I built my deck for this event on Friday by modifying a deck which I had playtested against Stefan Waldher for worlds, under the assumption that this would be a deck that I might consider taking to worlds. Then I Modded it again with the desire to make it qualify as both an Enterprise-E deck and as a Bajoran/Federation Treaty deck.

Well it turns out that the deck can't be both (I assume that this is due to the Facilities choices). The second version in the deck was done around midnight (my time) and I wasn't able to sleep, so I stayed up and played GTA V until the 4 am tournament start time. The deck changed a bit over that night until it was finally nailed down when I started the first game.

Around 3 am, I was really feeling the hit and highly considering just going to bed. I had been playing a ton of hours of GTA V and I wasn't at all certain that Niall would show up as there were already reports of his drunken escapades in Germany. Still, I decided to stick it out as I thought that Adam and Chris would be disappointed to show up and find no tournament.

At 4 Am, Adam showed up and we were chatting on skype while waiting for everyone else to show (and I was also playing GTA V). Finally, I suggested that we should just play our game and then we could each play the others when they showed up.

This game was one of the most one-sided I've seen. Adam as playing an Achievement deck and I had one which could possibly go to worlds. Adam's deck had the play engines but not enough draws, IMO. He was playing Terran Empire and had the regular Q's Tent. This allowed him to red shirt one dude at his planet mission, which found him a wall that required personnel and skills to hop. He later built up a decent crew to hop said wall, and then my screen dilemma + Barclay's cleared the board for him. Finally, once he had replayed enough personnel to solve, he did that. But Adam never got enough personnel into play to attempt another mission.

My side was pretty straight forward. I had tons of draws and free plays and pulled Geordi early so that I could get an idea of what dilemmas I'd be facing. Because Adam's deck was seed card heavy, there really were not that many dilemmas around to hold me out. I recall attempting a mission with two and finding an expected Dead End second. Then wandering around checking out various other missions and clearing solving them quite quickly.

Adam had 6 planet missions, with 3 in the MQ and 3 in the AQ. I had seeded my Space dilemmas under the AQ ones with the plan of setting up Transport Inhibitors on them before he got there. Never needed to.

I played Niall second and after waiting up until Midnight to get a game, I had to wait further as he was still building his deck. So I played some GTA V. Which was odd only because he played his World's TNG Klingon deck. I guess he must have been changing something (or was also playing GTA V).

Niall got the flip to go first, so I got the free Q the Ref. The spaceline ended up split down the middle (common now-a-days) and Niall's missions were either obviously Klingon or obviously trying to make me think Klingon. Mine had him confused (I'm pretty sure) due to a lot of different attempting icons. I put 4 dilemmas under the missions which had the best opportunity to get 50 off missions specialists

Niall had seeded the old Q's Tent so he was able to attempt on his first turn with just one guy. I didn't have a Villager's Who Don't Think Much of Ferengi, so he got to see my first seeded dilemma. Niall didn't like this much and never came back to this mission. Lone Klingon found a Crisis for lack of even a ship in play yet. On his second turn, Niall used Attention All Hands to get a ship and then took everyone who wasn't named Gowron to the neighboring mission. They lost nobody to Unscientific Method, then someone unimportant died to the middle dilemma, leaving everyone else to die to the Barclay's Proto Disease (for Lack of Science). This left just Gowron and a ship in play at the start of Niall's third turn. On my second turn, I decided to follow suit and attempt the mission. This was due in part to me throwing a The Power and making it Niall's choice only to have one of the three cards revealed be Geordi. As such, I assumed the likelihood of getting another Geordi anytime soon was low. This mission had an Altonian Brain Teaser (which stopped Data, but had no other effect as this deck doesn't do bonus points), something I don't recall at the moment, and a Linguistic Legerdemain as the punch line. This actually worked out well as the mission only had 4 icons and as a treaty deck, I had two. So It would only hang out for 3 turns and I had hit it early enough to make that negligible.

Niall's third turn was spent rebuilding. On my third turn, I attempted Bajor using an Espionage and cleared it down to the Dead End (passing by a The Higher... The Fewer along the way and putting me at -8). Niall's fourth saw him play enough people and another ship to allow him to go to his cleared planet and solve it - with a mission specialist (plus Death Yell points from Turn 2) to put him on 45. Things might have looked a bit dire here, as Niall was playing a two mission win deck, but he still had to get through space. He started by fake attempting the mission but that meant he couldn't get by the first seed; Trilithium Raid.

