Suden Käpälä (SudenKapala) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2021-02-08 - 12:00 AM Ach-Hunting Hugh`s Borgasmic Next Regeneration Exclamation Project. (7v6) Introduction As planned before-hand, this was to be the second gig with "deck 45" (my perversion / modification of the 'Borgasmic' TNG staple deck). I concentrated -- as said in the deck notes -- on getting myself some much-desired Achievements! And, where possible, I made the deck a bit more playable. This was mainly in taking out some extraneous mechanics that depend on drone downloads and a queenly presence. Interesting to play the deck now over the course of a few weeks, instead of having 3 games in 1 day. Round 1 Liam Fox  MW (+30) g222 (21.02.10). One massive cluster-fail of forgetting things, this was. Only during the game I remembered how I try, in my decks of the regular Borg, to keep track of all my options and resources. From then on, it started working a lot better. (No perfect -- but better.) Somehow it seemed that either I forgot a lot more during the previous games with my TNG Borg, but didn't even know I forgot it; or this game my head just wasn't in it as much. I think it was the former -- I'm just now getting to know my deck, me thinks. It was a fun game, though. Up until God took away my cube. And the deck would've been teched against that, if I hadn't moved the tech (Flagship Recovered) from my seed to my draw deck -- in order to make room for the Achievements I was Hunting (hence the deck name). I did that consciouly of course, and could laugh about being sidelined like this (at the end of the game anyway); and there could've been other ways I could've gotten around it. (Wait -- sending Locutus down would've only been 1 personnel w/ INT>6; and I'd have needed two! Well, no, still: comms drones with Lower Decks would've done that trick. I just didn't bring any.) I got to play Tomalak, assi'd Sodor w/ my Servo, saw some Neuropressure action by Liam (groovy), Investigated Temporally for almost half of the time I could've done so (LOL); understood how Continuing Mission actually works for me outside of Coming Of Age starters, too (more LOL); observed a real slow-moving Doomsday Machine creep down the 'line; took a card from my Battle Bridge side deck to show something (i.e., not played a card from it, yet); and saw Slent Enemy sprung... Because of taking so much time to run my turns, I proposed -- quite early on -- that we could extend the game. Liam was fine with that. We did so for... well, some time. (Not gonna say how much for fear of having our game disqualified or something. But it was... let's say, around 5'. LOL!) In my last turn -- after I lost my ship -- I decided to use the STP (that I'd played from draw deck) not to pull back my ship -- which I couldn't re-play anyway -- but instead use it with the Wormhole from my QTSD to have the Silent Enemy (specifically in this iteration of the deck for the Obsession Achievement!) move (back!) to the USS Grissom and Liam's Vulcan ship. Since they are Vulcans, all, and had CUNNING >>30, the Enemy didn't actually deter them from scoring any additional points -- but Kavok and his directive of "Experiencing Bij!" did. So the only points scored during the whole game were the 30 by my Consume Resources. A meagre Mediated Win -- but lots of fun. What else happened? I used 2 Willing Companions to play Locutus after Tomalak, and be guarded against 1 nullification at least. I got to see all my drones; except for the new Astrometrics one (but played that against Seppel in g218) and the good ole' Decipher Scout (but I played that often IRL)! Drew the latest version of Negate Obstruction, but didn't get to play it. (Seldomly could or needed to, though 'many' -- between 1 and 3 -- on hand each game. Perhaps cut 1 from the deck!?) Same for AI Kobayashi: drew but not played it. Milled 'a lot of' cards w/ Redirect Effort. It was nice to finally meet the Liam that I've seen in so many tourneys the past weeks. He played an extremely interesting ENT Vulcan / FED TMP time travel/archaeology deck (Kolinahr for short?), that I'd really like to use as a template for my future Vulcan deck. (Had started on one, but not nearly finished. This will be a good boost.) Feels very thematic and seems to be 'episodic'. (Is that the correct word for this? I don't