Marcus Smith (Carwash) Tournament Report - 1E Modern - Omarion Nebula Regional 2011-06-19 - 10:30 AM Scouting for Juvenile Heterogametic Humanoids Introduction This tournament was great fun, and well worth the long journey down. Many thanks to James for organising it, and to Danny and Paddy for their help and suggestions in practice matches beforehand. :) Round 1 Sean Turner FL (-25) Sean was playing Delta Quadrant Voyager-and-Vidiians, by the numbers. It was a fast deck with plenty of free reports and highly skilled personnel going for a two-mission win - but not very interactive and somewhat dull to play against. I had appalling luck with my opening hand: no ships at all, and after wasting a turn playing nothing to fetch an Obelisk to Masaka my hand, I was still no better off. In the end I wound up two turns behind before I could start reporting Scout vessels and scouting for Establish Gateway, by which time Sean's Vidiians had already amassed a sizeable crew. The damage was done, and although I managed to complete three Establish Gateways for 75 points, I couldn't recover from my initial setback and the speed of Sean's deck coupled with a two-turn head start sealed his victory. Round 2 Niall Matthew FW (+90)View opponent's ReportView original Report Niall's deck was an ambitious Khan/Revenge strategy, with Klingons and the High Council for free plays (to be infected with eels), and lots of Handshakes for draws. I'm not sure exactly how the deck was supposed to work, but my playing a scout swarm seemed to mess it up somehow. :/ He had seeded two Starry Nights at adjacent planet missions to ensure he got the Genesis Device as early as possible without being thwarted by Dead End (he also named 'Dead End' for a Genesis Effect played on one of them). Unfortunately, the skill base of his Khan-followers was poor: they lost 10 points to a Lack of Preparation, and had an regrettable tendency to die en-masse to Hortas, Dal'roks, and Neural Parasites before getting stuck behind walls they could not pass. Even Khan died at one point (it was okay though - Niall had a spare :). All of these setbacks to Niall getting the Artifacts gave me the time I needed to bag three Objectives and complete scouting for a fourth. By that stage though Niall had rallied, acquired the Genesis Device, and was poised to start scoring points from Revenge. I hit a run of bad probes for my final objective (despite re-probing with Two of Twelve) but a turn later I probed successfully and just squeaked in 100 points before Niall was able to unleash hell. It was close at the end! Ah!! A Borg deck minus the Queen, how refreshing to see. Scout Vessels? Even better, no match for my souped up Reliant. Let me just fly to the Gamma and Delta Quadrant and pick me up some easy points.... It's a shame I took out my QSD at the last minute. The first of two non interacting decks Marcus was going for his gamma and delta missions to scout. Thankfully some well placed combos and SoG cards kept his Borg busy. Meanwhile in the alpha quadrant Khan and co ran in to some trouble through Dead End, Dal Rok and Horta. managed to nulify horta but DR and DE were still between Khan and Genesis. Marcus eventually got through my nasty combos and started to probe for his last AP. 3 bad probes in a row but eventually got the probe he needed for the win. FL If only I had some wormholes.... Round 3 Stuart Marsh MW (+15)View opponent's ReportView original Report This was by far my most difficult and most enjoyable match of the day! Our decks were fundamentally mis-matched: the nature of my deck (no stealable missions, masses of ships) meant that Stu wasn't able to drop many of the nasty surprises he had planned. But the nature of his deck in turn was very disruptive to my Borg scout strategy. This made for a very interactive, very fun game! :) Stu was running Remote Interference for draws; this typically meant that he'd report Raptor One adjacent to my scout ship, move there for the draws, and then attack. It didn't matter which quadrant I tried to hide in - he could return the drone ship to hand an redeploy it at will. The constant attacks hampered my scouting and probing, and at one stage meant I had to wait a turn after scouting was complete before playing another ship to probe with to make sure my forces weren't there to be attacked (precluding the probe). Stu's Tactics consisted almost entirely of Target Shields, which was both a blessing and a curse: it meant that he was effectively unable to *destroy* any of my ships for their points… but it also meant that he was able to very quickly reduce their shields to zero, and then play Outgunned