Al Schaefer (ltkettch17) Tournament Report - 2E 2013-06-30 - 12:00 PM Donatra and... (the kitchen sink) Introduction Haven't even looked at my cards since the IA Regional. Summer weather in Chicago has been mild, so I've been able to spend a lot of time outdoors. My indoor time has been consumed by playing Mass Effect 2 and 3. I know those games are not exactly current, but they are crazy good and take up a lot of time. I'm running the same Romulan deck I played with a month ago. Getting back to my achievement goal of getting a win with each affiliation. Definitely need to take a step back and re-focus this deck or pair with a different dilemma pile. Round 1 Corbin Johnson FL (-25)View opponent's ReportView original Report Corbin is playing a slim Relativity deck and gets a very fast start. I thought I would be in good shape this game when I killed several personnel at each attempt. I felt that Temporal Transporters was a good target for FSE, but didn't have a way to cancel the one copy he had in hand. Unfortunately, I did not put his Tacking Into The Winds out of play with my Far Seeing Eyes so he was able to recycle his lost pile and retrieve a bunch of personnel to avoid getting skill locked at the end. I felt I got off to a good start but some key personnel (Neral and Navaar) landed on Energize and Corbin's dilemma pile took advantage of my weaknesses. The Corbin was in the lead and would win on the next turn. I had a chance to win the game and decided to attempt Transport Crash Survivors on my final turn having only seen a single dilemma all game that would be affected by Assess Contamination. I felt confident with Donatra finally present that I would be safe from anything Corbin might be holding back. Unfortunately, he filtered out my Donatra and hit me with a Hard Time and Overburdened which killed 3 due to my no skill dilemma pile. Janeway died a million deaths, but it wasn't enough and Corbin still had the skills he needed for his final mission. Al's deck title says it all. It had the proverbial Romulan kitchen sink installed. His report is very thurough and detailed. You would have won next turn Al. Round 2 Maggie Geppert ML (-25) Maggie was playing the latest version of her favorite Ferengi deck. I've seen the deck a few times before and was confident I could secure a victory by keeping Regya off the table. I fortunately scored some early points and put Regya out of play with FSE. I later got Ishka as well, but was having a difficult time finding a ship. Maggie's Ferengi bonuses were able to keep my Clown's from killing more than one personnel and I was stacking way too many dilemmas. Maggie completed Falsify Distress Signal when her ships had full range left and used the text to take an additional turn and finished Mine Vendarite to take the lead. Again, I had a chance to win, but the high cunning requirements on Assess Contamination made it difficult to put together two balanced teams to get the come from behind win and Maggie got the win in time. The extra turn and the time spent with all the Ferengi actions available really took away any momentum that I might have had. Round 3 Eric Bieche FW (+30) Eric was giving Dominion a try this month and after the Iowa Regional I was on my guard not to let anything slip by. The high attributes on his Jem'Hadar would automatically make The Clown pretty much worthless, so I wanted to make sure I got my crew out and attempting in case Eric got off to a fast start. Again, I felt that I stacked way too many dilemmas, but my kills were well targeted and by Eric's last mission he was short on Treachery. Like my other two games, I was in a situation where my opponent would win on the next turn if I didn't win on my own. This time I was able to close it out and finally secure a win on an otherwise unfortunate day. Closing Thoughts I either need more practice with the TT/ACE/Clown pile, or give it a rest for a while. The local meta seems more than experienced with facing this pile and it just didn't seem effective all day. That being said, MVB, won the IL regional with a similar pile so I'm not going to say that it's completely dead. The draw deck definitely needs a trim. The 'unstop brothers' never seem to get selected for dilemmas and were useless all day. Except for the game against Eric, personnel like Donatra and Neral either never made it to the table or were a non-issue if they did. The deck is so oversized that it seemed to play different in every game today. I really need to get Energize out early or start playing with These Are The Voyages to see more cards earlier in the game. I really like FSE, but didn't feel that I was using it effectively. I need to pay closer attention to my opponents mission skills early in the game, or have a better eye for key cards that will shut down their main gimmick. Congrats to Corbin on the win!