I was a little concerned when I saw that Rem was playing TNG Feds (plus all Space missions) but he had just one outpost (which I had no shot of destroying as it was the new Starbase 247 and he got an Ablative on it very early).

However, as fast as his deck was and played people as well as it drew with the Holoprogram: French Cafe', he had very little Security. I had correctly called that and had put the Security Dilemmas as last encountered. Then it was really just a matter of me eliminating all Security in play.

He made a cool hot run to the very far end of the spaceline (where I would have a hard time following) with the Future Enterprise, but the mission attempt resulted in mostly death as they hit a Kazon Bomb with almost no Security. I eliminated the Enterprise-D to slow down his plays (cleared and commandeered) so he was destaffed and stranded for a bit. But he did make a cool comeback utilizing the likes of Holodeck Door and a regenerated STP (to play people to the ship) to get back staffing to the FE. Then he seemed to be back in it for a bit, being able to fly back, cloak for safety, pick up people and head back out. This allowed him to get back to that mission and solve it. But I got lucky in drawing outgunned just when I had a lot of ships in play, so the next time he tried a restock it didn't go so well. After that he was drawing to find a ship (I do believe).

So I had a bit of time to attempt missions, and that went surprisingly well.

After Round 1, there were still 11 undefeated players. I got paired with Brady, who is new to online but a returning player. I suspected that this would be an easy pairing, but that was wrong as Brady is a very experienced player who might only be behind on the current meta.

Still, I was pleased to see a lot of dilemmas come out. This means fewer seed cards and no speed solver, which will give me time to build up the interaction. He had an Outpost mission, and I was hoping that it would be the only facility and it was! So my early game shifted to trying to staff up three ships to take that out (not really what this deck is supposed to do.)

Overall, the spaceline wasn't good for me. Brady had a lot of missions in a row with only one of mine breaking those up, and it was the Stealable Historical Research. Since I could not build the Remote Depot there, I instead put it just outside this homemade region which put it right next door to Brady's outpost. I put the Bajoran Wormhole between the Romulan Outpost and the next mission of his.

But the game likely came down to a decision made during deck building. Brady was not running the Romulan HQ and didn't have that much Diplomacy. He did have cloakable ships and many, many ships. So after getting out and attempting early, he played a Diplomat and flew out and cloaked and then used Chess Game to play Sela to her ship to have the skills to solve the first mission. But then, after they were stopped by Mission Debriefing, I Captured the Diplomats and killed the rest for the solving team.

Around here I started pinging the docked ship to try and prevent restocking Diplomats, but it seemed like Brady didn't draw them. When I got my third ship it was 2 turns and then no more outpost. He did play a D'lors here but he died the subsequent turn before having a chance to escape. Once the outpost was gone, Brady was down to just people who could play to the ships. So he wasn't doing a lot. But he still played smartly and never left himself open while attempting missions (that he could not clear due to the skills in play).

I shifted to attempting missions and was surprised to get through a space mission on the first go. I had chosen it simply for being within range. I attempted planet next, and only made it to the second of four dilemmas (a Land Eel) as I wasn't Red Shirting any Science. I attempted space the same turn and got that one down to the last dilemma, which was the Whale Probe.

We were close to time here, and Brady made one more valiant attempt to solve a mission and put points on the clock. I solved the space and cleared the planet (but did not send the skills because of In the Zone's existence). I could have had a Full Win on the next turn, but time was up. That's what happens when you waste the first 2 hours battling...

I was both surprised and relieved to see Jeremy not playing Borg. Instead, he had three AQ Bajor Region Missions and 3 MQ missions. I successfully called that he was playing Terran Empire + BRC and seeded the Dead End at the Terran Hideout.

Things started out good for me. I was in the AQ on my turn 2 and built the Remote Depot on Turn 3, I was all ready to mess up Jeremy's day when I realized that this version of the deck (unlike Version 2 used in the local regional) does not have Multidimensional Transport Device. This was a huge inconvenience as I had to work to get to and from the MQ (while Jeremy could beam across), so I snagged the Science Kit instead and flew through the wormhole manually.

Here, things had a chance to get interesting. Jeremy played the Defiant to give him two ships in the MQ (with the ISS Enteprise) to my only one. But I was close to bringing in another, if needed, so I was interested in seeing what he'd do. He kept his head down and worked to complete his Homeworld. The ships just shuttled people around, it took a couple turns to find the Dead End.

Meanwhile, I built up a second ship and flew them to the AQ to pick up an extra Bottle of White, which would be needed very soon by the troops. On the MQ side I cleared out the Mirror Terok Nor and commandeered it.

