Mmmmmmmm 2E Battle. It was time to try something new and something that hasn't been in our meta for some time (or so I'm told): Battle! Interaction! Fun.
So I ripped off the most interesting (and only) deck I could find that was using the Fed USS Prometheus and did a card-for-card ripoff of it. I played with it in one practice game to much winning so I decided I could handle it and brought it with me.
Round 1
Justin Eaton
FW (+100)
Low and behold my first game is against a returning player who hasn't played 2E in 3 years. I knew my deck was good and angry and I soon figured out that it was really good against Starfleet. I pulled off a promenade school and a Jaresh by turn 4 to have a crap ton of guys out and solving missions by turn 5 or 6. He finally got the columbia out and attempted his first space mission and promptly got shut down by a Gomtuu. On my next turn I left some dudes at a planet and staffed my prometheus and blew him out of the stars. That was pretty much that. Justin was unable to get another attempt going by the time I'd won. I felt somewhat bad but it gave me confidence that this deck had many tools and items at its disposal.
Al's Kitchen Sink deck is very solid and It's not the first time I'd faced it. I had defeated it once before (but only once before) with a deck that was faster (Relativity). My guys were having a tough time getting around his dilemmas and he had two ships going and was attempting missions very quickly. I made a fatal mistake by wasting a turn attacking his bird-of-prey which I knew I could not blow up as on his next turn he simply played another ship and continued his mission attempt. I did manage to blow up this next ship (Gomtuu + Prometheus) but he recovered fairly quickly and I had simply devoted too many resources to messing with Al that we ended up true tie-ing. The only reason he didn't win was a very lucky racial tension at his assess contamination that ended up knocking out just enough cunning to prevent the solve. His dilemmas shut me down.
Corbin was playing a tight Prometheus Battle deck. I didn't get nearly as good a start as I did in my pre-game, it took a while to get both PnP and GUYS in play. I dodged an early ship destruction when he couldn't find all the pieces to use Prometheus. But I got greedy and had a ship destroyed anyway. Corbin looked like he was going to run away with the game at that point, but a timely WNOHGB gave me an opportunity to come back and keep it close. I needed every trick the deck could offer to keep Corbin from getting anymore points and earning a MW.
Round 3
Eric Bieche
MW (+25)
Eric's Relativity build is very solid. His mistakes were his undo-ing in this game unfortunately and perhaps my knowledge of relativity was my undoing. After getting the Relativity Gomtuu-ed, I elected to blow up the ship knowing full well he only had 6 guys on the ship and that getting another copy out would be trivial (he in fact had another copy in hand). I knew that Belanna was in his deck (or at least knew he did usually play with her) so I took the opportunity to blow it up immediately following the Gomtuu. Had I waited for a later turn things may have been different. However, I only ended up winning because he blew a skill call on "Rapid Progress" after he'd been unable to stop someone with Helping Hand in the same attempt (because I had no medical). When he called "Archaeology" and "Treachery" I had Boq'ta and some dude with Treach... too bad for him. That got me two missions and he was unable to get a second done (but he got really close). He most certainly could have won this game.
Closing Thoughts
This is the old putting the Ferrari in the hands of an inexperienced driver dilemma. I played with a very powerful deck and missed opportunities and played things incorrectly. I lucked out far too much to justify a second place finish. My opponents are very good and this gave me a fun lesson in 2E interaction and when to and when not to. All of my opponents were gracious and educational.
