Al Schaefer (ltkettch17) Tournament Report - 2E 2014-09-28 - 12:00 PM Relativity, yet again... Introduction BoT Release event, and I'm playing pretty much the same deck that I played at the Return to Grace release event in March. I did make a new dilemma pile with 8-Costers and Chula: The Game, thinking that I could filter my opponent with Chula's and nail whoever is left with a cheap 8-Coster. I'd spent most of my deck-building time this month getting ahead on my Traditional and Virtual decks for the upcoming League events. My initial take on BoT before playing was that there were some interesting cards, but nothing to jump up and down about. Species 8472 was interesting, but I wasn't sure how it would shake out in an actual game. It seemed that you could get dilemmas in the core, but if you did, you wouldn't likely stop/kill enough people to prevent the attempt. No time to do any testing with the new cards, so I had to wait today to see if I would even face the new cards and how it would go. Round 1 Eric Bieche MW (+35) Eric is running old-school Alpha (Euro) Borg and was susceptible to the only BoT card I put in my deck today; Unconventional Consideration - which I did play and it did work. Relativity was running in its usual clunky fashion and I eventually got around to attempting only to be stopped by Eric's Tactical Disadvantage. Once I saw that, a convenient Roadblock put an end to that noise and I was able to continue attempting. However, the time that was spent downloading, Queen-swapping, and general Borg nonsense dragged this game to the edge and I just didn't have enough opportunities to secure the FW. Round 2 Michael Moskop FL (-65)View opponent's ReportView original Report Michael was running a pretty slick Dominion attribute reducing deck that was a perfect match for Relativity. Without any method to generate Intelligence, he easily stone-walled me with Founder Instigator. I couldn't find Security Drills, so even when he didn't have Unusual Simulacrum, I couldn't keep any 8472 dilemmas from going into the core. I thought my 'ace in the hole' would be Chula: The Game - I thought I could get all 3 on Terrasphere 8 and make it nearly impossible for him to complete. But I had to burn 2 Unexpected Difficulties on his first attempt at Terrasphere and did not draw a single Game. He attempted with 7 so I drew through 21 dilemmas (more than half of my pile) and did not get one of my three Games; BOO! The rest of the game was just going through the motions, it was very unlikely I would be able to solve another mission even though I had abandoned the Relativity with 2 Infiltrators on board, 2 more made it aboard the Wells and my Attributes were still handicapped. Cool build by Mike. Al was playing Relativity again. I was hoping for this match up since I thought infiltrators would wreak havoc on the future Feds. I ended up being right. The Relativity was packed with Founders crawling around in the air ducts and slowed Al to a crawl at Navigate Xindi Corridor. I was able to hold Al to two mission completions as I filled his core with 8472 dilemmas and got the alternate win. I fully admit that I really lucked out on my last mission attempt as Al hit me with Chula: The Game and then whiffed on the following two Chula dilemmas. Round 3 Edward Pigman ML (0)View opponent's ReportView original Report Ed was playing a Hologram build and I was frustrated early when my Games still decided not to show. Ed cheated around 2 of my 8-costers with Cluttering Irrelevancies, which was no surprise, but I just felt like I couldn't catch a break today. I played some guys and solved 2 planet missions, but an early Clown Go Away, forced me away from my first space mission and I had a chance to solve for the win, but Ed's Chula pile actually did what it was supposed to do, and I came up short in overtime. Heartbreaker this one! First mission took a while to get going, and ended up with a Game and Clown on it. Al went shopping for an easier opportunity elsewhere and I was cornered into some plays that I had no good answer for: secret ID 100% had to take Data out, but Kirk appeared and nix'ed my Game. ONH! took out my last Game, so I ended up way overloading to stop his teams. Thank goodness for the original mission with my initial Game, or this one would have been over. Closing Thoughts The 8472 mechanic seemed pretty cool, at least in the game with Michael. I'm afraid a lot of people will complain that it's a NPE, and there's probably a chance that someone will come up with something that's broken. The next few events I'll be playing in will be for our League will all be different formats and I don't think I'll have to worry about seeing anything too broken for a while.