Matt Kirk (CaptMDKirk) Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day Two 2013-08-17 - 02:00 AM No Blades, No Bows Introduction I had chosen my Day 2 deck before I flew into Indianapolis. I knew that modified wins would be sufficient to advance, so I went with the old warhorse that Justin Beal became famous for: Far-Seeing Eyes lockout. Remove your opponent's Exobiology (and Telepathy) and play Telepathic Deception for the lockout. There were a few hitches in the plan… Round 1 Richard New TT (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Richard was playing the typical Ferengi deck with Reyga and Mirror Rom. I stripped out his Exo fairly early, but Richard dodged a Telepathic and a Dignitaries with Rule #33 to switch to 3 Acquisition. I came back with two missions, and going into the last turn, he was ahead 60-55. I had destaffed his Kurdon at his third planet mission, and he couldn't draw into enough reinforcements. I dropped Tebok with his upgrade to rig the top of Richard's deck for my Prejudice & Politics, and tied it up. He stopped me at my last mission and I advanced due to being the higher seed. Richard was a great competitor and good sport. Stupid me. Big mistake #1: I threw down an Insurrection against Assess Contamination thinking it would overcome. Then, Hard Time gets overcome instead and Matt had an extra guy to Power Shift through and the last turn would have become unnecessary. I had an Unexpected Difficulties to pop. It might not have made the difference, but I should have tried. It couldn't have gotten worse; the complete mission tied us. Big mistake #2: Attempting on my second to last turn, I hit Caretaker's "Guests" and I thought I could grab Ulis from the deck to bring Reyga (his inevitable choice with the only Astrometrics) him right back. I don't know why I was thinking Secret Identity. Real big mistake #2: After he picked Reyga, I STILL didn't pop Reyga's ability, thinking the situation was finished. If I had, I would have had staffing and another shot at the last mission. Again, it might not have made a difference, but I would have loved the shot. I have 1E players in my area and am rusty on technique. Oh well, I got to Day 2! Still, Matt got pretty far. I wonder how I would have done. Round 2 Aaron Weil MW (+20) I'd seen Aaron lately during Regional season in SoCal, as he is just up the coast from me in the Los Angeles area and often attends the Santa Barbara events. He had gotten a taste of this deck when I visited for their Regional in June, and I had a pretty decent idea of what targets to focus on in disabling his fast and capable Starfleet build. I had my best opening hand of the day, while Aaron got stuck without Nathan Samuels, the centerpiece for his deck. I got Far-Seeing Eyes rolling early, removing both copies of Phlox and weeding out other potential threats. I locked him out and picked up the win after time was called. Aaron was gracious in defeat. Round 3 James Booker MW (+1)View opponent's ReportView original Report I had handled Booker's Cadets fairly easily in our Day 1 match, and I was a little surprised to see it again on Day 2 - it didn't strike me as a particularly great choice for the Day 2 meta, but he was going for straight speed, hoping to outrace any police decks. He very nearly did against me, and it was only because I used Power Shift to boost my Romulans past Assess Contamination's requirements and commanded completed planet and space mission, while Booker was ahead on points but only had completed his one mission. We chatted for a bit afterward and I advanced to the semis along with fellow Risan Chris Donati - we could only meet in the final if I could pull off a major upset in my next game. This game was a close one. I went first but he was able to keep me from solving the cadet mission for a decent amount of time. However, he was off to a slow start because he couldn’t download as much stuff as he wanted to because I kept interrupts out of my hand. I believe he solved a quick 30 point mission without much resistance but on subsequent attempts he was hit by a Gomtuu and Greater Needs. Eventually, I solve the cadet mission and head over to my planet mission and try to solve with two different away teams, but the mission got tagged with a Timescape. As I’m ending my turn, Charlie says we have 10 minutes left and Matt begin his turn. He spends some time thinking about he wants to do and he plays some guys and decides to play an At What Cost and prolongs his turn even more. He takes some time to figure out his two away teams and sends one down. After I play some dilemmas the away team gets stopped. Time is called and he starts his second attempt. Unfortunately, my random selection on my Unfair Terms fails to snag his 2 cost guy with Anthropology and he ends up using Power Shift 4 times to meet the attributes requirement of the mission to go along with the skills he has to solve the mission. I had 55 points when time was called. He only had 40 points, but because he solved both a planet and a space mission, he was the winner. After the game ended, Charlie came over I expressed my disgust of the time rules in such a high level event and I told Matt that he played pretty slow at the end. To be fair, he had to take a lot of time to figure out his away teams and he did play AWC to prolong his turn, but I was just irritated that I was eliminated from the tournament in such a way. Also, I wasn’t going to call a judge to come make Matt play faster because it’s a not a practical thing to do for a number