think so...) Capt. Spock, Saavik, Valeris, some of the nicest ENT Vulcan characters... nice to see those in action! I'll have to learn a lot though, because Liam had a lot going on during his turns. I hope he writes as extensive deck notes as I... Round 2 Joe Kallstrom TT (0) g224 (21.02.19). Before the game, the Commander and I got a bit acquinted. Which was fun! This was my first-ever mirrored game, I believe; at least when playing Borg. It was a bit eerie, having my opponent play me -- Hugh -- first, before I got to draw him. It was good that he was there. Just sad, that he was swayed by disloyal, wayward, lost Borg who had turned their back on the true collective. (Mine. Naturally.) And Hugh used his Geology for my Rock People. So awful, seeing him act in this misguided manner... So, mirroring, eh. This also brought with the fact of duplicating missions... my favourite part of the game. (Not!) Well, each of our 3 least Patrol Neutral Zone missions was upgraded to a whopping 90 points!!! Which, of course, did nothing for us. Patrolling is irrelevant. But we almost had a NZ-only game, if not for my Last Outpost. Tomalak joined my side of this Collective Civil War; Locutus fought for the treacherous (teehee!) rebels. Joe was tempted to seed Kobayashi Maru (AGT image) on my mission, exactly where I wanted it -- so I notified him that for me as a Borg player (he already knew, due to my messy seeding, this game) that was only a benefit. So he seeded it somewhere else -- but he got to repay that 'helping hand' of mine multiple times when I did dumb stuff (such as drawing an EOT card early, for TNZ -- and putting it on the BOTTOM of my deck, and not drawing it later... such things). Since there was no danger in the opposing Borg to score points from a creature I'd have wounded, I felt it safe to retaliate against the Planet Killer on my first turn. And I even got the chance to destroy it later! So, I can note in my AAR that by my Obsession, I saved the universe -- actually ridding it of the plague that was the Doomsday Machine. Achievement earned, double time! (And it let me use my BBSD / Battle Bridge side deck, 4 realz, for once. It... must... be... destroyed! Really! LOL.) The Dikironium Cloud Creature wreaked havoc (and let slip the dogs of war) on Joe's crew, because it kills people 'here' -- not just those 'present'. (And it almost got to me, at the other end of the 'line, too.) But he came back from that, obviously, at least to prevent me from getting a win. (On a side note: I had actually considered using both our TNGs to travel from my end o'the 'line to the Cdr's, to escape the Dikironium Thing; but it wasn't necessary.) I played my own, drawn, AI Kobayashi Scenario and attempted Consume Tech -- but got stalled by Spatial Rift. Kind of tough when only the scout drone has Astrophysics; but at least the Observation drone gets to share his skills. If on table, that is. Yeah, that Rift really is prime Negation fodder! On the other hand, so was my Temptation Of Flesh. Only included (like Trauma) as a Borg-themed gimmick, it's unpassable for TNG Borg on the first run. And speaking 'boot Adapting (I love Canada! Wanna visit!), I got to use the TNG AI of Negate Obstruct, by actually nullifying a dilemma with it -- the "Jon Archer sawing through a tree trunk w/ 3 Diplomacy" one. The Biohazard drone was screaming for attention (and a Menace, as such); she popped up every chance she got -- in random selections, by getting (De)frosted every turn by another player, and by just being very present. This was another game which lasted a few minutes longer than regular... At one point we wondered whether to call it quits or play for another 2 turns; we were at a True Tie at that moment. We decided to play on... (Yes, I had been taking some pit stop breaks -- 2 of them -- and I'm still not as fast as this game as I want to. Nor will I ever be.) And we still were -- truly -- tied, 2 full turns later. I'm glad we played on, though; with Locutus traumatized (more on that later), I had a reason to have Lo-Q-tus (i.e., Q of Borg) download a Q-Net. (Perhaps should've done it sooner, even?) It also got me to validate the inclusion of a Dyson Sphere door (which was there primarily for the Achievement; but I like the idea and in a prev. game it had also enabled me to seed Seppel's Empok