J (The Mad Vulcan) |
Tournament Report - 2E - Ferenginar Regional |
2015-06-27 - 10:00 AM |
Jaded |
Introduction |
This is my Play 10 for the Starfleet Affiliation. Although I already had a victor for Starfleet from 1E, it was nice to finally win with them in 2E considering how many times I've earned second place using them. |
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Round 1 | | Amber Van Breemen | TT (0) |
A pretty good pairing to start the tournament. When I sat down for this, I assumed that I would lose and then have an easier time opposing the newer players. This was particularly enticing as there were a few new faces about. I set out to just see how long I could hold Amber out at her missions.
Amber was playing Relativity with Stokaran missions. This was particularly painful to me, as my dilemma pile is already a bit expensive and very dual heavy. She also had OT Kirk and so I need to throw extra dilemmas in every combo.
Amber's first attempt at space found me drawing Personal Duty, so I put that first and it picked off Kirk (since she hadn't triggered him). That allowed the combo to work. Next time, I predicted that she would kill the first one and was right again, losing nothing in particular but of course putting one extra under. by the time another Kirk showed up, Amber had enough Ds under the mission to all but guarantee a solve against me, so instead of shooting to stop the attempt, I just tried to take out anyone who might help her at a subsequent mission. She used Kirk on the final dilemma in this combo (there were three) where I had purposely tossed a useless extra dilemma to entice her to use him - it was way overcosted.
While Amber solved her Space mission first and rather quickly, it took me a long while to get through mine, Amber was really cleaning my clock. Also, she got both of the new GQ Equipment in play to give all her people the skills for the Stokaran missions, so I was working only with stopping enough to kill the attributes (and hoping to get lucky with Data stops). this worked, and I held her at the planet mission for quite a while.
I believe the inevitable key to me solving missions was cheaters, namely Gannet and Fitting In. When time was called, it was my turn and I managed to solve a second mission. This put me in the lead, but not likely for long as Amber had gotten enough under her planet to all but guarantee a solve on her final turn. That worked and then she went to Dyson Sphere to try and get the Full Win. I believe she had two attempts there, but I managed to hold her out anyway and since we had both done a 35 point mission for each Planet and Space, it was a True Tie. |
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Round 2 | | Matthew McClain | FW (+80) |
As luck would have it, the result of game one likely decided this tournament. There were 12 players in the event, and that meant that the 6 winners of Round 1 would be paired together (3 games) and the three losers would be paired together (3 games). However, with a true tie in the mix, Amber and I had to be paired up and down. This is the lucky part as Amber was paired up with Ken (and lost) while I was paired down with Matt (and won). At the end, we were first and second, with Amber's loss to Ken making the difference.
Matt was playing a deck similar to Johannes' WCT build, but clearly a novel creation as it did not even have Enterprise-J (turns out it was Justin Ford's). It did have 4 space and one planet, where most of those that weren't Caretaker's were worth about 40.
Still, it took him forever to get through Caretaker's. Doesn't help at all that I have played a lot of Voyager and against a lot of Voyager. He attempted with 4 on turn 2, and then played a Delta Flyer on turn 3 so that he could keep attempting with 4 while also playing people. (He would attempt from the Delta Flyer and stash people on the Voyager.)
I was hoping to get a 'stop one and bounce away' type dilemma, but didn't see that and so, on his first 2 attempts, I had to give him one under each. Finally, I was unable to get anything to play, but when he added up the stats he found that he was one short. I considered telling him about Cavit, as Cavit was in the attempt, but I decided against that since this was a high level event. So he didn't trigger Cavit's gametext and failed to solve. Next go, he rearranged the people and attempted with 4, and I drew the one to stop it. Finally he got through with all four and found that he was again 1 short on attributes. This time, he was almost ready to pass the turn and decided to read all his card for any answers and he happened upon old Cavit (my favorite Voyager guy). It was a bit fun to watch him puzzle it out himself for the first time.
So as it was, Matt was able to attempt a second mission. But in all that time he was working on Caretaker's, I pushed right through my missions. One thing I will say about Matt, he was brand new to the game, but he did not play dilemmas like a newb, he figured that out quick. Usually new players over or under throw, but Matt was playing just the right amount. The only thing that got me through was sheer force and cheaters.
Best play by Matt was when he got a Sylvia to go off and made Damaged Archer his Captive. After that, getting through missions got real hard (I solved the first mission simply because Matt wasn't aware of Damaged Archer). I spent a lot of time digging in my deck to find Markus Forbes only to have him finally show up on the last turn and free Archer in time for a double attempt at my second planet mission, and still, Archer was in the away team that did not solve. |
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Round 3 | | Roxanne Barbour | FW (+100) |
At one point toward the end of the tournament, Ken pointed out that I Skunked Roxanne in this game, but she managed to Skunk all of her other opponents (except Richard, who she True Tied, because that's just how Richard plays), but that score definitely does not reflect the hard fought game I was a part of.
