Neil Timmons (ntimmons) Tournament Report - 2E - Worlds Day One 2014-08-15 - 09:00 AM 2014 Gencon day 1 deck Introduction So here we are. Gencon 2014. and I have decided to play the deck that I said was a one trick pony and would only work once. However with all of the errata that has been going on, in my brain this is my best deck. my thought process is that this deck is a good day 1 deck where I can drop a game or two, but a bad day 2 deck, even if I got all the way to the finals last year, this year it's what people would see coming. I was wrong, but it all worked out in the end so it was fine. However, here we go with day 1. Round 1 Earned Bye EB (+100) two earned byes from continentals really made choosing this deck easier. I think it is good against Romulan with all of the shocking betrayal, and my own N'Vek, and people who don't know what's coming should be easier games... but let's see what happens. Also turns out I had forgotten 3 cards on my deck-list, so I couldn't play with them. So before someone yells at me for not playing with Clear Ultimatum, it was a mistake, I forgot to add them to the deck-list so I had to take them out and not play with them. Round 2 Earned Bye EB (+100) I had to be there with decklist at 9:00am, so I was there. then I wandered the convention for a while hanging out in great anticipation until I finally got to shuffle up and play Round 3 Geoffery Peterson FL (-100) Geoffery is playing a TNG speed deck of the likes I have never seen. it's a speed deck with a bunch of guys I don't recognize. but that's ok.. once my engine gets going, it's devastating. so when it got going, it didn't really hurt Geoffery too bad. the dilemma pile was relitively ineffective and I failed to catch an Ace. Geoffery played a flawless game with carefully managing his personnel, dealing cleanly with the attrition that I was causing him and running through missions. I stalled him a little bit when I stripped him of all of his Biology at his 3rd mission, but I was so far behind it didn't matter, he had all the time in the world to find a 2nd biology and fly over and win. Geoffery always brings different decks and is always a forma table opponent. I hear he didn't do as well as I thought he would, but he did blank me right out of of the gate. FL 100-0 Round 4 Ben Hosp FW (+40) Ben was trying to do a very similar thing that I was doing, but with Sensing a Trap and My Patience has Limits. I think he fell into the trap that I have fallen into, that of the many mini-strategies that Romulans have, he just picked too many.. I don't know, I haven't really gone through his decklist, but during the game I kind of got the galgathong jump on him and using his own HQ (in the Romulus sector) and his Supervise Dilithium Mine, I was able to eliminate the range issues and do missions just a little bit faster. In our test games both of us won about half the time, this game could have easily gone Ben's way. FW 100-65 Round 5 Kenneth Tufts ML (-10) Here we go.. my new Nemesis.. Ken. Ken is a 1e player who just downloaded the new current powerful deck & just started playing 2e. but he is a really good player, so adapting to the other game wasn't hard and he has taken me down a few times in the last couple of months. Ken is playing the actual scary Romulan deck that everybody is afraid of. but I have 2x shocking betrayal! Yeah, it didn't work out. Dreamer and the dream is an evil card, and Ken was able to catch 70 points with his 2 missions to my 60 points with 2 missions. so GUYS for the win... ML 70-60 Round 6 Lucas Thompson FW (+70)View opponent's ReportView original Report Lucas is a guy from Boston, who plays in the group WITH Len. Len is a guy who used to play in Jersey. so when Lucas rolled out his missions and said "so this is a Len deck.." I said "yeah, I know, I have that deck in my backpack right now.. it's really good." he sighed. so the cardassians are really good at cheating. lots of fun cheating stuff to get around dilemmas. but it is not good when they have to continually discard their cheaters. HE did get 2 missions done,but he only had about 7 pepople left. he attempted his last mission and a couple of them died, then he sent the remaining 5 and with his own transport crash survivor I killed 4 of them leaving Evek looking around "guys? where is everybody? guys? hello? is anybody else there?" I was able to complete my mission and win. This game had me to the awesome play where I sent back parn with 1 card left in his deck, and had him draw 2 cards the top card of his deck and Parn, then made him discard both. It was a creative way to get rid of two personnel that he would