Pope (princedetenebres) Tournament Report - 1E - The Neutral Zone Regional 2020-04-12 - 04:30 AM Disguised Encroachments and Nelvana Traps Introduction Decided to try out OS Romulans for the regional, since I didn't want to play a deck I'd played before. Was hoping for some interaction, as I was running 2 Nelvana Traps, Scout Encounter, and Flash/Beware of Q to swap in a flash in lieu of big walls I knew my opponent would pass to force them to hit fun things like Fightin' Words, Baliff/Penalty Box, and most importantly, Issue is Patriotism (since I'd have To Be or Not to Be out early). I also note that the new Bird of Prey is a prototype, so I thought it'd be fun in conjunction with Disguise Encroachments to slap an Evaluate Starship Systems on one of them to get a nice attribute bump. The first time I tried playing OS romulans with the new cards I played a test game against Johannes (as it turned out, the same deck he used here), and realized I was lacking any means of doing anything to other Romulan players, so I opted for D'Lors as a mission specialist and ran a couple Revolutionaries, just in case -- this would come very much in handy later on! This was to be some exercise in masochism though, as Round 1 would be at 21:30 local time, and we finished Round 3 around 04:30am... But I regret nothing on that point, at least! Round 1 Julius Melhardt ML (-16) Unfortunately, first round Julius was running MQ Terrans with 6 MQ missions and Homestead, no wormhole or means of getting to/from the AQ. Not what I was hoping for at all For one thing, I was using Reunite Legends to get Kronos One to get Chang & TBoNtB on T1, and was hoping to use him to mix it up with my opponent, as well as his being a general to fly around and drop objectives on my missions with Taking Charge. So while he couldn't get to the MQ, at least he could get the event and take Kathleen Tonnell to go to the duck blind for some extra draws. The game ended up going to time, as with Scout encounter & Nelvana Traps bringing me 3 ships to pay a visit to the Terrans to teach them who the *real* evil empire is (the Romulan Star Empire is #1, obviously) we spent a fair bit of time doing some battling or, in the cowardly Terrans' case, trying to run away from battling ;). And while scout encounter came out first, his ships were a bit too strong to take out with the cha'joh, but fortunately I'd had the foresight to have the Sisters of Duras hitch a ride with Keras on Engage Cloak so that they could make the cross-quadrant journey and take command of their ship their after to give me the extra firepower mid/late game. He was plodding through my dilemmas, but my battling, destroying Avenger and Enterprise (once before whilst damaged it'd STP'd back to hand, too) as well as tangling with an Imperial Interceptor, he was on 66 points at time, to my 50. One highlight was when he'd downloaded a suliban cloak and tried to stave off destruction by using it to avoid certain destruction on my turn. Unfortunately for him, one of the damage markers I'd drawn for his ship was Crimson Forcefield, so I was pleased to alert him when he announced he was cloaking that the cloak was offline. I threw this game away, as I'd gone second and had time to do another mission, but had foolishly positioned a ship halfway down the spaceline thinking I'd want to be able to make a run for the far end of it and set up a ferry to get there in a turn, having cleared out two missions but lacking a skill to solve either. As a result of this incompetence, having the skills to solve both missions to put me ahead and give me the MW, at least, I was shy 2 range to get to both, and thus could only solve 1 of the missions and leave me short of the points needed to win. To add further injury and insult, for some reason I just ended my turn, thinking that those two missions on either side of my outpost were my only options, but my outpost itself had 2 dilemmas at it, one of which was Gomtuu, which I could pass. I had *NO* reason not to at least try the mission, as there would be but one dilemma there to overcome and I could solve the mission, and if I failed, the result would be the same... but I just didn't think of it for some stupid reason. Sure enough, after the game it was revealed that it was a Ghost of Cyrus Ramsey, which I had the Transporter skill to pass, and so thus twice over my own bungling cost me a MW. Argh! Round 2 Glen "Lofty" Shipley FW (+25) Well, at least I thought I'd not have to wait to interact with my opponent in round 2, as I wasn't expecting 6 MQ missions... so needless to say, I was disappointed when Lofty dropped 5 DQ missions and was doing a combo Voyager/FCoS + Cafe des Artistes deck, only having Earth in the AQ. Usually I leave some means of quadrant-hopping, but didn't think to include QSD this time, so was relying entirely on Scout encounter and Nelvanas to get me to them. (Un)fortunately, Armus Energy Field's random stops were giving him some difficulties, and while I usually would want to see my opponent fumbling with my dilemmas, but he wasn't getting to the ones that would let me come smack his DQ Feds around, which was actually kinda frustrating in a peculiar way. Amusingly, a couple times when I had to grab a pair of people for a stop or a kill, I managed to grab one of his couples. After obliging his (completely reasonable) desire to get Harry Kim killed (he says he tries every game), I was especially pleased to bump off the always annoying Neelix, as well as his paramour, Kes. He did manage to get a couple missions done, and as time was called we were on 75-75, with his getting Investigate Quantum Singularity on his last turn for 45. I'd thought it fitting to put Quantum Singularity Lifeforms there, which helped slow him down as I'd hoped. Thankfully, I was able to barrel through one final mission to put myself over the top for the FW on my last turn (having gone 2nd). This was the first time encountering Squire's rules, and it was actually far more effective than I'd thought -- or at least, randomly