Richard actually played the same deck that he had brought to the Burnaby Regional a few weeks before, which meant that this was a rematch between my dilemma pile (which also stayed the same) and his deck. I won both events and likely the reason for that is the dilemma pile. It seems to be pretty well set up for our meta -> not really anti-MvB or anti-Ken, as they can and do play literally anything, but more good against our midrange players who have a limited number of good decks to choose from (so far).

But I wouldn't say this was a walk in the park, on the contrary, I only got the mod-win. Sure, dilemma like Personal Duty and Moral Choice are great against Voyager, but they are also great against TOS, so we were pretty even on that matter. I also had little in the way of event destruction, so Richard got to keep his Enterprise-J.

But I think I got a bit lucky early on in that I managed to get a random kill that picked The Doctor early on (maybe first attempt) where the Doctor might have been able to save anyone else and Richard did not have a Chuckles in hand to discard to Revised Chuckles. Then on a later attempt, I managed to randomly take out Revised Chuckles. So, for quite a bit of the game, Richard was without his key cheaters and drawing into his deck to find them.

A few places where his deck got lucky where Energize, which he drew on turn 1, and Seven of Nine, which he got on Turn 2. Seven allowed him to set up the Energize burn each turn and the Energize itself sped up his deck. One he finally did get another Chuckles in play, it was time to start rolling hard on the missions, but time was up and I was ahead simply due to having a planet and a space.

I had one more turn and had to decide which 3rd mission to go to. I ended up choosing space and Richard held me out from solving it that turn, though I realized afterwards that said choice would not have earned me a FW in one turn anyway as it was a 30 point mission and would have left me on 95 if I had managed to get through.

Justin was playing all space Voyager, and I gotta give it to him, it was an impressive build. Still, my first goal of the game was to get a space and a planet mission done, you know: to be safe.

Justin dropped the Voyager plus two dudes on turn 1 and was attempting Caretaker's on Turn 2, luckily, I was able to slap him around and leave none under.

Still, the fact that his deck could solve with 4 people at each mission meant that he really didn't have to get many Ds under before things started being easy for him. When he attempted Caretaker's with 4 and gave me none to spend thanks to Running a Tight Ship, I forgot to play my Uninvited. Then he beat me down on my turn by starting with a Dreamer and the Dream and putting enough under to ensure no solve - so I lost the Uninvited and a Driven.

But I did okay at holding out the mission solves for a bit. Things only looked real bad when he managed to cheat through his third mission using the new Janeway to rescue two of the new cost 1 mooks from a stop and give him enough people and skills to solve.

This game really came down to it. Though, I thought I had a shot at holding him at his missions for one more turn if needed. Sisko was clutch in preventing the interrupt which would let Justin do two attempts in one turn. I think the result of this game really came down to how many attempts I could do in a turn. I was set up to do multiple attempts in one turn at my first planet when I hit God at the end of the first attempt. I tried to cheat it with Driven, but Justin Grav Trapped that. This was my error, since I could have Sisko'd his Grav Trap. Still, Justin had two ships to choose which to put it on. If he put it on the one which had range left, I could take that home to repair. But he put it on the other, so I just went to my other planet mission and started attempting there, thereby filling two missions at once.

On my final turn, I played more people and brought them in on a third ship and then had two loser mooks fly the Religious ship back home to get it out of the way. We solved the first planet reasonably easily, then I moved all to the second planet. Too many dilemmas added up and even though Justin hit me with two successful Dreamers on big hands during this game, those were also dilemmas under.

Might have been the toughest game.

Ken had a DS9 deck which used Historical Research, but I rolled for second giving me the benefit of Skalaar while hitting Ken with no benefit for HR. Still, I suspect that he drew the guy he wanted in Enrique Muniz, as playing him on turn 1 meant that he drew a card every time he played any other people. That adds up quick.

The big trick to Ken's deck was easy space missions. He used the U.S.S. Centaur and the new Thirst for Knowledge to make all his people have crazy attributes and make his Space missions be solvable with 3-4. Still, I did well against Ken early on by putting only one under with each of his attempts and even when he did get enough Ds under, I Uninvited him once to make him wait out another turn.

