J (The Mad Vulcan) Tournament Report - 1E - Ferenginar Regional 2013-04-14 - 02:00 PM Matt Kirk Made Me Do It Introduction This story begins when Matt Kirk PMed me and asked if I was heading to Vancouver for Ken's Regional. I, of course, wasn't. So he laid down a rather convincing argument on why I should go. Which means that I would need a deck. I chose Romulans because I really like Romulans and felt that I could improve upon Andrew Detze's Green build. I did, and it worked pretty great (in this event, I chose very, very poor dilemmas for it in the current online OTF tourament). Round 1 Julia Y-F Chen MW (+85) Playing against Jules was a blast. I was impressed to see that she has stepped up from a new player who simply has fun to a real competitor. Not only did she have a great deck, but she knew how to play it. I'm fairly certain that she can make a few more tweaks and really bring it home. I am certain that she will be getting an FW over me in the near future, though it didn't happen this time. Unfortunately for her, she missed her chance to beat me while I was being cocky. The next time, I will know what she is capable of and play cautiously. Jules had a sweet fast playing Office of the President + Holograms deck which was bringing out personnel almost as fast as me, but with far more useful and higher number skills. This was primarily performed by Holodeck Door for Revised 2E Holograms. But she also had the standard Federation download set. I managed to get Earth in a good position on the spaceline and was lucky that she wasn't running a Borg assimilator. When she played UR McCoy and started trucking him around, alone on the 1701 - I really wanted to eliminate him so that he couldn't nerf my The Cloud, but she hid him at Earth. Still I attempted the mission between Earth and her outpost and cleared it down for a solve the subsequent turn. Jules undocked and went after the Space mission with her outpost, but to my surprise, did not send McCoy. As such, I only had to stop some random dude to let the Cloud hit. Here is were I made the decision which decided the tournament outcome, as Jules and I were fairly evenly matched and placed similarly in the end. I just had to Nuke the Future Enterprise which was damaged with a whole lotta people on board. So I brought three D'deridex class warbirds down to bear. When time was called, I had cleared two missions but only solved one due to Dead End and could do no more than run two missions in a single turn for the 100+. In retrospect, if I had just gone for a straight solve, I likely would have had the FW which would have potentially changed the later pairings. But Jules fetched then In the Zone to deny me an FW. I got greedy and paid the price. But unfortunately for Jules, by giving me the TW she made certain that she would face Ken in the final round instead of me and ended up 2-2. Round 2 Matt Kirk ML (-52) When Matt came to my house, I was still putting my deck together using real cards from the Lackey file. He told me what he was playing, perhaps due in part to feeling bad about foreknowledge of my deck. But as I figure it, I had certainly made my own bed there. Still, I chose not to change my deck in any way. I had chosen Romulans in part to work against the HP010 deck type, which I think will be popular. It has a lot of ships and 3 no staffing ships that can be snagged for free. Because of the high Range space missions, I started filling up the spaceline with my armada to get them ready to shoot at Outposts. However, Matt had optional strategies on optional strategies and went full assimilator on me. I had made the mistake of bringing a Scout Ship to Romulus first as the base for the AAHs reports and he pointed out to me that I would need a bigger ship to do that. So I tried to get a bunch of Specialists at the Outpost and truck them to Romulus for temporary safety, and just before I got there he hit me and Assimilated Sirol as a counterpart. The loss of a few personnel destaffed then Romulan Ship, but I got everyone else together to throw down at space. This also played into Matt's hands as he gained a Contingency Plan and Cytherians on a very full ship - and I had no STP. But I was able to solve the cleared out space, unfortunately without the specialists as I had been hoping to have gone full gun through it. This triggered the Nexus, but it never did get far enough down the spaceline to make a difference. I had Tolian Soran lined up to go to heaven on the turn after time was called and had to abandon that plan and retreat to Romulus. So Matt's last turn and he has locked the MW but wants a FW but can't see one anywhere. He had lots of points by Assimilate COunterpart, Assimilate Starship, and his drone collection but the only nearby personnel left was a 1 skill D'lors. I pointed out the option of bringing more of my people into play to assimilate by triggering a Defend Homeworld and then Matt went for it, setting up what might have been the most Epic win of the year had it worked. He used Temporal Conduit to double the range on the assimilated Cytherianed ship to crash it into the Nexus and then relocated