I had to ask: "What Issue is Patriotism + Defend Homeworld trick?" Someone sat me down and patiently explained it to me.

The first thing I said was, "The new card doesn't make that any easier. That's already super-easy. Why would I want to clog up a super-easy thing by stocking and drawing into an interrupt?" The second thing I said was, "Wait... did I just say there's a super-easy way to put infinity personnel and ships in play?"

I decided to try it and see what happened. My real Worlds deck, the one I poured all the hard work into, was of course my OS Romulan build for Day One. But if that build fell apart for some reason, or if by some lucky chance I made it to Day Two, this was my silly backup.

This deck lost nearly all its playtest games, partly because I didn't redshirt with small enough teams, partly because I focused too hard on destroying my opponents after the trap went off (Joe Kallstrom memorably shut down a vast fleet by DL'ing a Q-Net after I'd wasted two turns flying over to fight him), partly because my original formula for the deck involved lots of people who couldn't actually download with DH. That not only turned out to be impossibly inefficient, but it meant the DH download soaked WAY more of the clock than it ought to. Going into Worlds, I felt it was in better shape than it had been, but it was unclear to me how much better shape.

P.S. People are asking "why no Conundrum?" Good question. It was in the original build, but I didn't want to be limited to Bajoran ships, and Conundrum is useless if a non-Bajoran ship is targeted. I almost did go ahead and limit myself to Bajoran ships... but cutting it gave me back a seed slot.

I was, frankly, very upset to face Kris. Not only did I consider him the top pick for the championship, not only did this spoil my dream of facing him in the final game, not only did I have no idea how to beat his deck... but he had done a great deal to help me prep for Worlds, and I had no desire to knock him out of contention early. Nor did he want to knock me out after all the work he'd put into me. And we'd already faced each other the previous day, and that had already sucked very badly -- it nearly knocked Kris out, and would have knocked me out if I hadn't won that game. Facing him again, in the first round no less, felt like Fate was out to get one of us. (It was.)

Also, my deck was premised about 75% on the element of surprise, and Kris, who (along with Kevin "Coach K" Jaeger and Jon "pfti" Carter) had coached me extensively on the best use of this deck, knew exactly what I was planning. How the frak was I going to beat that? (Spoiler alert: insane good luck.)

I thinned out and mixed up my dilemma combos to try to trick Kris into falling into a trap combo, but the spaceline did not favor me: all Kris's space missions were at or in one case right next to the ends of the spaceline. Since Aggro Borg can wrap around the spaceline with ease, that left me without a decent place to bury some toxic dilemmas along with a nuisance Cytherians. The Cytherians would be either a mis-seed or easily overcome. I chose the latter and hoped, again, for the best. I had four trap combos and two non-trap combos, and the non-traps both ended up on the ends of the spaceline. Kris would have to make an error to stumble into one, but errors happen and I crossed my fingers.

Coach K had trained me on the value of table talk in walking my opponent toward a mistake. I naturally table talk anyway, because I just enjoy chatting to defuse the tension of a match, but today I was going to use table talk strategically. But Kris graduated from the Coach K School of Table Talk before I had my driver's license, and I knew I couldn't outmaneuver him psychologically. I decided quickly that my best chance was dead silence. I would play the game, I would stare at Kris, and I would hope that, deprived of any information from me, he would talk himself into a mistake as the game lengthened and we both got fidgety.

And, holy cow, we both had plenty of opportunity to get fidgety. This game was a Mexican standoff from the tipoff. Kris went first. Kris's deck was 100% teched to fight and kill my personnel. I wanted nothing more than for him to fight and kill my personnel -- at Bajor, where it would trigger my massive card drop and allow me to retaliate at once. But Kris knew that, and could not afford it, so he waited for me to leave Bajor -- something I refused to do, because I knew I would get wiped out if I did.

