table and shout "AAAGH!" in an aggrieved way. Had ENTERPRISE survived that battle, there can be little doubt the game -- and the rest of the tournament -- would have played out differently. But a deck that gives you the cards you need when you need them is useless if you're too scatterbrained to notice them. Good job, deck.

Now *I* had lost the game, and Kris had a two-turn head start rebuilding. I played Regenerate with Parallax Arguers, but I'm afraid the rest of the game was, as Kris likes to say, academic. I sat there digging for a ship as fast as I could while he went attempting. He found the I Hate You combo that is super-weak against TNG Romulans (and which I had long ago decided to prevent him from ever seeing with my big scary guns) and pushed through two other combos in short order using standard A-team/B-team. FW 100-0.

I do want to call attention to what I thought was the smartest thing about this game: Kris was determined to steal Espionage Mission from me, and dedicated some effort to doing this. He was very smart about it: the combo was rebuilt on the fly when he saw Earth, and he seeded (if I recall correctly) Edo Probe / Love Scow / Chula: The Game. The first is scary for anyone who doesn't know the underlying combo, and the other two are dilemmas that Starfleet is *especially* weak to (while Romulans have no trouble). Starfleet alone, in fact, has no way to pass Chula: The Game -- no Greed in the entire affiliation. In fact, *nobody* with a [22] icon has Greed -- not even the frickin' Ferengi! Consider this my periodic request for the CC to please fill some skill gaps in Starfleet, especially if they want us (as they seem to) to be able to play Starfleet either on its own or with the [22] Klingons, without help from the Orions. (The [22] Klingons have plenty of other problems, though, that make them non-viable even when they can fill skill gaps -- please help them, too.) Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh, right: Kris's Earth dilemma combo, which again was built on-the-fly (a skill I much admire), was absolutely perfect for stealing: it was very likely to bog me down for four or five turns, but he could walk through all three with no problem. Well-built, Kris. But getting the warbird with Selok aboard early on meant he never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Incidentally, a word about the deck name: one other reason I wanted to run this deck is because it will probably stop working sooner rather than later. Starfleet has HUUUUUUGE skill gaps that keep it seriously hobbled, but the two most serious gaps are in Astrophysics (you need 5 in the modern meta; Starfleet literally doesn't have it) and in Tractor Beams (the Grappler, for lack of a better phrase, sucks hardcore). Mirror personnel -- specifically, Mirror MACOs -- fill the Astrometrics skill gap very impressively, and several others besides, and the 2E Mirror Starfleet ships all have Tractor Beam thanks to the conversion rules (making them indispensible). But most, perhaps all, of these personnel and ships are due to be converted in the new Block, and I don't believe the decktype will survive once it has to contend with the ugly logistics of Crossover -- and that's assuming the CC keeps the cards at their current power level, when recent experience suggests the CC is going to smack them all with a fat nerfing. So: here it is, folks. Mirror Starfleet's Last Alpha Rodeo. Something will follow, no doubt, but it will be different. I strongly suspect this is the end of the line for this particular gang.