his drones to Romulus (this cost him all the Assimilate Starship points). Then he used A Willing Companion to allow another Assimilate Counterpart (targeting Praetor Neral). This move triggered the DH and let me download every noun in my deck except one, but his drone paired with Neral first thereby killing the plan. Round 3 detze001 FW (+100) This game was my deck vs. the deck that I had improved. And improved is certainly the right word as it was no contest. I had been giving Andrew unsolicited opinions on the deck for a while, but only here did he get to see how they worked. We shared 2 missions, both planets. I love shared missions and do well in games with them (except against Andreas, as he is even better with them). On top of that, Andrew had only two space missions and one was stealable (Quash). I put an impressive 5 dilemmas under his two space missions and 3 under each unshared planet. The shared planets each got two from me and then 2-3 from Andrew, but nobody ever went there. Andrew attempted first (at Quash) and failed my Trilithium Raid for lack of strength. I went after my first planet mission and trucked through it fine, though it had a Dead End as the punchline. Andrew then went for his other space mission, but failed the Armus: Energy Field. Finally, he went to the planet between them and didn't like the Edo Probe. I flew out to my nearest space mission and the Droid army cleared everything down to a Maglock. Andrew must have found what he was waiting for as he reattempted Quash and cleared the Raid but then Dev. Communique set up The Cloud just fine. Rather than wait it out, he returned the ship to hand with STP, a good decision in the long run as he could replay the crew at 4-5 per turn. I had to shift personnel to clear that the next turn, but made sure not to solve it so I could AMS for a second treachery Specialist and solve for 50. this, again, was kind of greedy as his Crystaline Entity had netted me 5 points already as Lore had returned to hand previously and had not yet been replayed. Andrew rechecked the Quash the turn after failing the cloud and found Nav Hazards, but both he and I did not have the Stellar to clear it. He thought that my AMS would bring in Tallus, and it should have if I had stocked him (first improvement to be made). But I solved my space to put me on 55. Andrew then cleared Nav Hazards only to find Emergency Conversion, which he lacked the Tranny Skill to clear. So I solved it for him AND my own planet just to put it way, way over the top. Round 4 Justin Ford FW (+15) Another blowout on my part, though at first finding out that Ken had helped him build a Hirogen speed solver was scary. Ken won last Year's Seattle regional with just such a deck. It was certainly quick, with Jordan attempting a space mission on Turn 1! Trilithium Raid just held him out, but by turn 2 he had found The Cloud. Kes saved him from that fate. I am of the opinion that he wasted her cheat, unless he only had one ship in the deck, as he did not go back and clear the cloud the next turn. Kes was his only medical in play and he then wasted Penks DL for Hajur to get 1. He did solve a mission before me, but all his missions were DQ and I certainly had YAAM. I knew that the game would be easy when I attempted planet -> he had the Computer Skill combo. This is turn 2 and I have just enough strength and skills to get over a Land Eel but find Access Denied, + Ferengi Inj + Dejaren. I almost bust through it right there as I had 4 CS in play. Lore and one of his sisters were stopped but nobody died by Dejaren (as Lower Deck and HQ War Room mean that nobody lacks the smarts) and I cleared the combo the next turn easily. But then with the Dead End (everyone chose right on where to put it). I went to space and red shirted anyone not needed to Specialist solve the two missions, they got all the way down to the last dilemma, which was Scientific Method. I never red shirt Biology or Science, so i couldn't solve that until the next turn. But that meant a guaranteed win in two turns as all skills were in play. Justin went to space and failed the Friendly Fire combo and then another space, which he cleared rather readily for the solve, and then went to planet as well. Luckily he didn't solve that as I could In The Zone away 50 points worth and make him need every other mission on the board. But ultimately it just wasn't possible for him to get another 105 points before I could shift ships around and solve the two cleared out missions. Closing Thoughts During the event, I didn't want to face Ken or Matt. But afterwards Ken told me what his deck was and we both agreed that I would have had a shot against it. Ken is definitely the better player, but I have taken him before because he decided to run stealable missions. Also he had 2X the Computer Skill combo (which I was teching for). In retrospect, I would have preferred to go against Ken rather than let Jules do it as it would have been either I win it all (both Ken and I had one MW, so it would have been decided by head to head) or I would have had 4th with Jules getting her bye (high likelihood). Win/win.