Nathan Miracle (GooeyChewie) Tournament Report - 2E - Trek Masters 2016-02-20 - 12:00 PM Notulans Atlanta Masters Introduction I debated among several choices for my Masters deck not two days before the big event. Notulans won out because I've had a fair degree of success with them in the past, and I knew I could put together the deck quickly. This time I took out literally every Romulan. Fun fact: There's no achievement for running a [Rom] deck with no Romulans. Round 1 Connor Corbett FW (+100) I know Connor has John Corbett for a teacher, and we were playing in a Masters tournament, so I chose to treat Connor as I would any other opponent, despite his age. Connor got off to a decent start, dropping a bunch of Cadets at Earth. The stack of personnel just kept piling up, though, as Connor did not draw into a ship very quickly. By the time he played the Valiant, I was already in a good position. I managed to win without letting Connor complete Practice Orbital Maneuvers. Round 2 Lucas Thompson FL (-100)View opponent's ReportView original Report Sometimes I run dilemma piles which are great against weenies, and sometimes I run dilemma piles which falter against weenies. Today my dilemma pile let me down. Lucas ran a very fast TNG solver, attempting Rigel X multiple times for multiple card draws. My Notulans can attempt missions pretty fast, but not THAT fast. Lucas flat outran me for the full win. Nathan's deck is intended to be fast and play on the opponent's expectations of a Romulan crew to steal missions by not getting stopped by popular meta dilemmas like An Issue of Trust and Personal Duty. Fortunately, I was tracking his skills well enough to not throw either one when I drew them, even if that meant putting more dilemmas under a mission than I normally would. I also enjoyed a speed advantage here, putting him on the defensive (where he would not normally expect to be with a fast deck. Fortunately, though I blanked him score-wise, he had a good time and was happy to see the new TNG cards at work. A funny thing happened in this game. Nathan used Stripped Down on my first mission, and shuffled the dilemmas off to TCS, figuring I'd wouldn't go there. I'd actually solved it last game, to get away from the Tenak'Talar and the infiltrators aboard it. I then realized that I had plenty of skills in play now too, and most of my personnel I happened to have in play were the lower integrity/higher cunning ones, so I happily went to TCS instead of Alien Probe. In fact, the only time I solved IAP this tournament was in my game against MVB, when I had no concern for Insurrection. Round 3 Alex Pauley FW (+100) Alex's Ferengi deck never really got off the ground, and my deck came together about as perfectly as ever. We finished pretty quickly, but at least we had fun with The Pendari Champion's order! Round 4 Greg Hodgin FL (-70)View opponent's ReportView original Report The game against Greg went pretty quickly as well, but for different reasons. We always try to get in at least two games in a round. Beforehand I asked what the over/under was for the length of time of our game. We finished at the 24 minute mark. Greg ran an interrupt-based Borg solver. The Weak Will Perish killed Locutus, which allowed me to subsequently use Gomtuu Shock Wave and Occupational Hazards, but also put The Weak Will Perish beneath the mission. The Chula section of my dilemma pile hindered me, as several of my dilemmas were prevented to a combination of Adapt and Knowledge and Experience. I was able to complete one mission, and had enough dilemmas beneath a second to complete it as well, when Greg completed his third mission (largely thanks to me completely forgetting that I had Unexpected Difficulties out!). After our first game, I borrowed a deck from Greg and learned how to pilot his Ferengi 2-mission win deck. My inexperience with the deck showed, but now I'm excited to build my own version of it. Ah, Nathan. I usually end up sitting across from him. He was playing a Romulan/Reman weenie deck. My deck got up and running, and although Nathan held his own for a bit, once the deck got running he wasn't able to match speed with the Borg onslaught. Round 5 Will Raiman MW (+30) When I sat across from Will, I saw one of my worst fears: New Founder's Homeworld. I knew if I let Will complete a mission, I would have to go for all four of my missions. I also picked up pretty quickly that he planned to use Infiltrators, so I kept attempting different missions to avoid his cunning traps. My Romulan Scout Vessels limited Will's Crippling Strikes, as The Reman Mines boosted their Range. At one point, I moved a ship despite Crippling Strike and Gomtuu Shock Wave, taking advantage of the in-Region bonus between Romulus and Supervise Dilithium Mines. Despite Bashir Founder's attribute bonus, my high Strength personnel were able to complete both Supervise Dilithium Mine and Deliver Prisoners on one turn. In retaliation, Will completed Stakoron II and made me lose 5 points. At that point, time was called. Will was unable to attempt another mission on that turn, and I would not be able to complete both my remaining missions on my turn, so I simply ended my turn and took the modified win. Will said afterwards he felt like he could have won if we had another hour to play, but considering I had four dilemmas beneath one mission and two beneath my other, I wasn't so sure. I suppose we'll never know. Closing Thoughts Notulans are fun, but I think they've had their time in the sun. Next big event, they'll be in the deck box as I test out new frontiers in 2E.