Actually fairly close game for much of it. I didn't get a Handshake in the opening hand and, due to the CM errata, really had to work to find one. I also failed to make dual use of Richard's KFCs due to not including that Ref Card.

When I did get it going, I ran right through three of my planet missions to get Kronos cleared down to the Dead End, Reported Activity down to a Scientific Method, and Romulus emptied. I opted not to solve any as I wanted to draw into mission specialists to make them bigger. I wrongly thought that my dilemmas would hold Richard out for more than a turn at each mission.

Instead, Richard took negligible damage at all mission attempts. He went to earth first and the first attempt had enough stats to hop a doubled holo ruse, while then losing negligible points to THTF, and 5 to Flapjacks. He didn't have much trouble recovering, however.

It was the other two missions that really failed to hold him out. Both the ones he chose had the dual combo: Edo Probe, Paralyzed by Fear, and Friendly Fire as he just went for it in both cases (hopped the Edo Probe) and then had insignificant #s stopped by PxF since Bajorans and Feds are crazy awesome at Integrity and Cunning.

This game went a bit better for me. Like the first game, I got a Barash out very early due to seeding my outposts AT the opponent's missions. Richard went first and left his Merc Ship floating in space next to my outpost, so I intended to blow it up. But then I made a mistake and played a really awesome ship in hand rather than download he hoopdie Vulcan shuttle. This meant that, after getting 2 enterprises with Admiral Riker, I had three ships, but could only staff the one. Luckily, Richard still left it in the open after turn 2, so I relieved him of it. Emergency Evacuation helped to rescue the people aboard.

This gave me time to build up while Richard was trying to figure out how to get his people together without being blown up. He started maneuvering an cloak/decloaking ships. Meanwhile, I relieved him of the Cha'joh. Finally, he got everyone together at one end of the spaceline - the one with all the best dilemmas.

I noticed that two of my missions had only 2 dilemmas under them, though they were far apart, my deck had many ships with crazy good range and if I could set up an In the Zone doubled range, I would be made in the shade. I found Unsci and Sci Method at my Evade Dominion Squadron and lost no Scientists but had to dig a bit to find three. Meanwhile, I shifted the ships over to reported activity and attempted that with three crews. Unfortunately, this time I lost two people to Firestorm (including one of the specialists I needed for Evade Dominion Squad) but did clear the In the Pale Moonlight punchline with the Duras who was waiting on the ship (turns out the Brothers were running similar dilemmas).

Richard decided to attempt the mission farthest from my fleet, which was Metaphasic Shield Testing. Here he found The Whale Probe (shutting him out) then a Cytherians combo to send all his best people on a trip (or at least a lot of them) and a The Cloud to eliminate the rest. Luckily, flying way over there was too much effort and I also felt that the Cytherianed ship wasn't worth shooting as it would not reach the end of the spaceline before the end of the game.

I solved Reported Activity with only two specialists for 45 and then the next turn solved Evade Dominion Squadron for 45 as well such that I only needed to find 10 (and could be done if I had the other two specialists). I set up my final turn to be able to shift ships all the way across the spaceline to Romulus, which had the other two card dilemma combo. This turned out to be the Access Denied + Ferengi Injenuity + Dejaren combo, but Richard did not have his Q the Ref out. It would have been solvable WITH the Access Denied, since very few personnel had died. Without it I had a walk. This was also done with specialists to put me on 130.