Nor with dangerous cards). Via the Danger Derelict, I was able to sick 'Oops!' on Joe's hive... and if that hadn't stopped him, Paralyzed By Fear might've. So... there's just one pile left that I haven't seen played out yet... Hope to see that next game... Joe would've won if his Locutus (Leadership for Oops, for starters) hadn't succumbed to his Borg-induced (and wonderfully thematic!) Trauma; he could've unstopped his ship by Making It (The Clown) Sew. (Joke courtesy of the memes thread on forum.) And while I had fumbled enought to make this feel a bit like a victory, it actually was only a 35-point tie... But it was a great game! Sorry we couldn't chat more, but dinner was waiting. (Would've liked to ask about the manner in which, or why, Joe was planning on getting to get to my missions (that is -- given his playing a NZ deck, which usually closely-knit! I started wondering about that since he included multiple[?] copies of Let's See What's Out There. And what were you going to do with that Construct Starship!?) Round 3 Joseph Wisniewski ML (-35) g228 (21.02.28). In a game 'riddled' with technical difficulties (but fun nonetheless), GeraldKW achieved a MW, 35-0. First, at saturday (21.02.27), the Lackey server was down! The whole day. On sunday (whence we could reschedule), it luckily was back up again, but at the end of seeding my WLAN crashed (so I had to re-seed) and our Discord connection had some trouble up until we reconnected for the second time. It was nice to see Klingons in action in a tourney. Disappointing was that they immediately sent my plans for Temporal Investigations across the Final Frontier. That was a bummer. My Vinculum wasn't spicy (as Niall would say, Gerald pointed out) but spiky. I got to play it soon (and Distro Nodes to boot), but it didn't add up to much. A Productivity drone popped into my first hand so that was nice -- again, without much use in such a short game. Both my Topological Anomaly and Danger Derelict piles (and thus both Data & Garak got issues) got triggered. That was fun! I hadn't expected those piles to do a lot (having them mainly for the Borg themed dilemmas) but they proved to hamper a bit. Strict Dress and First Ray-Distruptor each killed a personnel; Oops delayed a turn. And the weird Temptations of the Queen's Flesh also ran some interference. Joseph solved his medical relief. I attempted to scout Detection Grid but Kavok hit me with Bij. That was my 2nd turn (we both finished 2, in total), but we had already extended for the delays and we needed to wrap up regardless. So that was some unsatisfying game time, where actual play was concerned; but we got some surprises due to my dilemmas and it was fun to chat and joke a bit. Round 4 Bye BY (0) Although I love playing (nobody wants to sit out a round), I was happy to get this one BYE because it helped me land the "full set" Achievement. And it's hardest to 'earn' ('get'?) a BYE; because naturally, we always try to prevent them by gathering an even number of players. And while this was also a 4-round event, I thought it'd also help a lot for the 'top seed' achievement, but this was an incorrect assumption. (Seems to have been a timed Ach?) In the game report and event pages, though, at first it seemed that I should play Caretaker's Guest. (The pairing software somehow did that, Carter notified us.) Now, I'd have really liked to be playing Seppel again, but I'm sure we'll have another chance soon, given our mutual attendence record of the past months. Closing Thoughts I forgot to immediately write up any thoughts I may have had, and only now (31.03.14) do I return here and clean up this draft AAR. So, not much to add at this point. But there's at least this: nope, I wasn't happy with how this next iteration of my deck performed; but of course, it again was top-loaded with Ach-hunting cards. (And getting those was a planned fun part. So there's that!) Also, I felt I was off my game here -- I think I felt that my learning curve isn't as steep as I want it to be. Then again, I'll just have to accept that I only 'just' started out with all these new aspects to the game (Lackey, online, OTF, and Virtual cards -- all at the same time in December'20). I guess I should just give myself some time to get used to it all, still. Thanks for playing and/or organizing, everybody!