I managed to get a luck Round 1 pairing against The Hosp. Normally, Hosp places rather high (but almost never wins) and can only be faced by doing well in an event. Also, he's on The Hit List since I haven't played him in over a year and the achievements only recently started counting different opponents. This win gives me +1 on each the Play Against and Win Against achvs.

Ben's missions were pretty obviously Starfleet Era with the Klingon mission and Orion mission (but not Earth?) But I recognized this as possibly Borg and the Salvage Starship had me a bit scared. The only 1E online event that Ben won was a Borg one. My dilemmas suck against Borg, but I built the deck with the intent of outracing them (or just hiding and grabbing a few points). I seeded The Nexus under my Homeworld in case of Borg as he would certainly put his They Will be Coming there but otherwise seeded my dilemmas normally. I put only two dilemmas under the farthest mission from Ferenginar in hopes that he would stay over there and also Cytherians under the mission next to Ferenginar in hopes of sending him away for a turn or two.

He was playing Borg and TWBC did indeed seed at Ferenginar. I seeded my extra outpost on the other end of the spaceline, for some reason that I might not wholly understand. But I used this to try to pull him from my Homeworld as the guys I played there were out in the wide open, while most of my guys huddled under a Stratagema Blanket like the fearful little Ferengi they are (see: Quark in "The Siege of AR-558"). Ben got his cube up and running on Turn 2, but I had AAH download a ship and moved everyone safely to home before that.

One lucky thing for me was that I played Krunk to that really far Outpost. As he was my only Tranny and Ben was running Tribbles, he opted to stop that dude with 1 tribbles for ever and everyone else had free run. I inevitably attempted Ferenginar (once I got a Fed in play) and was pleasantly surprised to not find a Dead End. This mission took me quite a while to churn through. Local Trouble found me lacking Anthro on the first go and then on the second it's download of Rape Gangs picked off one of my two Security such that a SoG doubled Archer stopped them all (and killed a second guy). On the third go, Shore Leave was walked through but then Female's LI Picked off Lwaxana and Male's LI picked of Dr. Farek (they weren't dating, they were just dating together). So I was expecting Matriarchal and that would have hit me hard as I had Handshook one lady, just lost one, and yet to see any others - but it was Founder Secret? That stopped me again.

Ben got tired of waiting for me to stop hiding and flew out to Establish a Gateway at his space mission. The first go saw him waltz an Edo Probe, slide right on by a Ferengi Infestation, and lose the ship to V'ger for lack of Anthropology (The Queen was running Greed), this didn't phase old Ben much, as he had Federation Flagship: Safety Net seeded and he just relocated the ship to the far end of the spaceline (though this left him in danger of getting blown up again without a safety net). This meant that he was pretty damned far way from Host Metaphasic Shield Testing, so I attempted that and my red shirt crew barely slid by Arsenal: Divided (Integrity... are you serious?), failed to stop drones from boarding the ship by an Undetected Beam In, and then hit Cytherians. I STP'd it. This left me with a cleared Space mission, only a Founder Secret under the planet and looking at the ways to possibly make this a two mission win.

Ben used a Transwarp Conduit to get back to his space mission the very next turn, and then probed and solved for 25 (Gowron in play for instant probing). Next turn he went to assimilate a planet. The first dilemma caught him short as it required attributes and he had sent a small scouting crew to the mission while moving the cube away to the neighboring mission. It was the turn after Ben attempted his first planet that I cleared but could not solve Ferenginar (I sent all my strongest guys but neglected to also include Acquisition. Since the first group was stopped by mission debriefing and the second didn't have a Federation personnel to allow the attempt). This is key because the mission that Ben had scouted was 3 away from the far end of the spaceline and he had put his ship 2 away (at my extra outpost). As you may recall, I had seeded my The Nexus at Ferenginar and busting through the Founder Wall got me a blown up Borg Cube (again).

Ben wasn't shut out though, since he could simply relocate his personnel to the next planet and keep assimilating planets. After getting decubed, he had to go back to his first planet to complete that objective. Gowron and the drone that allows you to probe twice made sure that he got it done and at the end of the turn the Nexus picked his dudes back up again so they could move onto the next mission.

This put him on 50 and me at sad shit.