Things came to a head the turn after Jeremy found the Dead End. He decided to go for broke on the shared Mirror Bajor and this worked! he blitzed right through the 3 dilemmas (and one mis-seed :)) to solve. Mission Debriefing stopped everyone on the planet and then I brought a ship over from the AQ (I was up to three here) using Quantum Slipstream Drive (as Bajor was the farthest mission on the spaceline). Once my troops cleared the ships and scored points, I had my ships destroy the Defiant. Then after passing the turn to Jeremy, but during his play phase, before he had beamed the people up from the planet, I used Outgunned on the ISS Enterprise, thereby ending his Holoprogram Hijinks (he was getting a lot of card plays by asking for the whatsit).

Here, things shifted again. Jeremy was locked down with no ships. I sent some troops to clear Mirror Terok Nor again (which had been re-commandeered, since I had only left one Jemmie behind). This was done to eliminate the card draws and reduce his chances of finding a ship. Meanwhile, I slipstreamed one of my ships to the end mission in the AQ so they could red shirt through. This worked as the combo was Personal Duty + Friendly Fire (with a Fast Ship in the middle finding a bodyguard). This combo isn't too good against interaction, as I have the time to wait. There were about 25 minutes left on the clock here.

So, I flew the ship home and reset the whites (one had left play, been nanoprobed, and then replayed for free at the Remote Depot) before flying over and solving + 5 for Victory is Life. This made the score 45 to 35.

But Jeremy was not yet done swinging and he played another copy of the Defiant at the Terran Hideout and flew over to pick up his peeps. I was so bewildered that I momentarily forgot that I was holding two copies of Loss of Orbital Stability. I could have held the Defiant at the Terran Hideout until time. But as I forgot about that, things got much more interesting. After getting Admiral Riker successfully to the Mirror Terok Nor, he found a U.S.S. Enterprise (CoC) and Jeremy suddenly had two ships, though only one with range. I held the Enterpise at Mirror Bajor with LoOS.

Then I threw down. I bounced a ship to the MQ with Quantum again and attacked. This eliminated one, but triggered Defend Homeworld (not sure if we played this right, but it didn't make a difference), however Jeremy's thinning deck netted him two dudes and an ISS Constitution, they returned fire on the ISS Enterprise! sending it to Jeremy's graveyard.

I still had two LoOS in hand, since the one I had played found its way back via Nanoprobes. So on Jeremy's final turn, both ships stayed at Bajor, and on my final turn I had the option of trying for another mission (but too low of a score to go for a FW anyway) or just fucking around. I went with the latter. I now sent the Jemmies to the ISS Constitution to score 5 points on Battle and then I was planning to attack the ship to send all of them to their glorious Deaths, but Jeremy opted to STP.

Never did draw into the Jemmie who fetches Commandeer ship in this game, it would have been damned useful.

What always impresses me is seeing a high level player adapt and really think out play against a high interaction deck. Jon was not only ready for what I had brought, but he throught out every move to make the right decisions at just the right time. In retrospect, this game was just me watching Jon outmaneuver anything I might have done.

Jon had three key missions, which he managed to seed adjacently at one far end of the AQ spaceline; Romulus, Insurrection, and the Paxan Wormhole. His deck also just spewed personnel, with three free play points at ROmulus and then Insurrections two play points and Androids. So on turn 1, he had enough people and ships to fly about and attempted at Insurrection. He failed that first dilemma (The CLown: Guillotine) but now knew what was up. It was my plan to seed that before Dead End in the hopes of picking off a few Diplomats. But since Jon had seen this on turn 1, he was able to play the two Diplomats on Turn 2 and run through it. He had gone first and I wasn't ready on my Turn 2 to do anything about that. He also had enough personnel in play to red shirt the Paxan WOrmhole here, and they again failed the first dilemma. But I wasn't ready to go dick with them (and had a serious lack of Androids).

I was almost ready to fly through the wormhole on my turn 1, but I had not any Jem'hadar in play and couldn't staff the Dominion Warship even though Jon had allowed me to double download for Deyos and a Jemmie. One turn 2, I could have played a Quantum Slipstream Drive as my card play, but that would put me at the end of the AQ spaceline and not able to dick with the people at either Insurrection or Paxan Bunghole, so I just flew through the wormhole.

Jon's turn 3 and he runs through the first dilemma at the WOrmhole and fails Gomtuu Shockwave, since they are just a Red Shirt Team. This allows for a good Turn 3 for me, since I am able to build an outpost and blow up that ship with all crew. In retrospect, I should have captured one of the ANdroids aboard, since that would given one ship immmunity to the Paxan Wormhole and not just put them in the graveyard to get recurred and replayed. But like I said, Jon was just outplaying me all around. He moved to Romulus to build up after his intel gathering, and I spent my turn four Capturing one mission specialist and stabbing the other for 5 points.

