Michael Van Breemen (The Ninja Scot) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - American National 2011-01-15 - 10:00 AM Diversity Introduction Well, it's the first big tournament of the year and I haven't the foggiest clue what to play. It's not helpful when you have ten possible decks that you can choose from. After rolling a Scattegories die (which is a 20-sided die btw), it decided on this deck. As you can see, it's a very simple deck - cheap above-average integrity people + 3 missions I can solve with four people + distant exploration = win. Granted, there's lots of holes in this deck with no death prevention, no interrupt prevention, no event prevention and if I don't get 10 bonus points from Distant Exploration, I have no way to win. Plus, Casual Recursion would've made me very sad. Yet, this is the deck that the die chose so that's what I went with. Round 1 David Kuck FW (0) David was playing cadets which could match me in the speed department, but the Lwaxana Troi/These are the Voyages makes it go even faster. He was also using Minuet to stop important people after each dilemma which makes killing the people I want much more difficult (that is, until she eventually died herself.) He went after Geological Survey first (didn't have enough cadet I think), lost half his crew but could still staff the ship. After building up, he went after Practice Orbitial and lost half his crew but could still staff the ship. He saw my two or three The Manheim Effects in play which would let me take a dilemma back from underneath a solved mission of my choice for the next attempt so he ignored those two missions and went after Survey New World. A lucky pickoff of his possibly last Davies took away either his Geology or Science needed for the cunning requirements. Meanwhile, I was sorta chugging along, having a strange draw so that I couldn't seem to get people which considering the amount of people in the deck, is surprising. I made it through Investigate Destruction but somehow had no Biology for solving Investigate Alien Probe so I went to my Eliminate Harvesters instead while waiting for a second ship as well. At the planet, it was a one-under, can't solve lovefest and multiple copies of Skeleton Crew at Eliminate Harvesters and eventually Investigate Alien Probe made it more difficult to get through them. I was more worried when he had gotten a Back to Basics that he could play (between ships and people, he had at least 17 that went back into his deck) but I managed to make my way through the rest of the dilemmas in space. It was near the end of his turn when a warning came through that time was coming up and since he started, I sped through my turn as fast as possible since he would likely have a chance to win on his turn. I sent down a bunch of people and was able to get through for the win just before time was called. Even though the score was 100-0, it was a lot closer than that. Round 2 Neil Timmons FL (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report 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 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 Round 3 Amber Van Breemen FW (0) My fiancee gave me this look like, "Just get this over with." It wasn't like she didn't know what I was playing, she even helped me sleeved it. It also didn't help that she wasn't liking her Terok Nor deck either since it wasn't working for her like she would've liked. In her words, "I'm not playing Terok Nor in a tournament again." I felt bad but I knew that she wouldn't want me to go easy on her. Plus, she really wanted some of that great prize support (one of our missing skill buttons, Series 6 tournament foils, etc.) so I did the best that I could do oblige. It's this whole soon-to-be spouse thing, making the soon-to-be wife happy. Normally, she was the one with the great random selections but today was not that day against me. It's not a good sign when you lose Dukat to Final Adventure and Damar to the Tragic Turn pull from that same dilemma as well which had also de-staffed her Tenak'talar. Meanwhile, I'm grinding through dilemmas which were all stopper types (although my deck lacking certain skills made simple dilemmas like Warp Bubble Mishap turned into killers) so it wasn't a total walk in the park and made her happy. Eventually, with some carefully played Distant Exploration (after Dukat took one away), I was able to get the win. 100-0 Round 4 Mike Harrington FL (0) When I saw the mission selection, I knew exactly what he was going to do - Solve Instruct Advanced Drone, solve one of the two planet missions and due to challenge twice for the remaining points. I was hoping that my dilemma pile would do enough while I made it through my missions. Unfortunately, my opponent's dilemma pile was just as painful as mine in taking people out (using Subliminal Signal along with Tragic Turn made it fairly painful) but more importantly, he used Korath to take out two of my Distant Explorations. Since I had managed to get through two missions without any of the bonus points for it, I had no way to get 100 points. Eventually, he recovered his missing skills and made it through Deliver Ancient Artifact and did his Challenges for the win. 60-100. Round 5 Casey Wickum FW (0) He was playing a DS9 only deck with a few 40-point missions (Protect the Wormhole, the Breach Barrier one) His deck was looking to use the Centaur for the bonus attributes just like mine but his also went for using the Under Siege people which was bad for me since Bashir would wreck my dilemma pile. Thankfully, his first mission attempt, I was able to take him away along with taking out 5 instances of Navigation (Sisko, Jadzia's double Navigation, Melora and Ross) If Kira, Odo and Miles were there, I would've taken out the entire bridge crew in one fell swoop. He eventually solves Protect the Wormhole but by that time, I was able to get through all three missions for the win. 100-40. Round 6 Al Schaefer FW (0) Al is playing one of the bad kind of matchups for this kind of dilemma pile - micro-teams. You don't get to kill enough people and it still leaves too many underneath the mission to really stop them the second time. He was having a hard draw which helped as I was working my way through my missions but I was still concerned. His first attempt at Amnesty Talks, I was able to take out Kira (Lela) with All-Consuming Evil along with taking out almost every instance of Diplomacy in the attempt as well. When he Borum'd Kira back from the dead, I was able to use Uninvited to get Urgency for the stop (Kira had both the only Law and one of the two Diplomacy). Unfortunately, he had used Swashbuckler the turn before to get rid of my second Uninvited to solve the mission and went to Investigate Maquis Activity. He attempts with four and I get the best draw ever - Dalk'Rok and Polywater. I kill one, another gets stopped and no dilemmas are placed under. It was the only time that I played dilemmas all day and not have something go under. It gave me the time to make it through my missions for the win since he had to go to Transport Delegations instead to make it through that mission before going back to Investigate Maquis Activity. 100-70