Joshua Sheets (prylardurden) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Romulus Regional 2011-05-22 - 11:00 AM Avoidance 3edux Introduction Round 1 John Corbett FL (-65) DS9 Earth - It's Gotten Better Recently. John drops a lot of cheap various species DS9-icon personnel Turn 1. I know I'm about to get Schooled so I dig for an ETU (GravTrap in hand). No such luck. Promenade School next turn and nothing I can do about it. About a turn later, here comes the Pres, and burns those points for the DS9 Dream Team (Dr., Dr., and Bumper). Once he got a ship, he headed out. In the mean time, I get my Energize out to start getting my big people out and both copies promptly get Sloan'd away. That puts a serious dent in my speed (it is nice to play Kirk & Donatra both two turns in a row), and I'm falling behind fast. However, my dilemma pile is doing exactly what it needs to do - stop John with 1 each time (that would be Legacy) and returning it to the pile with the Trial. John is not thrilled about this and starts naming Legacy with Sisko. There goes that idea. Stopping him a few turns gave me some chances to catch up, but only thru 1 AC before he gets his stuff going and gets the win. We both caught some bad beats but he flat out beat me this game. There is a reason you always see him in Day 2 of big events. Round 2 Bye BY (0) I lose, I get the Bye. Thats typically how it works :) Round 3 Alexander Schmitz MW (+25) Great - EuroBorg. I have played against these before so I know what you generally should do. Alex caught a couple bad breaks on his Quintessence (a lot of interrupts) and it took him a few turns to get setup. I get a nice little crew built up and get ready to bite the bullet. I get out and go AC first. I finish the mission on the first attempt but screwed up the range and got stuck there. I get someone (Kaitaima, I think) Abducted. Since she was the only one I lost, I made the decision to Favor AC and do it again. The 2nd attempt did not go quite as well (lost a Tigan to him during the dilemmas) and don't solve. Alex has a bunch of assimilation stuff built up (I know, I should have hidden at home) and comes over and takes about 3 more personnel (Donatra and a couple others) and then attempts Assimilate Resistance. I get a draw of a lot of dupes and a couple things that might work. Um, guess who forgot that he had just taken a few of my people who had pretty much the entire skill set for those dilemmas. Oops. He completes the mission and grabs a Kirk out of my discard pile. Wow, I am going to get destroyed by my own people (this is not new but usually when my own people destroy me it is because they are failing the opponent's dilemmas, not nuking mine). I luck out because the sphere is out of range and cant get anywhere. I hadn't realized it but the game had been going for quite a while and time is called during my turn. Alex went first, and with his bonus points was currently in the lead, and I technically don't have a mission done yet. I play a Kirk and Donatra (thank you Energize) and take a shot at completing AC again (much easier with about 4 under). I attempt and complete to get the Mod Win but was out of range to go for the full win. Round 4 Ben Hosp FL (-30) At this point, I have to win out to have a shot at the belt. All I have to do is get thru Hosp (and Phil next round, but this is the current match I have to get thru). Well, we dupe 3 missions (AC, TCS, Romulus) and I get a feeling that this could get interesting. He gets his FSE stuff going, and I start getting my people out with an early Energize (that was a great promo choice by the CC, IMHO). I get thru an early AC but then make a critical mistake. Due to a lack of command stars, I go to Space at Deliver Evidence with 13. This would be the turning point of the game (John even said so as this was his bye). After that ended badly (but not destaffed), I had a hard time recovering (FSE was doing its job) and been was cheating around some of the dilemmas I was playing. He got thru his missions for the win before I could catch up. Round 5 Phil Schrader FL (-20) TOS running cheaters and Kirk at AC. We dupe 4 missions (i think, may have been 3). I might as well have not had Romulus in the deck as I couldnt draw a Romulan for anything (I dont think I ever played a Romulan the entire game). I was always getting a card 1 after I could afford to play it (lost track how many turns I had to discard down, and that really shouldnt be happening in this deck). My dilemmas were doing fairly well against Phil (esp. Pitching In, which saved a couple attempts almost by itself). However, my lack of Green power (Donatra and the fact the Romulans have pretty much all the mission skills for AC) meant I was out attempting without the mission requirements and hoping to cheat somehow to get the skills in play. That did not work out how I had planned, as Phil's dilemmas were being juat as, if not more, effective than mine. In the end, the bonus I had hoped to get out of combining HQ's was not a factor at all and a lack of high cost personnel meant no favor the bold once I got thru AC and I had to do TCS which went very poorly. I could only hold off Phil so long at AC and he broke thru for the win.