On my side of the table, I was trying to play universal and unique female personnel, ideally of different species. Universals and females cannot be targeted by Assimilate Counterpart, and different species made me less vulnerable to Assimilate Species. Perhaps, if I were smart about it, I could build up a decent force and attempt a mission without suffering too horribly? As a matter of fact, I was so fixated on this that I ended up holding a bunch of unique males in my hand. I had it in my head that one path Kris might take to victory would be to Establish Gateway at one of my "dead" combos, then zoom over to Qo'nos, Assimilate Homeworld for 40, trigger my trap... but then come over and Assimilate Counterpart for the win before I could convert the win myself. 25 EG + 40 AH + 30 AC + misc Add Distinctiveness points would do it. So I was hoarding cards in my hand, even though that was pretty stupid and irrational -- I had played Morn on Turn 2 to get draws, and there is no better counterpart than Morn.

All this thinking was invisible. On the table, here is how every single one of my turns went for the first... dozen or so turns? "I play [ship] with [personnel]. [Personnel] beam to Quark's Bar. I draw three to end." In fact, on the several turns where I either had no ship or had no universals/women to play, I didn't even do that -- I literally, on Day Two of a World Championship, said "Pass. I draw three to end; your turn." Occasionally, I would undock a ship to make space on the Pylons, but that's it. Then I stared at Kris and hoped for an error, or that his desire for a Full Win would force him to try Qo'noS.

Kris was in no mood to make errors. He knew he held the initiative for now, and used these dozen or so turns to get everything perfect. He used Ocular Implants to carefully scout out every dilemma on the spaceline. He correctly identified each of the four trap combos, although he approached the remaining two with extreme caution anyway, just in case. Slowly, methodically, he Established Gateway at FGC-47 Research, while also clearing out the Mar Oscura at the opposite end of the spaceline. (Thanks, Transwarp Hub!) He could not Establish Gateway at both because he'd only stocked one Establish Gateway. But a card-played Resistance is Futile put him at 35 points. Kris then announced that he was quite content to sit at FGC-47 Research for the remainder of the game and take home the Mod Win, and I knew that he would, too, because it was the strategically correct move. Oh, and Kris had spent a dozen turns perfecting his draw deck for probes, putting Transwarp Conduit in his hand, emptying his discard pile, and getting all his objectives to the table face-down, so he had every option available. I was looking pretty doomed.

That moment brought an end to Phase One of our game, which was both the tensest 40 minutes I've ever played and 40 minutes in which, to a spectator, essentially nothing happened. But Kris had played his hand well, and the screws were officially put on me.

I had two possibilities. One: I could flail desperately at either Refuse Immigration on Bajor's left or Relocate Settlers on Bajor's right and hope I had enough resources to solve both before Kris's Borg wiped me out. Kris had overseeded both missions while leaving absolutely zero dilemmas under Save Stranded Crew, but they were the only missions I could reach. Tachyon Drone meant my cloaking devices would avail me not. (Although now sitting here I'm wondering if I should have sent a BUNCH of ships with cloaking devices out to SSC and hoped for the best. Did not occur to me at the time.)

Possibility Two: I could draw as many cards as I could and hope that one of them was HQ: Secure Homeworld. Then I could attempt Bajor, where I would be "safe" from Kris's ravenous horde, insofar as he couldn't hurt me there without triggering Defend Homeworld. But the odds that Kris had Dead Ended Bajor were... very very high.

When I drew Anastasia Komananov with her Smoke Bomb bugout, I settled on Possibility One. I stuck a bunch of universals and females on a ship and flew them over to Refuse Immigration, while Komananov hung out alone on the U.S.S. Magellan at the same location. First dilemma: Experience BiJ! I knew that would stop me, and that Kris would then eat my carefully-assembled crew, so I used the Smoke Bomb bugout. You're thinking, "But James, that doesn't help you! Smoke Bomb stops you, too!" All I can say is that I have never actually used the Smoke Bomb bugout before, was thinking of it in my head as a get-out-of-dilemma-free card, and forgot about its cost. So not only did my people still end up stopped, but Experience BiJ went back under the mission.