to capture them and their crews. This happened three times! :/ More often than not my turns were very short, as I was frequently unable to do anything, or play anything without it being rendered immediately useless. Fortunately I did have *masses* of ships in my deck, and by judiciously using Transwarp Network Gateways and Space-Time Portals to remove them from harm's way at key moments, I was able to complete two very slow, very painful Objectives. Stu's turns by contrast were long and convoluted affairs with lots of downloads and a boggling array of ship and personnel movement shenanigans to enact his plans-within-plans strategy. It was hard to keep track of what was going on - and a couple of times it even seemed to get too much for Stuart! - but it resulted in a series of successful and strategic gambits for him. It's no wonder our game went to time though! In a desperate attempt to scrape together whatever points I could manage, I played a Resistance Is Futile on one of my completed Establish Gateways for +10, and completed scouting on an Assimilate Planet. Despite at one point losing an entire crew to a Barclay's Protomorphosis Disease, Stu had completed two missions and was in the lead, avoiding dilemmas by sending people back to the Drone Control Room mid-mission with Daniel's Out Of Time SD. Despite further losses of crew he's also managed to clear out Quash Conspiracy ready for a win next turn. At this point time was called! Stu had gone first and so my turn was the last one: I probed successfully for the Assimilate Planet, leaving me on 85 for the win, and Stu never got to finish Quash Conspiracy. :( If time had been called a few seconds later, it would all have been over for me! Stu was very sporting about it, and I really felt a bit outclassed against his deck. But it was a fun game, and I look forward to playing him again in future. Marcus was playing the classic Borg Scout ship deck (or as we used to call it the “Borg Shopping Trolley Deck”). He had alpha, gamma, and delta missions. He started off reporting a scout ship to the gamma quadrant and scouted a space mission and straight away hit one of my damage dilemmas. Two target shields took his scout ships shields to 0! I reported Raptor One to his location and used an Outgunned... It must be the only time a weapons 3 ship would ever manage to outgun another ship. Over the course of the next few turns more Scout ships dropped in and he would then use adapt negate obstructions to move to the next dilemma. During this time I managed to outgun a total of 3 Scout Ships and when he moved into the alpha quadrant I hit one ship with a Romulan Ambush. But he was still managing to score points. While my Raptor One was battling Scout Ships I had managed to complete two missions to score 60 points. Marcus was on 50 Points. He played a Resistance is Futile to get to 60 points then moved to complete an assimilate planet. He completed scouting. In the next turn I threw everything I had at Quash Conspiracy by the end there were no dilemmas under it and I had Sela on board a ship but stopped – so next turn I would win! Marcus took his next turn and just before he went to probe for his last mission time was called!!!! He scored 25 Points from assimilate planet and the game finished 85-60. It was seriously a case that if time had been called 10 seconds later I would have won...... bugger! Round 4 Paddy Tye FL (-25) This was something of a less interesting game, simply because Paddy and I had played the same decks against one another a couple of times before in practice (along with Danny, who ended up winning the tournament). Consequently we both knew what to expect, and specifically, I expected to lose: I knew from experience that Paddy's Mirror Federation/Cardassian deck was a fast one, with lots of draws from Ore Processing and plenty of free plays. He'd only made one alteration since the last time we'd played - the addition of a second Bajoran Wormhole, which allowed him to reach my ships in the Gamma Quadrant, making things a little more difficult once I'd completed my objectives in the Delta Quadrant. In the end though he was only able to destroy one of my ships for points, a necessary sacrifice since I needed it there in order to successfully probe. Paddy was using Occular Implants to vet Dilemmas before attempting missions, but since we both knew one another's combos anyway it was somewhat redundant. In the end I managed three Objectives for 75 points, but Paddy's Mirror super-teams walked through my dilemmas too fast for me to keep up with, and he won. I *knew* I should have put some The Higher… The Fewers in! ;)