Jon builds up and solves Paxan Wormhole and I make some pathetic attempts at my mission closest to Romulan Territory (though Kobiyashi and 8472 kick my ass). He didn't have the HQ: Secure Homeworld seeded and had to draw into it, but once he did, there were people around on the planet and ships uncloaked post failed attempt, and I was able to clean house on Capturing, taking the skills for the mission solve mostly.

However, it was here after I had used the last seeded Captured that Jon revealed his secret weapon. Wait for it. A mother fucking Rescue Captives. In his actual deck. Wow.

So now, Jon has all of his personnel and I have jack squat. He was able to easily solve Romulus and then the next turn (In the Zone was stil legal here) move to Insurrection.

Now, in my favour, I had spent those intervening turns wisely. Jon had landed the Injector Assembly 1 to protect it from interaction, but I had beamed aboard it and commandeered it. So there was to be no harvesting of the particulate. Unfortunately, Jon revealed here that he could solve the mission the old fashioned way, by using Data and Picard in Fed mode with a lot of Non-aligned (mostly androids). So that was that.

This is just one of those games where you kick yourself later for blowing it so hard.

The seed phase found us duplicating 4 missions. We were both playing Dominion, though mine was interaction and his was a solver. We both got our Omet'iklan's out early and spent a bit of time building up at our respective GQ missions.

Things went well for me early. Matt was building up at a homeworld, but was keeping all his people on a small ship. I went ahead and built up one ship to go to the AQ and build an outpost while building up a second staffed ship in the GQ. Once that was ready, I card played a Quantum Slipstream Drive to bounce the AQ ship to the Founder Homeworld and flew the other ship in to play an Outgunned and take everything he had in play.

Next, I worked through the shared Destroy Iconian Gateway and solved for 35, though I didn't yet have a Victory is Life for Bonus points. So I was sitting on 35 to 0. Retrospect tells me that the thing to do here would have been nothing at all. Matt had a Dead End at his Homeworld (which he had yet to reveal since he did not have HQ: Secure Homeworld out) and the only other missions within flying distance were shared. but this is not what I did.

I decided that I wanted to shoot for a FW, with the better end of tournament standing that it would net me, and went out to attempt a shared space mission while he still had few people in play. However, Matt also played quite smart. Before really bringing too many people into play, he brought out two Dominion Warships to prevent a return of the Outgunned (which I had recurred with Nanoprobe Res). I did Capture a few of his Dipplomats to prevent him from busting my dilemmas, but as it would have it, I ended up clearing the mission and leaving it wide open for a the next turn theft.

With very few people in play, I somehow doubted that he could move in for the theft, but indeed he could and had an extra guy to kill to the 8472 dilemma on the mission. Since I had lost 5 to Hazardous Duty while clearing the space mission, this put the score at 35 -30 in his favour. This should have been very good news for me.

All I needed to do was personnel battle and throw the Victory is Life in my hand to get 5 points and then wait out the clock for a True Tie. But, I had lost my Omet'iklan to the mission attempt. So, the best I could do was to try and destaff his ship with Captureds. Once I beamed over, I realized how Fucked I was. He only had 7 people on the ship and I could take out 3, but 6 of them were big stars. So, with just 4 left, he still had staffing!

So, on Matt's next turn, he flew through the Bajoran Wormhole but did not have the skills to be unstopped. I just could not trick anyway to get to him! I had this brilliant idea of playing Quantum Slipstream Drive to hop to his homeworld and then commandeering the empty ship there to move over to the Bajoran Wormhole end and pick a fight before he could retreat to the sanctuary of Stratagema, but Kudak'Etan was in my hadn and would also require a card play. Tehre was no way to get to him. So, instead I decided to throw down at the other shared mission.

Cue the same shenanigans. I cleared all the way to the cloud and lost points and lives on the way. I was one Astrophysics short and my personnel were stopped allowing for Matt to move in for the solve.

So pretty bad plays on my part, but given that I couldn't tie it up and he could just hide at home until time, I had gotten myself into a bad situation. At this point, he had enough points that he could just solve the Founder Homeworld for the FW (if he drew enough people to clear the first mission). The remeaining missions for me to attempt had Kobiyashi Marus on them and, due to how many people I had lost to attempts already, were very unlikely to solve. but I opted to go for it anyway (going all in into a The Higher the Fewer) rather than just wait for him to get the FW. At least it was fun.