Kris then flew over, blew up everyone there with a Gowron of Borg battle and multiplexing, and that was that. Kris was, rightly, trying to figure out what I was doing here -- luring him into a trap? But without enough WEAPONS to even damage him? And with no matching personnel on the Magellan? -- but the truth was that it was just an error caused by the vise closing on me. I should've gone to Relocate Settlers, the planet mission (although, of course, Buried Alive was there, so I would have still had to pay the piper eventually). No matter which mission I'd gone to, I cannot imagine right now what broken thought process made me decide to send EVERYONE at one time instead of parceling out a few. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn't have very many Bajorans in play, and so I only had a limited number of possible attempts before I ran out of matching personnel. But I know I had at least two Ministers Rozahn, and I sent both, so that still feels pretty stupid.

Anyway, now I was really on the ropes. My "safe" mission team was all dead. I had peeked at but not actually encountered Experience BiJ!. (I don't think we played that right at the time -- we placed BiJ! on the mission, I think -- but we fixed it later.) I still had no HQ: Secure Homeworld. In desperation, I started reporting everyone who'd been stuck in my hand. (As a matter of fact, I forgot about the "up to 3" limit on Staging Ground and on at least two turns violated that limit with full-spectrum rainbows. I can't imagine this changed the outcome of the game but, like the thing with Experience BiJ!, it was a misplay.) I eventually found and reported General Hazar -- a universal Bajoran -- and sent him to Jeraddo for an attempt. Buried Alive stopped him, of course, and then Kris came to eat him, this time with Assimilate Species. He had 25 real points (+10 bonus points while his Cube was present at FGC-47 Research), so the Add Distinctiveness points counted. More to the point, Kris wanted to hurt me EVERY time I left Bajor, which was smart. I'm not sure he realized just how dire my situation was with respect to the number of Bajorans I had available to me. (Normally, I can get to Clash at Chin'toka or Attend Royal Function to attempt there with everyone else, but Kris's aggressive spaceline seeding had left me with just the Bajor Region.) So General Hazar bit it, Kris added 3 more points, I had no universals left, about half my deck was drawn up, and, apparently, no options.

What Kris did not and could not know was that, just after General Hazar was stopped but just before Kris started his turn, I had finally drawn HQ: Secure Homeworld.

And now I had a path to victory.

On my turn, I examined my assembled ships, found ample WEAPONS between them, and designated seven of them, perhaps even eight (total WEAPONS = ~60) for an attack run. Worried about Obelisk of Masaka for some reason, I even left them all fully staffed instead of doing the sensible thing and flying them all over, then evacuating excess personnel to an eight transport ship that could then get out of the line of fire. Then I attacked and destroyed Kris's slightly souped-up Borg Cube for 50 bonus points.

...which, as Kris pointed out before I even started moving, didn't count, because I had no missions solved. But I didn't care. They might not be good for winning, but they would get me past Dead End. (Kris used Fed Flag Recovered to replace the ship immediately, of course, but at least I had the points. I never figured I would end up relying on the Rules Committee's Sep 24th ruling on Fed Flag Recovered, but I guess thank goodness we ruled on it!)

By next turn, I had about 40 cards in my discard pile, and a fighting chance. I played HQ: Secure Homeworld and went to work on Bajor. Sure enough, it was Dead Ended, but we strolled past that thanks to the Cube kill. There were three other dilemmas in the combo, but heck if I can recall what they were. Faux Pas and Scientific Method, maybe, with a Scow at the end? I cleared some but not all of them that turn, in a series of attempts, and I was clearly going to solve Bajor the following turn. That would give me the lead: 35 from Bajor + 50 from the Cube = 85, except only the first 35 Cube points would count so actually my total would be 70. Meanwhile, Kris has 25 + 10 from RiF + 3 for Hazar = 38... except the 10 only counted if he ended the game on RiF, and it was becoming clear he would not, so his total here was 28.

