Neil Timmons (ntimmons) Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day Two 2014-07-12 - 06:00 PM Romulan Discard 2.0 North American Continentals Introduction Well here we go. I dodged Harrington... again. The last time Harrington and I (and really the only time) threw down, was Worlds 2009. yes. he & I have not played in 5 years. but as we see, it was not to be. I can't believe we keep going to big events, and keep missing... it is funny after a while.. Round 1 Kenneth Tufts FW (+95) Here is the 3rd Romulan deck I ran up against. and it is the exact same build as MVB's, the guy who just beat me. awesome. here we go. This is the second game I won because Ken had an 80 card deck with 4 (5?) ships, 3 of which were birds of prey, 1 was the phoenix (not a functional ship). but with no way to download his ships, he was just relying on playing/drawing them. I made him download his birds of prey and discarded them, and in the mad rush of discards also got him to discard the phoenix. I however scanned his dilemma pile, saw a TT pile, and proceeded to play around it. he tossed Tragic Turn, Overburdened, and Toe to Toe. I escaped the Overburdened deaths, and he selected a personnel who cost 3 while I had another that cost 3, so I just stopped a bunch of guys. 7 dilemmas under 0 dead. The rest of the game kind of went like that. I was able to navigate through some ugly dilemmas, while he was unable to secure transportation and I was able to get a win. This is the classic lesson of "don't build an 80 card deck with 3 ships." Ken is a classy guy, and I am glad I got a chance to redeem myself after he crushed the Klingons the day before. FW Round 2 Missed Game MG (0) Round 3 Kris Sonsteby FW (+65)View opponent's ReportView original Report I finally ran into Kris. it only took 9 games... Kris was playing a VERY fast VERY good TOS solver. I had some problems dealing with his guys. I was able to use Keras and Gal Ga'thong to make him discard his Kirks, and early on he pitched one of his two rescue ships, but I kept calling guys to download that he didn't have. I called kirk 3 times, but that only worked twice, I called spock which was a good one, but the rest of the calls for him to download a card with Keras were failures. The plan is for me to know the cards in your deck, against Kris I was up against a huge disadvantage. The game came down to his 2nd mission. he completed his planet mission, I blew through my space mission. he had a lot of dilemmas under his second planet mission, but was short on skills, but it was an auto-solve when he got guys. so onto his space mission. He hit Tragic Turn like a truck, but stacked a lot of dilemmas. However with a secret ID, I knew he was very light on staffing. we spent a few turns of him drawing and playing some stuff, but I knew, because he didn't tap the table, he had another ship in his deck. which I failed to guess which one it was. The climax of the game came down to the last (played) turn. the score was 30 to 35, with a lot of dilemmas under his 3 missions, and a lot of dilemmas under my 2nd mission. I can see he has 3 cards left in his deck. I call for him to download a ship, and fail. so I use Sent Back to send some random fool back, which causes him to draw 2 cards. if his last ship is one of those cards, I probably win. if it isn't, I probably lose. Turns out his last ship was there and he had to discard it. Kris had taken such care to guard the Enterprise that he played early on I was surprised I actually was able to catch him with a single command star on his ship. After he could not score any more points, despite technically being ahead, he tapped out, because I had 32 minutes to complete a mission that had 3 dilemmas beneath it. Kris is a very honorable player, and I was glad we finally were able to have a game. the last time we met, I won because he played show trial and out of 6 personnel selected Locutus giving me the extra 5 points I needed to win and not get stuck at 95 points (and 5 points to play a K&E just case I needed that as well). this time I won because 3 turns of drawing cards were not a ship, and when the bottom of the deck was reached, out of the last 3 cards, one of the top two were a ship. I consider both of those games extremely lucky wins. My luck cannot hold out forever, but fortunately for me, it held for the day. The Big Show was trying Romulan, and discarded a handful of my All-Stars mid-game thanks to the Gal Gath'thong. With a planet mission already completed and a free pass essentially earned in space, Sent Back forced