I sent everyone to solve Ferenginar and this worked even though made the right decision to 1 Tribbles there as he had an unlucky pick. I also had all my personnel from the far end of the spaceline back thanks to the Nexus. Since Host was already cleared, I had no reason to go there this turn (In the Zone's a bitch) but had card played that turn to Rebuild my deck. The trick to winning was that I needed 20 from Delivering Soran to the Nexus (both in play) 30 from Ferenginar, and then 50 from Host. I still had both Science Specialists in play, but would need either one Scientist in discard (with Integrity of at least 5) or another Specialist made to fit by Suna. Suna was in play, but I had tossed my STP to bounce the ship to hand a few turns back and would need to redraw it to get a Reflection Therapy. Luckily, my opening draw after Isomaging my deck included a Handshake, a Scientist, and a ship. The end of turn draw from that was my STP (the odds were good as I really hadn't lost too many cards).

Ben relocated to another planet mission, scouted with everyone, cleared all dilemmas, and probed twice - both fails. But he had a bit of time before the Nexus showed up there. I played my STP and my new ship and used Krunk (relocated by the Nexus) to move a 1000 tribbles off my best ship (Kurdon) so that my mission specialists had skills. Then I flew everyone to Host and sent just the people needed to solve it (with Farek reprogrammed to Navigation by my friend Suna) and then flew the new ship with everyone else (including Soran) as far as they could go toward the Nexus (no Get It Done). I didn't have to worry about my personnel getting assimilated, which was a nice change of pace.

Ben just probed again and went up to 85 (or was it just 75, whatever) and then passed it back to me so I could deliver Soran to the Nexus.

Johannes was running a modified version of his Romulan TNG deck that qualified as a Romulan/Cardassian Treaty deck, a pretty solid one as well which also went for a Q Flash side deck achievement. We ended up seeding the spaceline with his six missions on one side and my six on the other where my stealable Meta Shield Testing and his Kressari Rendezvous were the bordering missions. For this reason, I decided to self seed The Nexus in a place where I could easily set it off and it could spend much of the game dicking with him on his end of the spaceline. I wanted to do Shield Testing and Revenge Plot (50 points each) for a two mission win with The Nexus as a buffer for 20 points worth of point loss, but decided to put the Nexus at Ferenginar, which was likely to have the weakest dilemma combo, so that I could set it off when I needed to. I was most concerned about a Dead End at either of my two best missions + point loss making me need two missions complete before triggering The Nexus.

Johannes went first and while his deck played well, he was playing personnel to three different missions (likely why he wanted his missions as a Region) and wasn't pulling a ship. My deck pulled a staffed ship on Turn 1 and parked it at Kressari to trigger the free Equipment at the start of Turn 2, I sent only three sacrificable personnel in case Johannes could suddenly pull two staffed ships on his turn two, but that was not the case and I got ahold of a free ETU for my trouble. On my Turn 2, I attempted Revenge Plot, as I had drawn into good planet D busting skills, but failed the Now Would Be a Good Time as my deck only has one Transporter skill. This netted Johannes Suna as a Captive (great pick).

Johannes burned his AAH once per game DL to get a D'deridex and headed out, but due to the placement of his personnel, was not able to mix and optimize his mission scouting crew, as such they did not have the skills to bust the first seeded dilemma at the mission he chose: Undercover Agent. Around here in the game, I cleared Meta Shield testing down to the Dead End.

Johannes attempted his Outpost mission and found the Dead End, this left his only ship thus far two from the end of the spaceline, so I decided to throw down at Ferenginar with a big dilemma busting crew. I failed a first seeded Lack of Prep but then cheated around it by using the Kurdon's special download on The Trois, but got hit with 8 Q Flash cards due to a big crew and managed to get into the hole pointwise. I did clear down to the last dilemma, after losing a decent number of personnel to Flapjacks (but saving two with ETU and a handgun). That final dilemma was a Captain's Holiday (great dilemma) and I only had one Arch and one Geo in play, but my end of turn draw that turn was a Holodeck Door (very lucky).

I had missed my opportunity to set off The Nexus, and Johannes moved away from the spaceline end. But I decided to continue on with Ferenginar anyway as I could solve it and the point loss pretty much meant that I needed to solve 3 missions. The Holodeck door got me Prot, which meant that I now had 2X Arch and 2X Geo, so I solved Ferenginar putting me on 19. Since neither of us had a mission debriefing in play, I decided to red shirt Revenge Plot and clear out more dilemmas. In the Zone was not an issue as I did not send the mission solving skills, and point loss wasn't an issue as 3 missions + The Nexus would put me on 150 scored that game anyway. I found the other Q Flash, but this time it worked in my favour by taking two prisoners (from my red shirts) and gave me back Suna. Combo Plague Ship bounced Prot out to the farthest planet such that he immediately got pickup and delivered back by The Nexus. Beverly was sacrificed to the Plague Ship for the 5 points. The team managed to clear all the way down to the final dilemma, which was a Medical Crisis.

