J (The Mad Vulcan) Tournament Report - 2E - Online Event 2013-05-20 - 11:00 AM Preposterous Gameplay Introduction i only saw this tournament maybe 5 days before it started and it was short players. I checked my rating to find that I was low enough, which is somewhat suprising as I was rather good at 2E back when I played it before. Presumably, my rating has slid during the 2+ years that I haven't played. I decided to steal the deck that Matt Kirk used in the Ferenginar 2E regional because it qualified for a lot of achievements AND was a faction that I had never played before. Round 1 Mark FW (+75)View opponent's ReportView original Report Mark is THE player whom I've faced the most in the Continuing Committee era, and we recently snagged the For the First Time, for the Last Time achievement for it. This tournament was short a player to be sanctioned the night before it was scheduled to start, so I talked him into playing. And BOOM, next night we're facing off in 2E. This was Mark's first 2E game ever, and he had chosen a fairly poor deck type (IMO) for the achievements. Once I had 7 people in play, I sent 6 out to red shirt my space, even though I didn't have the solving skills and Mark over threw dilemmas. he gave me 4 under and stopped all but two of them! But he learned quickly and on the subsequent 2 attempts, he gave me one under each time (while stopping everybody who could be stopped). Mark got out and attempted rather quickly and I bloodied the floor with my kill pile, but he did inevitably slide through a big cost killer for the solve. Maybe a turn too late to get his HQ bonus. Meanwhile, I had about enough dilemmas to auto solve the space mission, but I had yet to draw into enough Navigation for the mission requirements (srsly). Luckily, Mark lent me his Ezri Tigan, Soldier of Fortune and she taught my dudes how to Navigate throuhg a wormhole. I went planet again, and this one was a bit easier (2 attempts maybe) as I was finally getting enough no kill/ no stop dudes in play to walk through. However, I did hit a snag. I had spent all my Tongo points on At What Cost and Admiral free plays and was only at 80 points. I also didn't have enough of adeck left tom Tongo up to 100 and had tossed my card which gets the discard pile back (Takcing into the Wind is it?) so I had to solve a 3rd mission. The easy mission would be Historical Research but I realized (once I had the whole deck out) that Jadzia Dax was the only Archaeology. Meaning that to solve it I would need her to stay alive and then throw The Rite of Emergence for the other copy of Archae. I decide to risk it anyway, and that plan worked on the first try since Jadzia and a couple other people made it through the attempt. Round 1 - vs The Mad Vulcan: My First Ever 2e Game. I want you to know that. TMV went first. He was hoping not to, because of the Historical Research bonus. Sucker. We played a bunch of cards. Quark downloaded Tongo: Confront at some point, Seasoned Leader vs Miles O'Brien Repair Chief got J 5 points (+5). J had one Gamma Quadrant mission, Protect Wormhole, on one side of his HQ, and his other missions on the other side. He moved to Protect Wormhole and attempted with 8. I picked 4 dilemmas, which may have been slightly too many, but hey, I don't know what's reasonable. Moral Choice was first, and it picked 2 Feds and a Bajoran. They were stopped. Dark Page stopped Jadzia Dax Science Officer. Back Room Dealings stopped Data Commanding Officer. Magnetic Field Disruptions stopped Jake Sisko Temporal Anchor. The two people who were left couldn't solve. I attempted Evade Samaritan Snare with 6. Spatial Interphase cost nothing for J, with 3 high-cost missions. Between Hoshi and Tuvok, J chose Hoshi to die. I ETUd her. 2ndd up was Optical Delusion, and I didn't have Transporters present. I'd left Smiley on the HQ, so I could play more ships with him. J reattempted his mission with 8, with 4 dilemmas under I had 4 available. I pitched Predicament to make that number larger. Reflections was first. I had 7 folk in play (they all had that funny yellow icon). I could choose to stop 3 people. I chose Li Nalas, Jake Sisko and Jadzia Dax, so they would fail the next dilemma. Gravitational Anomaly was last, and it stopped everyone else. 5 dilemmas were under the mission. His next turn, he reattempted with 7 people. I drew 2 dilemmas I couldn't use, pitched Unexpected Difficulties and the 2 I drew there were also unusable. J solved the mission (+40, =40 because somewhere along the way he lost 5 points to do something). I got more people out and retrieved them from the HQ. I reattempted, with 9 folk. Another Spatial Interphase had the options of Tuvok, Travis and Hoshi. Hoshi was selected again, I ETUd her again. Pitching In was next, I chose T'Pol and Tuvok. Tsiolkovsky Infection was last, I passed, and solved the mission (+30). J took a bunch of folk to Deliver Ancient Artifact. Trelane's Trial killed the vastly outnumbered Li Nalas This set up Chula The Precipice, but a bunch of people had Leadership, Cunning of 6 and/or Honor, so it was passed. Last up was In Development, but there was only one 2-coster, George Primmin, so that misfired. 