J (The Mad Vulcan) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2013-07-08 - 12:00 AM otsd-003 Introduction I didn't do all that well with my draft set, at least in terms of mission busting skills. There were some not so rare dilemmas that were absolute walls to me. but I did pull a goodly number of ships and two phasers + phaser burns had a tendency to clean an opponent's clock in one away team battle. As such, I was definitely running a battle strategy. Round 1 William Hoskin FW (+45) This is the story about Will trying to complete missions and me being a dick. Pretty straight forward, Will played a scan fairly early on a mission that I put very little under. This showed him Cardie trap, Abandon Ship, and two Interrupts. The idea being that everyone will fail Cardie Trap and since the mission was in range of my outpost, I could then come over and shoot them (damage), if they reattempted rather than runaway, I'd get a good number of captives. Will made a solid play by using Suna to Reflection therapy some background dude to have Empathy and walked the mission. Then he retreated back to his outpost. I wasted my Suna + reflection therapy to give one more person Leadership so that i could have three staffed ships to attack with, but then I played a K'ratak with the shitty range and it couldn't keep up with the rest of the fleet (instead of the K'vort in hand), so it was left at home. Instead, I sent the two ships out toward Will's outpost to haunt him a bit. He wasn't scared and flew to the neighboring space and attempted. Sticky Armus killed a dude and then Nausicans killed a dude and stopped everyone. I then flew over and blew up his orbiting (but empty) ship. Will kept on ballin', played a new ship, flew it over, and cloaked it. Then he reattempted the mission. This time he failed a Chalnoth, but he had the 3 Medical to keep the dude alive thanks to Genetronic Replicator. I played Q'Net. Since this was the last mission on the spaceline, his people were now stuck with mine. Beamed down the strong ones to start a fight. Will thought this pointless, due to the Genetronic, but I righted him with a Phaser Burns (first time ever playing this card) and the won battle for three dead. So Will was smart again, he realized that he didn't have the Diplomacy to hop the net (my choice Nausicans kill had been Evek) and he couldn't decloak and beam his guys up, or I'd blow up the ship. And if the people stayed on the planet, they'd also die. So he decloaked, beamed em up, and STP'd it all to hand. This set him back considerably on the card play - but it was the best choice. With Will out of the picture, I decided to risk running through my Pegasus Search. The dilemmas were pretty cake, but I had to really shift my ships to bring in the mission skills (it requires about 20). Once I was on 50, Will decided to load a K'vort and fly across the spaceline cloaked. He decloaked at his second outpost to pick up newly played people and then kept going, but made hisn only bad choice of the game by not recloaking. I had one ship in range but unmanned. I played a second one to that outpost, shifted personnel, flew over, and blew his ass up (lost ship with all hands). But before firing, I had beamed down all personnel not needed to run the ships to attempt the mission (since it was mine), this was a bad call, as I send my mission skills (Galathon) and he died by Sticky Armus. This put me in a bad way as I had all but cleared that mission and could not solve it. I also could not solve Quash Conspiracy as I had already wasted the Reflection Therapy. I attempted my Outpost mission (establish Relations) and inevitably got through it for the second mission solve. But I needed one more. I went out to my last planet and cleared it down to a Hidden Entrance, but I only had one Engineer in my draft pool and was not smart enough to pack the Tricorder. So that was an impossible wall. this left just one mission that I could solve, and Will's outpost and all his people left in play were there. I had positioned a ship in range just in case he tried to clear it, but was reluctant to take a go at it as if I didn't make it through, he could always steal (he had no Triple Treaty, while I did). Luckily, he drew out, and as I had been drawn out for a while, that was the game. Round 2 Charlie Plaine FW (+100) Never got to play Charlie this time, as he got to busy with the making of awesome cards for us. It's been a while since I played the Chairman and I was looking forward to it / disappointed to miss out. plus I don't have him on my PvP Achvmts yet. Round 3 Jeremy Huth FL (-15) This game was a close one that really came down to a bad decision on my part. I had battle Jeremy a bit and blew up a few ships/killed dudes. But he was still sticking it out and trying to get that last mission to win. It came down to a Tarellian Plague Ship cleaning out the last of his dudes, which were attempting to far for me to mess with. At that point, I had one mission complete and a second cleared out: Pegasus Search. Because Jeremy was shut out, all i really needed to do was solve Pegasus and that would put me ahead in points for the deck out as my two missions complete (Quash and Pegasus)would be worth more than his two. I had all the skills but had been waiting to draw one more dude for the integrity. When I finally found one, he had Int of 2. So I needed yet another and decided to try to solve a planet mission just in case the dude for space didn't come through. I went shared so I could get 5 points of my own Sarjenka and when it was time for that, sent one guy to be stopped for her gifted five points. Then everyone else went at the mission only to be one dude short of the Alien Parasites Integrity. This is where Jeremy pulled out an awesome move that I'd not thought of before. He beamed all of my people up to the ship (with no range) and used his STP to return it to my hand. At that point, replaying enough people to solve either of my two cleared out missions was impossible before decking out. And lo and behold, the last two card in my deck were fed peeps. Round 4 Ryan McWilliams FW (+100) Ryan and I put our husnock outposts at the same mission, his Establish Relations - as it was in the middle of the spaceline. We then started building up our forces. We both had the Triple Treaty to allow fighting but not allow mission theft. Ry played a lot more ships than me and I was honestly getting scared. But he started trucking out people to the neighboring planet mission to clear down the dilemmas and retreat home for safety. This was fine in preventing ship battle, but my dilemmas plus away team battle meant that i killed everyone he had brought there (10+ I think). this put Ryan at a significant disadvantage that he never really recovered from. I then putted around the spaceline clearing dilemmas under every one of my missions (save one). Two had dilemmas that i couldn't get past, but the other three managed to get me over a hizzle. Closing Thoughts Might have been nice to pull out that close game against Jeremy and then see how well my deck could do against Dan Bunz. But in a way, it is nice to see a newer player win one rather than this old goat.