Neil Timmons (ntimmons) Tournament Report - 2E Standard - Sector 001 Regional 2010-06-19 - 11:00 AM Maquis 'big' fun Introduction What a weekend! I had talked Nathan into starting a regional again by saying that if he did I would attend. When he scheduled it and figured out a date, I wasn't sure if I would be at the hospital with my wife acquiring our first child or if things would be pushed back a month, but it turns out it's back a month and I managed to talk her into making the 7 hour drive down to North Carolina for some games. We had a blast. It's always great to hang out with Charlie Beam & George & Susan Meadows, and that's what we did all weekend. It was also great to see a bunch of the crew I met at DragonCon and hang out with them for a bit as well. I played 2 quick games against Greg before the tournament started to help him test out a deck he is building, and it was great to sit and play with Greg. he is a really good player and a class act and it was a lot of fun to sit down and hang out for a bit before the tournament. It was also fun to blow Nathan away with 12 people! the were trying to make sure to scrape the necessary 4, and trying to squeak up to 6 for even numbers, so it was great to see such a turnout! For being part of the CC, I was sent a set of the AP cards, so I brought them and tossed them into the prize mix with a few cards from my binder, so we had some great prizes to give out to the people who showed up. It was a great weekend of trek followed by a quick game of Twilight Imperium! Round 1 Mike Camp Sr FW (+100) Cricketman! It was great to see Mike Camp Sr. sit and teach Mike camp Jr how to play in a patient and understanding way. I know that doesn't have anything to do with the game, but it was great to see. The game was a bit one sided. It felt like this was a deck that Mike had just built and was trying to prefect. He went out and attempted a space mission and I used dilemmas to knock everybody off of his ship stranding him. This set him back a number of turns, and I was able to get through dilemmas and complete missions before he could fully recover. FW 100-0 Round 2 Charlie Beam FW (+25) Charlie Beam. Charlie is a good player who puts together good stuff. I started off with a biogenic weapon at his mars mission so he would have to do his missions the hard way. Well, he went and attempted his first mission and I had the worst dilemma draw ever. Not only did I not empty his ship, but he actually completed his mission on the first try! ugh... this is not going well. I had used Deploy the Fleet for some points so I was able to play All Out War and slow him down a little but, but was unable to unstaff his ship. He blazed out to his planet mission with his ETU & Escapes ready for my dilemmas. I was able to kill half his team and stop his attempt at his 2nd mission, but again, it just wasn't going according to plan. I don't have any way of getting cards back from the discard pile, I would have loved to get my All Out War back. When he completed his 2nd mission, I put Strange new World on his 3rd mission so he was fishing for his last copy of Law, and I played Secret Idenity on him giving him the chance to look through his deck and get her. Oops, big mistake! I was very rattled at this point, and didn't notice that he didn't have any Diplomacy, but he knew it, so he was slowed down at 75 points for the moment. I was able to sneak through a dilemma and complete my first space mission, then after getting stopped a few times I was able to get through my planet mission as well. So here we stand 75-75 points, both with planet and space complete, his mission has tons of dilemmas under it and mine has 1. I used Sloan to destroy the Biogenic weapon on his titan mission so I could play Biogenic weapon on his last planet mission to try and get him to go to a mission without any dilemmas under it. He was all excited when he tried to play Diana Troi (with Diplomacy) but she caught a virus and went away. Charlie then made a tatical error and with 2 Inferiorities in my core, he threw 'just' enough dilemmas at me to stop me down to 35 cunning.. but unfortunately Santos was part of the mix, so with the skills easily I destroyed my last event to put me over the 36 cunning for the mission. This was truly a case where I stole victory from the jaws of defeat as Charlie had me quite sewn up. Admittedly I would have been able to catch him at his planet mission for 1 more turn, and I was double teaming my last space mission, but I think he would have been able to hold me off had he not tried to minimize the amount of dilemmas he threw at me and I hadn't been able to cheat around my lack of stats. Sneaky Maquis catch another victory! FW 100-75 Round 3 Greg Hodgin FW (+75) And we finally meet Greg. Greg is a great player. He needs a few of the newer cards, but he has a great handle of the game. This game goes to whoever gets setup the fastest. The first thing Greg does is use Far-Seeing Eyes to remove the Biogenic Weapons from my deck. ugh. that sucks. but I hit him back with my cascade virus' keeping his 2 cost people with neat abilities from hitting the table. I was able to get the Defiant working and was stripping him of 2 cards every turn. It was funny we went through a stretch where he kept leaving the same personnel on the top of his deck, so the Valjean kept not working because he wasn't drawing any cards, just playing the ones he had in his hand. I picked up a Strafing Fire to get rid of the other 2 copies of Far Seeing Eyes, which was good. Greg kept missing with P&P, and when he did pick up points, he was spending them on At What Cost. He completed his space mission and no longer needed the P&P points as he just had points to spend, however I waited until he had spent a few points, and I blew up P&P/GUYS so he was trapped at 25 points, thinking that if the game went long enough he would be trapped at 90 points. Greg was using his dilemma pile to rip up my personnel really badly, and I was having a hard time keeping an ETU in play. The game came down to Greg with not many people in play, drawing up the rest of his cards and playing "In A Mirror Darkly" to put his deck back. Unfortunately now that he was geared up for another run, I was chewing on my 3rd mission and was able to get to 100 points before he could rebuild his team. When I completed my last mission with 7 cards left of my 82 card deck. I was 2 cunning short and missing Leadership, so Eddington was the hero of the game by growing to giant status, giving me the 3 cunning I needed and providing Leadership. Go Eddington! FW 100-25 Round 4 George Meadows FW (+60) George. This game started out very badly for me. The first thing George did was play OOOHH!! Nothing happened! and yanked a Tragic Turn out of my dilemma pile. the second thing he did was dropped Gem off at a planet and yanked a second Tragic Turn out of my deck. Ugh.. this is going to be a hell of a game. He played Debate over Dinner on his Practice Orbital Manuvers, and I knew exactly what he was doing. He was going to complete these two missions for a 2 mission win using the Debate for the extra 5 points. In retrospect I should have left the debate on there and hung him with dilemmas, but I paniced and used Kalita to send the debate to the top of his deck and the Valjean to send it to the bottom of his deck. George would have had the game locked down if not for Santos and a bit of luck on my part. I had Subliminal Signal and Not Easily Avoided in play waiting for him to attempt a mission. I attempted my first space mission, and he played just enough dilemmas to knock me down to 32 cunning exactly (need >32) which made me very sad that I had to destroy an event to complete the mission, but it also made me very happy that he was going to jump out all speedy and I was going to be able to get the jump on him with the first mission. Then the same thing happened at my planet mission I was 2 strength short, so I destroyed my Not Easily Avoided to complete. I was very sad that I lost my tools, but I was up by 2 missions, so it was a fair trade. George finally went to his space mission, but what luck, I was able to catch the last Tragic Turn in my dilemma pile and ran him right into it. It didn't hurt him too bad and he was able to complete, but I took a bit out of for his planet missions. So we were racing to see who could complete the most missions, and I was just punching on my mission faster then he was, all the while stalling as much as I could. FW 100-40 Round 5 Patrick Krentz MW (+45) It's never good when the game starts with your opponent saying "I've been gunning for you..." especially since I have so many of my secrets on my profile. I have gone to the biggest tournaments and done alright for myself so I am happy to share what I have, but it does end up being a bit of an Achilles heel sometimes if someone has done their homework. Patrick seemed to be playing a Kardashian deck that was very similar to the deck I used in the PA regional a while back. This worked to his advantage because it is a super awesome deck, but to his disadvantage becuase I know the strengths and weaknesses. The game started out awful for both of us. He couldn't find 6 other Cardassians, and I couldn't get Defiant out on turn 3 even tho. I went second and used Historical Research to download a personnel. So Pat was digging for dudes, and I was digging for command stars. I was finally hitting him with Defiant and Reide striping him of 4 cards from his hand per turn, so he was going 'very' slow. He was also stuck at 4 Cardassian personnel forever. There was a turn where he played Mila, but she caught a virus, then he tried to play Mila... again... but she caught a virus... again. Then he used High command modivation the one time he was able to kill Tain (taking him down to 4 personnel) well, in my digging I had picked up a Strafing Fire, so I was able to take away all of his High Command motivations for the game, which was HUGE!!! I started chewing on my space mission, but knew was was coming (I know all about that deck) and started with 6 personnel and all 3 ETUs aboard the ship that doesn't need everybody to staff. I caught dilemmas out of the deal, but he was able to return all 4 equipment and kill 4 guys. ugh. So I start rebuilding. Pat finally played Evek and captured Santos before attempting his first mission. I actually failed to kill many guys, and took him from 8 guys to 6 guys, also consumed the other 2 copies of Tragic turn! UGH! However on my next turn I played All Out War and the ribbon to get rid of 4 guys which left him unstaffed. Pat even commended "why didn't I wait for the Prakesh." Here we stand both with decimated crews and bad things waiting to happen. I was stalling him as much as I could, all the while making sure to either return or destroy (or put out of play) any events that would score him points. I had 2 Prison Compounds out of play, and had sent Labor camp away to the bottom of his deck, and seen Quite a Coincidence hit the discard pile. I was counting on leaving him at 90 points had we played it all the way out because he had no other ways of scoring points. When he completed his space mission and brought out the Phoenix, I was very glad I had smuggled earlier in the game because I was stuck at 75 points with a 35 point mission left to complete. This is where the game ended right after he completed his 2nd mission. I had attempted my 3rd mission and stacked 8 dilemmas, but only had 2 personnel in play. He just needed to finish his second mission but was also low on people. I was saving a grav plating trap for his last Prison Compound to prevent him from scoring his extra 10 points. I needed 2 turns to play dudes and go auto-solve my 3rd mission for 110 points. Pat just needed to score 10 points, autosolve his 2nd mission, and go solve his 3rd mission, but time was called. I am pretty sure I would have been able to eek out a full win with 2-3 more turns, but with Tragic Turns all gone I don't know if it would have worked. And that's where the game ended.. with both of our decks in smoking ruins either in the discard pile or out of play, barely any people in play, some points scattered about, and both of us wishing for just 3 more turns. MW 75-30