With The Nexus now blocking one mission and about to move to another, Johannes opted to hop it and attempt the farthest mission on the spaceline, which had my best combo, IMO. He lucked by the Trilithium Raid due to having Data and Sirol hanging around and then hit the Cytherians. Since he'd spent all of his range to hop The Nexus, he wasn't traveling anymore this turn and chose to STP the ship as it would just crash into the Nexus on a subsequent turn (or luck by and get blown up by Ferengi ships.) He then recommended that I Scorch his 15 card hand, and I complied thereby putting him down to just 6. By this time, Johannes was doing a decent job of scoring points even without mission complete, thanks to a (pre-errata) Labor Camp on Cardassia.

I had tossed a couple Biologists away early game to keep the draws going, so only had one in play. But I had recently regained Suna, so I used him to give a non-Medical person (a Gozar) Biology and then hopped Medical Crisis. That dilemma did randomly stop a mission specialists, so I only solved this for 40. Due to random pointloss/gain from dilemmas, I was at 60 here. I couldn't solve Meta Shield testing, thanks to In the Zone, but could finally hop the Dead End. However, it was no longer cleared out as Johannes had reseeded the Ferenginar Q Flash there. I sent a minimum attempt of 4 personnel (all wearing red) and they cleared it with maximal loss of personnel who did not matter.

This should have meant that the game was locked in my favour, but on my next turn, Meta Shield Testing would be blocked by The Nexus (finally working against me). Johannes did not get his 10 Labor Camp points here, as The Nexus had picked off his Camp Warden. He attempted Cardassia with a big crew and then failed The Clown: My Festival. He also tested the waters on Meta Shield Testing, by forcing me to reveal the HQ; Defensive Measures and confirm that it couldn't be stolne. But he managed to get 4 more people together to red shirt past The Clown and cheated through the Friendly Fire combo with the special download on the Bralek. He couldn't solve the mission this turn, due to not enough personnel to get a stat over 35.

I opted not to attempt another mission this turn, as my In the Zone would prevent Johannes from winning on his next. So I simply sat out and let the Nexus eat my last ship thereby putting all my people in the afterlife. Johannes completed Cardassia and decided to go after one more mission. He had the choice of the Dead Ended Outpost mission or the farthest mission (using a Hidden Fighter to get a Pi and more range) and opted for the one at the end of the spaceline. This crew failed The Cloud and were stopped.

So all I had to do was AAH download a Marauder and fly everyone to Meta Shield Testing but I had forgotten to Oof! cancel his Fighting Words and was a bit concerned that some of the mission skills would be unusable, but luckily, most of the skills on that mission are also Classifications.

Danny's missions looked Like Kazon (with Son'a) to me, but that was simply too cool to be what he was actually running. I did opt to seed the dilemmas as if he were playing Kazon, which meant I put jack shit at his MQ mission. Even if he was running Borg, I couldn't see him bothering with MQ and to this day, I have no idea why he even had a MQ mission (anti- KCA tech???).

I should have asked how many dilemmas were under each mission, as I found out later that Ferenginar only had 1! Had I known that - 1 D is always Dead End, and I wouldn't have self seeded The Nexus there. As it was, that bad desision almost cost me the deck, as Danny was playing interaction and I couldn't set off The Nexus to dick with his fleet. On his turn one (he went first), he didn't do much. Tossing one Kazon Dude for free in the DQ, one free Son'a, getting s ship in the DQ with Spacedoor, and downloading Gallatin with the Observatory to set up Duck Blind draws. He forced me to spend a card draw to get General Quarters like the true Tier One player that he is. On my turn one, I played the HQ; War Room at Ferenginar and flew the seeded Marauder to Ferenginar while dropping off two guys to shut down the Duck Blind (for a very short time). This play worked well and poorly for me in many ways. First, the battle got me 5 points and two draws with the Ferengi Warp Core (those 5 were very integral later) but I had left my fully loaded ship in orbit of Ferenginar assuming that they were safe at the homeworld. I had also used my once per game download of a Ship for a second Marauder with AAH just to get it out of the deck and reduce the likelihood of drawing it.

Still with very few personnel in play, Danny got another ship with spacedoor and could just barely fly his Kazon cargo carrier. Using a drawn Wormhole, the wormhole Mission, and outgunned, he was able to hop his ships to Ferenginar and Outgunned me. The stop from wormhole was overcome by Make It So. This is a neat trick as it only requires the weapons to be hanging out and not actually staffed ships, so the fact that he only had three guys there did not stop them from one by one staffing and unloading the ships,threatening my ship, and then loading up and leaving. He then used two seeded Captured on the guys left on Insurrection, and a Boarding pod to take over the second Marauder and go up 20 points.