Kris concluded, correctly, that I was about to pull ahead of him regardless of what he did, and he concluded (I'm less sure about this) that I had enough people in play to break out whether or not he triggered Defend Homeworld. Also, there were only 6 minutes left on the clock. He determined that his best chance was to burn the clock out while scoring a bunch of assimilation points, giving me a minimal chance to respond -- even if that meant springing my trap. So he flipped Assimilate Counterpart, targeted Morn (correct choice), and attacked the Away Team on Bajor with a bunch of red Borg who all had +7 STRENGTH.

I flipped Defend Homeworld. Rather than dropping everyone into that personnel battle -- where they would likely die, and would have only about a 50/50 shot at saving Morn from assimilation by meat-shielding him -- I downloaded all my remaining personnel to Quark's Bar. The number of personnel I ended up with was FAR less impressive than in other games, since I'd already drawn and played half my deck and a quarter of my deck was already dead BEFORE this battle started.

The battle served its purposes: Kris assimilated Morn for 30 points (Assimilate Counterpart) and assimilated one or two other personnel with Talon Drones for somewhere between 3 and 8 points (I do not recall, because I was only barely paying attention at the time to the details of the battle. I had not realized how close the score was -- it wouldn't actually hit me until hours later, in the car on the drive home to Minnesota, that this game was only a few points away from going the other way -- and so I wasn't closely tracking how many skill dots Kris was picking up). The battle also used up the remainder of the clock. I had one turn to respond.

Although much of my original Away Team had died in the battle, my Defend Homeworld reinforcements were sufficient. I solved Bajor, and finally took the lead in overtime.

By this point, I'd forgotten the Intermix Ratio rule altogether and was acting like I had 85 points. In reality, I had 70. By my math, Kris had 25 EG + 30 AC + 6-11 AD = 61-66 points. However, I'd also forgotten at the time that RiF stopped counting when he moved away from it, so I THOUGHT he had RiF points and that the score was 85 to 70-something, when it was actually (I am fairly sure) 70 to 60-something. Instead of doing the smart thing, verifying the score, counting up Add Distinctiveness skill dots, and settling for the Mod Win, I decided I needed to go for the Full Win, so I attempted Refuse Immigration again.

But now my earlier screw-up with Experience BiJ! came back to haunt me. By the time Bajor was all done and Mission Debriefed, I had only 4 unstopped Bajorans left, which severely limited my ability to attempt missions. I had to send one to Refuse Immigration just to trigger the BiJ! I knew was there, and another two to Relocate Settlers (now a Space/Planet mission thanks to Buried Alive) to discard the BiJ!. So I only had a single Bajoran remaining to me, and three dilemmas left. One of them, of course, was Cytherians, and I knew that going in, but, with only one "attempter" left, I had no choice but to throw my everybody at the mission and hope for the best. They all hit Cytherians, and that was that.

And so the wildest game of the weekend ended. For forty minutes of tense nothing, in which I showed more patience and grit than I knew I had, we tried to force or psych each other into action. Kris finally succeeded in forcing me to act, but a lucky draw of HQ: Secure Homeworld just when his cube hovered next door to my Bajor delivered me a clear path to a Mod Win, and Kris's attempt to foil it by either out-assimilating me or running out the clock fell just short... although they came much closer than I realized at the moment. (In a daze after my unexpected win, I have no idea what score Kris reported to Maggie, just that he reported a Mod Loss and that I verbally concurred with his report. Hopefully he was more on top of these things than I was!) One or two more assimilations, one more turn for Assimilate Species, enough RANGE/staff to return to FGC-47 for RiF points after the planet battle, and this game -- and, thus, the entire tournament -- would have turned out very differently.

I have now used up three years' worth of "beating Kris Sonsteby" luck in just two days, so I expect my next win against Kris in 2025, just after the presidential election that puts The Pendari Champion in the White House.

