Michael had a pure achievement deck (going for one of the original hidden achievements) and I think I could have done much better against him. As it was, I feel that this was fairly close. though Mike assures me that Uninvited could have held out my last mission solve for a couple more turns.

The big mistake I made, was almost wholly focusing on my offensive strategy during my turn. When Mike would go an attempt, I would realize that i failed to leave a ship in hand for Tactical Disadvantage or failed to leave decent strength for the Know Thy Enemy. Also, Mike made good calls with his copies of Self-Replicating Roadblock that were always played the turn he was attempting the mission and always named something I drew. But if I had held him at his space mission at all (he got a solve on the first go) then I might have won this. Both planets had much better results in holding him out.

Justin had modified his TOS build to utilize Tribbles for dilemmas. This meant harder missions to solve, but great defensive capabilities. In particular, he used TATV McCoy and Shran to bounce overcome dilemmas and make me work that much harder to get through the tribbles. It also worked in his favor that the stop from infestation and the bonus one from the related mission are not simultaneous, so The Central Command wasn't that good. Plus, he kept Grav Trapping those, making me push through missions the old fashioned way.

It was during my final game that I realized what I should have done differently here. I should have used Weyoun to shuffled Shran back into the deck. Likely, Justin had a few of those but at the very least, he would have had to repay for him and fly home to get the bastard.

Inevitably I won simply by attrition. Attempt, attempt, attempt, and Justin was having little luck vs. my dilemmas. Know Thy Enemy and Tactical Disadvantage were always auto stops for him and Alternative to Fighting was just as good.

Richard had a pretty solid Dominion build which focused on unique Jem'hadar and Mobilization points. All his missions were GQ but oddly he had the original Dominion HQ. This was quite odd as I never saw a non-aligned person enter play. He stated that he simply forgot that there was a new one, but this error would not have made a difference in our game since the Tenak'talar gives me 10 points to spare anyway.

I got out to attempt first, in spite of a Crippling Strike due to the Tenak'talar's range. The only other strike that Richard used this game also did nothing. But I believe that Richard did solve space first. He was going at Stokaran space and i did quite well with holding him out for a while, but eventually it gets hard to have the dilemmas to play to hold out the attempt and Richard brought out two ships to be able to restock and reattempt each turn.

What shifted the balance was when I did solve my space mission as I had range to go to the planet, and that went one and done (solve in one turn due to multiple attempts in that turn, rather than on the very first go) and then still range for the third. Like my first mission, Richard did well at holding me out at this third. In fact, after two attempts here (and being completely out of Ruling Councils) I only had two dilemmas under.

Richard was working on Stokaran planet, but I was having good luck there and was also putting few under. But time was inevitably called and Richard flew a ship to my planet mission to sit there. I didn't like the look of that. I was up on points with two missions solved, but I thought a timely interrupt could prevent a FW. So I played a second ship, split my crews, and went to space. This proved a bit lucky. The first group (of 7) only saw two dilemmas under before being shut out. So, the second group (of 6) needed to see nobody stopped to solve and Richard had four to draw and spend. The luck was that the only thing that Richard found was Pitching In, and I had been cheating those all day. Choose two Cardies to be stopped and then Central Command to leave six in the attempt. So final mission solved at the last possible time.

In a hands down situation, I would have had a MW here instead of a FW. The full game went maybe 5-8 minutes past time.