3 under. But the skills were there. (+40 =80). Tongo again, this time it was my Hypospray vs his Alvera Tree Ritual, taking me to 35. I played Maximillian Forrest and Starship Defiant (-1 with Smiley), leaving me one counter. I played In A Mirror Darkly for free, this put my hand to 7. (-5 =30). I didn't get any other cards of appropriate cost, so I had to draw one. It was a choce between drawing one and pitching an unhelpful card (Guardian's Advice had been clogging my hand for a while), or play More Than Meets The Eye (needs a Transformers AI) and lose 5 more points. I did the latter. (-5 =25). Needing points, I attempted my other Space mission, Evaluate Soliton Wave. Ominous Presence didn't get lower-costed. It picked Tuvok who stopped T'Pol (there was a 1 in 3 chance each of Vulcan, Human and Trill, the Trill wouldn't have stopped anyone else). Unfair Comparison was next, he lucked out with 14 cost to my 11 (I even had a 7 in there). This stopped Ezri, Travis and Obrist. Ezri defected. J attempted his other Planet mission. Cultural Differences was first, stopping Jake Sisko. Antedean Assassins stopped Jadzia, who was unstopped by Vascular Pad. Formal Hearing ended up being very easily passed. One of the skills wasn't there, but The Rite Of Emergence was played during that last dilemma to add a skill to Jadzia. Historical Research was solved (+35 =115). Interesting first try at Second Edition. Hey, I got points! Final score: J 115, me 25. Round 2 Markus Eberlein FW (+25)View opponent's ReportView original Report I played Markus last. That was due to difficulty scheduling a game as both mark and Jon were easy to find a time with. This probably helped me a lot, since I had the deck figured out buy then. I finally got to go second, but then forgot to use Historical Research. So early in this game I was hurting for the plays/draws. My hand was all cost 4 cards and I couldn't get things balanced to save my life. inevitably, I found a Quark and got Tongo going. This time, I only used 5 points for set up (at What Cost, I believe), so I could 2 mission win. The first mission took me quite few attempts, but by the time I went out to planet, I had a good unstoppable team (and could even double team). That one was complete in one attempt. At this point: I had 40 points from space, 40 from planet, and 15 from Tongo. Markus had attempted his space quite a few times, but had no score. I felt bad about this and decided to give him his space mission (play no dilemmas) and this almost burned me. I had holding cell in play to stop him from using any Council interrupts for Bonus points but he wisely tossed 3 Comfort Women to blow it up and then used his Tanak'talar (sp?) and Councils to make the mission worth 70! I wasn't planning to give away 70, even if I was on 95. This explains why Markus was not attempting much, as he had been (wisely) setting up to make sure that the mission completion was worth good points. It also meant that he only needed to solve a cheap planet mission for the win AND he had the range to go try this turn. I did manage to hold him out. On my turn, I set up for a new mission attempt, just in case, but Tongo'd for the 5 points I needed to win -> he won the Tongo. So I tossed Preposterous Plan for the Epic Win. Acually the third game. DS9 stop prevention. Historical Research says MAY. Tongo with many low cost cards doesn't work out. And stopping unstopable is almost the same. Mission one for 40 was solved. Weyoun went on holding cell. So, making bonus points was a bit tricky. Soon Kressari finally was solved, 2 Comfort woman for Holding cell had to be sacrifies. 2 rouling councils and the ship made some points. 70-95, so one Tongo the wrong way or just a solved mission for me with a destaffed ship... The Next Tongo gave me the points :) but nobody read Preposterous Plan and just let the +5 points end the game. Round 3 Jon Carter MW (+5)View opponent's ReportView original Report I played Jon second, as he is on the East coast and Markus had some sort of business trip. He was playing Mirror TOS, so I was DAMNED afraid of Reflections (x3) since Mark had spanked me with that card. I almost Krimmed for it but instead solved the Space and just stayed very far from space for the rest of the game. After the game, though Jon admitted that he only had 1X of each dilemma (for a Highlander II achievement) and so it wasn't really a risk. On my first attempt, Jon tossed one dilemma which did a full stop and no dilemmas under while spouting off every skill I had in play - that level of skill tracking is scary. Being that he was playing TOS, Jon got out attempting rather quickly and this scared me too. So I used every bonus point to make my deck run fast as well (with At What Cost and the Admiral and Kira etc)so that we solved a space mission around the same time. Then I realized that I'd put myself in a bad corner. I had no way to get a full win at all. At some point, Jadzia Dax had been Tongo'd into the discard pile and my Tacking Into the Wind had been eaten by Energize. I didn't have enough of a deck to Tongo to 100 or the skills to solve more than one more mission. Still, I went out to that planet mission and double teamed it, getting a ton of dilemmas under but not solving. Then Jon pointed out that we should really call time, and man was I against it. I cannot explain this to you as Time was the only way I could win at all, but I had just barely missed on solving my planet mission and could absolutely solve on my next turn and I just really wanted that to happen. This is crazy as all I had to do to win, if this turn was the last (as Jon suggested) was to hold him out of his planet mission and I am quite good at that as I run a lot of the draw extra dilemmas and burn everything you have to stall aspect of 2E, and yet I was still adamantly against winning. As it was, I did hold Jon out and I did regretfully accept the Timed Win. Maybe I should learn to play for Timed Wins as they tend to go in my favour (in 2E). Again the killer dillemas were the end of me. that and not enough people to draw to replace them Closing Thoughts Pretty fun event, and I managed to clean up on achievements. Markus was the only actual 2E player and I think I had the second most experience overall. My closest game was definitely against Jon - that man is good at 2E.