The game opened on an amusing note of mutual shock and horror as we realized that we'd duped FOUR missions. Not just the three Bajor Region missions in my deck (Bajor, Jeraddo, and Refuse Immigration), but we'd also somehow duped Attend Royal Function (Elas). Turns out Daniel liked it for Spock's Brain. I just liked it for the requirements, but will definitely swap it out in future builds, cuz YIKES looks like a lotta people are using it. This left us each with two, count 'em, two unduplicated missions: one planet and one space apiece. Mine were Clash at Chin'toka and Save Stranded Crew. His were Characterize Neutrino Emissions and Attack At Rare Phenomenon. The spaceline was, in a word, grody:

Characterize Neutrino [D] - Bajor* - Jeraddo* - Immigration* - Chin'toka [J] - Rare Phenonm [D] - Elas* - Save Stranded [J]

The dilemma phase was very tense for me. I mean, for him, too. But he got the high roll and would get the first turn. That ALSO meant that -- unless he was doing something weird like seeding Bajoran Wormhole: Mirror Universe in the dilema phase -- he, not I, would get to choose where DS9 seeded. If he seeded it anywhere other than Bajor, I was in A LOT of trouble, as my dilemma combos would all be worthless and my trick would almost certainly not succeed.

But there were lots of reasons for him to put it at Bajor. Firstly, he was seeding Chamber of Ministers + cross-property Bajoran Resistance Cell, and having everyone report to the same place made things easier. Secondly, homeworld protection is good? I seem to recall a Civil War tent in there, although his deck list isn't posted yet. Third -- and I made a big show of complaining about this -- if he put DS9 at Bajor, he was only 3 SPAN from his closest unduped mission, while I would be 8 SPAN away from my closest. (My other unduped mission was waaaaaay at the far end of the spaceline.) Putting DS9 anywhere else would only get me closer to my unduped missions. So, overall, he decided to go ahead and seed at Bajor. Outwardly, I jokingly whined about the positioning. If I were playing an honest Staging Ground deck, I would indeed have been in a ton of trouble. But I wasn't. So, inwardly, I breathed the biggest sigh of relief since... well, since about 20 minutes earlier, when I drew that clutch HQ: Secure Homeworld.

We had a nice long ten-site station, which we lined up sideways on the end of the table. Both of us wanted to use Quark's Bar for Morn draws (and I needed to have Bajorans in the bar for my trap to work anyway), but Morn only draws cards unopposed, so that didn't work. I shut down his Morn draws as soon as I moved in. Daniel pointed this out, I groaned chucklingly, then never bothered to get my own Morn because why bother -- but obviously I continued occupying the Bar, which Daniel seemed to find slightly suspicious. Daniel took Guest Quarters before I could get to it, and I decided not to contest it, because I wanted him in go mode ASAP, and I did not want to make him even more suspicious. Unfortunately for both of us, Daniel tried the old Reunite Legends / Enterprise-A / Admiral Kirk trick at his Bajoran Outpost (seeded at Characterize Neutrino), because he was not aware of the August and September warnings that this trick would no longer work after September 6th. (My Rules Manager brain files a note in the back of my head: how to ensure people learn about updated rulings if not reading front-page articles?) We resolved the fact that this did not work, and that shut down another draw engine, to his visible disappointment and my own invisible disappointment. (Again: I wanted him in go mode! Do a mission so I can download my deck!)

By now it's my... third turn? I think so, because I had two ships out, and I believe I spent Turn 1 doing an Ops/Shrine-download for Kai Winn and drawing no cards. I decided I had a decent gang out -- 5 people, in addition to the two Bajorans and a Fed I was leaving at the Bar (did I really need to worry about Ilon Tandro in a BRC deck? Probably not, but whatever, paranoia pays off). So I put everyone else on a Miradorn Raider and sent them over to Clash at Chin'toka, where they bumped into Stand-Off and failed immediately. Back to Daniel.

