This was a pretty well matched game, though I feel that it was decided by some poor decisions on my part (that's the way things look from a first person perspective.) The first being the choice to see Deep Space 9 at not Bajor. I saw that Matt was running Klingon and assumed the now quite popular Speed Solver and so assumed that I needed to compete with a great/fast deck. So I seeded DS9 at space to take advantage of the Science Lab. Never got the chance to, however, as Matt seeded a Merc and a Husnock ship and pulled a couple klingon ships plus staffers in the next two turns to blow up DS9. I only had the time to get everyone who had played there off and safely to Bajor.

I then started playing smarter and hid until I had a treaty and then used a Hidden Fighter for the Apnex so that I could commute between the Homeworlds. First I brought the Romulans to Bajor, but found the Dead End. Then I brought everyone to Romulus and cleared it after saying yes to an Edo Probe. At this point, Bajor will be the third mission. So I need a space mission.

Matt had the old tent and could red shirt missions and also had a ton of ships to let him red shirt space. This resulted in easy space mission completions with little casualties. I sent a huge group for my first attempt at space hoping to bust the opening dilemmas and then find Cytherians or Scow (as battle decks tend to use) but Matt seeded Cytherians first! Then I had to STP this ship without much mission progress. The second ship went out on the same turn, but failed since the second dilemma required a real crew (Gomtuu SW). This left one under and the second crew had to be sacrificed to the Klingon Empire.

Next turn I sent one more group to try to bust Gomtuu AND the final dilemma, which turned out to be nothing (misseed). I had not sent the mission solvers, but had miscalculated and sent both people with Physics. The deck had a ton of physics, but I spent the rest of the game drawing one card by one and not finding Physics, or Dig, or a draw card. At the end of the game I looked at the deck and found it to be a lot of that. This gave Matt plenty of time to solve missions, and my dilemmas proved to be pretty mediocre vs. Klingons.

I'm not sure if this even counts as a game. Johannes WAS playing a Klingon solver, but I seeded DS9 at my homeworld anyway - as I had learned my lesson.

I never really got going in this game, only just getting out the Treaty and attempting a mission before it was over. Johannes had Officer Exchange Program and Equipment Replicator to get his shit going and that resulted in a 3 B'Somgh + 3 Zegov monster away team that steam rolled my dilemmas. This went so quick that he hadn't the chance to pull out the Mission Specialists and he won on turn 4 or 5 at most.

In the end, with two missions solved for enough points that he only needed to Arbitor for the win, he still sent everyone at a third mission and almost completed that too before ending my misery by letting Gowron stab his rival Kahless.

Probably one of the most Epic games I've seen, which shouldn't surprise anyone who has faced Mark. The Frog tends to play fun decks and have a great time rather than going for that all-out win. I felt bad when I saw his mission set as Mark had told me about this deck and plan, though I had forgotten (or not known) that it was for this event. I decided to play this honest and actually put Dilemmas under the two space missions, even though I knew he couldn't attempt them. As I partly suspected that it was a double fake out and he actually could attempt them. Still, he had put the two space in the bajor region so even if he was running Borg, I could spend a few little ships pinging him until the HP010 exploded.

This PLUS we shared Romulus. So I ended up with 4 dilemmas under each of his best missions. We started pretty much on par with the reasonable draws and plays. Both of us had to wait to get the non-seeded treaty in play before blowing up at the missions. But when we did attempt missions, things went better for me than for Mark. He lost a huge crew to Barclay's - effectively setting him back to nada and I lost far fewer while churning through dilemmas likely meta'd against TNG decks. Dabo's actually worked in this game.

I had gone to Jerado first and lost Kira to a good kill dilemma and cleared down to the Raging ambassadors. Spock + Sarek meant that I would have to bring every diplomat I owned (or get stabby) to complete, but since I went here early, I just decided to wait out the count down and collect up Dabo points. I started red shirting Characterize Neutrino Emissions (I think it was) and found dilemmas that were likely meant to target TNG, so it went down pretty easy. Then I simply had to take my time solving each mission to avoid In the Zone.

