Well, this is it. The long awaited conclusion to the first season of Return to Farpoint (online), of which I have played in every event - which has spanned a whole year. Going into this, there were two big factors for my affiliation selection. First, I had played this tournament format in it's initial test run, December of 2013, and had learned a valuable lesson. I had grabbed Terok Nor, since I needed the play achievement for that affiliation, and the Transwarp decks themselves are pretty even. But what I found was that TN has a horrible time with the draft pack choices (we are allowed 4 packs to supplement the Transwarp deck, from different sets) as the likelihood of getting cards which can be added to the deck is quite low. Therefore:

Lesson 1: Pick something that can draft well.

The most obvious choices, then, are those which have their own sets. If you pick Ferengi, the Strange New World packs will definitely have something for you. Voyager, Starfleet, Maquis, and TOS are all also good choices for this reason. But TOS is particularly good, because they have common personnel in the TATV, IAMD, and WYLB sets.

The second factor was which affiliation or factions I have the most ticks with (for the Play 10 Achievements). This eliminates Bajoran, Cardassian, Klingon, Romulan, and Ferengi. This factor put those affiliations just above Terok Nor on my list.

My Top choices were: 1. TOS, 2. ES9, 3. Maquis, 4. Non-aligned, 5. TNG, and 6. Voyager. I was pleasantly surprised with Earth Space 9 when I looked at the quality of the Transwarp Deck. WYLB has a lot of Earth personnel and Non-aligned to supplement it. All of those decks had solid cheaters in them, and also had a good chance of pulling more cheaters.

I ended up pulling TOS, which is great because of all the weenies and extra draws.

My opening hand didn't have much in the way of the skills I needed for my first mission, but I got them together to go attempt quite early. Ted did a fine job of holding me at this mission for a few turns and even when I had 4 under and was attempting with 5, he drew a cost 1 'have this skill or someone dies' to stop me again and picked off my only Biologist.

This is where I had made a big mistake in this game. I had two ships with crews of 5 and 6 respectively and considered throwing a fake first attempt to make sure of a solve, but instead built the second crew to go to planet after I had solved. Since I only had one Biology in play (but one in hand), I couldn't make two true attempting crews. But after he shut out the mission and killed my only bio, I should have flown the second ship home, so I could get the Biologist in hand there on the next turn. Instead, I decided to stick to the plan and went to the planet, which netted me one dilemma under and a full stop. The reason why this was such a big mistake was two fold. First, the two missions I had attempted thus far were 30 pointers, and wouldn't add up to a 3 mission win (though they were my two easiest missions and the only two I had skills for so far). Second, I didn't have the range to regroup and reattempt my space the next turn and ended up spending a lot of resources just moving things around between missions for the rest of the game.

Then things went bad on the defensive side. On Ted's first attempt in space, I shut him out with minimal under (2), but on the next, I drew my five only to get 4 planet and a Timescape. So it was a walk (I didn't have the luck to get an Unexpected Difficulties yet). Then he went to his next mission, in the same turn, since nobody was stopped and no range had yet been used, and again drew horribly on dilemmas.

At this point, I really needed to do well at holding him at his third mission. He only had one ship, so was still single attempting missions, but I through a bit light to try and get lucky and prolong the game for a comeback, but that rarely works and he solved for the well deserved win.

Michael said it best when he said that he just drew horribly on dilemmas. That pretty much sums this game up. I went second, and could get the Historical Research grab, but I looked at my hand and saw that I had all the skills I needed for my first mission and so just went for someone with good integrity.

My deck is mostly weenies and I built up and attempted first, with 8 people on turn 3. I had 2X of every skill needed for the mission except Programming (which I had more of in my hand but was a counter short to throw it). But I ended up getting through on the first attempt, and that shifted what I chose to play on the next turn, since I was now planning for a different mission.

On my next turn, I played Daystrom with the upgrade, to help me work through Ds. Then I flew home, switched ships, and sat out anyone needed for the third mission but not the second. Again, I attempted with 8 and again I got through on the first attempt.

Mike would attempt his space mission three times in the game. On the first go, I gave him three under, but was certain of the stop. On the next, I through everything I drew that could play (two dilemmas, with a total cost of 3) and that got me a mission shut out just because he was short on the mission skills and I got lucky pulls. The third attempt solved, but Mike had to use the special text on the Reliant to boost the range, fly home, and fly back to get it. And that meant that he would do no more attempting that turn.

