Tournaments | trekcc

Jason Tang (PantsOfTheTalShiar)
Tournament Report - 1E
2013-07-14 - 12:00 PM
Dukat Will Be Coming
Introduction
This was my last physical tournament before I moved to Norway for grad school. I brought the EE deck I played last tournament, but I also I wanted to try out another deck idea. I had thought of a Borg deck that shredded through Establish Gateways using multiple spheres as expendable scouting vessels. My first thought was to stock Locutus as my counterpart, but then I realized I could seed a Cryosatellite with Dukat of Borg and Orb of Prophecy and Change.

Round 1	Bye	BY (0)
I volunteer for the bye to finish assembling & sleeving my Borg deck.


Round 2	James Heaney	FL (-75)View opponent's Report View original Report
James had a TNG Klingon battle deck with all planet missions. I seeded They Will Be Coming on Evade Borg Vessel, and used Maturation Chamber to download the Multiplexor Drone. This kept me safe from the aggression of James's Klingons. I had seeded my Cryosatellite at the same location, and thus was looking to scout that first. I was converting a lot of draws to drone downloads, which in hindsight was almost certainly a mistake. I needed to draw into my other ships, or at least pad my hand to Masaka into my other ships. Instead, I got impatient, and started scouting Evade Borg Vessel with Locutus's Cube. First dilemma was Cytherians. Curses! This is exactly what my deck was designed to overcome. So now I trek ALL the way across the spaceline, with my intentionally high-span missions. (Total span of my missions was 26.) Meanwhile, roughly in the middle of the spaceline, James solves Impose Order. He releases his favorite card ever, The Nexus, and earns a Genesis Device after losing about 4 personnel to Firestorm. He doubles some other 35-point mission with the Sega Genesis Device and solves it through an anemic space combo. He's at 105 of 140. On my way back I decide on a Change of Pants and assimilate that completely open Impose Order after one missed probe. I dump a Borg Scout Vessel at Evade Borg Vessel, and try to finish scouting there, but James refines his Scientific Method and picks up a third mission to put him at 140.
Although he beautifully bluffed a Cardassian deck, Jason was playing a Borg deck with They Will Be Coming – his first foray into modern Borg. (I should try it at some point.) He had a Cryosatellite at his spaceline-ending space mission (which, ironically, I think was Evade Borg Cube) and was all gung-ho to scout and secure the location. However, Cytherians was the first dilemma, and we had a fairly long spaceline. Though Jason had Space-Time Portal, he had no way to re-report the Cube (which was Locutus’s) if it went to his hand, so he had to play it out. Which he did, with aplomb! I was able to get my fleet up to snuff in case his Borg tried anything aggressive, but his multiplexor-enhanced Cube was still too powerful for my lightly-shielded fleet to take on in an open attack, so, when he passed my outpost (right in the middle of the spaceline), we did it without violence. Meanwhile, even with the armada setup, the Cytherians delay was so long that I was able to get some good solving started. I was still able to solve two missions, secure The Genesis Device, and activate the Nexus before he scored his 15 Cytherians bonus points. 105-15. The Nexus gets close enough to cause us both trouble as we try to solve missions in this vicinity. Jason just wants to get a mission before the game ends, so he Assimilates Planet at Impose Order. Fortunately for me, his counterparts weren’t able to steal those 35 points! That would have really crimped my plans and given him a 75-70 lead. But he gets his 25 points after a couple of bad probes because there are no dilemmas, right around the time Soran gets into the Nexus. 125-40. Long story short, at my final mission, I hit Hanonian Land Eel again and had neither SCIENCE nor SECURITY. Time was about to be called, so it all came down to this turn, and there was a 12 RANGE span between me and my outpost – all of which was threatened by The Nexus. Ultimately, I was able to use Get It Done to retrieve Zegov from my discard pile (SECURITY), play her, play my last ship (Maht’ha), positioned a Vor’Cha in the middle of the span, put everyone on my Pagh, flew the Pagh into the Nexus, sent everyone back to the outpost to pick up Zegov by staffing the Maht’ha, ferried everyone back to the mission using the Maht’ha and the Vor’cha, then pulled Soran out of the Nexus to nab the necessary SCIENCE, beat the eel, clear the mission, and score enough points to make up for losing Soran’s Nexus points. Again, a Full Win, but, again, a last-possible-second thing. 140-40.

Round 3	Matthew Hayes	MW (+18)View opponent's Report View original Report
This time I get my draws going, since I start with We Are The Borg in hand. I also take advantage of Obelisk of Masaka/Masaka Transformations to draw into some spheres. I start scouting my Cryosat mission with spheres, and bait out a Cytherians as planned. (The funny thing is that with a range of 4, the sphere couldn't make it pass my 5 span missions, so it moved a few locations and just chilled out.) I soon have Dukat and my Orb. Meanwhile, Matthew assembles a monster crew at The One's outpost, and breezes past my Matriarchal Society combo + Outpost Raid. He even had the STRENGTH>81 for Outpost Raid. Matthew then attempts Raid Ancient Burial Site where he loses 18 points to The Higher, the Fewer and then something like 6 personnel to Firestorm then gets stopped for two turns playing Chula: The Game. At this point I'm in high gear. Dukat + Orb + Service the Collective + multiple spheres scouting are accomplishing my goal of completing objectives in a single turn. I do this twice, bringing me to 75 points. Unfortunately, for some reason I had been hesitant to scout my planet because Anya was chilling out with her lover and I was worried about her battling and stopping me from probing. This hesitation caused me to go back and forth along my high-span missions instead of just moving along in a line, and it probably cost me a turn and some time. Alas, time was called when there was a good chance I would have completed my 4th objective in the next turn or two.
Jason, yet another good player. I was glad of the game, as he's moving to Norway for school for 2 years. In fact, I must credit Justin, our TD, as being diplomatic enough to take the bye (which admittedly, should have been mine). Going into this round, James was willing to take said bye, as I had driven 4 hours down to Mpls and would be driving the 4 hours back on the same day, with work at 6 AM the next morning, but, Justin realized this would clinch the tourney for James, so that was overruled. Justin, being the gracious host, (and I'll state I made it known that I was fine with the bye should I receive it, as both an Ambassador for the game, and that it was their local scene so no hard feelings would be had in any case) sat out this round and I had another good game, the final one for some time with Jason. His Borg deck ran well and while I certainly had a good amount of personnel out, I couldn't keep up...hitting my head against some wall dilemmas that required skills I couldn't seem to draw into fast enough, even though said skills were included. Oh well.

Closing Thoughts
I was happy with my deck. It certainly needs some tuning and some practice, but my real goal with it this tournament was to complete Establish Gateway in one turn from targeting to scoring, and I accomplished that. Everyone else had interesting concoctions. It's great to have a local group that loves trying new things (as do I). I'll have to try out Lackey so I don't get withdrawl while I'm in Norway.