Michael Van Breemen (The Ninja Scot) Tournament Report - 2E - Trek Masters 2016-02-20 - 12:00 PM Brig or Dead, either way works Introduction I had two decks with me - The Well (my TOS two-mission win deck) and what I played which was fine. The pile worked, as long as people weren't able to deal with the death faster than I could solve. Also, I never went first for this entire tournament which didn't help matters. Round 1 Scott Baughman FW (+65) Weenies, weenies and more weenies... I did my best to kill person after person but I can't kill everyone that he has in play. It took so much Telle/Garak/Central Command cheating to catch up in this game, solving my two planets in the same turn. Round 2 John Corbett FL (-70) Avoiding random selection vs Pile of nothing but random skills = very short game. If I had only used a normal pile, I would've at least have been in the game... Still, I did plow through Kressari thanks to 3 Central Commands for the solve so at least there's that. Round 3 Richard Crandall FW (+100) Vulcans. He attempted to interact with God but my pile destaffed his Enterprise-A along with an Endangered (he lacked any NA's anymore.) Meanwhile, I used Telle and Corbin Entek's three captives to make it through the missions with relative ease. Round 4 Lucas Thompson FL (-30)View opponent's ReportView original Report This was a nailbiter and it came down to me screwing up my final two turns - the previous turn using Central Command to get through the final dilemma only to realize that I miscounted my Cunning and couldn't solve. That was my first Central Command which burned a second one, one that I didn't need to burn at all. Final attempt, I forget about Transport Crash Survivors and attempt with five - getting three dilemmas. I used Telle to get around the first dilemma, used the final Central Command to get around another but couldn't prevent the final one from hitting, stopping one person, giving Lucas the solve on the next turn. Fortunately, MVB's kill pile did bury the missions when he killed my people, so I had an opportunity to treat my personnel as expendably as I'd intended. Unfortunately, I'd made a tactical error early on, and failed to move my staffed Excelsior home after my mission attempt, and MVB was able to capitalize on the situation by Ensnaring Beverly. I lost a whole turn or two rebuilding, but fortunately I think the speed of my deck had him rattled too. He lost significant resources to Central Commanding a wall when he couldn't solve, and it burned a second one. He had to dig hard for his third one, and the only time I was concerned about the parallel draws of New Life was when it helped him dig deeper into his deck. I'd managed to fail with two crews and a 5-dilemma third mission due to him topdecking a 1 cost dilemma and then Uninviteding the the second crew, so I had to block him for one more turn from solving his second and third missions. Mission two was buried, so that wasn't much of a problem; and for mission three I drew a timescape. The bad news is that I failed at dilemma placement, and put it after the Excalbian - the good news is that he'd forgotten about TCS and was left with 5 people for team two. He tried anyways because I had a guaranteed solve on my turn, but couldn't pull it off. Really close game. Round 5 Michael Schwartz FW (+70) He was playing Bluegills which, thanks to Ro being immune to random selections, gave him his space mission in one attempt, despite losing half his crew, leaving just barely enough to staff the ship. However, at his planet mission, he loses all but two people thanks to a perfect Overburdened (Consume hits All-Consuming Evil and trips three non-skill dilemmas), he's destaffed. As a result, I get plenty of time to work through my missions for the win. Closing Thoughts I never successfully used Trap is Sprung so that could get cut and I always forgot to use Makbar's text which may or may not have made a difference. Still probably should've used a real pile instead of the kill pile but oh well...