seeding the S/P dilemmas didn't diminish them as much I'd expected. For instance, first attempt I hit an Experience Bij. So I had to go elsewhere, and hit Dead End. I mean you might not have known he was seeing randomly, it worked just fine. Seems to me now that the weakness of it isn't necessarily the lack of ability to setup combos, the extra stops are a bit of compensation for that, but that I could rule out a huge portion of the available dilemmas in game as I knew they weren't eligible for Squire -- that is, no need to worry about a Denevan, Cytherians, God or Jol Yichu. So against an experienced player with knowledge of the available dilemma pool, it does seem like it's a bit of a handicap. I very much hope it is not weakened to preclude the possibility of swapping out dilemmas for Q-flashes with Beware of Q, as that's at least one thing that would help a bit, I'd say. Round 3 Johannes Klarhauser FL (-58) Well, in spite of a lackluster performance so far, I still managed to find myself at the top table, and with a FW could come out on top for the day. But Johannes is obviously one of the best, and so there'd be no room for error. Unfortunately, being nothing if not a bungler, that was not to be, rather than to be. My principal error being failing to trigger my To Be or Not to Be on turn 4-5 when he engaged the Earth Outpost he'd downloaded for me with Test Weakness. I'd helpfully played an ablative armor on it on my next turn, so he had to bring a fleet to take it out, and I just simply forgot to trigger it, as I have it for use with Issue is Patriotism. I had both gal'gathong (with Keras & D'lors aboard and revolutionaries in hand) as well as Kronos One in range of the location, and the losses from TBoNtB would've removed the crews from all but one of his ships, so Gal'gathong could swoop in from Engage cloak to deal with Decius, and Kronos One on its own could follow up with a second attack on one of the others. But I've gotten a bit ahead of myself here. We had a weird spaceline with 3 duplicated missions, so it was both short and missions were dilemma heavy, as a result I also made a critical error in the seed phase in putting 4 dilemmas at Patrol Neutral Zone, the 3 following Armus: Energy Field were excessive, as I put a ship in the neutral zone on turn 1, and as we were both Romulans, he lacked a means of attacking me, so he couldn't even pass the first dilemma there. Unfortunately, late in the game when it was essential that I do so, I had the means to destroy his last ship in the zone, but the following Space Amoeba - Subspace Shockwave and Emergent Life-form meant I'd need to waste a bunch of ships to get through myself, when I desperately needed those delaying cards elsewhere. Would that I'd had the good sense to think about the requirement on Armus and placed them at either Iconia or Evade Sensors! Fool! Anyway, he got out off to a quick start with his contender objectives, and I delayed it by slapping the ablative armor on the Earth Outpost, and moved Kronos One a bit closer while building up range on Gal'gathong on Engage Cloak. I'd held Revolutionaries in my hand to spring at an opportune time, though I wanted to make sure I dropped it before he was going to hit either nelvana trap, of course. His contender objectives coupled with S'Salk and Test for Weakness had given him 45 points from objectives, such that he'd only need to do two missions. Somehow I'd not noticed that we only ended up with 4 dilemmas at our shared Evade Sensors, though both of us having objectives in point area made our each having seeded a Disgraceful assault there pretty painful, though he had multiple ships there to take the punishment, and another one to rescue his folks from the final dilemma I had there, Quantum Singularity life forms. Here's really where my failing to trigger TBoNtB killed me, as he needed those ships to get through these and taking at least a couple of them out earlier on would've made this a much much more difficult task, if not impossible with Kronos One nearby and my Romulans not much further afield. Once that was solved, he pivoted to go after Iconia Investigation, much closer to my forces. Thankfully I gave him quite a difficult time getting through it, Armus Energy Field once again proving its use (after Buried Alive, of course), and I sprung a Nelvana Trap on him there and some battling took out his Decius. Still, over the course of a few turns, he'd managed to clear all but the final dilemma, Thrasian Powers, and was preparing to muscle through it, when I swapped it for a flash and compelled him to battle my ships there, leading to more lost ships. In the end, he was through all the dilemmas, but was down to just the gal'gathong on his side, and I had not just Kronos One but 3 bird of prey Mk IIs, a battlecruiser and the gal gathong (obviously Kronos wasn't able to join the romulans, but could mix it up on its own), and here he saved himself with a clutch play of Cloaked Maneuvers to keep his ship alive in the face of my fleet. Then he made his one mistake, STP-dropping on his next turn the battlecruiser with some personnel to go solve the empty Iconia, but upon attempting and showing me skills for the solve, I reminded him that, unfortunately, Fightin' Words was still on the table and his people lost the critical skills, and must be mission debriefed... and his gal'gathong was again exposed at the mission, but once again, he had another cloaked maneuvers to spare himself from the wrath of my waiting ships :( And sadly, at time I didn't have the means to finish another mission of my own, and sitting on 48 wasn't able to make any further headway, so I made one stab at a mission and ended my turn for him to finish Iconia for the win. Closing Thoughts Well, in spite of a 1-2 record, I had a lot more fun than the scores might've suggested and felt like I was in both games and, were it not for my usual blundering, could well have pulled them out. Damn! Oh well, thanks to my opponents for a fun all-nighter and to Paddy for hosting us.