I was pretty stoked to be paired against Lori in this tournament, as it was the last of the weekend and she was the only one of the three new players that I had not yet faced (and beat). Then again, it was her second ever First Edition tournament and she was playing a borrowed deck with a quick tutorial on how to play. Given what my deck does, this could also be her last First Edition tournament.

High credit is due to Lori, who can pick up a complicated game quite quickly. You could see the development over the game and I've no doubt that she will be a tough competitor, if she sticks with the game, a year from now. Plus, this is one of the best decks out there. I often refer to it as Jules' deck, since she always plays it. But it was actually designed and built by Ken, who also refers to it as Jules' deck. That AND it won the Florida regional a few weeks back when piloted by a brand new player.

We both started out building up a force to work with (though perhaps with different intents). This was definitely going to be a timed win game for someone, since Lori still needed to read every card, and I was helping her to get all of her free plays and downloads by pointing out what she was able to do (though certainly not telling her what she should do).

Eventually, Lori had a pretty massive stack of personnel and was trying to choose the first mission to attempt. Luckily, she chose the mission that I would attempt first, and as such encountered my best dilemma combo. She hopped Trilithium Raid like it wasn't there and then her crew went on a Cytherians trip. She didn't have a second ship in play, so nobody else was attempting - but she did still have a significant number of people on the outpost. I chose not to reveal mission debriefing, since the Cytherians + no used range this turn meant she got pretty far on the trip and much closer to my wormhole mission because...

I put everyone aboard the mothership and hopped quadrants. Then, I Outgunned the Nebula and put a staffing crew aboard to score me 15 sweet points. Next, I flew closer to her mission, but couldn't quite get to Host Metaphasic Shield Testing. There was not a seeded Hidden Agenda card, and the Defend Homeworld was used to get a Roga Danar from the tent - so no mission protection.

Lori's turn and she plays a ship and then checks to see if she has the skills to complete the cleared out mission. She is just short Engineer, so I point out that she still has the Assign Support Personnel which could potentially find an Engineer to bring in. Sure enough, Sergey is in the tent and can supply the Engineer.

But here's the thing. I have seeded a Computer Crash, which can be flipped to prevent any downloads thereby preventing her from getting the Engineer and guaranteeing me 40 points on my next turn. But the question being, did I want to do it. Lori had played excellently so far and just happened to be facing my deck. That and she was going to lose the second ship after solving thanks to Mission Debriefing anyway, after using Attention All Hands to get the first and Wall of Ships on the second, I wasn't even sure if there was a third and she'd likely be drawing for it. I could shortly eliminate her outpost if need be, I just couldn't see any way for her to win this game other than me completely messing up. So I let her solve the mission... and then destroyed the second ship.

So I attempted and cleared planet and then went to space only to fail a Friendly Fire. At that point it was 55 to 40. Lori had needed to play an Isomag and had spent most of the rest of the game just trying to build anything. Time was called the turn before the FF would have finished counting down and have been solvable, but that still wouldn't have been a full win. Had I solved Meta Shield Testing with Kirk or a Reflection Therapy rewritten Mission Specialist, though, and this would have been an easy FW.

After Round 1, there were 5 players who were undefeated. Richard had the Bye and then Kurtis, Ken, Me, and Nick. Except for Nick, those are actually who you would expect to be contending. Nick had been paired against his father (both new/returning players) in Round 1. The pairings put Kurtis with Richard in a Final Confrontation level game, me with Nick, and Ken paired down.

The start of the seed phase looked a bit grim since Nick had both Earth and Insurrection - effectively two Headquarters - and me with only one HQ mission dilemma combo (my planet combos fail if there is a seeded, on-ground Facility). But things looked amazingly good once the seed phase was complete, as he only seeded Office of the President and had an Outpost Mission, luckily right next to Earth, and Insurrection was apparently just a solid Federation mission (which it certainly is). This got more baffling later in the game when he played an Injector Assembly One to Earth as the card play and used Ready Room Door to get Ru'afo to it.

