JP was playing his TNG Romulan all planet mission deck which had destroyed me in a recent online event. Except that this time my dilemmas weren't as hindered by no space missions. The key to this was Buried Alive, which allowed me to stack all my space dilemmas under two missions, but also left one mission lacking. So I seeded my Strategic Base as the last 'dilemma'.

JP spent most of his game flying around and attempting each mission to scope out the Ds. In fact, he attempted them all. Quantum Incursions at the Genesis Planet stymied him, as it did in our last game, but once he found the second Buried Alive, he pointed out that it was unique and that made the mission a walk for him. This would be the only mission he solved in the game, though he had cleared another down to a dead end, so if he had got through one more then, in theory, we might have had a closer game.

Ken played his Borg deck and I was in no way ready for that. Most of my dilemmas would do nothing against the Borg and I had no way to hop to the AQ to shoot him and prevent a probe. I did have one combo that would do a bit to slow him down, so I put that at the one mission I hoped he'd certainly go to. He didn't.

Ken put his Transwarp exit at the end of the DQ spaceline so he could mess with my people at whim. I mostly stayed away from that end, so he really only succeeded in picking off my people trying to run the draw engines and assimilating a couple of mission specialists.

I made one really solid move early on that should have bought me a lot of time. I Quinned his Mission Debriefing. This should have meant that i would have a few turns to try and bust dilemmas without being auto stopped, but Ken cycled it back into his deck and then, after a shuffle and cut, managed to redraw it immediately. That's not the only place he had good luck. I hit an Armus: Energy Field at one space attempt and he managed to pick the one guy I could not lose (out of 12 maybe). So I used Make It So to unstop and go again. And he picked the same fucking guy.

So yeah, what could have been a good game went very quickly one way and that was that. Ken did have to do a few objectives, but he had a Counterpart to aid with the same turn probes and my dilemmas did not a whole lot to inhibit his progress.

A very close game when it came down to it, and when we replayed in Day 2 it was again close, but going the other way. I remember my own Mission Debriefing slowing me down and losing 15 points to The Higher... the Fewer pushing me out to a 4th mission.

Roxanne set up her Duck Blind and Process Ore: Mining draw engines at Historical Research and that fed into a cool Guardian of Forever draw engine. But she was not lucky enough to get the specialists to make a two mission win (I think a more focused and playtested version of the deck might have won the day), so had to go to a 3rd mission, and that gave me a chance at a win.

If I were asked what the best deck in the game right now, that is the best possible deck given the possible cards, I'd point to this deck by Jason Drake. It has 6+ play and 6+ draw engines AND it does a two mission win. It's the best of every world.

What's more, never having played against it, I chose the wrong missions for my weaker dilemma combos. This game was over about as soon as it started. I did fare much better when I refaced it (or a slight variation thereof) in Day 2, I'll give me that much.

Make's a brother wish he'd played interaction!

Very fun day of trek. Wish I'd played against Mike, as he was the only high placing player that I did not get to face. I wouldn't have minded finding out how our decks would fare against each other. My placement in this event is exactly where I felt I should be.