Neil Timmons (ntimmons) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - American National 2011-01-15 - 10:00 AM 2011 Nationals West Borg Robot Zombies!!!! aaahh!!!! Introduction Nationals East. I decided it was time to make a sneak attack on Nationals West. I have participated in Nationals East twice at this point, and I figured the only way I would ever get to Nationals West is to catch it when it got as close to me as possible. Well that and Southwest offered to fly me to Chicago and back to DC for about a hundred and thirty bucks… So here I am, sitting in the class room of the college of DuPage. I had just walked in to see three people in the room. I walked in with my big black coat on, and my goofy “Animal the muppet” hat on. I looked up at Al Schafer and asked if anybody else was planning on showing up. I could tell everybody in the room was looking at me thinking “who the heck is this clown? What’s with the goofy stupid hat?” Al handed me a DeckPadd to fill out, and when I handed it back to him he look at me and said “The Neil Timmons?!?” So I will set the stage. 2 people know I am in Chicago. My wife. She had to know.. I had to get permission. Charlie Plaine knew. I was planning on bringing a whole bunch of prize support, so I had to talk to him a bit. No one else knew. So it was a shock during the second round when Michael van Breemen sent me a text asking “Are you in Chicago?” I had already been ratted out. It was fine.. my surprise was well received. The only thing that was a bit frustrating, was getting on an airplane, flying to a place I've never been before.. seeing a bunch of people I am meeting for the first time, but playing Josh, Michael, Jared & Charlie. These are great guys, but I have played against them all, one of them 10 times. it would have been nice to meet some of the local flavor instead of taste the same stuff. I tried to avoid that by not bringing anybody, but well, that's how it goes. On the bright side, the people who play trek are really awesome and great people, so I did get to see a bunch of people who I don't see very often. Thank you to all who showed up!! It was a great time had by all! N! Round 1 Joshua Sheets FW (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Round 1: Josh Sheets. I have played Josh a few times, it’s a good guy. I was a bit skittish when I sat down, but when I saw what he was doing I felt a little bit better. He also said he had built his deck the night before, and as one that has done that, I am always happy to hear that because I personally always miss stuff and lose games because of it. Josh however had built a solid deck. However in the process of me dropping a lot of people, he had forgotten if I had played Locutus or not, so he played Secret ID then Gomtuu Shockwave. I lost the Queen, but gained a Locutus, and proceeded to score 10 points for the trouble of breaking through a Gomtuu. It’s never a good idea to give the Borg free missions, and I was able to complete my planet mission and use One with the Borg for the rest of the points I needed to win the game. FW 100-35 I hadn't been on the boards Friday to check if there was any new info I should know and was semi-surprised to see Neil. I popped an Oh! Nothing Happened blind, calling Legacy (my pile was not set up to handle that) and Whiffed, a whiff i was ok with. Neil starts doing his Borg downloading thing, and Im putting a crew together. I go out first (I think) and run into the classic Timmons Tragic Turn. I have 7 dilemmas under Genesis, but only 1 personnel on the planet and 1 on the ship. Ouch. At Neils first mission, I make one of my worst plays of the day - I play an SI and he brings in Locutus to pass the following Gomtuu (with bonus points). At his second mission, I give at least 2 more dilemmas for Locutus to score points off. I end up Completing Survey New World, and have enough dilemmas under the other 2 planets if I can get the skills together, but giving up a free mission was too much to recover from and Neil gets the win. Not saying I would have beat him if I hadnt gifted him his mission, but it would have been closer. Round 2 Michael Van Breemen FW (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Round 2: Michael van Breemen I am always scared of sitting down in front of Michael. He builds the stuff that will crush you if it works. I had Transport Crash Survivors, but I am still afraid of what happens. So we start playing, and I see he is running his Turn pile with all the consumes. Ok.. have analyzed that, I know how to beat it… no worries. So I go to work disrupting him with different things, and finally make a mission attempt. Lots of guys died.. but no worries. I knew that all I had to do was suffer one mission attempt, then the others would be a breeze. I had a person I did not own, so I used Knowledge and Experience on his Tragic Turn, then just suffered the rest of the kills. No worries. The rest of the game was just rebuilding from the decimation and heading to my planet mission. FW 100-35 I'll say it before and I'll say it again - I don't like the Borg. I don't like the swapping, I don't like the taking of my people, I don't like the things that make me cry. So when I saw that Neil was playing his deck from Worlds (with a few tweaks), I was about 95% sure that I wasn't going to win. The dilemma pile I have does not do enough against the Borg to make me happy. So I get a fairly good start and head to my first mission with seven... only to have six enter the discard pile. He attempts and I get a few killed but I can't pick off enough to prevent him from solving his Assimiliate Resistance, thereby getting Vic Fontaine which is just extra joyful. I know that, if I had enough people whom I could sacrifice at each mission, a subsequent crew would be able to