One thing in Nick's favour, he had seeded the original Q's Tent and could red shirt missions. Also, since he had four space missions, I had to mess up my combos a bit. Cytherians had no lead-in dilemma, which would force a real crew, and instead sat in front of Quantum Fissure. He sent a little ship with just two people to hit the Cytherians and they started their trip. I hopped quadrants and took it over, replacing his crew with my own to score the 15 points, but this time the ship had horrible range and was going to take a few turns to get there. I then moved my fleet closer to his mission.

Nick played another ship (he had a seeded Spacedoor on the mission Outpost) and shirted again. They didn't have the skills for Quantum Fissure and were stopped by Mission Debriefing. I promptly relieved him of that ship, but then made a mistake on my next turn by not leaving a staffed ship there (or any ship). Nick got a third ship out, this time with Hidden Fighter, and attempted the mission for the solve. I could have stopped this one with Computer Crash and again didn't. This time it wasn't me being a nice guy or any of that bullshit, but because it was just a 20 point mission and the CC could be used better to stop dilemma cheating later in the game. At this point, I could destroy the ship AND damage the outpost in one turn, with the number of ships I had in play. So he was shortly down to one facility

Going back to that score, it was 20 for Nick and 15 for me (Cytherians) but I was playing as though the score were 55 to 20, my favour. Why? Because old Nick had a universal 35 point mission and I could have Kirk lend a hand in solving it. It was all a matter of setting up the team to bust my own combo and not doing so on the same turn as the Cytherians points.

So now we come to the sad end of our story. At this point, Nick is locked down at his Homeworld, which is all the way on one end of the spaceline. And then he did exactly what I wanted him to do. With just four personnel in play, he sent three to attempt Earth. The Dal'rok triggered and the Dead End sat on the mission. This meant that he could not play people and ever have them stay in play. So he, rightfully, conceded.

At Round 3, there were just 3 players left undefeated. Kurtis had taken out fan favorite: [strike]David[/strike] Richard Delashmit, I was still going strong, and Ken was by no surprise still there. The site paired me with Kurtis and Ken got paired down again, which was bad news for Lori, who had just been recovering from a Bye. In her second tournament ever, Lori had to face two lockout decks. But it was certainly nice having her in our play group for that short time...

Absolute props again for Lori. She had spent her Bye drawing out her deck and getting to know it, using the experience from Round 1. As they were sitting at the table next to us, I could clearly see that she was confident with the deck and playing real well, even with little chance to win. Certainly, that deck can possibly beat what Ken had - but it would have required a bit of experience and foreknowledge of what he was doing.

I was disappointed to face Kurtis here, since I wanted either of us to be the winner. (As much as we all love Ken, you gotta root for the underdog.) I had a very different goal in this game than in the previous ones, since I could not very well lock out the Borg (unless I got every ship in play). The plan was to put up as many points as possible and just see if Kurtis could do better than that before time was called.

This is also both the hardest game I played and the most fun by a long shot. *Queue action/suspense music

Now I've played against this deck many, many painful times - though not yet when piloted by Kurtis. This is the deck that Ken brought to Worlds Day 1 last year and, as we know made day 2, and he has always called it Kurtis' Borg Deck (I recall that that is literally the title of his World's Day 1 deck.) So, I know a few things about it. The planet combo is Female drain, so the trick is to never Red Shirt ladies. I decided to start out in the DQ with Liberation and sent the first crew to confirm that Shore Leave was there, and it was, maybe about Turn 2. Now here I should have also done the same to the neighboring planet mission, but did not. I built up until my Kazon had Integrity > 50 and Honor and then sent them down to clear the dilemmas. I had used an I'm a Doctor Not a Bricklayer and Going to the Top to get Vekor and Navaar respectively, and they were waiting on the outpost to clear the Matriarchal Society and solve (with Culluh). Talosian Trial did kill a dude, Karden, and then we subsequently bust the Matriarchal Society and solved with a specialist for 35.