of reason. For one, there wasn’t a judge that was solely monitoring the top 16. Two, the community is too fragile to have players accusing others of playing slow during an event and to have Charlie crack down on them. Three, as I said before, it was an important turn and I think Matt needed to take the time to organize his away teams. I think I’m more upset with how Matt completed his second mission. Power Shift allows a player to take advantage of the timing rules by manipulating his crew’s attributes by sacrificing what become meaningless points. Romulans are already a slow deck, but I have the feeling that this can be abused in the future. I know I won’t get a lot of sympathy because I played Cadets, but at least I was playing to win the game in a straight forward manner. This was the first time I really felt slighted at a Trek event. All of my opponents have always been extremely honorable. I know people don’t follow the same rules I do, but if I were in Matt’s position, I would have likely conceded because I wouldn’t feel right winning the way that he did. Without sinking his meaningless score, he doesn’t advance. On Friday, I feel I showed some class by conceding to Hoffman. On Saturday, Matt played in a manner that, while not illegal, was fairly scummy due to his long last turn and his use of Power Shift to win via a technicality. What’s the lesson to be learned from all of this? If you can use the rules to your advantage, you have every right to do so, but you must deal with the consequences of those actions. Hoffman and I have a great relationship. For as hard of a time as I give him about playing decks bigger than his kids, I genuinely like the guy because he never tried to be a scumbag to me in the many games we have played going back to the 1990s. When I had to chance to win on a technicality against Hoffman, I didn’t take it. I feel this preserved the relationship Hoffman and I have. As for Matt, I’m afraid I can’t say the same thing. He advanced to the next round I hope he is happy with his accomplishment that he earned. Round 4 Neil Timmons FL (-100)View opponent's ReportView original Report Neil had been in my head on Day 1, playing aggro Klingons just as I did. He was again thinking alike in his choice of Romulans for Day 2. He, however, had taken the old Gal Gath'thong deck and brought it to a true Tier 1 level, whereas I had simply updated Beal's old FSE deck. He emptied my hand relatively quickly, and made sure I could draw more by dropping At An Impasse, then followed it up by playing Sent Back to further drain me down. A couple turns later, I had lost all my ships and retrieval, and Neil finished his first mission, at which point I conceded. A brilliant deck design played to its full potential by a champ. Here is another name of a player who has been in the lower decks for a long time, all of a sudden finds himself in the quarter finals of Continentals. Yet another fright for me where I drew a circle and came up with a huge blank.. What could he be playing?? what will he do?? No matter where he was in the past, he has clearly elevated his play up to very high levels, so if he has practiced a lot, then I may fall into traps! Then he rolled out Romulus. uh oh.. it looks familar.. uh oh.. I don't know where he got it, he said but I don't remember, but it looks awfuly similar to my own romulan deck that I played in Germany in one of the side events. Basically use Far Seeing eyes to strip your opponent of exobiology or biology and telepathy, then run them into Telepathic deception over and over. ugh. This game is really going to be who gets out first. I got out first. he played P&P on the first turn, and followed it up next turn with GUYS. As soon as he had 5 points, he dropped Far Seeing Eyes. ugh. here we go. but I wasn't going to go quietly. so I made him download Far Seeing Eyes as the only card in his hand, then played At an Impasse, then Sent back, to send Far Seeing eyes back, and he doesn't get to draw 2. then used Galg to make him discard the one FSE. then he didn't get to draw cards, then he had to download another FSE, then I caught the 3rd one with a Clear Ultimatum. *whew* bullets dodged (kind of) he had Feast on the dying to get events back, and Tacking into the wind to get dudes back, so I had to Sorus and Clear Ultimatum those away as well. But it turns out I got even luckier. in the discarding mess of earlier in the game, I had forced him to discard all 3 of his ships. With only 3 ships in his deck, he was waiting to play tacking or Feast, so when I took both of those away from him, he had no way to get ships back. So with 20 points he sat there and waited until I completed a mission. As soon as I completed a mission he conceded as the game was actually over with no way to leave his HQ. This game could have gone a very different direction had he been able to get his one FSE going... but I was able to dig under his tricks and catch them before he could get them off. high marks to Matt for taking this deck all the way to top 4, that is impressive. He is a great player and I enjoyed a really great game. FW 35-20 (100-0 by concession) Round 5 Missed Game MG (0) I will just say the game between Neil and Donati was one for the ages, and very entertaining to watch two great players with evenly matched decks go to the limit. Video next year for Worlds! Closing Thoughts I had a fantastic time in Day 2 with several close misses and plenty of dramatic upsets. Congrats to Chris on his spectacular win and bringing the gold home to Risa!