Coming into this event, I was not sure what to play. I wanted to go for achievements and I wanted to build a new deck, but it wasn't sanctioned coming into the weekend, so I didn't make one.

Morning of, I found out we were getting sanctioned. But I still didn't have a deck. I thought about running Terran Empire again, and even modified that deck for this event only then I thought I'd rather play something riskier but with a bigger reward if I could win. Thus, I pulled out my old TNG Cardassian deck, famous for many 2nd place finishes.

John Paul and I had both opted for TNG Cardassians and our decks were evenly matched really. He had the Host Metaphasic Shield Testing and Scientific Diplomacy free play engine, but I had no shot at stealing it since it was way on the other end of the spaceline. We also shared both Cardassia Prime and Kressari Rendevous.

Early in the game, John Paul started in on Host MST and once he passed the opening dilemma (Trilithium Raid) he lost 9 to The Higher the Fewer and went on a trip with Cytherians. This turned out to be a fateful trip as I set up my Zalkonian Vessel with an all Non-aligned crew and destroyed it before it reached the spaceline end. This worked well because his ship was just a Cardie Freighter with a Plasmadyne Relay aboard.

I worked through Steal Tech, but it took some work. But I solved it for 45 with specialists. I then cleared down a second mission and was ready to solve.

But in the time for that to happen, JP had attempted space, triggered the Whale Probe and then triggered the Friendly Fire and had made a good dent in his planet, it was just a matter of getting the solves.

But JP made a grave error. He decked out by the end of his turn. So on my turn I looked at the score, looked at the size of my deck, and played Handshake (Function 3) to draw the last six cards in my deck, and that was that.

Brian was playing a The Circle Deep Space Nine Bajoran deck, but I didn't know that in the seed phase. He had a copy of Insurrection, which he could not attempt and existed solely to eat dilemmas. I can't fault him for that as it is how I won with Bajorans, the first time, and it worked! I put 4 dilemmas there including my dead end. Biean had 6 self seeds that were all there to score points and Cargo Runs for the sweet draws. He had little issues at all at Jerado. The first time he hit Ferengi Infestation he was lightly low on the integrity, but the next turn he blew right through, lost 9 to The Higher The Fewer and failed the last dilemma, but not so much that he couldn't just pass it with the next crew. Then he collected his Sarjenka points, and the next turn solved plus Barcaly's plus returned Orb to be on 47. Quite impressive.

But on my side, things were also going very smoothly. I attempted before Brian, which probably made the difference. Because his deck was so seed card intensive, he did not have many dilemmas for defense. The first mission I went to, a space (Steal Tech) just had Unscientific Method Followed by SCientific. My intitial team had no science and no one died and I spent the next turn setting up to pass and solve. I did so with a mission specialist to be on 40. Then I immediately went to the next mission. This went similarly with Hippocratic Oath setting up Medical Crisis. I found out on turn 3, but ti took two turns to get the skills together to solve this, and once I had brought it, they had no range to go to another mission.

So here, Brian really needs to bust his space mission. He had trouble with the Trilithium Raid (didn't bring the skills) with his first team, and the second team brought the Engineer but went on a trip with Cytherians. This meant that he had to reattempt and hit The Cloud, so it was a quastion of whether he would red shirt that or not. But he didn't have the people left to try to do so this turn.

I felt pretty good about this. I still had two cheats (Bralek and Anya) and had just played a third ship. I set up two massive mission attempting crews with a wide range of skills. The mission turned out to have Make Us Go and then Combo Scow (picking off Anya). I opted not to use her download, as I was through the mission, but then after she left and we left the mission attempt, Brian revealed a seeded Mission Debriefing (very clever). So I had to pull it off with the people in the second crew. I checked the stats and I could get the range to move the Scow only because I still had a matching commander of ship that had not moved and Defiant Dedication Plaque on the board. I had the two Engineer , not on people who were needed to solve the mission, as the ship would not be there, but I was one skill short for the solve. I used Suna to dial that skill with Reflection Therapy and that was that.

I think this was a six turn game.

Well, I must have gotten cocky after the first two games, because this one was full of mistakes by me. Ted attempted early, maybe turn 2, and passed my first seeded Trilithium Raid at Host Metaphasic Shield Testing and then went on a Cytherians trip. This put most of his people on a round trip, with no STP on the table to get out of it. The next turn for him, he beamed a plasmadyne relay on his ship, so it would make decent time down the spaceline. I decided to play to blow him up and spent one turn setting up and the next achieving 2 ships in play and we shot and damaged him. Only trouble being, Plasmadyne relay brought his range up to 7 but my damaged ship, from the first engagement, could not catch up, and I had not been lucky enough to draw a third.

So he got his 15 points, and then set up a second ship to make it interesting (I would have to contend with two), so I finally decided to turn my attention to missions. I had wasted most of the turns that I had set back Ted and really hand't accomplished much. I attempted my planet mission but failed to red shirt and Diplomacy so they got hit by the first dilemma: The Clown: Guillotine. Then on my next turn, I attempted again and failed to have the three Diplomacy (or Law) for Implication. The last dilemma was a Subspace Fracture which killed my whole 6 man away team (due to lack of Engineer), but I finally solved here with the secondary crew, but I was out of range after shifting personnel around to get my law. Meanwhile, I had manged to let the Zalkonian vessel get repaired and Ted had finally worked his way back into range of his mission.

Ted attempted his closest space mission, which happened to be Resupply Marauder II. He blitzed right through this, as I put the weakest dilemmas there. He decided to just go for it at the Edo Probe and that worked. He had plenty of people to hop my Ferengi Infestation and then lost points by The Higher The Fewer. Still, the points he had left from the Cytherians and the mission put him on 30.

Next, I through down on Cardassia Prime. This went well, though I lost three more lives, one to A Fast Ship and two to Hunter Probe, but we passed the final dilemma anyway, a Kazon Bomb, and solved. While I had not lost points in my previous attempts, I had wasted pretty much all of my special downloads and had not scored any Mission Specialist Bonus Points. I had to decide to try my space mission (Kressari Rendevous) or try to steal Ted's Host Metaphasic Shields (he did have a hidden agenda seeded.

Meanwhile, Ted had another turn. He attempted his nearest planet with 13 people, but failed to get by The Clown: My Festival. Then he attempted it with 3 (he had the normal tent), got by since one did have low integrity, lost two to Flapjacks, and had one continue on to the last dilemma, which unfortunately for me was Alien Parasites. There was a ship in orbit, so when I took command of Ferengi Picard, he could beam up, but nobody was on board so I could not use it to try to steal his Host Metaphasic Shield Testing. Instead, I just STP'd it. This was unlikely to hurt him too much as most people were still in play and he had no lack of ships.

Then he sent a red shirt crew at Host and found The Cloud. This worked for him again. While Ted solved no missions this turn, he could definitely win in two turns. So I needed to be careful of failing Friendly Fire, with no cheater dilemmas. Since the only D left at Host was Dead End, I built a 5 person crew for it and flew over, but he revealed the HQ: Defensive Measures. Then I sent a crew with no Leadership or Officer at Kressari Rendevous. This worked, they cleared down to a garbage scow and Defiant Dedication Plaque gave me the range to move it and come back, the last dilemma was the Dead End. To get the thirty points, I had to use Suna to rewrite a mission specialist.

I was very lucky to not find point loss Ds at Kressari, because I had lost all my Gorans without pulling out the guns. And I was fresh out of cheater cards and a deck.