Tournaments | trekcc

Matthew Ting (Wedge772)
Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event (Mission to Talos IV)
2013-10-07 - 12:00 AM
Talos IV - Season 3 - Episode 1
Introduction
Premiere cardpool with a few additions, I was thinking Kevin Uxbridge is a necessity for this format. Built a Kevin heavy Fed/Rom deck, hoping opponent plays Red Alert. Dilemmas are selected to allow for a potential 2 mission win with bonus points.

Round 1	J	FW (+15)View opponent's Report View original Report
Oh no, a Fed/Rom opponent! Fortunately, only 2 missions were duplicated. Even more fortunately, he was running 6 planets. Doing the math, this meant that if I could trigger my 2 x Balancing Act he probably had no way of winning the game on points. I raced to try to complete Investigate Massacre quickly, one of the duplicated missions, triggering the first Balancing Act. I get hit by Alien Parasites + STP back to hand (never knew that combo worked!), leaving the mission open for J to take. It was still a race to get the attributes in play, 1 more turn and I would have had it. Went to Investigate Anomaly next, hitting a Menthar Boody Trap / Tsiolkovsky combo which stalled my ship. Looking at the position of J's D'deridex, I had to use a Wormhole to get it back to my outpost. J got stopped at the other duplicated mission (Investigate Raid) which I managed to snatch out from him after he cleared dilemmas. Eventually the other Balancing Act hit, but J was ahead of points so his only option was to KFC me for a double deck out. Kevins stopped that, and I managed to finish a 3rd mission for the win. Great game, would have lost if not for Balancing Act x2.
This is the story of a game which I thought I was going to win at numerous points during, but actually never had a shot at winning. Still, it is one of the most fun game I've played. Matt and I both had Federation/Romulan Treaties and a seeded STP, though his deck was heavier in the Federation and mine in the Romulan. We shared two planet mission, one was on the border of our territories (Investigate Massacre) and the other was on my far end. Otherwise the spaceline was 50/50 down the middle. Matt struggled a little bit with how to put his dilemmas under 6 planets, but ultimate found a combo that really worked. We also both had two Outposts and a Spacedoor, where Matt put his key outpost at the Investigate Massacre and then attempted first turn to put me on -50 due to his first seeded Balancing Act. he also went first,as I recall, so that was starting at -50. Matt then proceeded to outplay me, mainly because every KFC I tossed was a wasted card play that was immediately Kevined. That plus the Federation personnel really are that much better than Romulan. He proceeded to clear out the space and get ready to solve, but luckily my filter dilemmas set up the Alien Parasites and I STP'd his ship to hand thereby setting him back to essentially 0. So it was a race to see who could get the bodies to solve Investigate Massacre, and I ended up winning (sorry to spoil it like that) just one turn before Matt could. This brought me up to -15. Over the course of the next few turns I plowed through 3 missions and got all the way up to 100 points. This left the mission with my Key outpost and the other shared mission. I likely needed both to get the other 40, unless I could get 5 bonus points somewhere, so I went to the shared. I ended up clearing it down to a Shaka, WTWF (with a Q behind that, it turns out) but only had one diplomacy in play. This was a problem as all game I had been trying to draw using KFC and Matt had countered nearly every one with a Kevin. I had lost Sela'd Diplomacy to a Female's Love Interest at some point and really needed a Picard. but Matt continued to counter each KFC and I continued to get just one draw per turn -> not Diplomacy. Meanwhile, Ting sent everyone he had on a ship down to the far end of the spaceline to solve the shared space, and there was nothing I could do about it since we had double affiliation attack restrictions as Romulan and Federation. It took quite a few turns (three at least) for him to make the trip and I attempted my final planet in the meantime only to find the other Balancing Act and the other Shaka. When Matt did finally solve the shared (his first shared mission), I had no way to get to 140 and when I did draw Jean-Luc he helped me solve my final mission for a grand total of 85 (185 scored in the game). So my strategy shifted to either staying ahead in points by time or causing a double deck out. I started throwing the KFCs at Matt, but they continued to fizzle. Turns out he had 8 Kevins in the deck compared to my 6 Keevi. So Matt tookk his time and safely coasted to 100.

Round 2	Bye	BY (0)



Round 3	Kenneth Tufts	FL (-100)View opponent's Report View original Report
After the first Kivas > Kevin > Q2 exchange, I could see where this was going. I did manage to get a solving crew out, but failed to draw into a 2nd lady for Matriarchal Society. I also couldn't go to my space mission, knowing I'd hit my self-seeded Cytherians, and without having drawn Wormhole. This effectively locked me out of the 2 missions I needed to win, and going to any of my other missions would have resulted in needing 3 missions, which I couldn't see happening. A well deserved win for Ken, who was very familiar with what could be done in the meta for this format.
Rom/Fed was scary as was the early kelvins on my KFC's but i had enough Q2's to hold them off and once the KFC's kicked in the counter spell war was over. his amazing personal with some Romulans, made me a little leary fro my high point missions but I put some self seeds at both to make him think twice about it and then a lack of females stalled him from his BGB letting me sail to 140+ space points.

Closing Thoughts
Much learned from these games, especially the weakness of Premiere era space dilemmas. Hopefully I'll be more dangerous next year :)