Neil Timmons (ntimmons) |
Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day One |
2014-07-12 - 10:30 AM |
Romulan Discard 2.0 North American Continentals |
Introduction |
Here we go! more big tournaments! John asked me a while back if we wanted to hit Continentals this year... so we made it happen.
I fully expected to run into dual HQ, and other romulans, which is why I was running this space mission, lots of Odo, Timeless and more then one copy of shocking betrayal. in the end it was the romulans who I couldn't' beat.
The deck in itself is bigger then I want, but it is what it is... with Historical Research and 9x cards that = Gal Gath'thong it usually comes out pretty quick... I just have to worry about things like Holding Cell and Sent Back. |
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Round 1 | | rakesubrocket | FW (+100)View opponent's ReportView original Report |
This game was unfortunate. the original Frid told me to take it easy on his son, but unfortunately in big tournaments I can't really do that. While Henry had a really good fast cadet solver, it is a deck I am very familiar with and I know how to go after the cadets. also he made a slight tactical error not knowing the tragic turn pile would wreck his small teams, so I ended up stranding him at his mission. All in all Henry is a really great kid and I am very happy to see his dad get him into trek. I predict jr worlds showdown between Henry and Constance!
FW 100-0 |
neil played a great game I tried but alas in the end he won |
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Round 2 | | Nat Kirton | FW (+70) |
so I am playing an updated version of my continentals deck from last year. Nat was playing an updated version of his continentals deck from last year. so that was the joke "This match is one year too late"
my cards came out pretty well and while we were going thorugh the first few turns, Nat made a critical mistake and discarded a ship. I was able to lock him out to only one ship, and unstaffed him when he went to his mission. FW 100-30 |
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Round 3 | | Preston Holida | FW (+35) |
yay Preston!! We finally get to play after bantering on the boards forever! He had a rockstar TNG speed deck.. lots of those "Int>25" missions and a bunch of guys. There are two ways to combat the Romulan discards.. one is to fill your hand with cards and just suffer the attrition, the other is to keep an empty hand. Preston opted to go for the empty hand. so I made him download Mott and some other key personnel for me to make him discard with the Gal Gath'thong, and it kept his personnel in check. I was also able to place him ad an Impasse for a couple of turns where he just had to surrender his turn. Then Mareth (who is a rockstar by the way) punched his way to the ends of the missions. by preventing himself from being stopped by polywater and some other stuff.
The excitement of the game, was when Preston was punching on extremely easy missions, but was losing his deck quickly. He got to his 3rd mission with no deck and no hand (and no way to get any personnel back), needing Int>31, and he had exactly 31. I was literally hanging on to the game by a thread. Preston is an excellent guy to play against and I am glad we finally were able to sit down to a game.
FW 100-65 |
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Round 4 | | Michael Van Breemen | ML (-5)View opponent's ReportView original Report |
This game was a knock down drag out fight. Michael expertly piloted this deck to lock me out of all of my archeology with 2 well placed dreamers and some very good play. He let me back into it while I was at my space mission he called a skill off of Guillotine that no one had, so no one died.. but he attacked my archeology so was unable to complete my 3rd mission. He also launched the Phoenix so I would have had to do my 4th mission (with all of that archeology that he just filtered out). I was punishing him with my Gal Gath'thong but he was able to just deal with the attrition and go crush his missions. Some notable happenings:
both of using P'Tol to learn that both of us were playing Tragic Turn "ok boys, stuff just got real.."
Michael revealing one of my Escapes on top of my deck with P&P "UGH!!!"
Michael calling a skill on a personnel in space that none of my personnel had, and putting 11 dilemmas under a mission and killing no one.
2 really bad dreamers that wrecked all of my archeology locking me out of my 3rd mission
Michael launched the Phoenix. (important later)
Neil made a huge mistake and attempted a mission with too much important stuff in his hand, which was brutal when dreamer hit.
