Pope (princedetenebres) Tournament Report - 1E - Online Event 2015-06-29 - 12:00 AM Introduction Deck: K't'inga's Revenge! So I've never written one of these before, but I've tried to provide a brief deck description and then a quick rundown on the game, and a few stray thoughts about each. My deck was AU Klingons with 2 time locations. The objective was to draw a Ready Room Door & Arne Darvin in the opening hand. With a seeded New Arrivals, use the RRD to get Crew Reassignment and after I play my old battlecruiser to Sherman's peak (SP) then every universal I can play aboard a ship to the ship at SP and draw a card with Arne Darvin, not just OS personnel but all but 2 personnel in my deck are AU. So hopefully that will reliably draw me 2 each turn (Arne gets you a draw for playing any Klingon person or ship there), and the extra Arne/Gro'ths I stock to ensure I get him turn 1 can be discarded with Mutation/Temporal Shifting for more draws. And once I defend Homeworld for General K'vagh, the 5 augments in the deck play there to draw me 2 cards each. I use the time locations to report au klingon ships for free, and if I use their special downloads to get personnel to Sherman's Peak I can get a draw on my opponent's turn with him or use them to bust through dilemmas as the situation warrants. With a bunch of AU ships (and the T'Ong) I should have an opportunity to do a nice StP drop at some point during the game too, to offset the disadvantage I'm at with reports due to New Arrivals. I've got Hijack Freighter or Secret Salvage II which don't usually attract the best dilemmas to give Council of Warriors a shot (Chancellor Gowron fetched via Going to the Top can facilitate this). And I've got a bunch of Klingon ships that while 23rd century, each require only 1 person to staff and aren't so bad with the various modifiers like Krase, Kang & Captain's Log. Throw in a Martok & the Kla'Dius and I'm ready to battle. Add to that, though this was an accident and not intentional, but I thought all this made me reasonably resistant to the usual battle decks myself by having 2 time locations, 2 outposts to report to and with crew reassignment, engage cloak, the T'ong, & a space-time portal AND To Be or Not to Be, a battle deck would really have their work cut out for them to knock me out of the game entirely. Round 1 Andreas Micheel FW (0) Sorry, this is a long review, but it was a very close, exciting game so I thought it merited a longer blow-by-blow account of just how the Enterprise twice barely avoided destruction & the winner ended up with fewer points. He was playing TNG Feds/Host Metaphasic and draws with Continuing Mission/Handshake & Cafe Des Artistes to draw many cards and play a bunch for free each turn. Host Metaphasic Shield Test was his only space mission, so while I was a bit surprised to see someone 5:1, I realized if I could steal it, I'd really force him to have to work for the win. However, it was at the far end of the spaceline so I had decided that probably wasn't likely to happen given that my old battlecruisers have pitiful range and I wasn't likely to get down there, so I went with 3 dilemmas at an extra mission to be able to put 5 down at his sole space mission. I got off to a decent enough start with drawing Arne in my opening hand and getting the crew reassignment draw engine going with him whilst playing a few free ships to Camp Khitomer. But then I made my first stupid mistake and didn't protect Crew Reassignment with RRD, opting to put it back atop my deck next turn to dl & protect Captain's log next turn with it. He attempted Host and the Enterprise fell prey to my combo of The Swarm/Scout Encounter. The Cha'Joh was able to damage the enterprise on his turn (his only ship at that point), but his timely play of that fire sculptor. A combination Kevin Uxbridge/Fire Sculptor made me regret not protecting Crew Reassignment decision very much. I have to compliment Andreas, while I had looked using FS & NA Dukat to attack my opponent's discard pile, but hadn't gotten around to figuring out a viable way of doing it, and certainly wasn't considering it a threat. He managed to fire sculptor my Q the Ref first, and then my temporal vortex later! So very adroit use of the interrupt this game, sir! And worse, thinking about how to recover from that first sculptor play caused me to forget to finish off the Enterprise with my Cha'Joh on my turn, as I was trying to recalibrate my strategy given that my access to my time locations was almost entirely cut-off. Still, it was a stupid mistake as it was his sole ship and had 4 crew who had survived the first attack and was without weapons due to The Swarm. Stupid me! So I was hurting, as I had counted on having QtR to use its ability to cycle temporal vortex between my time locations, and it was counting down on Camp Khitomer where I had 2-3 ships but few personnel (they were at Sherman's Peak), and he might well have another fire sculptor for my vortex when it