Mark was playing a specialist-oriented TNG Federation solver. The spaceline was rough: we duplicated three missions, and I ended up with my Luna seeded at the very end. Mark recognized that I needed to seed all my stuff there, so he did the logical thing: he stripped a few dilemmas off his combos on the far end of the spaceline to double up the dilemmas on the near end of the spaceline. I would need to solve two missions with four dilemmas under plus a duplicated mission with three (one of them mine, luckily).

We both got cracking right away. At Mark's Repair Mission, I managed to kill the 8-person crew of the Enterprise with Barclay's Protomorph even as the 8-person Galaxy crew was sent way down the spaceline with Cytherians. But Mark really had my number: he Buried Alive my Luna, then had fun blowing up my (very few) ships. Shuttlepod One went down to V'Ger, and (rookie mistake) I had left my only Command Star aboard. Not willing to risk Enterprise (not that I could even staff her), I dialed up Shuttlepod Two, and it went down to God. With only Enterprise left on the board and Columbia in the deck, I flew over to Visit Tranquil Colony and sent down an all-MACO team, hoping to trigger a Denevan Neural Parasites so I could download Combat-Ready: Solidarity with Sascha Money. I succeeded at triggering the Denevans, but hadn't realized that Sascha had been killed on Shuttlepod Two. Whoops. So five MACOs died.

It was down to the wire, as the Galaxy reached the end of the spaceline, scored its points, and started heading back to provide critical skills for Mark's final attempts in his two-mission win plan. I decided not to attack the Galaxy, mainly because I didn't have enough command stars to ensure victory, and he went home unmolested while I dived into the duplicated space mission (Study Rare Phenomenon). I cleared out my own Dead End, pinged against... Quantum Leap, I think, cleared it with a pair of Nelson Kempers, and found Quantum Incursions underneath. Then I threw everyone at it, knowing I could meet four of the six requirements. We rolled lucky and cleared it for the win.

Very lucky, it turned out: all Mark needed was Transporter Skill to clear Ghost of Cyrus Ramsey and win the game, and he had just drawn into Miles O'Brien. So this one was down to the wire, and I won largely by the opening coin toss.

Kris was playing his old Romulan deck, and immediately shook me up by seeding Romulan outposts on both sides of Luna -- followed quickly by some warbirds with Captain's Log and big big guns, which came over to monitor my progress. Knowing I had to act quickly to avoid facing a full-on armada, I attempted Luna immediately. While I made quick work of his Love Scow, my attempt to pass Jol Yichu! was foiled when Kris special downloaded a Romulan Ambush to take out the shuttlepod I'd launched for the occasion. Whoops. He now had the firepower on the table to damage Enterprise, and would soon be able to destroy the outpost, so I retreated into the past to build up my forces. The blessed removal of Temporal Vortex from the Ref pile meant I was safe there, and built up my forces while Kris worked on missions.

About 8 SPAN to the right from my outpost, Kris attempted Vanquish Enemy and suffered for it, losing a crew to Barclay's in the process. However, he cleared it out of dilemmas. I was going to steal it, but Kris was able to assemble a daisy chain that got him the mission skills and a warbird at Vanquish Enemy. He attempted and solved. 50-0.

I now knew I had to attempt immediately. Enterprise had more RANGE than the warbirds, but not MUCH more RANGE. I knew Kris had two warbirds 8 SPAN to the right and one warbird 3 SPAN to my left. I had a mission, Fissure Research, 3 SPAN to my left (yes, he built an outpost at my mission to harrass me better, that's Kris), then Kris's Neutral Zone intervened, then Explore Dyson Sphere 12 SPAN away. (At the far end of the spaceline, 6 SPAN from the Dyson Sphere, was Romulus, doing nothing.)

Enterprise had RANGE 11 at this point (Jol Yichu had killed people, reducing the number of command stars available to me). I knew if I attempted Fissure Research, I'd be attacked and pinned down. I knew if I flew to the edge of the Neutral Zone and waited a turn before reaching Explore Dyson Sphere, I'd be attacked by the warbird coming in from the Fissure Research outpost, pinned down, and destroyed. So I did what seemed to be the only possible choice: I flew Enterprise to the edge of the Neutral Zone. Then I put the entire crew of 20 personnel in a shuttlepod, launched it, and attempted Explore Dyson Sphere. I had used no MACO downloads and had nearly everyone on the table (a few in my newly-regenerated hand). We could take on practically any skill wall the game cared to throw at us -- The Cloud was what I really expected from this deck -- except space dilemmas with automatic effects. It was a risk, but a calculated one.

We did indeed pound through a Arsenal: Separated with practically no injury, since so many personnel were here and so many universal. But the second dilemma was Cytherians. The three-range shuttlepod literally could not pass the 4-span missions on the spaceline. So... that was that!