Michael had bonus points from P&P to give him victory condition.
When time was called, Michael was in the middle of doing a mission attempt, so all of a sudden it was VERY important that he did not use power shift, lest he goes from "Modified win" to "tie" which he said he seriously thought about, because he has tied 4 different people, and I would have been a 5th..
Michael is one of my favorite players to play against, and I am glad I get to run into him when I go to big tournaments.
ML 70-65
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As soon as I saw the missions hit the table, I knew what he was going to do. Thankfully, I had a Bird of Prey in my opening hand so no getting ship screwed for me which was a good thing as he had Keras and Gal'gathong in rapid succession. This was a grind for both of us as I was trying to take out his Archaeology without specifically stating the skill. Between the dilemmas and helpful Dreamer and the Dreams I had him locked out of his last mission. Thankfully he couldn't remember my Senator or Praetor's names to prevent me from getting bonus points from Prejudice (he had used Tackings to take out my GUYS.) Thanks to five bonus points that I didn't use on Power Shift, I managed to get my second mod win. |
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Round 5 | | David Kuck | FW (+75) |
Well dang. I sit down to Dave, and what does he do? he rolls out the same missions at Michael. well this just got bad. I assume he is playing Tragic Turn, and I assume it is going to be a very similar knock down drag out fight like it was with Michael. so we get playing. I get the Gal Gath'thong going. he starts doing his P&P thing. but ends up with few cards in his hand. so I make him download his birds of prey, and make him discard them. I get rid of his 3 ships, and he is just hanging out. he has people, but cannot download his remaining ship. I had got rid of 2 of his copies of Feast on the Dying. But he had 3 of them! (of course he did).
While he was using P&P to score points, (and spend them on Far Seeing Eyes) I started chewing on missions.
Turns out he was not doing Tragic Turn, he was doing Telepathic Deception lockout. Ok.. well here we go. I went to my space mission, and he tossed some random stuff, but knowing that I was light on exobiology and telepathy he tossed Telepathic Deception. I played Secret agenda to manfacture the missing Exobiology to solve the mission. So I am sitting happy. he has bonus points, but I have a solved mission. i I can blow thorugh a planet mission I should be able to lock up a modified win. So in good ole' arrogant fassion, with The Viceroy in my hand, I went and attempted a planet mission. dreamer/Telepathic Deception discarded my hand and my telepahty personnel (and my Tacking into the Winds no!!) so I guess I have to do this the hard way. build a 6 person team, and attempt every turn until he somehow doesn't draw a telepathic deception. after a few turns he played a Dangerous Liaison that I also failed, but I had enough science and security that I could build a team that could complete the dilemma and the mission. so that's what I did. with that 6 person team at Supervise Dillthium Mines, and another 6 person team hunting for a dilemma at Iconia Investigation, I just waited for him to play Dangerous Liaison, which he eventually did.
Dave was able to finally play a 3rd copy of Feast on the dying to get his ships back, but at that point I was short-double crewing Iconia actually with two different teams that had 2x Arechology, 2x programming, 2x science and 2x security, so Dangerous Liaisions was a dead draw and at some point he had to toss a dilemma. I was able to get to the point that he could not draw into his telepathic deception and I completed to win.
FW 100-25 |
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Round 6 | | Barry Windschitl | FW (+20)View opponent's ReportView original Report |
Ugh. Borg assimilator. I know that deck, I know it rather well. I won Nationals playing that deck, I am very familar with what it can do. But, stick to the plan. Get Gal Gath'thong going, and try to get rid of some of the cards that hurt the worst. He had all of the interrupts in his hand, I could not find a Tal. He also had 3x Annxation Drone in play, I could not find (or download) a Sent Back (which murders all 3 Annexation drones) and he was prepared for my dilemmas with Knowledge and Experience and blew through two missions. but in the end, I made him download and discard 3 of 9, so his deck was not able to get 4 free things back from the discard pile (I think I made him download 3 of 9, then used T'Aluthan to punch her out of the universe... I don't quite remember... because sometimes you have to hit someone with a chair so hard they fall out of the clouds).
