J (The Mad Vulcan) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2012-09-01 - 12:00 AM Halleck Dilusions Introduction Christian ran this event, and he had a real solid idea for it. Like the previous two Random Affiliation Events, the decks were limited to only a single affiliation. However, this time they were not assigned randomly but drafted in reverse order of Player Standings. This means that all of my losing has finally paid off! I drafted 4th, and by my calculations that should mean that I am playing either Romulan or Cardassian (as TNG Federation and TNG Klingon are sure to be picked early). I actually built the TNG Romulan deck for this event prior to the affiliatiosn being announced. I then built this deck, rebuilt it as Federation/Cardassian TNG for the OTF event and rebuilt it again (based on what I leaned there) as it stands now. All prior to this event beginning. Round 1 Daniel Matteson FW (+85) Dan was playing Ferengi. I knew this because Christian had posted the draft picks prior to the tournament beginning. This was one of the decks that I specifically teched against. I knew how I would play Ferengi and assumed that Dan had done as I would have (WWJD and all). When seeding missions, we began by alternating. I favoured one side with the missions I liked better. Inevitably, Dan, who was going first, decided to clump a few missions on one end of the spaceline. I complied by doing the same at the other end. This put my Explore Dyson Sphere and Reported Activity next to each other. They were separated by just a Kressari Rendevous from my less appealing space mission. Repair Mission was one of the farthest of my missions from me and not likely to get solved. My deck has two means of dealing with the Ferengi planet lockout strategy (using Transport Inhibitors). First, it can solve 3 space missions for well over 140 points, but also it has Hidden Fighter to get an Establish landing Protocols and a landable ship (no beaming required). Dan’s deck was quite impressive. It got free plays to the Tower, for Attention All Hands, and for The TNG Ferengi Incident. It also was quite capable of pulling out Equipment with an Equipment Replicator on the Ferengi Trading Post. He did have trouble getting Continuing Mission draws, though, as he had too many of the awesome Ferengi in the deck and not enough of the mooks. My opening hand did not have a Nanoprobe Resuscitation or a Holodeck Door, but it had quite the assortment of free play CM draw personnel. It also had Hidden Fighter and Ready Room Door. During Dan’s first turn, I noted that he had a Tribunal of Q and a Hidden Agenda, which I assumed to be a Q the Referee. He then revealed it to be a Quark’s Isolinear Rods and then used it and First Rule to get Quark, The Trois, and a GPL into hand. This meant that he definitely did not have a Q the Ref in play, and he failed to turn his only end of turn card draw into one, so I thought I might try to take advantage of the situation. We had both seeded a Duck Blind, he hadn’t set his up yet but I wanted to get mine going. I tossed a free mook and a free Ent-D peep and then used the first card play to fetch the U.S.S. Galaxy (with AAH) which could not be upgraded into a better ship for lack of a Holodeck Door. I then used Assign Support Personnel to get Sergey and Helena (one download), used their Special Download to get Nikolai (my scond Anthropologist and DL #2) and then since I still didn’t see a general Quarters show up, I went for my Defend Homeworld snag of Miles O’Brien (that’s 3). Then I walked my Rozhenkos out on the planet and used Hidden Fighter to get a Runabout landed thereabouts. Dan’s second turn came with lots more personnel plays (thanks to the turn 1 download to hands) but a lack of CM draws. My turn, I tossed Picard and a mook for the CM draws and then Sam Lavelle as card play for the Lower Decks . I then took everyone who wasn’t a mission specialist or watching natives on Reported Activity to Explore Dyson Sphere and attempted. This played well for me as the combo was the classic Personnel Duty + Friendly Fire. Picard and Lian T’su were stopped and I used O’Brien’s special DL to put everyone else back on the outpost. I was a bit concerned that that Dan, who had a mini-armada going, would take out my U.S.S. Galaxy. I thought that if he did, I would STP it back to hand. But instead he simply flew over and captured my Picard with his Bok. I figured I’d let him have that and the 5 points that it earned him. I spent the next two turns building up all the Mission Specialists to solve Dyson Sphere fore the biggest total possible. I had drawn two such specialists, and they played for free, and then used the old Nanoprobe Reset AMS to get two more that I had not yet seen. Finally, those CM draws snagged me a Holodeck Door so I grabbed a Holo-Leah. Around here, Dan attempted his first planet mission, but he was walled off by Ferengi Infestation not because he lacked