Matt Kirk (CaptMDKirk) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2011-11-23 - 05:30 PM Short Stack: Earth DS9 Introduction I have been beating on the door of The Bare Minimum for a few months now with a few near misses, but largely failure when it came to 35 deck/20 dilemmas. I had been cycling through playing different affiliations in my Short Stack decks, and it finally came together tonight with Earth DS9… which is ironic because the last time I won a 2E tournament, I was playing the same HQ. Round 1 Johnny Holeva FW (-20) Big stack of Voyager cards, like Euro-sized. After the shuffle and cut, he nonchalantly drops Vger with Janeway and Revised Chuckles aboard. At this point I know I'm in for a long game, but I also know that if I can keep draining his resources (core events & cards in hand), my dilemma pile should be able to stand up to his crew eventually. He stacks a space mission or two as I struggle to get my crew together. I head out and he hits me with Back to Basics, since his discard pile is full of VOY ships. I am displeased, but even more so when he uses The Trial Never Ended to get it back. I realize quickly that I need to switch my teams to ultra-small, to reduce the possibility of him drawing B2B again, and also to disable his opportunity to play it. I redshirt on a planet to clear his B2B stacked with Trial, and manage to skate through a planet mission, with Johnny playing no dilemmas. I'm a little confused, but later he would tell me that all his dilemma draws were based around the maxi-big 8-costers from Necessary Evil that depend on a core full of events for discounts. But since I had been forcing him to use Chakotay's ability to destroy them, he was unable to smack me around with any of them, of which I was very glad. I managed to squeak this one out after a key stop from Drumhead, and then Alluring Spy on the final turn. 100-80 Round 2 Nathan W MW (-10)View opponent's ReportView original Report I hadn't seen Borg in a while, and was immediately glad that I had Mediate Peace Treaty as a safe haven against assimilation shenanigans. It turned out to be irrelevant, since Nate was trying a straight up 2-mission win deck, scoring 15 from 3x Annexation Drone, and 5 from Debate Over Dinner, with two 40-point missions (Breach Barrier & Restore Errant Moon). I snagged Locutus early on with Holding Cell, and tried to find Dignitaries and Witnesses every chance I got. It turned out to win me the game along with The Clown: Go Away; I stopped Nate at least five times with the one copy of D&W I ran. I came from behind to win this one at time. 70-60 I was pretty much ahead the entire early game. About half way through I thought the game was in the bag. I was slowing him way down and single attempted my space mission. Things were going good until I hit Restore Errant Moon and got smoked. I couldn't stack a single dilemma, getting hit by Echo Papa, Dignitaries, and Captain's Holiday over and over. The Clown kept saying go away, but I was too stubborn to do just that for one turn. I think he probably returned 10 drones back to my hand. My dilemma play was good, but his crushed me considerably more. It went to time, but I doubt I'd have been able to squeak through his minimum sized dilemma pile. Congrats on the tourney win, Matt! Modified loss: 60-70. Round 3 Rogue Shindler FW (-80) I had tested against Charlie with his Bajoran Resistance deck, and I was not at all confident that my dilemma pile was going to be able to stop Rogue's version, especially since 2 walls feature Geology, which BR happens to be good at (Captain's Holiday and Dangerous Climb). I got a speedy start to this one, with a team attempting aboard the Centaur on turn 3. Rogue intentionally misseeded an overcosted dilemma to hose the Centaur's ability, and that cost me a turn while I found others to make up the difference in Integrity. Holding Cell grabbed Curzon Odo from Rogue early on, and that left him needing to blow 2 interrupts before being able to make the third one stick. He ended up being 1 Strength shy of smoking Off World Raid on his first try, and came over after I had finished off Track Survivors with help from Melora Pazlar at a whopping 14 Integrity (borrowing 8 from Worf). He scored 20 points with Just Like Old Times and Day Kannu before I was able to double team Risa Shore Leave and claim my five new achievements! 100-20