hit the discard pile; and even if not, I could only pull it back once with Tribunal of Q, so something of a pickle, to say the least. but at least I was able to bring to the present the K'Elric (w/ Kang) to start its long journey to mess with him (Khitomer/Sherman's planet) were at the opposite end of the spaceline as Starbase 247. Fortunately, he was stuck behind my next dilemma and I had the realisation that he hadn't retrieved his own QtR and that my 10 or so people on the Gr'oth, all being AU could be STP dropped into the AQ, and as I had 2 Space-time Portals in play I was able to pick up the Gro'th and drop it at Host Metaphasic, and clear the last 3 dilemmas there and steal it for 40, which I deemed worth the loss of the Cha'Joh to a Spaceborn Entity. I'm up 40-0 and he has no space missions, so while there's a lot yet to be done, I've gotten myself in a good position needing to score just 60 before he scores 140. In spite of losing at least 7 personnel (4 in one fun away team battle: Die Wesley! Die!) he was drawing lots and getting free plays out of Finest Crew, Attention All Hands, Scientific Dip. he was perfectly capable of putting lots of points on the board in short order. Which he proceeded to do by solving a pair of planet missions next to his outpost in subsequent turns to get to 70 points and the lead! It took my slow ships awhile to get back to our end of the spaceline; the trouble being that I had several personnel at my outpost and I judged it best to combine them with my AU crew before attempting missions. I managed to finally score Secret Salvage II, but another timely fire sculptor prevented AMS points (I discarded it with nanoprobe in my hand to fetch 2 specialists in my tent) gambling he might not have a 3rd sculptor, or at least not in his hand... but he did. Meanwhile, we had some skirmishing above Cargo Rendezvous, he had the Enterprise, Nebula & Galaxy against my Gr'oth & K'Elric. The K'Elric was eventually destroyed, but his ships were all damaged and suffered severe attribute reductions which limited his mobility. A timely download of Metaphasic Shields saved his Enterprise a second time from destruction. I managed also to clear the dilemmas from Khitomer, but my sole treachery (Gen. Chang) died & while I was feeling very confident as I held a nanoprobe in my hand; he, of course, had another fire sculptor, leaving my mission empty, but without treachery on the board -- except for poor old Arne Darvin who had been left behind on K7. Annoyingly I had 2 more treachery personnel in my hand, but since they were extra copies of Arne, it didn't do me much good. :p Dunnagh cleared a 3rd planet mission bringing him the score now to 105-65 on his turn, but having solved 3 planets he needed 140 to win. His damaged ship prevented him from moving to his next planet on his turn, and I was able to defend homeworld for General K'Vagh and get him to the mission to solve for the win 100 > 105. On his next turn he probably could've gotten to 140 with his 20 person megacrew,so it was even more narrow victory than the score suggests (which is really saying something!). Great game! Final thoughts: -put 2nd QtR back in Ref pile; ironically I had had one there in the previous 2 tournaments but dropped it this time :p -Don't be stupid! No excuse for forgetting to blow up his ship after damaging it with Scout Encounter on my turn. -Fire sculptor is, it turns out, a valid response to Mutation/Nanoprobe, and a devastating one at that. Love to see old interrupts getting some good use, even if it really screwed me repeatedly here. Round 2 Alexander Schmitz FL (-100) Ty was playing a TNG Romulan Underground deck with a bunch of Neutral Zone missions & Pegasus Search. The Neutral Zone was smack in the middle of the spaceline with both my outposts and time locations on the one side and his outpost (@ Pegasus) and HQ on the far end of the spaceline. Once again I curse my last-second decision to remove DDP from my tent, as while I love my old battlecruisers, they are not known for their speed... and it was 34 span from Agricultural Assessment to his outpost, so I saw early that that could be a problem, and decided to put 4 dilemmas at Pegasus, even though from the moment it hit the table I started thinking about how to steal it. This would end up being my undoing... Anyway, he managed to get a good number of Romulans out pretty quickly, and get traveler & Surprise party to augment his CM draws. However, with Mirror Image, they both were double edged swords as they fueled a reasonable quick start for me as well. Getting Darvin & K'vagh to K7 to get draws going myself, I got a good number of personnel down, and even managed to get the K'elric & Amar off on the long journey to go harry my Romulan neighbors quite early on. Before I could get down there though, he managed to get through my combo at Romulus and acquire Starry Night, which he swapped for the Phased Cloaking Device & an Interphase Generator (handy with