Once he was crippled and could not complete his 3rd mission, he just held on and played dilemmas to make sure I could complete my missions in the time allowed. I believe I suffered a welcome dreamer, which at the end doesn't hurt to discard cards, it is much more exciting that it is an overcome dilemma. Barry was a really great guy to play agasint, and darn near had me.
FW 100-80 |
Milled, but I Did get two missions,and 80 points before he finally realized that he needed to Keras Three of Nine into my hand and discard her to stop me from recycling K&Es and OWtBs. I got two of his guys, including one Intel guy to stop Sela from interfering with my hives plans. This was a rough last game that left me more than a little drained.
EDIT: After reading Neil's report, I have to say thanks for the props, it was indeed a Great Game against a great player whom I had only heard about through previous reports. You played like a champ Bro. Great game. |
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Closing Thoughts |
Here are my thoughts about what I saw. I came totally prepared for dual HQ, Relativity, for other romulans, and an idea on how to beat federation speed. I ran into zero dual HQ's, zero relativity, and the one loss I did take was to another romulan deck, with two shocking betrayal in my dilemma pile. I did however see a bit of federation speed.
People do not know how to deal with the Gal Gath'thong. People do not know what skills Romulans have. I don't know how long these things will be advantages, but I used these to my advantage all day.
Of course I will try for a ship lockout if I can, it is devistating if you can do it, but out of the 9 games I played, in my mind there was only two games that were deck building issues, and it was two guys playing (more or less) the same deck. Ken and Dave (in the other report) only had 3 maybe 4 ships in his deck, and they were all the same. They were easy to figure out, easy to make him download, and he convienantly kept his hand empty so I could make him download the single card and make him discard it. but the rest of the ship lock outs that I had were errors, not deck building issues. Henry had 2 ships in play, Nat had ships in his hand at the beginning and chose to discard them instead of other things, Preson had ships (and 2 complete missions), MVB had ships (and beat me), Dave Kuck had 3 ships in a huge 80?ish card deck.. and Barry got 2 missions done with his ship. In the subsiquent tournament, Ken Tufts also had an 80?ish card deck with 4 ships (one was the Phoenix), Kris was able to use his ship and complete two missions, and Nate had a handfull of ships (he had 2-3 in his hand, I checked).
I completed a few different missions when people played dilemmas I and I just s showed the skills, with them going "huh... well.. I didn't know he had that.." or Stooge #2 (aka Mareth) being able to prevent himself from being stopped by Pitching In, Moral choice, polywater, and Ingenius Jury-Rig. I caught a lot of people who stopped exactly the right amount of people, and had Mareth been stopped would have meant a failed mission attmept, but preventing the stop completed the mission.
Span 2 space missions are the best space missions.
Tragic Turn piles that contain a lot of skill dilemmas are awesome.
Gal Gath'thong against another romulan player maans range isn't an issue for anything. (same goes for anybody playing a span 1 mission).
People in Minnesota are a lot of fun to hang out with and play agasint.
13 hour tournaments with lunch/dinner "whenever" are long, and I am glad I am in good physical shape as I was able to remain solvent for the whole tournament.
I hope my kid is into star trek as much as Henry is, watching Frid bring his kid was one of the best parts of the weekend, I feel a little bad I had to do dirty things to his deck, but it is Continentals.
John & Kris may not be BFF's, but at least showed an outward appearence of making a little bit of peace.
I finally got to play against Dave Kuck, for the first time in 6 years.
Jeramy ran a top notch excellent tournament with an awesome trek count down clock, fast pairings, quick rulings, and generally very professional setup, I was very impressed.
All in all, MN is an excellent place to play trek, I am VERY glad I went, I can't wait to go again!
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