Al Schaefer (ltkettch17) Tournament Report - 2E 2012-11-18 - 12:00 PM StarFleet Invades My Mind Introduction Corbin was gracious enough to host a 2E event today. I'd been working on a traditional deck for next weeks league event and I built a new standard deck as well. I hadn't played a game with my new deck yet, so I thought I would be safe with one of my more tested decks. Unfortunately for me, that wasn't the case. Round 1 Corbin Johnson FL (-50)View opponent's ReportView original Report Corbin was playing a Delta Klingon deck with a bizarre combination of personnel. I got off to an ok start, but I had a lot of duplicate personnel which made it easy for Corbin to stop me at Investigate Sphere Network. I hadn't paid close enough attention to who Corbin had played so I felt like I was grasping at straws when it came to my dilemma pile. I was drawing planet in space and vice-versa. Corbin wasn't holding anything back and continued to stop me at ISN. I finally drew into some At What Costs and thought I might have a chance at a comeback when Corbins last 2 Baht Kuhl challenges went my way. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance when a timely Nu'Daq resurrected a Baht Kuhl and Corbin scored his final bonus points to complete the game. Had we played this match again, Al would most certainly have won. He seemed to simply be having bad draws all around and just couldn't really solve Eliminate Sphere Network early on. My Dilemma pile was on fire. Al was hoping to do really well today in the hopes of getting his rating above 1800. Oh well. Round 2 Brian Leonard FW (+40) Brian got a first turn Voyager in play and was off to a hot start. I caught up quickly and pulled out the win even though Brian had stolen 4 dilemmas with Field Studies. Brian's dilemma pile didn't have enough cards to deal with Archer and that was the difference. Round 3 Eric Bieche FL (-50) Eric and I are playing a basic mirror match; same missions and nearly identical draw decks. I got off to a better start, getting a ship and some key personnel early. Eric was able to stop me at Investigate Sphere Network, much like Corbin, until he was able to catch up. I still felt that I had a decent lead, but that all changed quickly when I random chose Eric's Lorian to be stopped. Eric correctly used Lorian's ability to unstop the rest of his team and not only complete his first planet mission, but go on to complete the second as well. I had a horrible draw and needed some serious luck on his final mission attempt, but it just didn't go my way. I feel like I lost to a bad random pick, but Eric played an excellent game throughout and I just didn't have anything to stop him at his last mission. Closing Thoughts Congrats to Eric and Corbin for playing solid games today. I had a few choices here and there which I could have done differently but I'm not sure it would have made a huge difference. I did play Shocking Betrayal on Eric, knowing that he would choose Shran to be stopped and retrieve a dilemma from under my ISN; that's the one card play that I wish I would have played differently. Also, I kept drawing Back to Basics today. Somehow, 2 copies of this card got shuffled into the dilemma pile from the last time I used it. Maybe I added them to go with a Borg deck or something, but they were completely useless with Starfleet and it felt like there was one in every dilemma draw I got. I don't think this is the last game I'll play with Starfleet, but I definitely need to manage my dilemma piles better. I also need to slow down and pay closer attention during my games. Corbin was playing a mission set I'd never seen before, but I was so confident with Archer, I didn't pay much attention until it was too late.