get through the carnage for the solve (which is how I solved my first and only mission.) The problem is, I don't have enough people to do that and with no means of which to get people back from the discard pile, it just wasn't in the cards. Neil eventually made it through Restore Errant Moon and, with bonus points from drones and One with the Borg, was able to get the two mission win. 35-100. Round 3 Al Schaefer FW (0) Round 3: Al Schafer Al was playing Bajoran, which is really scary. Bajorans can deal with dudes hitting the discard pile really well. The beginning of the game started off really badly for me. I started w/ Energize/Quintessence, but had an equipment and grav-plate in my hand I chose not to play. Silly me.. so Al destroyed both energize & quintessence with In the pah-Wraith’s wake, and I was stuck at normal speed. So I figured I was at a disadvantage. Al went to a mission and I had a fantastic dilemma draw and decimated his crew. I was able to get a couple of his guys (eventually including Sisko and Basso Tromac) to go attempt a mission. Al put all of my interrupts back on top of my desk with swashbuckler, but I was able to complete the mission, then I used 2 of 9 to draw 3 cards (getting my K&E’s back in hand) and went to attempt my planet mission all loaded up again. I was able to complete my planet mission using Basso to remove a borg sphere from my discard pile to come up with the stats that I was short, and use One with the Borg for the extra points to win. FW 100-0 Round 4 Jared Hoffman FW (0) Round 4: Jared Hoffman Jared was playing cadets. There were lots of cadet decks around this weekend. It is a pretty good answer to Damaged archer (you beat dilemmas? That’s ok, I’m faster than you). In this case I got things going very quickly, and Jared was concerned that if I was out speeding his speed deck he would fall behind. Then he went and did a space mission and lots and lots of guys died, then some came to play for the other team. Jared was able to complete Practice Orbital maneuvers, and used the Mirror to put all of his personnel in his discard pile back in play, but it was too late. In the time he took to build his away teams back, I had rushed through my missions. FW 100-35 Round 5 Kris Sonsteby FW (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Round 5: Kris Sonsteby More cadets. This game went very badly for me. The first thing that happened was quintessence milled 2 of my 3 grav plates off the top. Ugh. It also got the Assimilation Techniques. Double ugh. It also got 2 ships… triple ugh (only 6 ships in the deck). So early on I was forced (under threat of not getting locked out) to Quintessence for a ship (quad-ugh!!) and had no protection for any of my events. Kris meanwhile was having issues of his own finding cadets. He had a couple, but not a whole bunch. Eventually he attemped a planet mission first and I was able to toss (with aid) a Tragic Turn, Entanglement, Necessary Execuition, Dal’Rok, No Quite Domesticated Pets, leaving 6 dead and 1 on my team with only 6 dilemmas under the mission. When h e finally recovered from that and completed the mission, I did almost the same thing at his next planet mission. Kris then was able to get most of his deck back with Mirror (aahh!! Grav plates are gone!!) so he wasn’t totally locked out of the game, but his stuff was still buried in his deck. Running out of time, I was behind by 5 points, and I attempted my planet mission. If I solve, I am at 95 points with planet & space, and he has to solve his final mission for the win, or I get a turn to dig for One with the Borg. So I attempted with a whole big huge away team. He stopped some guys and killed some guys, but was not enough to stop the mission attempt, but the highlight was tossing Show Trial, and I fanned out 5 personnel for him to pick from. If he picks Locutus I score the 5 points I need to win (well 10 points) if not, I am stuck. Low & behold.. 1 in 5.. Locutus pops out, I score 10 points, go on to use his own Kirk to bust his last dilemma to win the game. I didn’t even need to use my Uninvited for his last mission attempt. FW 100-60 The Big Show's walking science fair projects were a formidable opponent, but my Cadets held their own and put on a good match nonetheless. In spite of some heated words and an added layer of gamesmanship, our first encounter primarily came down to good fortune and on this day he had it and I didn't. FL 100-60. Round 6 Charlie Plaine FW (0) Round 6: Charlie Plaine. Ugh. The chairman. One of the most under rated players on our site. Come to find out the only game he had lost was to the guy who built his deck.. that’s what kind of player Charlie is, he can just pick up a deck and win. Unfortunately for Charlie we were mirror matched, and in my opening hand I had won the Quintessence battle because I had one in my hadn and could use it to download 2 of 9. This game ended a lot closer then I expected it to, because Charlie was able to break through some dilemmas and not lose a crew. He was also able to guard his personnel so I could never get more then 1 of them so One with the Borg didn’t do much. However there were some things I had working for me because I had expected Borgs. I had Shocking Betrayal in my dilemma pile, and Causalities always rips a big huge hole in Borgs. I was able to bang on my space mission until it was complete, and I ran over to my planet mission and started hitting it pretty hard. I was not able to get very many personnel I did not own so I ended up doing Transport Crash Survivors to win the game, and the Borg were able to come up with exactly 16 skills to do it. This was a really great point-counterpoint game, and Charlie really is one of the most skillful players I have ever had the pleasure of playing against. FW 100-35