In preparation for this tournament, I built my deck in Lackey considering the special theme of the tournament (pure Klingon or pure Romulan) and a group of target achievements. Then on the Saturday before, I dug through boxes to find the physical cards, mostly from previous iterations (skeletons) of Klingon decks.

Most of this was done during my daughter's nap. I brought my card boxes into the bedroom, since she sleeps better and longer if I stay close by. I had gone down to the basement to swap out a card box and when I got back she was standing there holding the lid to my Klingon OTSD box in one hand and a few of the cards in the deck in the other.

"cards," she said.

"good job Le Vy, you found the cards"

"ooooh, cards."

I clapped for her and then we went out to the living room to play. (Eleanor is 19 months old.) Once I had her interested in a film, I went to the kitchen to warm up our lunch. But when I got back to the living room, she was nowhere to be seen. I sprinted back to the bedroom to find her there again, with the OTSD box.

"Cards!"

My first pairing was against David and he had brought a non-TNG Romulan deck with Son'a. I looked through my dilemma combos to find something particularly nasty for Insurrection, and think I succeeded, though he never did get to try it out.

This game went my way pretty quick. I started building up a fleet and David obliged me by leaving a staffed ship in space nearby while trying to bring everything to Romulus. I relieved him of it. Then he tried a mission, but again it required his ship to be vulnerable, so I relieved him of that. Finally, he decided to stay at Romulus and build up.

I wanted to destroy the Son'a Observatory, on principal. But I started attempting the nearby planet mission to kill time while I dug through the deck for more ships/matching commanders. Unsci killed someone and I think that another died by Kelvan Show, which got me down to a Sci Method. I decided to get the Tricorder for that, but that required me to spread my ships out on a commute to the Equipment Replicating Outpost. I left an uncloaked ship in orbit of Insurrection to help ferry things over thinking that David would certainly not be likely of drawing a Son'a Battleship in that turn, but he did and played/staffed it. I was a bit interested in seeing how the battle would go, as his ship was certainly bigger, but I had a battle bridge side deck. But alas, I did not get to find out. He retreated it to Romulus, which was likely the wise choice.

On the next turn, I solved Distress Mission for 50, which put me on 80 or so, since I had scored a goodly number of bonus points. (People died, yelling had occurred, etc.) This put me in a very good position, as David had a severe lack of points and hadn't been attempting missions, while I just needed a space mission. He was struggling to get his ships/crews together without leaving anything open for destruction, but luckily had cloaking devices.

Next turn, I went to space by shifting lots of good personnel between ships and using a DDP boosted Qam'chee to make the last stretch. My dilemma clearing crew did good work and went through Personal Duty, A Fast Ship (some dude died, someone played by Patrick Stewart as I recall), and Friendly Fire. This made me happy as I did not lose any points (actually gaining 5 of Picard's demise) and felt that David could not do anything reasonable with two turns. I moved the Vor'cha over to put two ships at that mission and deter an attack but David brought it anyways. Pretty admirable really, since the game was just about over. Might as well draw some blood and hope that personnel killed were key to the mission solve.

I had left too many people on the Vor'cha for good taste, and his two ships were bigger than my two (he had the Scimitar and the Son'a Battleship, two veterans of the Dominion War) but the Battle Bridge actually out me ahead and I destroyed the Son'a Battleship while he only damaged the Vorcha. Didn't matter, though since I had tons of ships to spare and the mission requirements are only Cunning > 50.

I had expected Justin to bring an AQ Borg deck, but he had an Hirogen speed solver. This didn't look good for me as I would have to shift my deck to solver and couldn't use Expand the Empire for any points. This was likely my toughest game of the tournament.

I ended up attempting Romulus first, as I assumed it would have the weakest dilemmas of the four planets, but it had the Dead End. I then went to the two neighboring planets (Distress Mission and Reported Activity) on the next turn and sent a crew at each simultaneously. The first saw a Hippocratic Oath and couldn't get by, but the second passed the Oath only to have everyone else die by a Combo Plague ship. This meant that I really needed Medical, so I retreated to my Equipment Manufacturing Outpost to make some fresh doctors.

Justin had gone to a planet first, and he didn't have much issue with my combo. Turns out the Hirogen had Anthropology and Officer for days, so no points were lost, but three people died. He was then able to solve it on the next turn with Seven of Nine for the big money (Assist Coop for 40). But that had left him a little slender on the Hirogen Officers (as three had died) and when he saw the Hazardous Duty at another mission later in the game, he promptly went elsewhere.