Pegasus being next door to Romulus). He was short an honor personnel to get the bonus points off of the Underground, and had lost 10 from Lack of Prep, so he moves up 30-0 with mission specialists. On my turn, I make a fateful, and wrong decision, having built up a dozen or so people on my end, instead of dropping the T'ong at Agricultural Assessment, I decide to put it down at Romulus instead with Phlox & General Chang getting me K'Temoc immediately thereafter with I'm a Doctor... so now, with Captain's Log out I've got a respectable warship in the neighborhood, albeit alone for a few turns til' a couple more K'tingas can make their way down the spaceline. I thought he was likely to go after Pegasus and was so I'd got the right guys there, with the matching commanders en route to solve it. My combo under it was: Changeling Sweep - The Swarm - Scout Encounter - Protestations of Innocence So I was confident that that would keep him at bay for a couple turns; as he never had more than one ship out, I could swoop in and solve after my scout battled to stop him. But he didn't go to Pegasus as expected but to Iconia just beyond, which he managed to solve in a few turns time after losing at least half a dozen people to Denevan & Deliberate Tactical Error. During this process he had no choice but to leave his ship vulnerable to attack, and the Devoras was destroyed by the T'Ong & Kronos One (which along with her sisters K'elric & Amar had arrived on the scene). So while the score is 65-0 for him; I don't feel like I'm in as awful a position as that score might indicate; as I've got 4 captained ships at his outpost or next door, and he's got no ships in play. Down on my end of the spaceline (though really, my guys don't really see a distinction, it all belongs to the Klingon empire!) I managed to trigger Dead End at my Investigate Alien Probe and clear out Secret Salvage 2 -- but at high cost, as V'Ger wiped out a crew of 11-12 people; all my diplomacy being on my Captains I now realize, and Koloth not having turned up yet. While I had enough people with the Captains and the crew I'd dropped with the T'Ong & on the Amar with space-time portal to solve, but had screwed myself up with a combination of my own cards making it hard to steal Pegasus: -Scout Encounter might enable him to DL a ship to attack me with and turn my own combo against me. -Q's Tent:CW meant I had to go with at least 4 if I was to redshirt past it -Protestations of Innocence (note to self: maybe not such a good wall to put at a mission you're going to steal preceded by Scout Encounter!!) -Berserk requires all 3 of my security to be part of the redshirt crew Long story short, I finally get my act together and get the people I need at Pegasus Search (after returning T'ong to hand and replaying it) and then bungle the execution. I've got 16 personnel there and stick Kered, Gen. Chang & K'Vagh aboard to redshirt and having brought Darvin along since I'd decked myself, thought he wasn't too useful and would make a good 4th for the first crew, just in case he had a scout ship. He didn't dl a ship, for whatever reason and so I clear all the dilemmas with the two crews and then realize that I have only three treachery at that location; all in the redshirt team... literally anyone but Arne for the fourth would've been fine; I just did it without thinking that in the other 12 that I wouldn't have another treachery. So needless to say, on his turn, with a 50 point mission clear of dilemmas and the artifact that single-handedly solves it there, he plays a ship and wins 115-0. Let that be a lesson to you on how not to steal a mission. Final notes: -- I didn't think about it at the time, but there was something Trek sense-wise that was funny about my deck which was focused on K'tingas being so decimated by V'ger (its that mess Star Trek 1 all over again)! I really let myself get too fixated on stealing Pegasus; its a great prize to be sure; but all those personnel I had on his end, coupled with those on my end, and I squandered the game. I mean no disrespect to my opponent, of course, but looking at the dilemmas I was up against, had I not divided my forces, none of them would've slowed me down (excepting I Hate You, which would likely have cost me a turn to change K'chiq's skill). I spent more time working out how to get around my combo than it would've taken to get around any of those at the missions on my end. But then, with 27 personnel in play, I suppose that's to be expected. With Lower decks out, even his best combo with Kelvan + God couldn't have even stopped me. So the lesson there is, yes its great to be flexible to adapt to the game situation and seize opportunities; but this is a case where just sticking to the original plan would've been better; send 2-3 ships with 1 guy on them to harass him and everyone else just relentlessly clear-out missions, everyone is expendable! Well, still, congrats to my opponent here, as he played well, and made only one