me to draw my final ship only to have it thrown away on his turn. FL 100-35. Round 4 Nathan W FW (+40)View opponent's ReportView original Report Here we are. the final game. and Nathan rolls out exactly what I don't want to see. I did however bring as much as I could against it, but this is the proverbial bad matchup. But, Nathan is also exhausted and I think I have the physical advantage over him as I am awake and alert. I went second so I was able to download Keras, so that was a very small silver lining. The rest of my opening hand was a whole bunch of verbs. I got the Gal Ga'thong going, so that was good, but Keras got snatched by Holding cell, and I had to come up with a different plan. Ok. here we go. you have no guys. you have 1 ship. your opponent will blow through your dilemma pile like it was snacks in front of a fat guy. aaaand.. GO! So here's the plan. do missions. go solve stuff. So I did that. I managed to find an all star during the game, his name was Mareth. I solved 2 different missions against Nate when he tossed just enough dilemmas to stop me, except I was able to prevent Mareth from being stopped. So after Keras got jacked, I used the Gal Gathong to attempt a space mission. I knew he had Outclassed, so I knew I was just attempting to overcome a dilemma, but it's a dilemma. The next turn Nate threw pitching in, which ended up not being cheap, and Morath made it only stop 1 personnel, and I ended up getting the second half of his dilemmas mis-seeded and walked thorugh the mission. the good thing about having a hand full of nonsense, is when you need to pitch an event, you can do it. I spent 2 turns on my planet mission, but when Nate tossed Issue of Trust, and it stopped 1 personnel, I was optimistic, however the second dilemma he tossed was hard time, and stopped the attempt. boo!! Nate made a critical mistake that I believe was because he was tired, and threw two more dilemmas that were mis-seeded, so my mission had 5 dilemmas underneath and the next turn I walked through without anybody being stopped. Nate had cut right through my dilemma pile like a hot knife through butter, and despite me trying to strip him of his command stars with Sent back, and getting lucky with The Charismatic Mr Kor, he was still able to just toss my dilemmas aside without anything but a stop. I was able to kill one with Hull Breach, but that was it. so here we are. I have 2 dilemmas under Supervise Diltihium Mines. baring a miracle, Nate wins next turn (LOL I can't stop him..) I play Ptol. I scan his dilemma pile and what do I see on top? an Oracle! UGH! So I take 2 guys on the Gal Gathong and fly over to Historical Research and attempt with 1 personnel to clear that off of the top of his dilemma pile, then I make my real attempt at the Reman mines with 9 personnel with 2 under. Then I get super lucky and Nate uses Unexpected Difficulty for the worst dilemma draw. I did not realize how super lucky I was, but I found out in short order. the last mission attempt was Secret ID, which he used to filter out a skill (unsuccessfully no one remembers the skills Romulans have) and it brought in Donatra. then Shocking Betrayal, which was ignored by Mareth, then Moral choice, which actually stopped a personnel, and on to the last dilemma Optical Delusion, which I just had the Programming 2 Security and Transporters to solve. He thought he had me with the transporters, but turns out Mareth has Transporters. I showed the copy of Secret Agenda that I had in my hand so filtering out transporters was not going to work, but I didn't need it. I am totally convinced that I lose this matchup 9 times out of 10. and if Nate wasn't so tired from playing constantly since 10:30am, he would not have made the mis-seeding mistakes or the Pitching In mistake that he did. In the scope of things a few years ago Nate & I both flew into San Diego, and he beat me to go on and win the title, now I have beat him to win a title.. by my count we are 1 and 1... STAY TUNED FOR THE TIE BREAKER IN THE YEARS TO COME!!! In all seriousness, Nate is an excellent player and I count myself very lucky to have won that game, but when the glass trophy is on the line, it's better to be lucky then good. This game is going to haunt me for awhile. My draw deck had nearly every tool to annihilate this deck. My plan was simple: get out the Sao Paulo, Holding Cell Keras if I can, and if not always keep a healthy hand full of cards. There was one other option I strongly considered over the course of the game: have us lose 5 from Torga and force Historical