Andreas was in many ways ready for my deck, but I still think that it should have beat him. Instead, this game brought out the obvious flaws of the deck and suggested improvements for a future tournament (had LoOS not been banned).

LoOS did it's job and held Andreas out for many many turns, even though he had 3+ ships in play over those turns. I had blitzed through two missions without an issue, but needed to attempt and solve a space mission. The issue being with the size of the deck (99 cards) and only 4 copies of Hidden Fighter, because I could not draw it, even though the deck draws 7 cards a turn. Obviously, too big a deck and too few Hidden Fighters was an issue, but I also had Obelisk of Masaka and no Masaka Transformations - a card I run in almost every deck I build for just this reason: horrible draws.

Andreas spent something like 5 turns doing absolutely nothing because of LoOS, while I also spent my turns doing nothing but drawing to find the Hidden Fighters. When I finally did, I attempted my space mission with two crews. The first failed a set-up The Cloud and the second hit Cytherians. With no more copies of Hidden Fighter, I had to wait out the Cloud and that meant that I was one turn late of when Andreas won the game (and all outta LoOS).

This game was a pretty straight forward win for me, thanks to LoOS. But had that card not been in the pool, I think the game would have been pretty even and competitive.

Alex was playing an Enterprise-E deck that used the Flagship and Office of the Pres free play engines and then had additional draws/plays from Cochrane Memorial. However, I only saw two ships from him in this game. He had the EE and he had a U.S.S. Akira from a Spacedoor download. Early in the game, he played enough to staff and flew to Cochrane's statue to start that engine up. Since he wasn't attempting missions, I left him alone and let the LoOSes build up in my hand. Then he attempted a space mission with almost everyone, bust the openning dilemma and hit Cytherians. I was able to strand the almost everyone at the nearest planet, leaving Alex with nothing to do until he gave up and STP'd it and started over.

I then scorched his hand because I am an absolute dick. Also, the STP returned the LoOS I had played to my hand, giving me one more.

Alex started rebuilding, and got Geordi out to see the final dilemma and plan accordingly, but I had won before he got all his skills back into play to solve that mission.

JP had a TNG Fed deck. It looked like a TNG Fed deck from the missions, but he did have some unexpected inclusions that made me somewhat question this initial assessment. The spaceline ended up a bit poor for him, as his missions ended up being split by my DMZ and Badlands regions (we shared on of the DMZ missions). But of particular interest, he had the 45 point stealable planet Trill. I was happy to realize that not only could I attempt missions with only a Fed icon but I also had a Trill with Symbiont in Mirror Dax. I chose to put Hanonian Land Eel + Deliberate Tactical Error + Dead End there, betting that I could get to 50 points first and knowing that I could easily hop an eel without using Universal personnel.

But this set up had me concerned by the time that JP was attempting his first mission (Trill). I realized that a two mission win strategy could potentially work against me if he ran it down to the Dead End and then cleared a space, solved it for 50 and returned. But that's not how it went. After failing the Eel for lack of Science, JP went to space and inevitably found the Cytherians. He had no STP, so I had managed to strand a good percentage of his personnel in play with LoOS.

I attempted my Homeworld first, but ran into issues almost immediately. He had a Diplomacy drain combo (with Blended Seeded first) and I had no Diplomacy. So I had to decide how to proceed. I decided to use The Art of Diplomacy with Kirk, to get Kirk stopped and get to the next dilemma, which was The Clown Guillotine (which I expected). I knew that I could not pull off Diplomacy x 2 without any to start off with but hoped to get to that and cheat by it the next turn, gaining skills with either the communicator or the Vulcan Mindmeld. However, once my people got through, the random death was my Treachery mission specialist (of all the luck) leaving me with just 2 X treachery in play. The only fortunate part was that nobody was stopped by the clown, since he was also the lowest attributes in the away team. So on the next turn, I was able to use Vulcan Mindmeld to give Tuvok Kirk's skills and that made the 2X Diplomacy. I forget what the last D was, and only recall that I again had to use a special download to cheat it, but did solve the mission. However, I only solved it for 30 points, since my mission specialist was dead.

I wanted to attempt my other MQ mission, but had not drawn into Geology. I also couldn't go to space as I had not found a Hidden Fighter yet. So instead, I attempted my Badlands planet mission. I was surprised to fail a Hanonian Land Eel, as I did have the Science and the Security but not the strength, as I had drawn into no guns or gun downloaders that turn. However, on my next turn the massive drawing did net me Hidden Fighters -> three of them!

So, I went to space. The first dilemma, was an Assimilated Vessel and the second was a Virus. I could not cheat that much Computer Skill into play, having already burned the Classic Communicator and Vulcan Mindmeld. But I didn't like the idea of taking damage from the Assimilated Vessel and just letting it fly off the spaceline for 10 points (when I could seriously use those 10 points.)So, I played both of the other Hidden Fighters in hand and brought an armada of three down to bear on it. Only to realize that that left me a bit short in Total Weapons. I only had 16 and needed 17 to blow it up, so it was just damaged, and it randomly damaged my Delta Flier in the process.

This was a bad tactical error, as two ships would have been plenty to damage the Assimilated Vessel. But with the Delta Flier damaged and the Bajoran Interceptor having bad range outside of a region, it was impossible to catch up to it and finish the job on my next turn. Had I saved on of the Hidden Fighters, I could have brought that ship out on the next turn, a bit closer to the target.

A turn prior, JP had played a Runabout and was using it to catch up to his U.S.S. Nebula (with the Cytherians). He claimed that the reason for this was to protect that ship from my blowing it up, but I had no intention of blowing up the Nebula, as I wasn't intending to let it even move. Instead, I was able to let LoOS on the Runabout to hold it still for the Assimilated Vessel to Damage and then fly over and eliminate that. This returned JP to the state of having just one ship in play with everyone aboard unable to do anything. I was concerned about reattempting my space mission, as Diplomacy was still an issue, so I waited and brought in Mirror Spock only to find an Armus Energy Field, which stopped nobody needed to solve.

Next, I attempted Mine Dilithium. But the dilemma combos worked great here. They thinned me down to just two people and then they were short the Exobiology for the Linguistic Legerdemain. Since they were both Bajoran, it hit for 5. So the question was: should I wait out 5 turns or did I even need five turns to win?

Most of my missions would not get me to a win. With my Treachery specialist dead and no Kira Taban in sight, all my missions were just worth 30 points, and I needed 35 to win. So, I left the skills in the MQ to solve Mine Dilithium, if the chance arose, and then started trucking a ship toward Trill. After two turns, I was set up to daisy chain people over and I did so for a walk solve and win.