This meant that I could auto solve Bajor with just a Dead End there on the next turn for the win, and Mark had JUST rebuilt his crews. Instead of attempting missions, Mark went the awesome route and decided to start a war at Bajor. After commandeering DS9m he attacked Kai Winn in the shrine to allow a Defend Homeworld uber download. Then we had it out royal in space over Bajor. As I recall, there was lots of life lost on either side but not anyone needed to actually solve the mission. So I got boring and 'won' on my next turn.

A pretty bloody game that was a real street brawl when it came down to it, ultimately going to he that was least afraid of throwing a low blow.

John Paul saw me running Romulus and Bajor regions but decided to put some missions on each side. Once the smoke had cleared that meant that he had 3 missions on each side of my 6 - not good for JP. Still, he had pre-errata TNG Ferengi and Mercenaries and proceeded to just churn out the people. Once he had a respectable ton of people in play, he attempted a mission and lost them all to doubled Barclay's (with a ton of Science and Security but only one Medical). Then he spent a lot of turns building up again (without much difficulty).

It took me a long while to even get my deck going, though I did a lot of Daboing, they almost all failed since the cards I hit for probes were all the Handshakes and Ships. I attempted Jerado first, but loathed a first seed Medical Crisis, since it makes you bring the Medical so that they can be eliminated. I then cleared Bajor down to the Dead End and moved on to Romulus.

By the time I got to Romulus, I had ton of people in play. While I was trying to choose between Romulus and Remus, JP grabbed an Access Denied tipping me off to the infamous CS combo. I had two people with CS x 2 and two with CS x 1. I sent everyone at Romulus and Odo and Kira were baffled by Ferengi Ingenuity while Dejaren managed to pick and kill my Romulus CS x 2! What are the odds?! At that point I needed to either recur my Romulan from the graveyard or wait for Odo and Kira to straighten their shit out. I started setting up the former option while I sent a crew to Red Shirt Remus, this ended 'meh' as they cleared it but found a Combo scow which sent Leeta to the far end of the spaceline (which was all but barren of people) but my deck lacks Tractor Beam (poor deck design). I ops downloaded Prylar Ranjen to Dig my CS x 2 dude back and replay him for free at Romulus. This allowed me to solve the first mission of the game.

John Paul was built back up, and he attempted another mission, which again resulted in everyone in play dying to Barclay's - this time for lack of Science, most of which were in the first crew. He did have the Kurdon here and there was a real nail biter moment while he looked through his deck and Tent for one Scientist. I got lucky. Somewhere around here, maybe just prior to attempting this mission, JP attempted the Mercenary Mission only to release the Nexus and fail to pass Crisis. He never did go back there for lack of Officer, or at least lack of Officer he wanted to red shirt. The Nexus turned out to mess with me more than him, since it started on the end of the spaceline that his people weren't and then went into my territory.

The Nexus was kind enough to give my Leeta back to me and I was finally having some luck at Dabo. I decided to go to space before the Nexus came down and blocked it. I can't recall off hand what the dilemmas here were, only that they shut out the first crew and that JP flew over a single Ferengi B'rel to damage it. Something tells me that it required Science since I downloaded Bariel via Ops and hopped it only to luck over a Gomtuu Shock wave thanks to Bariel having Diplo x 2 (Note: Opaka was killed by tactic damage in the proceeding engagement). Since JP could destroy ship 1 but only damage ship 2, I STP'd the former. This would presumably give me time to rebuild a crew to find out what was behind Dead End at Bajor.

John Paul did damage the second ship and took the two Tactic kills but at the end of his turn The Nexus picked off both of our ships. Meanwhile, he had Isomaged, rebuilt sufficiently, and solved both his previously cleared missions. The space one being harder for the requisite skills and the planet one still having a Scientific method, for which he had to recur his Scientists from the discard pile. This put me in quite the predicament as we both had two solved missions, but Bajor would be blocked from solving on my next turn. I put all my people at Romulus for a turn where I just sat it out for a two pronged approach. If JP attempted the Merc Mission (the only one on his side not completed) then I would bet on the Alien Parasites combo hitting and would do a swoop and steal with Ranjen giving the Archaeology and Gareb supplying Non-aligned. Otherwise, I would head back to Bajor.

John Paul still did not like the look of my Crisis lead off dilemma, so he opted to try to fly over the Bajor region, this would take him a couple turns. So I had time to multi-attempt Bajor for the win.