Same turn, I sent the males at the next DQ planet mission to do the same, but this one had one of the dual combos. Edo Probe was first, which is why I should have triggered this before solving Liberation, and I had to choose to go on or bail even though I did not have the skills to solve. Again, my goal was to just get as many points on the board as possible and attempting a space mission in the AQ with Gowron of Borg about just sounds like a bad idea. Also note that, since I was the only one who solves missions, bailing on an Edo Probe would mean that I would have to go to the AQ, solve a mission, and then come back. That's not happening. So I went ahead, and cleared the mission (inevitably) while losing the 10 points. This is a good trade as solving it would put me a net of 20 points ahead. The only trick being that one guy, the only guy who had died so far, had my missing skill for the solve. I had thought that Seska also had Physics, but I used a download of a ship to look through the deck and tent and found out how thin the deck was on this skill - certainly it is not built to solve the DQ missions. I had exactly two available. One guy with the skill left and Suna to download Reflection therapy and write it. In other words, I need to hope to draw it, and I had already burned both copies of Masaka Transformations to counteract a horrible opening draw (for both me and Kurtis, since he Mirror Imaged it).

So now I have the tough decision of waiting out the DQ for that one skill or just going to the AQ. Luckily Kurtis made that decision so much easier. He finally liked the amount of key drones he had in play and was ready to attempt his mission with a Transwarp Hub all built. With all the best people on the Facility, he easily cleared the Trilithium Raid with the crew on the ship and then hit the Cytherians. Kurtis laughed this off as an easy one for him, and certainly he is teched for it as he can just move through the Hub to the Transwarp Network Gateway seeded at the end of the spaceline, but as I see it any dilemma which stops the Borg for one turn is a good one. Normally, they can adapt to any issues, so one turn stop and no stop are the default results of Ds.

Since the travel through the hub is once per turn, this put his cube right next to my AQ wormhole mission. So, it was big decision time. I had a ton of ships in play, more than double his shields and downloaded another to top it off for this turn and of course, Leaders for all. But I still didn't feel too good about it as I don't know much about Borg and was not tracking what drones he had played nor knew all the tricks the Borg can pull. But I decided to take the big risk and attempt to put 50 points on top of my 25 and thereby make the bar 75 before time ran out. Blowing up a cube really does nothing more than score 50 points for me. Since Kurtis' deck runs Federation Flagship: Recovered, it's little more than a minor inconvenience. I had really wanted to build up for an Outgunned, after which I would have simply spent the rest of the game warping up and down the spaceline with my middle finger hanging out a port side airlock. By my count, the deck can do 76 Weapons. But I would need every ship I own.

So I attack and Kurtis plays 3+ Awakens from his hand, to which I reveal my Computer Crash. Whether this makes the difference or not, we may never know. I was on 58 Weapons and we forgot to use the Battle Bridge side deck, which would have been +6. Not pulling the Tactics was not an issue, since any four of the Attack Wings would have done the job anyway (though also killed four drones).

To my surprise, Kurtis did not have a Multiplexor drone on board and he relieved me of the Voyager (with Seska in command). This meant that I still had my fleet to come after him with, though I would need to fly the full spaceline OR draw into the Wormhole.

Certainly, what time we were at had played a big part in my decision. It was getting pretty close to a call. I spent the rest of the game moving closer to Kurtis' end of the spaceline and drawing all I could, Kurtis completed the Objective targeting his cleared out space mission and then proceeded to complete Assimilate Homeworld targeting Kronos for 65 points, thereby granting me a MW.

This was the game I had been dreading the whole tournament. But surprisingly, it was likely the easiest win. I had never faced this deck, but I had heard stories a few times and knew one of the key dilemma combos. When it comes down to it, my deck just happened to have all the counters to Ken's lockout strategy. After all, who techs against Kazon? Nobody in our playgroup (except Ken, who plays anything and everything) plays them.