Roxanne was playing a variation on Johannes' WCT Championship 2014 Voyager deck. This uses two 40 point missions and Caretaker's plus Enterprise-J for the easy solves. It overcomes Voyager's weak first turn with a lot of events in core. Roxanne was using those events with the High Cost dilemmas to just murder my away teams.
The deck is supposed to attempt the 40 point space mission first and with a big crew and Enterprise-J. Early on (maybe the first attempt) I managed to throw a very bad combo that should have handed the mission to Roxanne. I put Pitching In in front of Where No One Has Gone Before with only 7 counters to spend - assuming that the Pitch would be cost reduced. It wasn't. So with only two stopped/unstopped via Chuckles, it looked like a walk. Only problem being that Roxanne was a skill short for the mission. The solution for this is easy, Navaar gives it to someone. Only trouble being WHEN to trigger that ability. One doesn't trigger it while facing the first dilemma, as they might need a different skill for the second and after all, there is time to do so while facing the second dilemma - except in this case. Since Where No One was overcosted, Roxanne never got to the phase where Navaar could be triggered and was not able to get the skill for the mission. This was particularly painful as I did not make the same mistake again and Roxanne was held at this mission until the end of the game.
On the other side of the table, my first space attempt ended up with a lot of blood thanks to an 8 cost dilemma. But I learned quickly and this is where Gannet came in. I made sure not to have the skills in my attempt, but in my hand, and the next time that showed up, we cheated through with Gannet and/or Fitting In for the solve. This is also how the other attempts would go. I would be all set up by a crazy powerful dilemma combo that was ready to murder everyone, and would just manage to cheat an attribute or skill to hop through and solve. That's real play there: where the choices are to swindle your way out of a bad situation and solve or watch everyone you command die horribly. |
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Round 4 | | Michael Van Breemen | FW (+60) |
At this point in the tournament, it was Michael's to win or lose, and if he could lock in an FW against me, nobody had a shot at him as there were a lot of TT and MWs about. I was riding pretty high because I felt that I had a good shot at a medal. I did not think I had any shot of winning this game at all.
It was pretty obvious early on that Mike was playing a TNG variant on the deck that Ken won the Marysville regional with. Mike admitted this freely. I knew that Ken's deck was based on a Michael deck, but what I learned here was that the TNG version was the older form.
The point at which this game started to turn in my favor was when Michael started attempting missions, not that I realized this until much later. On the second attempt at his planet, I failed to stop enough people and they went through to solve. Only problem being, Tallera was one of the few people I stopped and he did not have an Enterprise-D in play so he (shocked pause for effect) solved it for the listed amount of points. What I did not know was that this meant that Michael had to do three missions to win and that his deck was not good at all at one of those missions. He moved on to trying to solve that mission, as the final mission can be done without facing dilemmas.
Being Mike, he picked on me hard for missing one key skill in my attempts early (any key skill) but I dug for what he was looking for and put it in play and then things started to go my way. Mike said that he was unlucky with the dilemma draws, and I think that is right to some extent. But I also think that his dilemma pile just wasn't teched right to face the deck I had. He had lots of issues finding anything to do with the dilemmas he drew and when he did decide what to play, I could cheat through. The game was quickly over after I moved on from the Space mission (I think I had one or two attempt solves at both planets) and we were done much earlier than anyone else. |
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Round 5 | | Richard DeLashmit | FW (+100) |
So now, I'm at the top of the standing, but I've been there before and last time I faced Richard in the last round and was knock right down to third with the loss. Mike was certainly rooting for Richard here.
In my favour, though, Richard was playing a deck very very close to Johannes' WCT Championship Voyager build. He had a kill pile, and after the first attempt murdered a ton of people, I started drawing for Phlox. However, both copies were hiding at the bottom of the deck and I ended up doing space the hard way. I began to be concerned that I would loose too many people to even attempt a third mission (though setting up a Mod win against Richard would be enough).
Richard got rolling pretty quick with an Energize, and I couldn't get the Counterspells to pull it down in time. Instead, I eliminated any Enterprise-J he ever hoped to see in play. Personal Duty and Moral Choice did their jobs at Richard's space mission and I was able to build combos to draw out the Chuckles uses without allowing the solve. Richard only played Revised Chuckles, but he tossed 4 other Chuckles to him without ever getting the mission. It seems like I might know playing against Voyager a little too well, but this being the third time today didn't hurt either.
With Phlox on the table, I turned on Richard's dilemma supplementing events. I did a one attempt through my first planet mission, but he wised up and tossed a whole hand for Excalbian Drama when I flew to the second. Richard did hold me at the second planet for a few attempts, but inevitably - I could double attempt in a single turn and that second attempt got through.
I do think that Richard could have gotten his Space mission given another turn. |
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Closing Thoughts |
I was pretty surprised to win a Second Edition Regional, especially against this crowd. But it was a nice way to retire Starfleet. |
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