Al Schaefer (ltkettch17) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Deep Space 9 Regional 2011-06-25 - 12:00 PM Borg Solver - Iowa Regional Introduction If I could put a title to this tournament report it would probably be called "Settling the Score." I haven't had the greatest tournament record so far this year and with GenCon just a few short weeks away I was feeling very unprepared and lacking confidence. I've only won a single local tournament so far this year after dominating the previous year with 10. My abysmal performance at the IL regional also left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I'd only played in Iowa once before at last years regional. There I played Maquis and finished 14th out of 18. I really needed to have an excellent performance today to redeem myself for my last two lackluster regional outings. After the sweeping recent errata, I knew I could expect far less Tragic Turn decks than I had been seeing so far this year. I had Teroc Nor, Cardassian Capture, Cadets, Voyager, Vintner, Starfleet Samuels, Bajoran, Romulan and Borg decks to play-test with going into this tournament. Although I was only seriously considering T/N, Capture and Borg. T/N seemed decent enough, but was too easy to predict and stop cold with simple dilemmas. Capture was a viable option, but I believe it absolutely required "100% mistake free" execution in order to win. Given my recent track record, I wasn't going to frustrate myself with Capture today. I finally decided on Borg Solving. It performed reliably in play-testing on Friday night, I have had some hard lessons with Borg in the past, and the last time I defeated Micheal van Breemen I was playing Borg. Borg also seem like the swiss-army knife of 2E. In spite of new sets, rules, and errata, they are phased by very little and play almost exactly the same way every time. Ed, Eric and I met at Brian Leonard's house on Friday night for some crash play-testing. Only Ed, Brian and myself would be making the road trip to Iowa. Round 1 Brian Leonard FW (0) Brian, our gracious pre-road-trip host, was my first opponent today. He defeated me for only the second time in the 2E era at the IL regional with a similar Romulan deck. I still anticipated the win, but Brian is a career Romulan player and I wouldn't take anything for granted. Way back in the day, Brian won the very first 2E IL regional/state championship with, you guessed it, Romulan. The Borg formula went as planned in this game. I was able to use Third and Fourth to get Quintessence out early and continue downloading at will until he Kevin Uxbridge'd my Q. Brian's dilemma pile was heavily reliant on Gorgan and Tactical Disadvantage. Unfortunately for him, he did not draw either at Assimilate Resistance and I was able to complete easily. His dilemmas were about as effective at planet missions and this game was over quickly. Round 2 Ben Paulsen FW (0) Ben is an Iowa local and (like Brian) he defeated me the last time we played, at the Iowa regional last year. Ben had a first round bye, and when he revealed 3 headquarters missions I immediately heard the "CHA-CHING!" sound effect in my head. However, after closer examination, the unholy trinity of Dominion, Maquis, TNG with the addition of two 50 point missions brought me back to reality. Whatever Ben was trying to do, I guessed it would take some time to setup and revolved around the dominion defiant and some other method of stacking dilemmas without facing them. I tried to quickly setup and attempt missions as fast as possible. Ben did a fantastic job of cold-stopping me at Assimilate Resistance. He made a slight error at Salvage Borg ship and was too far behind to pull of his gimmick before I was able to complete my last mission. After the game, Ben showed me his strategy of using For Better Or Worse to stack dilemmas but he could not find enough treachery Voyager personnel to play at Athos IV to meet the requirement of playing the card. Round 3 Edward Pigman FW (0) Ed is another player who defeated me in our last tournament game back in March. Ed and I played this match-up the night before and I had won. I was in the lead the whole game, but Ed's late-game usage of The Central Command allowed him to storm back and almost steal the game from me. I vowed to not let my guard down and try to shut him out early. Everything was going to plan, but Ed was able to stall me after capturing Locutus with Inequitable Exchange and ensuing Broken Captives. He had also destroyed Quintessence at about the same time and suddenly I was scrambling to get anything done. I eventually had to play an At What Cost to drop a second ship and personnel to try and complete Plot Invasion. After completion I was at 95 points and used every random drone text to try and draw cards in order to find another Annexation Drone. I was able to stop Ed one last time (after he had used his final Central Command), and pull my Annexation Drone on my fourth counter on the next turn for the win. Round 4 Greg Bloom TT (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Greg was the only player I faced whom I had no previous experience against. Although he came to the tournament wearing the Minnesota Master's jacket, so I knew he was not a player to take lightly. Our game started off simple enough, I got Quintessence out early but with my first download, I top-decked my second Q. Greg noticed this and was able to destroy the Q on table quickly there after. My final Q was also discarded early on (although I forget how) and Greg was able to use some TOS trickery to place them out of play from my discard pile. This not only slowed me down immensely, but made the Borg Queen almost entirely useless. I could barely draw and play enough cards to keep attempting missions forget about being able to discard cards to stock up my discard pile for the Queen. None of my interlink drones were with my attempting team and I was drawing desperately for another ship. Greg had yet to play Kirk and was playing cautiously for fear of drive-by assimilation. My dilemmas (and lucky random picks) were holding him off, but he was slowly pulling away from me. Again, I had to play an At What Cost after I had completed Assimilate Resistance in order to play a second ship and bring in more drones. I made a key error by playing an Opposition Drone instead of a Computation drone which forced me to attempt with enough personnel that Greg could play dilemmas at Salvage Borg Ship. He stopped my attempt and I was forced to return to Unicomplex again for a Computation Drone. I thought I would lose the game at this time because Greg had 13 people to attempt his final mission with 4 dilemmas underneath. His first team of 6 faced Old Differences and were stopped. His second team of 7 faced an incredibly lucky under-costed Pitching In and were stopped as well. I completed Salvage Borg Ship and had enough personnel to make two attempts at Plot Invasion. Greg guessed correctly that I did not have the Queen with my first team and stopped me easily with Dignitaries And Witnesses. On my second attempt he stopped me with Outmatched and I did not have enough tricks to unstop enough Borg to complete the attempt. Because of the At What Cost I was forced to play, we were both left with 65 points and had run out of time. There's no doubt that Greg would have won on his next turn, so I feel extremely lucky to have pulled out at least a True Tie. Al was playing a big Borg deck. I got a lucky opening draw, with Decker in my hand turn one for event destruction. I got his first Quintessence with Decker before he got to use it, and his second after only two uses with Scotty (he discarded his third on one of the two downloads. I burned the two in his discard pile with Jaeger the next turn, slowing his downloads immensely. Fearing assimilation, I started with Mediate Peace Treaty (scoring the bonus points I usually need from Investigate Maquis Activity with the Enterprise), and it was a bit of a slow start for both of us. Time was called with me up 65-30, but he was able to stop my double attempt at Track Survivors (the second time, drawing only one dilemma he top decked a Pitching In). I wasn't able to stop him from completing his second mission, tying the score at 65 apiece, but stopped his double attempt at his third mission with Dignitaries and Witnesses, then Outmatched. The tie gave Al the tournament win due to my earlier Modified Win.