My goal at the start of this game was just to True Tie. I knew that Ken's dilemma combos were hard and that my deck is built more for battle than for solving missions. But my main concern was Victory Points. Because of what the deck is, I have a lot of Modified Wins. that means that, if I lost to Ken here, I could drop down in standing considerably and not even medal (non-Ferengi Reader's note: for the BC Regional, Roxanne has medals made for 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each big event. As such, the goal of the weekend, for me, is always to get a medal: At What Cost. This time, I got three in the order: 3,2,1. Oh hey, spoiler alert!) If I tied with Ken, I had a guarantee on 2nd Place and if I won it would be the Gold.

So I built up and inevitably decided when it was time to wormhole to the Mirror Quadrant. This used the DQ wormhole mission and the seeded STP for a no stop. I was disappointed when I got there to find that I had no VIPs in play and when I tried to use Going to the Top to fetch one of the members of my pocket rainbow from the tent, I found that none of them had it either: I was hoping to battle Ken's personnel on board to get Rule 34 draws. I simply chose to get Kirk as he is an extra leader and can net +5 if he helps solve a mission.

So instead, we switched to plan B and just blew it up. This took a couple turn to get the draws going and play enough ships and Captain's Log (thanks to Kirk) for the Weapons. This worked because Ken's deck didn't draw into any ship to bail the personnel off the facility, but he told me later that it had just two ships and isn't supposed to get them out early.

Next two turns, and I've eliminated the Outpost as well thereby leaving Ken with no place to report anything. He had beamed down his crew to the planet with a matching KCA Engineer and therefore could potentially rebuild the Outpost but then he decided to help me with the issue by attempting. This revealed the planet combo of Volcanic Eruption and Combo Scow sending The Intendant to the other MQ mission. He had 6 people in play at the start of the attempt and this made 4 on one planet (to disappear via lava flow shortly) and The Intendant on the other.

I let two more dudes get picked off, but with the Engineer still surviving I finally decided to help them out with that and sent a decent sized group of Kazon, consisting only of people I didn't mind losing, to kill one more and make Ken have 0 there at the start of his next turn.

For a recap: Ken has no personnel in play and no way at all to get them into play. We have achieved the Tie. At one point Ken got excited when realizing that I had seeded a Ferengi Trading Post, thereby allowing him to report somebody, only to realize that all his personnel were Mirror anyway. This was ironic since this was a major concern for me, to have a place in my deck for my opponent to report to when one of my goals is to minimize or eliminate their reporting options. This is especially an issue if the position of the outpost is such to allow the player to report a ship there, fly a ship out, and then daisy chain to a far mission (a trick that I have pulled plenty of times myself). I had even eliminated this card in an earlier version of the deck only to bring it back when I realized how badly the Kazon need this draw engine.

So, I took a look at my options for a mission to complete and was split between two which I felt were likely to get the weaker combos. One was the AQ Wormhole mission, which only had two under it, since it was only worth 20 points. The other was Revenge Plot, which was very far from my Wormhole mission and would theoretically require a bit of range to get to. Only trouble being, these were no where near each other, so it would be difficult to change my mind once I tried one.

All of my missions had Kobiyashi Maru Scenarios and Access Denieds on them and the planets had Atmospheric Ionization as well. I chose Revenge Plot, since I thought a two card combo likely involved Dead End (it didn't), and then landed all my ships except the mother ship and attempted with everyone.

Kobiyashi took someone unimportant. The first dilemma was Kelvan Show of Force, which allowed Ken to pick two to possibly be dead. He took a while to decide, which likely meant that he didn't like what he saw, and inevitably decided that I was going to get through the dilemmas and to mill one of the mission requirements instead. I had only two persons with Exobiology, so they were the choice random kills. Next D was A Fast Ship Would be Nice and I gave him the mothership - and remember that this is the one that allows my Kazon to report to the AQ. But this was a game winning decision (though leaving one other ship in orbit would have been a lot smarter) and then we bust the last dilemma for the solve.

At that point, it was rather pointless to attempt more missions and risk point loss and we agreed that I would spend the rest of the game dicking around to kill the time and we should just call it there (with maybe 4 minutes left). Too bad I didn't have a Cube to go joy riding with...