I realized then that I had made a mistake, because Daniel knew I had no Bajorans aboard, and seriously contemplated attacking my ship. That wasn't a problem; I could spare the ship. But I absolutely did NOT want my personnel opposed anywhere other than the Bar for when he attempted a mission and triggered my trap. Fortunately, Daniel recognized that I could easily play another ship the following turn, fly over, and crush him with my reinforcements, so he decided not to attack. Instead, he took his nine guys, flew over to the Denorios Belt, and attempted Characterize Neutrino Emissions -- which, of course, was one of my trap combos! (My two dead combos were at Elas and Bajor, because I assumed he would go to his unduped missions first, and that my firepower could keep him away from Elas if it came down to it.)

The good news for me was that he had absolutely no idea the trap was coming. The bad news was that Bajorans are just naturally high INTEGRITY. This was one of my downloader combos, with A New Game giving me two Chula dilemmas and an exclusion in advance of each selection, and that suited me fine. First, Distracted By Thoughts of Home hit, phew, and then I used A New Game to download Way Home and Abyss, then excluded Odo (INTEGRITY 9) from both. He wasn't even the only INT 9 personnel in the team (there were... three?), plus there were several INT 8 personnel, which is nuts. This could have failed!

The Way Home selected a 9 and two 8's -- I think Anya, Vedek Bareil, and Kira Taban. GROSS. Fortunately, Distracted dropped the 8's to 14 total INTEGRITY, which meant The Way Home worked and Anya took a trip to Quark's. I guess it didn't really matter, since his Morn and Leeta were both still at Quark's Bar, so Patriotism was going to work no matter what. But I wasn't thinking about that at the time.

Abyss fizzled.

Then Q-uality Time downloaded the Q-Flash and we were off to the races. Patriotism hit. Daniel started reading the card allowed and asked him to shhhhh quiet, because this was the deck's central tech. Very sportingly, he complied. It was even more sporting when I flipped Defend Homeworld and downloaded my deck, and he DIDN'T flip the table. Leeta was selected as the random casualty, which made both of us sad; we both wanted her Dabo points so we could avoid solving a third mission, and now we would never get them.

Then mission continued! Rhetorical Question went on his ship, Multitronic Menace killed Kira Taban for 5 points, and Ghost of Cyrus stopped him. Rhetorical Question "hit" but didn't mean much, since he was at his outpost mission and could simply dock to remove it on his next turn. For now, he was stopped, so Daniel ended turn, and my 70 personnel + 30 ships went into action.

I couldn't win in one turn, I was fairly sure. I was absolutely not willing to attempt our shared missions in the Bajor Region, because they were too close. Even though I could very easily handle MY combos in the region (they were all "trap" combos that would fizzle if I ran into them), I was very worried that I would clear all the dilemmas down to the last one, get stopped, and then Daniel would play a ship and come steal on his turn, which I figured he would probably get. So, instead, I sent six separate redship crews to solve Clash at Chin'toka, at the limit of my RANGE). It should have been 5 crews, but I screwed up a Quantum Leap -- I sent 2 SECURITY and 1 Archaeology instead of 1 SECURITY and 2 Archaeology. Still, I cleared the mission, despite its heavy seeding (anticipating Unscientific Method after I saw Spock's Brain), and now I had a bunch of ships halfway across the spaceline, including some 9-RANGE Xepolite Freighters, which were poised to go all the way to Save Stranded Crew on the following turn. I also dropped moved some other ships to Jeraddo and Refuse Immigration to provide additional ferrying capacity back and forth if needed. I blew up Daniel's Bajoran ship with some spare Klingons, because I knew he was going to get at least one more turn and I didn't want him actually using it for anything. (I couldn't involve Romulans because he had Telek R'Mor in play and I'd forgotten to get Attack Plans.) Finally, I sent the original 5-person team that had originally attempted Clash at Chin'toka over to Attend Royal Function, as advance scouts. (They were on a Miradorn vessel, so couldn't quite make it to Save Stranded Crew). They exposed Eminian Disintegration Protocol there, and, remarkably, none of them were ENGINEER so none died. Then I passed the turn.