solves for both of us. This was super risky since I didn't know if he had any score 5 mechanics, and any game going to time would leave him in the lead 95-90. The game dictated a "normal" game from me, but that option was certainly compelling. The game went something like this. Turn 1 Sisko downloads the Rio (Sao Paulo in opening hand). Neil stripped some good cards (A Few Minor, Quark) on his first turn with Ultamatum and Tauethn while downloading Keras with Historical. On his second turn Gal Gath'thong came into play and I needed to be mindful of my hand. Meanwhile I begin digging for command stars to fly my ship but am not having much luck. However, I did pull a Holding Cell and didn't need to worry about discards the rest of the game. So if you are reading thus far, you probably figure I go on to win this game in wipe out fashion. Well, notice above I'm omitting what Neil is playing? That's because when Keras was gone and he abandoned his strategy for straight solving, my mind went blank. Who the f has he played? There's that Nanclus guy he's doing weird stuff with every turn. Did he play Karina? No that was Ken's game. Neral doesn't make sense with strength missions, but why am I looking at this Issue of Trust and not trusting it? Mental breakdown or 10 games over 13 hours? Thoughts below. Anyways, I handed him space on his second attempt completely missing a chance to hammer him with Gomtuus -- don't worry I drew those a lot at his planets. Meanwhile, I was having a hell of a time finding a 3rd command star. When I finally found one, Neil made his second good plays of the game (the first being choosing to race me after Keras was MIA): a Hull Breach randomed someone and Mistor Kor randomed Li Nalas. Next turn Neil Sent Back Sisko. So while the rest of my crew remained safe and I easily solved, the Sao Paulo sat there with 6 personnel but 2 stars from being functional -- very annoying. My next turn I played the Rio Grande and drew for stars while Neil went to planet and my dilemma pile continued to sputter quickly giving him his 2nd mission. Having drawn into Lela I resurrected Sisko, flew to one of my space, auto-solved, and buried enough dilemmas on the 2nd mission (no one died or went to a weird place) to give me at least a chance going down the wire. On his subsequent turn, by some dumb luck I must've nabbed Ptol with a Hard Time along the way leaving him a Geology short at the mines. On my turn I auto-solved my 2nd mission and went to planet for the win. I forget all the details of this attempt, but I think I went with 7. Neil SI'd out the Odo I played that turn, but I was able to bring in the Li Nalas he sent to the bottom on my first mission. There was a Renegade Ambush that killed Hoya. Then a Nec Ex killed Li, but setting me up pretty well the next turn. On his turn Neil played Ptol and spied The Oracle's Punishment sitting at the top of my deck. He made his third good/scumbag play by sending down a single personnel attempt to Historical and sent down 9 to the mines for draw 8, spend 8. My draws were: SI, Moral Choice, Shocking Betrayal, Outclassed, Timescape, Rogue Borg, Captain's Holiday, and Optical Delusion. Rogue Borg wouldn't work since he had that Intelligence guy that makes you discard and Captain's Holiday wouldn't work since it is mission skills. That left me my only choice: SI, Moral, Shocking, Optical. Long story short and not to my surprise, he walked through and solved for the win. FL: 60-100. Tough game, dumb game. When he solved his first mission I (pun intended) spaced out the Unexpected in my core and knowledge that I have two Gomtuus sitting not far below that he would have no answer for. Had I done that, I think it would have carried me the rest of the game. Now his D'deridex also gets hit by Outclassed! He got a fortunate selection on my first attempt which lost me a turn, but that's just part of the game. I think I did the same to him with a Hard Time. Closing Thoughts I had a lot of fun playing in a tournament from 10:30am until midnight. Endurance is part of the battle, and I am personally glad I am in good physical shape that I was able to be comfortable for the whole day into the evening. I really do think it made the difference. I was very happy to hang out with all of the excellent players in the MN play group, and I was stoked to meet a few of the people who I know from the boards but have never put a face to a name. The hospitality was excellent, and I can't wait until I can go back! Thank you to everybody who made it a really super fun weekend!