Lucas Thompson (edgeofhearing) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2011-04-17 - 11:00 AM Borg Assimilator Introduction It had been forever and a day since I'd played Borg, and I'd never played an assimilator in a tournament before, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I opted for a hybrid between the interrupt-only thin version and the event-heavy thick version, hoping to reap the rewards of speed with a modest amount of assimilatory. Also, I only own two copies of Quintessance, so I can only make my Borg decks a certain size. I paired it with a basic Van Breemen pile, one which I'd played around with a bit and enjoy using. I've only got two Clowns, so I had to improvise a bit. Round 1 Amanda Thompson FL (-85) So the wife goes off to her first mission in the new Bajoran resistance ship, and though I only kill off a couple I've got a good feeling I can get rid of the command stars. Of course, she solves using two copies of Ties of Blood and Water, so it's a risky maneuver. Anyways, I invasive drone over to her ship and Abduct + Reborn - and get Dukat and... Zayra??? The guy who can't use his skills when he's present with your non-Bajoran. Great. But it gets worse. I have failed to destaff her, and she flies off with my crew - after nuking Regeneration Alcoves with In the Pah-wraith's Wake. She has no need to go back to that mission, and I cannot draw into another ship OR another Regeneration Alcoves, so I'm locked out of the rest of the game. Kira and Orta play rough with my dilemma pile, and I lose 15-100. Round 2 Bye BY (0) I took a walk down commonwealth ave, all the way to the 95 overpass, at which point it started raining. The rain doesn't last long though, and, while chilly, it was still a nice walk. Round 3 Steve C FW (+30) I had considered rebuilding Tiger Blood from the MN regional (the highest-placing deck that I owned the cards to recreate) - so when I saw TN I got worried. Fortunately, there was no Founder's Homeworld around, so he'd at least have to solve two missions. Also fortunate is I've tried building TN decks many times, so I know many of their weaknesses, including a deficiency in the skill I was tracking... Leadership for Dignitaries and Witnesses. With a probable troika of Our Deaths around, I didn't bother doing any assimilation this game, other than the Dukat I picked up with Assimilate Resistance. It worked out for the best that way: the pile was doing the killing I needed, and queen-swapping with Unyeilding busted me through three missions for the win. 100-70. Round 4 Chris O'Connell ML (-5) Chris had 9 Leadership, plus Gav, with one being Kaitaama. I managed to kill/assimilate all of them on the first trip through his deck, until he got to the In a Mirror Darkly at the very end. Khan! was preventing me from using Reborn (actually, the only time I successfully used it all tournament was when I got Zayra) so I could never get up to the critical mass of personnel I command but do not own that I needed to fully destaff his cheap ships. We both made some critical errors - I failed to play a K&E that would have gotten me through an early Assimilate Resistance attempt, and he attempted with 5 when we had both seeded Transport crash survivors. Even though I lost, it was a really close game, and I actually got to do that which I built my deck to do - assimilate people. By the end I had 5 - several Vulcans and a Weyoun - of his personnel serving the collective. Definitely a fun loss, which is my favorite kind of loss. 65-70