the cunning or the Security but because he hadn’t brought the Security. When he did bust the Ferengi on Ferengi issue, he found Firestorm (picking off only one dude thanks to his Lower Decks) but then couldn’t get through In the Pale Moonlight (also due to Lower Decks). Also somewhere in here, he attempted a space mission, but never got by the Armus: Energy Field due to lack of mission skills. I restaffed the galaxy by playing people there (over a couple turns) and then had it loop back for my stack of mission specialists. Due to no In the Zone showing up (seriously, the Tribunal was for looks), I solved it for 60! Then I went back to Reported Activity to see if I couldn’t trigger the inevitable ferengi Ambush. I sent the expendables. Hazardous Duty was passed easily, then Flapjacks picked 5 of which I could save just one with my Phaser (I chose Worf). Then the Ferengi Ambush hit and worked. Not surprisingly, Dan won the fight; getting the 5 points for Ferengi Military Org. But quite surprisingly, he downloaded a second Ferengi Whip instead of a Transport Inhibitor. So I sent my medics (Beverly and Alyssa) to bust the self-seeded REM for 5 more points. Still no In the Zone, but I thought I wouldn’t risk it and send the turn back to him. I left some people on the outpost, an empty Galaxy docked, and the Runabout undocked with the mission solvers onboard. On his final turn, Dan shuffled ships to make some mission attempts and an attack run. He flew over a group to attack my personnel on the planet (killing 2 more) and this time added a Transport Inhibitor to the mission while going up to 15 points. I tossed the Asteroid Sanctuary that had been in my hand all game at the Runabout to protect it and the people it held from any intended maliciousness. Dan didn’t reattempt either the planet or the space missions that he had previously gone for (presumably for lack of skills) but instead went for another planet mission. This one had the Ferengi Infestation, which he could pass, followed by a Flapjacks. The second dilemma took out an impressive 6 personnel because he had sent all weapons out to the personnel battle. He was then locked out by the Medical Crisis. Although Dan had played an impressive number of personnel, I had not seen much in the way of Biology or Science. When the turn came back to me, I had a tough decision of whether to play the Enterprise-D or a Data and Geordi as my card play. Neither had seen play all game, which is too bad. I went with the latter. Then I landed my Runabout and solved that mission for 45 (two specialists). Round 2 Niall Matthew FL (-70)View opponent's ReportView original Report The story of this game is one of a couple key mistakes (by me) and a few solid plays (by Niall). It was a battle of the small speed deck and the lockout deck where inevitably the lockout succeeded. By turn 2 I was out and attempting my nearest space mission, Explore Dyson Sphere, where I found a Dead End seeded first. So on turn 3 I set up and went after Reported Activity. This was a walk and easy solve, however a well placed Altonian Brain Teaser meant that I couldn't get the AMS bonus points and this was only worth 35 points. A good move as it made me need 3 missions to win. No matter, I flew to the next nearest planet mission, Save Stranded Crew and solved that as well. This time the combo was Land Eel + Higher the Fewer and that again made the mission worth less points. So I was at 52 after two missions. Meanwhile Niall was doing very little. He'd play two (personnel or ships) and then draw and toss however many copies of Paralax Arguers he pulled. I let him have point for all but the first for which he had played a Surprise Party. Here was my biggest mistake. By this time I had O'Brien in play and had yet to use his special DL to cheat out of a dilemma. I mistakenly thought that he could bring people in as well as get people out of a mission attempt with Near Warp Transport. What I should have done was attempt with the mission skills and then bounce them out if they were in danger or were about to solve (as I needed 50 points here for a 3 mission win). But I did not send the mission skills and failed a Lack of Prep thereby dropping me back below the 50 points to attempt (Dead End). Next I went to Repair Mission, which can also be solved for 50 and found an Edo Probe. I didn't dare go on as my points were already dwindling. But now things were getting ugly as Niall started using his Card plays for disruption events and had no intent of solving a mission. Since I lacked the pertinent ref cards, he could win with 140 from Parallax points or just get a timed win against my 42 points, which he was already ahead of. So I trucked down the spaceline and attempted my 40 point Cultural Observation. Again the dilemmas were an easy clear but again the Land Eel + Higher/Fewer combo nicked points. The problem was at the end when I went against the flapjacks. I could save 