I had two more turns in the game before I won. On the first, I spent most of the time drawing into my deck to try and find a second Archaeologist. When I was down to three counters, I played an Evans and used the Earth text to draw 2, and sure enough: the next card was a 1 coster with Arch. So I would have the skills on my next turn. I decided to see what would happen if... and flew 8 out to Historical Research to attempt. Everyone I cared about stayed at Earth, as I hoped to have a few unfortunate deaths and maybe a D or two under. But I knew that Mike knew my personnel better than I, and that it would not likely go that way. He played no Ds and told me to solve if I could, and I could not.

So on my final turn, I played my one cost Archaeologist and triggered Earth for draws. Sure enough, I hit all the Arch, so I played as much as I could and built a diverse team with skill redundancy and they solved on the first (real) attempt.

I ended up playing Markus last. He had Maquis, which was an interesting choice but as I mentioned, it was one of my higher choices (because it drafts well).

I went second, and this time I could do some skill dialing to set up my first mission attempt. I decided to pull out Nurse Chapel as she knows a thing or two about Alien Probes.

I opted to not start attempting until turn 3, which was still a couple turns before Markus did. But he had a doosey of a dilemma combo. The first was a choice Astro or Nav stop, which took out my only copy of both - on Sulu. And then he followed that with Caretaker's Wave. I seem to recall him holding me out here for at least two more attempts. The wave prevented me from restocking at home, as I had to use all my range just to fly to the mission. Luckily, this crew had the skills in spades, and nobody had died. So the 4th turn attempt was fine and succeeded in at least putting Ds under. On my turn 5, I drew and played a second ship, and that allowed me to fly the first home for repair and then attempt with the second. Markus killed my only copy of Evans in play on one of these later attempts, but a second Caretaker's Wave saw me come prepared and I solved.

I went to Historical Research second, as I had drawn into a ton of Anthro and Arch as well as my equipment granting Arch. I seem to recall busting it on the first go, as he had thrown a lot of choice stops but wasn't able to target either skill because I had at least 5 of each. This was on the 6th turn, by my count. I had flown both ships to the planet (one from space and one from home, and then after solving I flew one home and made sure that both were well staffed for heading to the second space for the double attempt on the 7th turn.

On Markus' first mission attempt, he opted for planet. I drew my Overwhelmed and that convinced him not to cheat the Ds, since hitting the skills would just stop a ton of people. So the first did a 1 man stop and then bounced and the second put one under but he had the skills so a ton of people were stopped. Still: 2 under seemed pretty good for the amount of damage I did. On his second attempt, I went ahead and put 3 under, just to be sure, and that meant he was pretty set to solve it on his 3rd attempt, when I drew 2 cost three duals.

Still, his deck suffered from poor range ships, so he was only able to fly to another mission after a solve if he had not returned home to restock/swap people. In this case, it meant that he was attempting space with rather poor options. I liked that I could kill someone decent and was a bit ahead on the solves, so I threw generously and gave him 3 under space to ensure a stop.

Markus ended up holding me in space for 4 attempts, but he unluckily drew the Timescape at the wrong times. So those 4 attempts happened on my 7th and 8th turns. The first attempt put 3 under (8 were attempting), so the second attempt had a shot at solving. Markus only drew two and couldn't play them, but I had miscounted in my Integrity, while I did have the people to solve with 5 in play, I had split them wrong and these 5 were on exactly 31 Integrity (instead of 32, as it was Amnesty Talks). This was due to using an Areel Shaw and a Sarek for the mission skills, when I could have used Sarek and George Stocker (and then had two copies of Areel in attempt one). On my 8th turn, I remedied this by making a 5 man crew with the right people and attempting with just 5, but this time Markus redrew and replayed the Caretaker's Wave. My super crew lacked the Engineer (or extra Nav). So I went with the big crew to make sure that Ds went under and set up for an autosolve on Turn 9. That was assuming that I could hold Markus out of his third mission for one more turn, but I didn't need to as Markus drew poorly on his 5 dilemmas and the crew was able to get enough through to solve.