I played David in the first round and he was running an improved version of his (my) Romulan deck - meaning that this was a repeat of the last time we played. I put four under his 45 point mission (which I couldn't steal due to the icons and the location of it) but he inevitably trucked through. Trilithium stopped him, but he set up a 5 man all Android team to bust it. Then they went down the spaceline on a Cytherian cruise. In many ways, this was a smart move by David (even the choosing not to STP it) since me destroying the ship would just put Androids in the discard pile and thereby let him retrieve them and replay them with Cybernetics Expertise. And if I didn't waste a turn doing that, he'd get 15 points for 2 mission win. The follow-up dilemmas were The Cloud, which stopped his ship for a couple turns, and Gomtuu Shockwave, which relieved him of that ship. But in the end, he did solve it for the big money and bonus points due to it being a Neutral Zone region mission (though no Mission Specialists points).

On my side, I was doing a fine job of clearing down missions, but not solving a whole lot as all the Dilemmas were stallers. Edo Probe, Dead End, Friendly Fire with good set up, etc. So when it came down to it, I had to be careful about not solving too many missions in a turn, to avoid In the Zone, while still getting the range to move between the missions. This was tricky as the ones next to each other didn't match well points wise. I made a bonehead move when attempting to hop Founder Secret. I counted strength and could do it with just 5 guys, but then when they beamed down, David relieved them of their gun with a Disruptor Overload. I should have just flown over to my outpost and got the 2X Rogue Borg red icon drones, but instead I through 8 and took a bigger hit with Higher The Fewer and Flapjacks.

But what decided the game was David's inability to solve a planet mission. The first one that he went to had Undercover Agent as the opening dilemma and he had no Biology (he noted after the game that he only had 1 Biology in the deck!) He also couldn't attempt Romulus due to not yet drawing his HQ:Secure HW. So that just left the mission which bordered Cardassian space, and he never even got there before time was called.

Ultimately this is a Mod win due to stall dilemmas and not enough time to get them all done (though 5 were cleaned out). Another turn would have given David a shot at the planet mission, while one more for me would have locked the Full Win. Ultimately, me going for a 3 mission win as opposed to a 2 mission win meant that I was ahead at the end. Though perhaps if I had not destroyed his ship before it could reach the end of the spaceline (using both ships in play at the time) then I could have solved a mission or two earlier.

Richard reminded me that we hadn't played since the Seattle Regional. He had placed second at the last tournament that I had played at (beating Jules who beat me) and had won the previous event with TNG Klingons. This time he had a cool Office of the President + ToS Time location + Bajoran Resistance Cell + Son'a deck that likely only lost because it's ships wre so horrible at range.

There were a couple stealable missions on his side, the one closest to Cardassian space I only gave 2 dilemmas under the assumption that it would be an easy steal. Especially since the two were Do You Smell? and Alien Parasites. If he failed the Parasites, I could potentially solve it with his guys! Richard went there first, once he had a good number of personnel in play, and obligingly put the solvers on one ship in orbit while attempting with the other. There were 10 attempting so only 5 got stopped by burning food, and then the 5 remaining Feds/Bajorans definitely had the integrity. So that was an easy solve.

My side played exactly like that vs. David except that the first mission I went at had a combo to off Low Integrity dudes and then In the Pale Moonlight. This was an easy solve for me, even though Lower Decks makes most of my guys decent integrity. But the rest held me out until I again had 5 mission cleared.

David obviously had trouble with space, but also needed 4 missions even though he had bonus points from the Pheonix putting him at 45 since none of his missions went to 45 (don't tell him where I put the 5 point dilemma...) He had big issues with the first seeded Gomtuu Shockwave at one of his two space missions and had to draw to find a second Diplomat. But then he opted to go to the other, which only had three dilemmas under. This, again, was on the border of Cardassian space, and he never made it there before the game ended.

I went first and time was called during my turn - meaning that he would have one more turn if I didn't win. I had four missions cleared, but the two remaining unsolved didn't add up to 100 after. So I solved just one of those and then through down at an unattempted 35 point planet mission to go for the hail mary. Ended up completing it too, to get the FW.

When I sat down across from Ken, I was actually a little disappointed that I hadn't played my other deck as it was teched perfectly to destroy the dilemmas that both David and Richard had played and Ken had Klingons. But no, I was not wrong, since he started seeding a half dozen hidden agendas and finally revealed the painful truth -> Borg. Specifically, Ken had brought his Worlds Borg deck (presumably for the Weyoun of Borg Victor achievement).

But actually, this game was very close and I almost pulled off the tournament win (very dissappointed). I had outposts on either side of my HW and used those to ferry people to safety (Stratagema in tent) each turn. I tried to build up a decent number of people before attempting to go anywhere and then used a few to scout through Cardassia Prime to find the Dead End (which was definitely there) but that took a while as Ken seeded it 4th. Meanwhile Ken just hung out at bajor with a ton of Borg waiting for me to go somewhere.

I inevitably did go to the neighboring space and the first crew made it through an Edo Probe (went for it!) and down to a Borg Servo and were stopped giving Ken a drone. That made it so I could not STP the ship to hand as he had a drone onboard. I then attempted to move a solving crew over since it was a cleared mission but Ken Tarctor Locked my one ship and the third had wasted it's range moving to and back from one of my outposts. So I'm at -16 (there was also a Higher the Fewer in there) and Ken moved over and attempted to Assimilate Species on Cardassians, and certainly won the fight, but failed the probe. So one dude died and I got to retreive the survivors the next turn.

Around now, Ken took his one acquired drone and brought everything to his space to try and Establish Gateway (I think). This actually took him a couple of attempts even though I had set up those dilemmas for Klingons. I was thinking that he would fail the Gomtuu (for some crazy reason) and was planning to shoot it and just collect my points (I had 3 ships in play and one in hand) but he had given the Queen Empathy so passed throuhg. But Microbrain stopped him as Exo and Geo were two skills he did not yet have in play. What is more, he couldn't find them on easily downloadable people so he had to work to get that the next turn (moving Borg tricks etc).

I then solved my mission and was Mission Debriefed so I STP'd it. This put me on 14, which was the whole score of the game for a while. Ken inevitably cleared his space mission and then used Gateways to move his cube to the other side of the spaceline. He then attempted to probe at end of turn, but I pointed out to him that he had yet to play a counterpart. So on my next turn, I pinged him to prevent the probe for his objective and keep the score at 14-0.

But here is where I made my game losing decision. I could play as though this was my last turn (I had gone first) or second to last. But time had not been called yet. I had retrieved my STP with a Dig and replayed it, so I sent a clearing attempt at the other neighboring space (at this time my HW was cleared down to the dead end) and they failed (this group hopped the Borg Servo thanks to Suna rewriting someone) but were stopped by Garbage Scow and Mission Debriefing. So I STP'd to hand again to prevent Ken from acquiring enough drones to be at >14 points.

On Ken's turn, time was called. So he just needed to get >14 points, I.e. complete an objective. And he had gotten lucky and drew the Gowron of Borg, so dude got played. So he targeted Kronos for Assimilation and went for it. The first scouting group failed The Clown: My Festival and the second got cut in half by Do You Smell and then failed Alien Parasites. This gave me control of the Cube but dammit I couldn't do anything! Ken had expended all but 2 range flying to Kronos and the closest mission was 3 away. My DDP did nothing due to him running Locutus' Cube (why?) insead of the Queen's and he didn't have the range drone. So I had to just give it back to him. All I did was cycle a drone into his deck that was a bad probe and hope that that messed his odds just slightly. He got the probe! and checked his deck to find maybe 4 in 30 cards as bad probes.