Rather than conceded, I played on, but Kris resolved (obviously) not to blow up the shuttlepod, since I could Regenerate it if he did, so I was left with just the five or six personnel in my hand. They were able to get out fast, and, between the bunch of them, they actually did manage to clear all the dilemmas at Fissure Research in one turn, including The Cloud. (That took a Combat-Ready: Jury-Rig and a Combat-Ready: Tactical Reserve to pull Sean Hawkins off the Cytherians ship AND a Vulcan Mindmeld, but we got there.) Unfortunately, we didn't have any physics left (not even Trip Tucker!), and it was ruled that Warp Speed Transfer cannot be used to pull personnel off a Cytherianed shuttlepod (fair enough, I think)... so that was that. We watched while Kris found the rest of his skills to clear my planet dilemmas and win the game.

All fine so far. But the sad part, the part that's going to eat at me about this game? When I sent all those dudes in a shuttlepod to Dyson Sphere for fear of being blown up, I was acting on incorrect information. I was sure that Kris had a warbird at Fissure Research. He didnt. He had sent that warbird over to his other outpost to do the Vanquish Enemy daisy chain. I had been careless. I could actually have just waited the extra turn and then *carefully* approached the Dyson Sphere mission with two teams. I might even have survived and been able to come back and solved my remaining missions. Hard to say, and hard to see me winning the game ultimately, given the pressure I was under from turn one and the head start Kris had on mission points, but it would have been more exciting.

Although I have the feeling that "the time James threw 20 dudes in a shuttlepod against Cytherians" is going to become a bit of a legend, so that's okay, too.

Except I seeded Gold! first, and it's non-duplicatable, so I had control of it. Lucky me! This was the only thing Gold! did for me all day, because I had rather foolishly subbed out all Niall's dilemmas for a bunch of dilemmas that don't actually require random selection. Made it basically a dead seed -- or, more often, 5 free points for my opponent. Whoops.

Anyway, this was otherwise the same EE/22Klingon speed solver Kevin ran at regionals, gunning for the two-mission win at Pegasus Search and Narendra III. I believed that my MACO deck, despite having substantially better dilemmas than my Alpha Voyager deck at regionals, could not run quite fast enough to stop Kevin's speediest speedster. (I had known that going into today, and wasn't particularly expecting to face Kevin, because I didn't expect to do so well the rest of the day!) The spaceline, as it developed, broke rather badly for me. My final mission was Luna. I had to choose to put it on "my end" of the spaceline (where it was separated from the bulk of my missions by two of Kevin's unstealable planets -- a real problem for the low-RANGE Starfleet gents), or I could put it on Kevin's end of the spaceline, right next to Pegasus Search and Narendra III and absolutely nowhere near any of my missions.

I opted for the latter. My plan was straightforward, though an incredible gamble (one I knew unlikely to pay off): steal Pegasus Search and Narendra III both, probably watch Kevin blow them up at that point, then Regenerate and solve Luna for the win while Kevin recovers. (I had not realized, at this point, that Narendra III was asymmetric and thus not stealable by Starfleet, despite recent forum debates about how UFP: One Small Step works at asymmetrics.) Kevin seeded no dilemmas at either mission, seeing my plan pretty clearly.

I recognized, of course, that Kevin's hidden agenda was HQ: Defensive Measures, so I knew that the game would go one of two ways. Either Kevin would solve his missions before HQ: DM ticked down, and would win, or I would be able to swoop in and clear my own dilemmas ftw.

In order to trigger HQ: DM on my turn one, I played a bunch of personnel, downloaded Enterprise early (usually it's done on opponent's turn after Forrest hits the table), made something of a show of checking skills, and attempted. Of course, it was blocked by the HQ: DM flip, so Enterprise flew back to the Luna outpost and docked. I then built up my forces while I waited for the countdown to tick out.

Kevin did likewise, and, on the last turn before it discarded, leaving Pegasus open to me, he lunged at it. Unfortunately, he had correctly anticipated my combo: a weak piece of junk (Assimilated Vessel, a bonus point engine / shiny object for myself), a decent dilemma that didn't stand a chance against his solver guys (Spatial Rift, in this case), and -- crucially -- he correctly predicted that the final dilemma was Barclay's Protomorph, doubled by Shades of Gray. I had been counting on Barclay's hitting and buying me one turn. (By this point, I recognized I couldn't do Narendra, so I was planning to steal Pegasus, then get Luna, play Decontamination, then race down the spaceline on Enterprise to one of my other missions for the game-winning points.) But since Kevin knew Barclay's was there -- one of those things any close student of my decks would predict but most people haven't really picked up on -- he was able to tech up for it, he specifically ensured he had the skills to beat it, and beat it he did. He scored 50 points and won the game. I had gambled, I had lost, I think I would make the same gamble again. (Although I might look for a different combo!)

The game went on a bit longer, of course, since Kevin still had to solve Narendra, but there wasn't a whole lot there to slow him down, and I wasn't able to get through whatever was at Luna in time to get on the board (I sincerely don't remember anything I faced this game).

My flub in Game 2 against Kris *is* something to be embarrassed about, and I clearly played sub-optimally in my game against Mark, but the deck was pretty great, and was mainly pulled down only by the mediocre player behind it. Story of most of my tournaments! :)

Kevin was a great host with terrific prize support, and I'm sure I would have had tremendous fun had I stayed the entire weekend. As it was, I had a great day, and managed to get Jason in my car on the ride home for a great long chat about the game.