Greg Hodgin (tomalak) Tournament Report - 2E - North American Continentals Day One 2019-06-22 - 09:00 AM 2019 Regionals Introduction Continentals was in Atlanta this year. I live in Atlanta. Although the travel time was prohibitive (according to Google Maps, it was 14 minutes to the locale, and that was ridiculous), I soldiered on and made it at some ungodly time in the morning. My goal was to make it to Day 2 and win. I mostly achieved that goal (please see Day 2 tournament report for the end to that story). I decided on a solid, easy deck: a 2 mission TNG solver, all 40+ missions for delicious dilemma decadence, lots of downloading of the Ent-D with Edge of Forever and cheap weenies at Wolf 359. Round 1 Earned Bye EB (+100) During the first round, I faced the worst enemy of all: the tortured psyche of my own, dark, twisted soul. After an epic battle which involved katanas, a mocking clown, and a pitiable Irish setter, I managed to vanquish the foe. Also, I had a Dr. Pepper. It was quite tasty. With these two things, I was fortified for the second round. Round 2 Mike Camp Sr FW (+35) Mike always plays Klingons. Today was a day where always no longer meant always. Down was up, white was black, cats and dogs lived together, and clearly someone had crossed the streams. Mike had instead chosen to play Mirror Terok Nor (yes, there were a lot of Klingons in his deck, but you weren't there, man. You. Weren't. There.) and his deck actually worked pretty well: he managed to score a mission or two before I closed out the game. Round 3 John Corbett FL (-100) Ah, John Corbett. As always, it's such a pleasure to play against such a distinguished gentleman, who would never debase himself with pettiness, cursing or childishness. Cardassian nonsense led him to outpace my deck and he racked up a win. Huzzah...? Mr. Corbett mercilessly mocked me for having to play an Ent-D at full cost in one of my games on this day. Please see Day 2's report for my response to this white glove to the face. Round 4 Lucas Thompson FW (+35) Lucas is a great guy, but on this day, his deck was not so great to him. He was playing Starfleet (and I've kind of toyed with a deck like this): finish up Jupiter Station, get dilemmas underneath, Archer and T'Pol to just burn through stuff. Things... did not go according to plan. For him. My dilemma pile had enough kills in it to slow him down, and he had almost no kill prevention. He had Soval out, but I kept missing Soval on the random choices (to his chagrin and my unmitigated joy). He managed to get his space mission, but that was about it: he couldn't outpace the death or the speed. It's been a long road... for Soval not to die. But the rest of his crew did. Oh yes. Maybe it wasn't time for Earth to leave the nest just yet. Round 5 Michael Van Breemen FL (-50) MVB's always a great guy to play against, but this deck is madness. He just ate through everything; Central Command along with Enemy of my Enemy is just disgusting. I think he got two missions in one turn and blew through the rest. I think I finished a mission, can't remember, but his deck was able to do missions with 3 people at times. Fast, brutal, efficient: and clearly well played. He earned it. Round 6 Matt S FW (+45) Fed TNG vs. Fed TNG is always fun! Matt hadn't seen a deck like this before with Wolf 359. He was curious how I was going to save my ship: the answer was of course I didn't care about the ship or the people on board. It just died and I downloaded a new one. He was playing a cadet deck, and that meant my anti-weenie dilemma pile took a massive scythe throughout his entire crew, harvesting the weak and crushing the children as their fates were sealed in blood, gore and hull breaches. It felt good to kill. I could hear their keening wails reverberate in my ears as I finished my last mission. My soul sang as it drank upon their lamentations. It was a good day for them to die. Foolish cadets. Stay in school. Closing Thoughts The deck did what I wanted it to do: go 4-2 and get me into Day 2. It's not a top-tier deck but it got the job done.