Daniel played a few personnel, then passed the turn back. He had no ships and, at that point, no way to attempt Bajor as I recall. (I think he eventually got out HQ: Secure Homeworld, but he didn't have it yet -- and I'm sure he knew he'd Dead Ended the mission. I may have, too! With four dupes I had some flexibility in my combos. Don't remember for sure.)

First things first, I passed the Eminian Distintegration Chamber with 6 universals I collected from various ships along the spaceline -- none ENGINEERS, obviously. Then I... honestly don't remember the rest of the combo. I remember that we got stopped and that I took a team over to Save Stranded Crew to see what was there, and what was there was Experience BiJ!! So we headed on back to Elas to do some more work. Again, I don't recall the combo exactly, but I believe the final two were my Rules of Obedience (I broke up my combos a lot once I saw the spaceline) followed by his Linguistic Legerdemain. It was sheer blind luck that I had sent Dulmer, who has both requirements. Otherwise, that would have been, I think, a 3-turn lockout, maybe 4, and I would have had to go to a Bajor Region mission. So there's my absurdly good stroke of luck for this game! There was just over a minute left on the clock at this point, so I decided to do a VERY FAST attempt at Save Standard Crew to see the next dilemma, which took about 45 seconds. Then I drew and passed back to Daniel (who went first) with just about a couple seconds to spare before Maggie's timer went off. (I had forgotten that Maggie'd started official time ~ten seconds before me! Almost a very big error on my part!)

Daniel played a few more personnel and passed the turn back. He had evidently not drawn the ship he needed, and/or didn't have the Cyrus Ramsey skills (which are pretty tough, to be sure).

With a whole turn to work on it, and ships at literally every mission on the spaceline able to ferry, we were able to work through the rest of the dilemmas at SSC for the full win with ease. FW 100-5, but the 5 didn't count, so 100-0. Big thanks to Daniel for being a good sport about not being able to play the game after Turn 3... and for keeping my Hawt Tech a secret.

...not that it mattered, because my last game would put me up against Joe, who already knew my Hawt Tech just fine!

[James's end of spaceline] - PNZ [1] - Breach Detection [2] - Iconia Investigation [3] - Covert Installation [4] - Evade Sensors [5] - Gamma Hydra IV [6] - my Save Stranded Crew (which I stuck there just to deny him attempts while he staffed up)

So I seeded my combos like this:

[1] All the cards that are dead against Borg, with a Cytherians so he'd have to take a field trip (during which I would probably blow him up) unless Q of Borg was around. Possibly something to help me kill Q of Borg as well? But I think I was just hoping Q of Borg was not in play, or, more likely, that he would just never ever attempt this mission.

[2] & [3] The Distracted By Thoughts / Way Home / Flash combos that I did not think would work.

[4] & [5] The New Game / Q-uality that I thought WOULD work.

[6] Experience BiJ! + a Maglock

Against aware players, especially Borg, the game is often decided in the dilemma phase, so I did my best and then tried not to give away any information. As against Kris, I tried thinning out my combos to make the traps less obvious and maybe lure Joe in.

The game started out conventionally enough. Joe went first. He got staffed up and prepared to attempt Gamma Hydra. I played a couple ships and got Morn. I kept looking at his cards, mainly to make sure everything was absolutely on the up-and-up, no mistakes, but partly because I had nothing else to do while I waited for my trap to hopefully go off.

Things went sideways when I attempted Clash at Chin'toka on Turn... Two? I just wanted to get going, especially in case my trap never went off, and I had a crew of perfectly cromulent redshirts. Another Stand-Off, just like Matteson! They got stopped, the end.