I remember getting out reasonably early and working hard on my missions. Ken is quite good at stopping me with few under and he had many copies of Personal Duty and Moral Choice to tech against Voyager decks, while my deck also gets hit well with those. So it took me a damned long while to get anywhere but inevitably, I had enough to double attempt missions and I never did see a Timescape from him. On the turn when I solved space, I opted to stop the Enterprise-B for the points, as I suspected that the game would go to time and didn't quite have enough people for a second attempt at the planet mission at that time.

On my second to last turn, I managed to get the planet solved and could fly two ships to space to double team it. I chose the space mission, even though I had struggled in space previously, as it was slightly easier, as it was a lower point mission than the other planet and I had the extra points off Enterpise-B.

The first two attempts just got me one under each and a Gomtuu Shock Wave on each ship. I managed to shut Ken out at his planet once more, but I put a lot under when I did, as time was called on his turn.

So, as he only had two space done, I could get the Mod Win. I had two attempts in space, but was not lucky enough to draw into a third ship in order to restock them, so I was working with just who was still alive at the space mission. But I got lucky in the first attempt that turn busting through. Very lucky, since Ken revealed that he was holding an Uninvited to mess with the second crew (and nuking it with Sisko would left me with a crew that had to keep all members around to solve).

Ken had spent much of Round 2 complaining about Mike's deck, so I wasn't too eager to face it. However, it really was a fun deck.

Mike was playing Romulans using Brainwashing to spend 5 points to take command of your people and the new card Target of Opportunity to do likewise. He set up both Prejudice and Politics and Getting Under Your Skin on his Turn 1, and that meant 5 points every turn.

I attempted first but had a real hard time getting anywhere. Mike was good at killing my people, stopping a ton and putting just one under and I went on two WNOHGB trips. I had trouble drawing into a second ship but had a lot of people just waiting to be red shirted at home. I finally hit the ship during the second turn that I should have been sitting out due to WNOHGB, and that meant I got another attempt and one more under. This put it at 5 under.

After playing two copies of Brainwashing in one turn and picking off two of my best people: Spock and Number One, Mike started attempting and they certainly helped him. I tended to put two under his space mission on each attempt and once it had 5 or so, he went home and switched ships to bring out the key 5. I did have Uninvited to stop that attempt, but I still think Mike solved space before I had solved anything.

On my next turn, I flew one ship from the homeworld and then set it up to solve with just 5. Mike didn't think I had the 5 to pull it off and so I showed my skills, and he proved that I didn't have the 5 to pull it off. I had assumed that Skalaar was +2 attributes, but I had gone first. So they were stopped. I decided to continue as planned and send the second ship to attempt a planet mission even without a space solved, since I could still potentially solve that mission with just 5 (I had Persis in hand to make up for the one dumb guy on the next turn.) And I absolutely lucked out!

Mike gave me just one dilemma: Legacy, and flipped 3 skill dilemmas. Then I flipped three skill dilemmas and solved. (According to Lucas Thompson's analysis of this pile in his Road to World's series, it has just a 25.5% chance of passing a Legacy.)

Mike attempted a planet and I was shocked when An Issue of Trust stopped no one (seriously, Romulans. One Treachery in the 9 person attempt). But then they got their clock cleaned by Picking up the Pieces.

On my final turn, I played Commodore Decker and Persis to staff the Exeter and then flew them to space to fix my 5 man crew. This allowed the solve and let them switch ships to bring everyone in play to my third mission. I could make two 9 person crews pretty easily and the plan was to get a few under with the first crew and then decide whether to go big or small with the second. Mike gave me just one dilemma and it was "Rapid Progress". He named three skills: Treachery, Physics, and Archaeology. I was surprised to see that I could potentially cheat this, I had two dudes with Treachery and one with Physics, that was Soran, who would end up stopping someone randomly. I had to use Driven for the Archaeology but it got me the mission.

7 attempts, 7 dilemmas under.