So at the start of my turn 2, I had no personnel in play and only two ships in my deck. I decided to just play like normal (except no ships) and allow Danny to take out the outposts one by one. AAH and FMO got me free plays to get draws, which got me free plays at Ferenginar. Those are the only ones I got to keep. I did try to get a crew up and together at my outpost such to retreat to Ferenginar with my Fed Scientific Diplomats, but I had forgotten that the outpost at Test Shields was a Trading Post and Danny simply fought me and killed those dudes. This made it hard to staff a ship, when I did play one, I couldn't staff it yet, and danny damaged it through the shields. I had Get It Done but that range boost couldn't get the battered ship to Ferenginar so I simply sent it to Red Shirt the neighboring space mission. This proved very lucky. The two dilemmas there were a Chula, that stopped all but two, and a Linguistic Ledgerdemain. The latter meant that I couldn't complete the mission for 3 turns (the two guys left were different affiliations) but otherwise it was cleared out. I STP'd that ship rather than lose it forever.

Danny blew up the Outpost at my outpost mission first and the Trading Post second. Having failed to move people to Ferenginar from either, I shifted my focus to try to get a crew to complete the cleared space mission from the Husnock outpost. This didn't work out as Danny destroyed it before the three turn countdown ended, but I did get a look at the mission were it had been seeded, clearing the Flapjacks - losing two and then butting up against the Hanonian Land Eel. So far, Danny seemed to be playing a game of locking me out and winning 20-5. He next attempted to destroy my HQ (since my deck was too slim to get much of a Benefit from Defend Homeworld, but I used Stratagema.

Here-ish, I attempted Ferenginar (which required me to Card play a Fed Sci/Dip personnel to attempt) and found the inevitable dead end. Danny pulled another cool trick by shifting all of his personnel and ships just to get Tierna to Ferenginar and wipe out the attempting crew. This put me at one personnel in play. Danny finally attempted a mission, and it was Host Shield Testing. I had to choose to reveal my HQ: Defensive Measures or let him go at it and hope he couldn't get through in the first attempt. I decided to let him go for it as HQ:DM would count down before I could get a crew there anyway, as things were going, but he only cleared the first dilemma (apparently the goal was to trigger the HQ: DM).

My goal in the game shifted to trying to just get points on the board by completing the cleared space and hope for a timed win. to do so, I would need to build up a crew at Ferenginar and then play the Zalconian Vessel and use Get It Done to give it 11 range. My only other ship, The Kurdon, had no way to get there in one turn. This took me a long time to set up, since I had drawn into both Isomags early game and then Masaka'd them to the bottom of the deck. I now had to draw my whole deck just to get my discard pile back. One that happened, I was moving at a decent clip again, but still took a while to do anything as I wanted to get 1. Zalconian Vessel and 2. STP back (in order to return the Zalc to hand after the mission was complete) and then I happened to draw into the mission specialists (which had to be card played). This meant that, although it took a while, I could complete the space mission for 45 and roll on up to 50! This is what I did, getting Dr. Christopher and Narik and then using Suna to Reflection Therapy my Dr. Borts into a Nav specialist. As such, I completed that for 50 and STP'd as planned.

Me hitting 50 seemed to take Danny by surprise. He hadn't done much more than draw and build up since wiping all my facilities off the board, not too surprising as a deck which can pull off his turn two sweep has to be very focused on that aspect. He did attempt Insurreection at one point, only to find a first seeded Dead End, and then attempted his space mission. This latter took him a few attempts but he did successfully call and score 5 points from V'ger but had to dig for a second Diplomacy to get by the Last seeded Gomtuu Shock Wave. When I completed my mission for 50 is when Danny really started trying to get points and complete missions, though it was kind of late.

I had a perfect turn planned out after my completed space mission, where I would complete Ferenginar. I still had Lwaxana Troi there and needed to replay Quark (who I sent to space in case of Access Denied) for free to the HQ and Dr. Chistopher (to attempt Ferenginar) as card play. I would then have the mission solved and be at 80 and the Nexus triggered so I could Deliver Soran there the subsequent turn (with Get it Done range boost. This meant that the card play on my following turn would be the Zalconian Vessel (again). However, I managed to fuck this up bad and played the Zalc vessel rather than Chirstopher essentially preventing myself from getting any chance of an FW. Still, I didn't request a take back.