Scott Baughman (Neelix) |
Tournament Report - 1E |
2015-09-05 - 01:00 PM |
Hirogengrams |
Introduction |
Having never tried a Hirogen deck before, I decided that DragonCon 2015 would be a good place to jump right into it. With some help from The Mad Vulcan and a few others on the boards, I stumbled upon this design that emphasized holograms and hunters. It turned out great! |
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Round 1 | | Ryan Sutton | FW (+65) |
My games against Ryan are usually epic affairs, with a key battle (ground or space) often providing a moment of clarity as to the eventual victor. This time was no different, with Ryan sending a strike team after my two lonely Anthropology mission specialists in the Alpha Quadrant early in the game in order to kill them and deny me my extra card draw each turn from a Duck Blind. But having lost very few personnel - and rather unimportant ones - to this assault, I felt confident that I could at least get some good points on the board before Ryan could get up and running. He was doing Bajoran Resistance Cell shenanigans and later I found out playing the deck he used to win continentals. Imagine my surprise, then, when my dilemma combos and seeded cards started causing him problems. I used the combo Garbage Scow dilemma in these combos and had downloaded a Mission Debriefing into play with a Ready Room Door on my second turn. It's an older combo - scow plus debriefing - but it still works and Ryan even complimented me on my old school tech. Later, he hit a nice combo of Kelvan Show of Force into a Shades of Gray: Brutality-enhanced Barclay's Protomorphosis Disease, and lost an entire crew! Ryan slowly rebuilt while my Hunters and holograms went about solving missions and scoring bonus points on the Establish Home Planet mission for Holograms. Incredibly, Ryan walked into another of my BPD combos and lost ANOTHER group of personnel. I won before he could get enough people out to come back from the second board wipe. Great game, Ryan, and I look forward to our next duel. |
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Round 2 | | Phil Schrader | MW (+40) |
Phil was playing somewhat of a mirror match, except his version didn't have any alpha quadrant missions. I seed Save Stranded Crew mostly for the download of All-Consuming Evil, and he knew it. As we were making dilemma seeding decisions, Phil said, "Ah, you're probably not going to the AQ anyway." And I dutifully played along and nodded sagely. He decided to seed nothing under SSC so I knew I could get my AQ points (to satisfy You Are a Monument) relatively easy if I could just get the other points. Phil's version of Hirogen, though, involved the Genesis Device, so even though I (luckily) seeded my Dead End under the mission he planned to torpedo for points, he used his own Cytherians to score enough points on his own first mission to cruise past the Dead End. He did use The Genesis Effect to name Dead End, though, as an insurance policy against point loss, I suppose. He was also using a lot of holograms and so my Barclay's combos weren't as effective since Holograms don't suffer permanent death. However, one copy of Kelvan Show of Force slowed him down a turn as you need at least two non-holograms to get past it, LOL! I made two crucial errors in this game that kept me from getting a full win, both of which are due to the fact that I had not played it before coming to this tournament. That's right, I won with ZERO practice, hah! My first error was in sending my entire away team - Hunters and Holograms alike - to attempt an empty Establish Home Planet mission. I forgot I'd only get the bonus points if I sent solely holograms. Woops. My second came late in the game. I had used my Wormhole mission and a Wormhole Interrupt to get to the AQ and was sitting at 90 points. I had one other Wormhole interrupt in my hand, but I couldn't remember my back up plan for getting to the other quadrant again. In desperation, and with time ticking down, I played Isomagnetic Disintegrator hoping to draw into my Wormhole from my discard pile. Phil meticulously made sure I shuffled discarded seed cards (that weren't dilemmas) into my new deck so as to hope to keep me from getting it. Phil's plan worked and I was "stuck" in the AQ with no way to attempt my only unsolved mission there for the win. However, on his side of the table, my Garbage Scow was causing him problems as many of his Engineers had died to Braclay's earlier in the game. Phil made some comments about his lack of Engineer and then double-checked his Rituals of the Hunt to see who he was copying from my side. The game was like attack of the clones with the doubled Hirogen personnel in play as well as Hirogen copying skills from other Hirogen on the other side of the table! Turns out, he was hunting Idrin at that point in time so had another Engineer. As time wound down, Phil needed to go to the other side of the spaceline to pick up his lone "Printed" Engineer and then use one of his Hirogen with Anthropology who was gaining Engineer from Rituals of the Hunt targeting my Idrin. Thinking quickly, I used Space-Time Portal to return my ship to hand with Idrin aboard. With no Engineer in play on my side, Phil was locked out of his final mission and I got the modified win as time expired. Whew! It was only AFTER the game, and that move with STP, that I re-read that novel-length game text on it to note -- I COULD HAVE used it as a second Wormhole interrupt to get back to the Delta Quadrant and possibly solve my last mission for a full win. D'oh! |
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Round 3 | | David Beets | FW (+65) |
Dave was playing a cool Starfleet deck with some nice Backwards-Compatible 2E cards from the Enterprise crew over there. He played Orion slave girls for free, had the Starfleet HQ online and all sorts of cool shenanigans - but that group was especially vulnerable to my beefed up Barclay's Protomorphosis Disease/Kelvan Show of Force combo and Dave suffered two horrendous board wipes in two mission attempts. He did solve one mission, but not before my crazy "download the skill you need on a hologram" deck could get enough points to make it all academic. This game, I left a mission in the DQ empty, having cleared out all the dilemmas and then went and solved Save Stranded Crew to avoid the You Are a Monument problem. On my final turn, I took a full ship of about 20 personnel back to the Delta Quadrant using a Wormhole Interrupt and Space-Time Portal and then unstopping the Olarra with Iden on board thanks to a seeded "Make It So" to solve the empty mission for the full win. |
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Closing Thoughts |
Hirogen with their Holograms are no joke. This deck doesn't play a ton of free personnel each turn - in fact, you try to avoid playing more than one free card in order to keep extra draws from New Arrivals online - but the people you do play are QUALITY! You can download a variety of really great skills through canny use of Holodeck Doorways AND the hologram folks are basically death proof! Add to this the ability to download the highly useful Rituals of the Hunt OR a Hirogen ship (even the unique Olarra) via Hirogen Hunt and the boys in blue are no joke! Big thanks to J. (The Mad Vulcan) for helping me work on this deck ahead of time and nail down dilemma combos and self-seeds. Huzzah! |
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