But Joe decided to attack! Surprised my pants off, that's for sure. Unfortunately, he could not pull it off. He played Temporal Conduit, then recovered it by some means and tried to play it AGAIN, targeting the same ship, aiming for quadruple RANGE this turn to get all the way down to Chin'toka to Eliminate Starship on it. But this is literally a textbook violation of the cumulative rule (see Rulebook: The Cumulative Rule: Timing, paragraph 2), so it did not fly. We did call over Maggie and Jeremy Huth to confirm with a true ruling rather than my ruling (sure I'm the rules manager, but I'm also Joe's opponent in a championship game, so a BIT biased!). I frankly would not have minded if he'd blown up my redship, but would have been VERY nervous about him attempting PNZ, where my crap combo was, especially this early, before I had a lot of ships. At least he had no Multiplexor Drone, so this'd be cheaper than it was against Kris! But, whatever, the battle didn't happen.

Still, Joe HAD played it, and he'd committed to Eliminate Starship as his objective, so he did use the Conduit to at least go all the way to Breach Detection Barrier, bypassing my end-of-spaceline trap combos and effectively abandoning Gamma Hydra. I downloaded Morn, abandoned Chin'toka, and went to hide at my DS9, hoping he would either leave me alone and fall into a trap, or come fight me so I could legit flip Defend Homeworld.

He decided to leave me alone, but not TOO alone -- instead of returning to the end of the spaceline where he'd started, he downloaded Consume: Outpost targeting Iconia Investigation.

This was very bad news for me, because it was one of my Way Home-only combos, and he DID have Lower Decks out already, plus a Vinculum. (The man knew what he was doing!) I expected three blue drones in the attempt, who would be able to pass Way Home even with Distracted By Thoughts. But, instead, he sent two blues and a green. Thanks to Distracted, the green could be paired with either blue for 6+8=14 INTEGRITY, allowing Way Home to relocate the other blue. So I did, the trap went off, and we were off to the races. Joe did indeed finish Iconia Investigation; the final dilemma there was Rock People, which I had HOPED would hold him for a moment, but no dice -- that Vinculum really did come out early. The only reason he didn't go on to another mission immediately was that he'd already used The Ultimate User's objective download that turn to attempt Consume: Outpost at Iconia, so he ended turn and passed it to me, hoping for another chance soon. In our test game, he had been able to take at least two, and I think three, more turns after my trap went off.

But that test game was before I refined my deck and my strategy. I did not give him any more turns. I just redshirted into absolutely everything and hoped I didn't hit Friendly Fire. However, I had 5 of my 6 missions within range of most of my ships, so he would have to lock me out at not 1, not 2, but 3 missions in order to freeze me up. He did lock me out at one -- I tried Attend Royal Function, way at the end, because it only had 3 dilemmas under it, while everything in the Bajor Region had 4. Friendly Fire hit there. But I solved three others for the win.

Chat was saying that I would make ~10 mission attempts in that turn. The true number was 16. 6 attempts solved Chin'toka (although one of them was at Elas just to get rid of a closing Chin'tokan BiJ), an additional attempt at Elas passed Faux Pas but locked me out from Friendly Fire, Dead End stopped me at Bajor, Jeraddo turned into a meat-grinder with Your Galaxy is Impure + Misinterpreted + Rules + Rock People and required 5 attempts. (I also kept ALMOST forgetting YGII, which would have blown a lot of mission skills!) Then back to Bajor for 2 attempts to get through Make Us Go, a Scow to move, and a third and final attempt. This was inefficient and clearly wasted some skillful people, but I was not expecting enough Friendly Fire / Linguistic locks to put a stop to my juggernaut, and I had lost several test games by sending too many people rather than too few. So I stuck to it, lost a lot of people, but finished the game in one turn.

I want to thank Kevin Jaeger, Jon Carter, and especially and above all Kris Sonsteby for their contributions (both material and psychological) to my ability to run these decks and succeed with them; Joe Kallstrom, James Monsebroten, and Daniel Matteson for playtesting with me at various points; Maggie and Team Chicago for putting on a wonderful weekend; and my wife Martha, who may irrationally hate Worf, but made it possible for me to travel for Star Trek Cards for the first time in a couple years by watching the kids for 2.5 long and tiring days at home. As always, I'll see ya on the spaceline!