have otherwise needed to complete his final mission. After starting this tournament 1-2, Lucas helped me get off tilt to win the games I needed to qualify. Thanks Lucas! edit: my apologies... I don't want to cause any fights, I am appearently off mark, (unless we can settle those fights with a best 7 out of 13 set of trek games..) FW 100-65 Neil's Romulan discard deck was one of those decks that I made the conscious tactical decision to not try to build a counter for. I doubted anyone else would play it, and he's got enough game that I doubted he'd play it day 2. I wasn't shocked he was playing it day 1 though, and was not surprised at all that I lost to it, my deck is just too thin. I was only able to play enough personnel to solve one mission before I was decked (I was one person shy of solving 2 missions, a potential timed win scenario). We both had fun in this game, joking about Evek being my last guy alive: "Guys? Hello? Where'd everyone go?? I'm so lonely..." Edit: "Lucas is a guy from Boston, who plays in the group that Len built." Them's fightin' words, Timmons. Round 7 Auwerd Bijker FW (+100) Auwerd was playing Klingons. whom I know very well. this game was actually rough for Auwerd. He tried to short stack a mission by going with 4 guys at Rescue prisoners, but Assassination attempt took a bite out of his guys. then he just felt the pain of the constant discards, and had a bunch of guys die while trying to attempt a mission. after his space mission he caught a biogenic weapon, and that was how the game was until I scored the rest of my missions. Auwerd was a gentlemen and a very classy guy. I enjoyed playing against him and look forward to seeing him in the future. FW 100-0 Round 8 Michael Van Breemen FW (+45) True to form, Michael had another really crazy good deck. it is rather simple. Enterprise B gives you 10 points to complete a mission. if you do 2 40 point missions and get the bonus, you can get 20 bonus points from the ship. I was able to pull off a necessary execution when he went planet first, so that was nice, but he could just toss out people so fast I couldn't keep up. but the discards did eventually slow him down and I was able to get some missions done. But the game came down to a very dramatic twist. weeks ago we played Continentals. two times I sent a dead-bluff crew on a mission attempt. he used Aces or Guillotine to call mission skills only for me to say "swing and a miss!" on my third attempt at Continentals, he did the same thing, called mission skills, but I had actually brought the mission skills (thinking ha! he will think I am bluffing!) and murdered guys and I was short the Archaeology to solve and I lost the game because of it. This time around exactly like I did last time, I put 2 guys aboard the ship, and said "I attempt with 6". Michael went around and around in his head, and finally said "this is either the worst or the best play ever. I send no dilemmas" He had just seen me play Ptol and reveal 1 ACE, guilottine on top of the deck, so I am sure he was thinking that what I was trying to do was just stack mission dilemmas so I could make my 'real' mission attempt next turn (or 2 or 3 turns later depending on how many guys he kills). However, I rolled over the mission skills and won the game. Michael was 2 turns away from winning, so it was actually a really good play, but this was "The Mission attempt that started at Continentals." Michael has always had my number, and if I get predictable, he will catch me and win.. the only way I can win is to be unpredictable. Yes, in this case, "I attempt a mission with guys who I know can solve the mission" was the unpredictable move, but still, it's the only way I can beat him. Closing Thoughts Romulan Discard is not good. it isn't bad, but it isn't good. I win with it with a simple mantra. "know what is in your opponent's deck. make him download that with Keras, make him discard that and cripple him." This is an awesome strategy when you know what is actually in your opponent's decks.. but against people like Geoffrey, and Michael I just had no idea. I was guessing in both games, and neither was really effective. I only won against Michael by finally completing a mission started at Continentals, and agaisnt Geoffrey I got blanked. Lucas was playing a deck I had in my backpack, and Auwerd was playing Klingons and Ben was my testing opponent, but still, I was very lucky to only drop 2 games. So I did not choose romulan discard for day 2, mostly because I knew I was running up against Michael first round... I did not figure I could get him to send no dilemmas a second time... so I had to make a change.