3 dudes with picard and 2 guns but had to let 1 die. I chose the anthropologist even though he was needed for the solve because I had another anthropologist who was a Mission Specialist. So I did not solve the mission and could not get my Specialist there until the next turn. But here, Niall revealed what he was really about. Over the next maybe 4 turns he tossed disruption cards that prevented me from going anywhere near the mission. When I got close, it was Incoming Message: Federation or such and back I went to my outpost. This allowed him to inevitably steal the mission (it is worth 40 after all) and being that i was playing Feds I couldn't just blow him off the spaceline. So it came down to it. I cleared out Repair Mission but couldn't solve as I had lost key skills and the replacements were on the other side of a Q's Net. The death of one of my last 2 Diplomats meant that I couldn't even cross the Q's Net to unite my teams. I can't fault Niall for making the most of a poor affiliation draft but man is full bore Parallax Arguers annoying to play against. Damn, TNG Feds, I won't be a match for them. He played a 40 point mission, which I wanted, the same way I want strippers and Jager at the weekend. J was ploughing through mission after mission going trough my edo probes and losing points just liked I hoped. He sent his 'B Team' to the 40 pointer and cleared the dilemmas, at which point I incoming messaged his 'A team' to stall the solve. At this point I pulled of my special move; 'The Quantum Leap' (it's like the Hadouken of Star Trek CCG) I returned my Enterprise to my hand via STP then discarded another to report with crew at the mission. I had an Atmospheric Ionisation on that planet so I had to wait a turn or two to steal it. 1 mission done. meanwhile, J was still suffering my point loss dilemmas forcing him to attempt more, his ideal mission had a dead end on it, which he couldn't do. On the plus side he played Edward Jello which caused me to scream out a barrage of Robocop quotes. By this point, J had lost so much points he couldn't complete the game and conceded. FW for me (I wish I sung the Quantum Leap theme though for my special move) 2 games won, my deck isn't all that bad after all untill.... Round 3 Matthew King FW (+100) I didn't get to play Matt King due to his work schedule picking up around the time of Round 3. He was valiant enough to forfeit to me. Round 4 Jon Carter FW (+40)View opponent's ReportView original Report Overall, I was quite impressed with Dan's AU Klingon build. I think he had a rather hard affiliation to play and made the best of it. He used the Great Hall and Khitomer play engines which come with the weakness of a large commute between and low range ships unless you manage to get the two missions seeded adjacently. Dan used his first turn card play to get a K'tinga with Spacedoor and immediately used the special DL. He had already used defend homeworld to get Kerla and Kerla to get Chancellor Gorkon but I didn't mind him using up all his special downloads as they could not be used later to bust dilemmas. A couple turns later (or so) he used Handshake to get a new hand, Spacedoor to return an empty K'tinga to hand and STP to get a crewful of dudes. He then attempted his nearest planet mission which wasn't Kronos and found an easily passable Ferengi Infestation + Firestorm + In the Pale Moonlight combo. The firstorm snagged only Chang and he couldn't bust ItPM until he got a new low Integrity dude. Though Khitomer has plenty of options there. Dan's dilemmas worked well against em as they caused some point loss and that prevented a two mission win. I ended up doing Ecplore Dyson Sphere, Repair Mission ,and Reported Activity with Mission Specialists for a 3 mission win. But before I managed to clear and solve those three, Dan almost won. He drew and played another Chang to solve the planet mission and was using oool bonus points (like Arbiter) to get a 2 mission win. He earned the Genesis Device but had yet to draw and play his Kruge. Then he through everyone at his nearest Space Mission. Everyone died per V'ger but the mission was cleared so he simply had to spend resources to draw the mission skills. As it was he drew into a Kronos One to download a key dude and solve it. But he hadn't the range to get The Genesis Device from his outpost and still had no Kruge in play when I solved the third mission. Key move: Dan played a The Power and chose third function to let me discard a card. I chose the Fek'lr (aka a ship with range) and he never opted for 3rd function again (lesson learned). He is dumping TNG feds all over the place attempting super hard. I am moving OK, I push through the planet mission fairly easy. After that His mission specialist do their work and hit me pretty hard. Closing Thoughts Overall, I did about how I thought I would though I expected to lose to Christian or Seppel or maybe even Danny (interactive battle decks).