I got a ship just in time, when Jeremy got stopped by a dilemma he'd forgotten he'd seeded at my mission. I raced over, stole it BACK, and acquired the Orb of Prophecy and Change, which I used for the rest of the game to improve my card draws slightly.

Then I cleared out a mission of my own (Test Mission) and he lunged to steal it, but I drew into Physics at the last second.

Then I decided to steal HIS mission, which required Empathy + Diplomacy, on the theory that he had no Empathy in play and wouldn't be able to get it. But that turned into a meat grinder, and then he played Devinoni Ral, so I threw up my hands and said, "YOU KNOW WHAT? COLONY." (Turns out he had Fair Play anyway, what a great pull for him, so slightly lucky escape for me.) I played Colony way down the other end at the first mission I'd stolen back from Jeremy's clutches, flew down there... and got my main ship stopped cold by Time Travel Pod for 5 turns as Jeremy solved that Empathy mission. Still, the Colony was built, so I still dumped some people there and scored 7 points the first turn. Then I dialed back to 3 points per turn so I could make it to 70 over a few turns while a different team attempted a different mission. And I did and it worked out. I think the last thing we had to do was move a Scow.

At no point during this game did I deserve to score any points, much less win the game. Jeremy did all the work and played much smarter than I did throughout.

In fact, it turns out this is pretty much what he's like ALL THE TIME. One of the rare cases I've encountered where the real-life individual did not really match up very well to the very serious, logical, precise online persona I had in my head. Brian's tons of fun IRL. Hang with him and you'll do alright.

He seeded a 40-point planet space mission, which I decided to steal, so I put my artifact under it. We ended up with 7 dilemmas underneath it. We both seeded outposts down at that end of the spaceline.

Then Brian played a Q-Net, trapping us both within that four-mission area. (Really three missions; one of them was my seeded Nebula.) Who had diplomacy? Not me! Neither did he! (Also, he was REALLY struggling to find a ship at all.)

While he dug for ships, I solved both the other missions and started working on The Big One. But then he started shooting at me, which I assumed he wouldn't be able to manage because of the rainbow of compatibility. Wrong assumption! I shot back, but then he shot back extra, and in the end I lost two ships to his one, including some decent personnel. I had drawn and played Where No One Has Gone Before some time earlier, so now used it to escape the area while he solved The Big One and looked for Dip. With 50 points already and a large team, plus an outpost just two turns' travel from the opposite end of the spaceline, I was able to solve quickly... although almost not quickly enough, since he too soon played WNOHGB and came after me!

Wildly fun game, hands-down the goofiest game I played on the weekend, but still a very coherent and strategic round of Trek. And Brian was so happy to steal my Artifact and blow up my ships I feel like the real winning was the friends we made along the way.

Also, https://i.imgur.com/4h4Zoor.mp4