The range to get back to my outpost was not good, so I decided to throw one attempt at that space mission to not waste any time. Turns out that it was another Medical drain and few personnel died to another Combo Scow (as I hadn't sent the newly acquired equipment on a red shirt attempt). But realizing that the equipment was the ticket, I correctly guessed The Cloud for the punchline and solved the mission the next turn.

Justin solved a space mission relatively easily and with mission specialists to get all the way to 95, so I made sure to put a YAAM on the table (he was DQ only). Then he found the space mission with Cytherians. As he had sent a big crew to bust this, they were out of the picture for a few turns (even though it was Equinox in the DQ) and the backup away team only managed to fail The Cloud leaving the crews both distracted for the next turn or two.

I played a ship to Kronos to help easy the travel back to Distress Mission, and sent the big crew here with the equipment as I knew it was the Medical Combo, they got to the end, but failed it since I had only chosen to send one B'smogh (in case the final dilemma was scow needing towing). On my next turn, though, I played a third Biologist and solved Distress Mission for 50. Then I sent my non-solvers to Reported Activity. They managed to clear the Hippocratic Oath and Kelvan Show, with Kitrik being Chosen for the latter as that to die. I thought I again correctly predicted Scientific Method as the punchline and used Riker's download of ETU to save him. This was fortunate, as I had exactly 3 scientists in play and would have had to track all the way back to the Outpost to get a Scientist making equipment. I could solve on the next turn, for 50, once I got my Scientists and Mission Specialists together.

Here, Justin decided to use a Persistence of Memory + Mona Lisa + Disruptor Overload to cost me 25 points. But he failed to realize that this was not enough as it only put me down to 55. He had solved a 3rd mission to go over 100 but was undecided on which remaining space to make the 4th and didn't have range to get to either yet anyway.

So on my last turn, I made the full win by solving for 50 (four Honor Specialists present).

Ian was playing AQ Borg, so I was eager to play hims, as I wanted to see if I had successfully teched against Borg - but also afraid... very afraid.

I went first, and got a ship up and going ASAP to retreat to my Homeworld. Much of the game was spent hiding at Kronos (and secretly hoping to be attacked) which meant very few Gowron reports but no problem with the AAH reports since the Vor'cha is my AAH downloaded ship and has 3 staffing icons.

On turn 2, I sent a lone Hegh'ta with Klag (one skill dot) out to Reported Activity (shared) to trigger the Expand the collective. This successfully put me on 25, as I had drawn a Death Yell. Later I started pinging the nearest unshared planet, but that did not end well for me as my females all fucked off before I could clear the Matriarchal Society. Luckily, Ian's attempt to assimilate species failed.

Next, I turned my strategy wholly to getting enough firepower to nuke a cube, which was waiting ever so patiently at Kronos with my ships. I just built up and he built up, turn after turn. I had drawn two Ready Room Doors early and had converted them to Captain's Log and Defiant Dedication Plaque respectively, but had yet to draw enough matching commanders to make the most of them. I had hand FULL of ships, but didn't want to scare the cube off, so I just kept playing staffers - slowly since I could not get the most of my plays or draws.

Eventually, when I was one ship away from doing the deed (and trying to get the staffing in order), Ian flew away and attempted a Space mission. This one had Trilithium Raid (a walk) and Cytherians. This latter dilemma decided the new pacing of the game as Ian had apparently not stocked an answer for this. It took him 3 or so turns to traverse the spaceline, and meanwhile I went hog wild on completely safe mission attempting.

I ended up losing Lack of Prep and High the Fewer points at space, to put me at just 6. Only to go up to 41 when I finally solved Distress Mission (note: no Mission Specialists points thanks to a Brain Teaser). Dead End was the punchline in Space, so I needed one more mission. I went to the other space mission, as it was not shared, and sent a big crew only to have them stopped by Borg Servo (my Kitrik is the TNG one without Cybernetics, though he was in the attempt.) This gave Ian his 4 points for the game, as he assimilated a Zegov. On the next turn, I had enough skills to meet the mission requirements with two groups, so I broke them into smaller attempts. The first group found an Edo Probe (I went for it) and a combo scow and were stopped by Mission Debriefing. I had expected a scow in a Borg deck, so the B'somgh's happily moved it. Then the second crew solved and were also stopped. I couldn't get back to the first space mission, which only had a Dead End left, but I set up a ship at Kronos to help make that commute happen. This meant that I would have very likely been able to win one the next turn.

However time was called at the start of Ian's turn and he had just hit the end of the spaceline. He opted to us A Change of Plans to attempt his space mission there, but all were stopped by the first dilemma: Dead End.