Al Schaefer (ltkettch17) Tournament Report - 2E Standard 2012-06-24 - 12:00 PM Similar Cadets Introduction Didn't have much time to prepare for this tournament. Work has been crazy and I haven't touched my cards since the IA Regional. The latest flavor of Cadets was the only deck in my bag that I hadn't played in a tournament yet - so I went with them. When I first started play-testing with Ed's Cadets, they were monsters; I found it extremely difficult to stop them. I felt they required the opponent to play absolutely flawless dilemmas. Ever since the errata to REM, however, Cadets just can't seem to do anything right. I'm not drawing the right combinations of personnel, not getting Security Drills in play, and just having rotten luck. I was hoping today, they would turn it around against other opponents. Unfortunately it did not work out that way. Round 1 Brian Gondek FL (-55)View opponent's ReportView original Report Brian is finally returning to the tournament scene after more than one year on hiatus. When he revealed his missions, it was clear he had returned to his TNG roots. I felt confident that the Cadets could handle his old-school dilemmas, but he had no issues stopping me. My dilemma pile was more geared towards filtering out one key personnel and stopping him with a wall. Unfortunately, his deck doesn't rely on any one key personnel, so I had a tough time stopping him. Even when I thought I had a clever dilemma stack, all the right people randomly made it through and he was able to complete his missions before I was. Good to see Brian back, I'll be better prepared for our next match. Leave it to Brian to be the one to end my longest win streak ever. I used to always joke that every tournament had a showdown between Al and me. That's obviously not the case any more after my disappearance, but it was true today. Our game was a strong display of defensive effort. Al only had three cadets in his first mission attempt at Practice Orbital Maneuvers, so I was trying to either weed out one of them or stop everyone with Tactical Disadvantage. I was able to halt Al's troops pretty well, but he was able to do the same to mine. On my second mission, Al took out Luther Sloan with Secret Identity in hopes of hitting me with a Rogue Borg Ambush, but that plan was shot when I replaced Sloan with Kirk, Living Legend, who allowed me to pass it and complete the mission. I got a break on my last mission when the last card, Polywater Intoxication, allowed me to stop the NE Riker to unstop a high integrity TNG personnel present to win the game. I found out after the game that a lucky Hard Time pick had taken out a personnel Al was going to use to score 10 extra points, so he had an even deeper hole to dig out of than I knew about. It was a hard fought game, and I wouldn't be that confident about a rematch. Al's dilemmas were able to dramatically slow down my speed deck. Round 2 Edward Pigman FL (-50) Ed was playing his dissident Borg deck. When he dropped, B'lanna, Quintessence, and Energize on his first turn, I was sure it would be a quick game. However, Ed made a huge error at Practice Orbital Maneuvers playing Breaking the Ice when I had 2 non-hand weapon equipment on table. Ed stopped me easily with the usual weenie stopping dilemmas at REM while I slowly replaced my cadets with normal personnel. I thought I had the game in the bag when I sent Ed's huge crew of Borg Where No One Has Gone Before, but he was still able to stop me for a total of 5 attempts at REM. I missed an opportunity to destroy Ed's last Hurried Departure and he was able to complete his last mission and score bonus points for the win. Round 3 Brian Leonard FW (+75)View opponent's ReportView original Report Brian's Voyager deck went down quickly to the cadets. I easily had my best draw of the day against Brian, everything just clicked - there wasn't much he could do. Al won!