On my fourth turn, I finally went to space. This one also went pretty easy. I recall that it had the Chula: Stop everyone without one matching skill, but that only stopped one, and a Combo Scow. The Bajoran Interceptor didn't have a tractor beam. I used my Assign Support Personnel to fetch Jae to staff the Enterprise-E (with Data in command) and kindly moves the scow away so that my personnel can solve. Niall's Fifth saw him bring enough personnel to get by Trilithium Raid only to take a trip with Cytherians (and no STP, though plenty of range on the ship). On my Fifth, the Linguistic was gone and I solved the mission to put me at 62. I still couldn't solve Bajor, due to having a lack of Treachery or Obsidian Order in play, so I went to Characterize Neutrino Emissions on the opposite side of Bajor. This again went well. I had 2X of the skills for this mission and left one set out while sending the rest. It had an Edo Probe. I was a bit torn on whether or not to continue as the previous THTF had forced me to need a 4 mission win and losing 10 points wouldn't make much of a difference. Yet I already had Bajor cleared and set to solve on the next turn, so failing an Edo Probe would look real stupid. So I bailed.

On Niall's sixth turn, he continued to truck down the spaceline and even re-attempted his space mission only to find The Cloud and be stopped for the full seventh turn - if he saw it, which he did not. This would give me a full 2 turns to win, which was easy. I played HQ: Secure Homeworld and solved Bajor. Then I had two crews to throw down at Characterize, but the first did the job.

Before I won, Niall wisely tossed his Arbiter to have Gowron and Kahless battle for a few more points.

At least Chris had a Q's Tent: Civil War, like any sane player. He was running Cardassians (non-TNG) and Son'a for the best combination since Bajoran and Son'a (or chocolate and peanut butter). We both had Bajor, but after seeding the spaceline, it was deep in my territory (so I assumed it to be mine and only put one dilemma there). Chris managed to get Cardassia, Insurrection, and Kressari next to each other. So they got the best dilemmas.

Chris wasn't playing cards too fast. I attempted first, on my second turn with 6. They hopped right over the Hazardous Duty and then 3 died to flapjacks (losing me 5 points) and then the remaining 3 failed Friendly Fire (another dying). Though this was bloody, it did mean that the FF would count down by turn 4. On turn 3, I attempted space and found Edo Probe and then bailed since my first mission would be solvable on the next turn.

Sometime around now Chris attempted Cardassia (since he seeded the HQ:SH) but was stymied by a first seed Medical Crisis. I solved my planet (Investigate Maquis Activity) for the bonus 5 (it was first solved) to put me on 30. Then I went back to space but the dilemmas shut my team out. Chula: find the matching stats followed by Center of Attention = full stop (though no deaths). On my Turn 5, I finally got Geordi. So I looked at the last dilemma under Assist Damaged Vessel, and it was Scientific Method and I already had enough Science and Medical there plus the skills to solve the mission. So I did that. Then I flew to Bajor and attempted using the HQ:SH that I had free played a few turns back. We shared this mission and I only seeded a Lack of Prep, so I made sure to bring the mission requirements. The other dilemmas were Blended (which stopped just Worf) and Dead End (which had no effect). This would have allowed me to solve if Worf wasn't stopped (as he had one of the Leaderships) but I also didn't want to solve this turn in fear of In the Zone. As such, I had an autowin on Turn 6. Assuming that Chris couldn't come up with the 20 or so range to steal Bajor.

So Chris decided to try and put some points on the board before I won. First he went back to Cardassia with some Medical Kit and Engineering Kit action. But Those spontaneously blew up in his face! (Equipment Malfunction x 2) so he went out to his next nearest planet that wasn't Insurrection (probably should have gone for broke on the Ba'ku planet for the double turn, but oh well). Nobody had Science for the Unscientific Method, then Chris opted to not give me his ship for A Fast Ship Would Be Nice. So Everyone died (except the two Androids) to Barlay's STD. They couldn't fly the ship and they couldn't solve the mission.