Michael Van Breemen (The Ninja Scot) Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day One 2014-07-12 - 10:30 AM Guess I Should Give It a Try Introduction I don't normally play decks like this but I thought that I could get into the top 8, despite its inherent slowness. If I were to try this again, I would make it significantly smaller. Round 1 Earned Bye EB (+100) Yea, byeness... Round 2 Kevin Jaeger MW (+10) Kevin was rocking a K'mtar fueled battle/FSE deck. My dilemmas were doing their job but I was losing people from his declarations of All-Out War. I got one mission done in one attempt thanks to a lot of cheating (and his forgetting about what skills my people had.) When time was called, I had plenty of dilemmas under ALC but no people in play and I needed to solve this mission for the mod-win. Thanks to drawing into some At What Costs and the realization that I already had a Bird of Prey at Romulus, I dug deep enough to get people with skills to solve for the win. Round 3 Steve Nelson FW (+65) Steve was always looking for the one card and I was messing with his draw deck enough to help make sure that card never showed up. He was running an Unfair Comparison pile so I was being careful with my attempts and, thanks to bonus points and Power Shift, got through missions. He was taking out what few events I had in play (opening hand Viceroy for him) but no interrupts for Tal for him (I kept using them or discarding them instead.) He made it through two missions but I got the full win, the only one of the tournament. Round 4 Neil Timmons MW (+5)View opponent's ReportView original Report 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. 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 Round 5 Mike Harrington FL (-65) His deck reminded me of my regional deck but I kept picking up wrong skills with my dilemmas. Between that and not having mission skills when I would've solved missions made the game go Mike's way. Round 6 Kenneth Tufts ML (-25) The only person I didn't want to play at Continentals as we had been practicing and refining his deck for Continentals. He had what he needed to have in play first and, with a willingness to