mistake himself (forgetting to bring enough security to pass a dilemma he'd hit the turn before), which didn't really end up costing him anything. So while I say I gave away the game, I still tip my hat to him as he played everything practically perfectly and that much at least is reflective of our final score: FL 0 - 115 Round 3 J FL (-50) Round 3 vs. J I've gone way overlong in the previous two, so I'll try to be more succinct in the last two games' descriptions: J was playing a TE/BRC deck with Halkan council & Terran Rebel HQ. He managed to get out a pretty large number of personnel and attempted Mine Dilithium early. He had a few guys with SD icons to bail him out of a potential problem with a dilemma, but I think he got through both that mission and Search for Rebels within several turns of the game starting and only needing to use 1-2 of his special downloads. I was moving along at a decent pace, but was hampered by not ever having the right hand to STP, nor did I ever draw one of my T'Ongs, which is a bit of a pain as that's how I offset the cap from New Arrivals. Still, I managed to get out a pretty good number of guys, but not as quickly as J, and he'd cleared his 3rd mission before I managed to get Ag. Assessment down to just spatial rift. On what I knew was going to be my final turn before he'd win, I managed to solve that, with some bonus points got me to 50, and I went next door to Investigate Alien Probe, knowing that I couldn't get but 45 from it to bring me to 95, but unfortunately, my own mission debriefing had meant that I had had to stop all but one of my Engineers and kept me from getting by his Trilithium Raid. He solved Divert Attention for the win the next turn. 130 - 50 His deck proved to be a tough one for me, as I know I can't outrun speedy decks with mine, but count on having a K't'inga or two in their neighborhood to mess with them to hopefully slow my opponent down, but his ability to just beam straight to his next mission in the AQ from the MQ made that not really an option. Further, I've intended to do ship battles rather than personnel battles, and he had at least two hand weapons, so even with lower decks on my side, that didn't seem like it would be an effective use of a turn, as I probably would kill at most 1 person in AT battles, if I brought enough personnel to overwhelm his team. So while I'd sent Captain Kang off to harry him, in case he should appear, I only had one opportunity to attack a ship of his and it wouldn't have been consequential, so we went the entire game without battling. No huge mistakes this game, but overall, I think I just need to play more aggressively, I am waiting to long before striking out to attempt missions and forfeiting the initiative to my opponents in this area, and when I'm not impeding them with battle, that is likely fatal. FL 130 - 50 Round 4 Matthew King FL (-100) I stupidly saved over my autosave of this so I couldn't bring it up again to jog my memory as to what had happened in the game (nor did I have the good sense to make any notes of any sort at the time), but as I've gone way over in previous, I will be mercifully short here (with apologies to Matthew for my inconsistency here). He had a speedy TE/BRC/Maquis deck with a couple missions in the MQ. After getting out a good number of people pretty quick, it didn't take him long to make his way through my dilemmas, even though he lost a ship to battling with me. Unfortunately, while he was cruising through his three badlands missions, I got stuck behind Quantum Incursions -- frustrating as its been quite easy for me all tournament heretofore, but with K'ChiQ on the far end of the spaceline, in spite of my ample AU personnel (I think 8 of 9 in the crew) and easily mustering the other skills, I rolled an empathy requirement 3 times, thus keeping myself stuck & losing Council of Warriors. In retrospect, I made a mistake insofar as I went after that mission which bogged me down for that amount of time because I thought I was lacking in computer skill to attempt Secret Salvage when I had one available that I forgot about and while I would've lost points to the edo/whale probe, at least could've solved *a* mission (and pulled off CoW :) ), oh well... well played on Matt's part, so well-deserved win, but fun game in spite of not putting any points up. FL 0 - 110 Closing Thoughts In spite of being outscored by the embarrasing margin of 150 - 455, I did not feel like I wasn't in any of the games, and had a lot of good interaction. I don't usually have so much fun with such unequal results, that is that it was a lot more fun to play than the scores might indicate. Many thanks to all the fine gentlemen I had the pleasure of squaring off against, and of course to TK for putting it all together and herding the cats to keep plodding on in a somewhat timely manner. Looking forward to next round. Did anyone make it through all that? :D (I don't know why my spacing/formatting wasn't preserved, sorry!)