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by James Hoskin
The next leg of the Team London world tour continued with our local tournament (insert a
bad League of Gentlemen impression here "... for local people"). While travelling
to other legs on the tour would involve getting out of bed the previous night, today we were
afforded the luxury of the sun rising while we were still asleep.
That is except for the two Irish boys who were flying over to join in. The previous weekend
the Scots had failed to defend their territory when the English invaded for the Glasgow TOC,
and now it was our turn on the defensive as the Irish invaded England for the London TOC.
We had nine players in total with just seven "locals" turning up. The threatened
invasion from the Czech Republic never materialised.
Strange New Worlds had just become street legal two days before the tournament but not
everyone had received their cards yet. Luckily Mark, the TD, did have his cards and had offered
to loan them to anyone wanting to try them out. I did think of saying I wanted to play a
Ferengi deck and that he could build the deck for me but that seemed a bit too much. I instead
opted to dig out my old Kirk deck and see how it would fare.
When I first built my Kirk deck, Tragic Turn dilemma piles were popular in London and a
9-man attempt would usually get massacred. However I had noticed recently that I was seeing
fewer Tragic Turn dilemma piles so thought I might be able to get away with playing it once
again. Little did I realise the reason I wasn't seeing Tragic Turn was because of the decks I
had been playing that were designed not to face dilemmas (using Running a Tight Ship, or
Tampering with Time, etc.)
I actually added very few SNW cards to the draw deck. I didn't add the obvious Delegated
Assignment because I didn't have enough personnel who could take advantage of it. I threw in
one of the new missions as my 4th mission – to be attempted only in an emergency, and also a
couple of cheap costing Non-Aligned personnel who had cunning 7 (Sigmund Freud and Tolian
Soran).
The dilemma pile was totally overhauled. I saw Where No One Has Gone Before and tried to
build a new pile to abuse it. This would however require me to flex my skill tracking abilities
during games though – and they hadn't been used for many months, as my previous dilemma pile
was attrition based and required very little thought.
Round 1: (Steve Upton – Cardassian Capture)
I guessed Steve was playing a capture
deck when he played two copies of Psychological Pressure a few turns into the game. It gave the
game away, and I decided to stay at my headquarters that little bit longer than I normally
would have. That decision helped me later in the game because soon after that decision I drew
Luthor Sloan and used him to destroy one of Steve's Psychological Pressure's before he could
put them to effect.
I didn't know whether Steve got impatient and tried to solve a mission or whether he really
had a mission solver with a little capturing thrown in – but he left his headquarters first
and attempted a mission with seven personnel. I literally got my dream draw with two dilemmas
that could stop one personnel each and a Dreamer and the Dream. I was certain Steve couldn't
solve with five personnel so I used all three and he had to discard his hand when he failed
the attempt. There were several capturing events there, so I guessed he was playing a full-on
capture deck.
As Steve had no hand I felt safe to venture out and attempt a planet mission of my own.
Steve didn't capture anyone (he said later he wasn't using Ungracious Hosts), but he did get
some revenge by playing Dreamer and the Dream and then proceeding to stop my attempt using
three other dilemmas. With my handful of cards discarded (including Sloan) we were back level;
neither of us had a hand, and we had both made one failed mission attempt.
Next turn Steve drew several cards until he found what he was looking for: something to
capture with. He played Provoked Attack and then flew over to capture Ezri Dax.
On my turn I reattempted my mission and solved it. The mission I solved, Runabout Search,
allows you to take a Federation personnel from your discard pile and put it aboard your ship.
This allowed me to take Sloan back so that I could continue using him to destroy Steve's
punishment events. I moved over to my second planet mission and attempted. Steve was clearly
trying to play dilemmas that would trigger Psychological Pressure from one of Dax's three
skills however, he didn't make me use enough of them as, I only had to discard one card to PP
that turn. One quick Rites of Emergence allowed me to pass his last dilemma and I solved the
mission that turn.
On Steve's next turn he had a choice. He could either fly home from my mission to pick up
more personnel, or he could fly back to his mission and attempt with the same seven crew as
last time. He did the later and I was again able to stop him from solving using a Wavefront,
which bounced after he had neither Astrometrics nor Navigation on the ship or in his hand to
use with Garak.
Next turn I moved over to my third mission. It turns out that the new mission I added,
Protect the Escapees, was just as easy to solve as my regular third mission so I had a go at
it. I only needed integrity>25 to solve the mission so I attempted with 9 personnel hoping
Steve wouldn't stop the one personnel I had in the team with Navigation. I had to use another
Rites of Emergence combined with Security Drills but I managed to get through his dilemmas
unscathed and solved for the win.
FW 100-0
Or so I thought. As we had finished before the other games Mark asked for my deck so that
he could deck-check me. I always count my cards before I hand over my deck to make sure that
none are missing, and I did just that this time. I was expecting to have 37 dilemmas but only
counted 35. I looked on the floor, in my deck box, well just about everywhere but couldn't
find those two missing dilemmas. I gave up and handed the deck in thinking I must have made a
mistake, and that I really only had 35 dilemmas, but then I suddenly remembered I had taken
two dilemmas out of my pile the previous night. I couldn't remember whether I had taken those
two dilemmas off of my deck list so asked Mark how many I had written on my list. He replied
37 and I knew that I was going to fail the deck-check.
I think now's the time to give a warning about the perils of building your deck in the
early hours on the day of the tournament. Up until now I'd always thought it wasn't a bad
thing, but following this failed deck check I won't be doing that any more. Well... I probably
won't be doing that any more :)
FL failed deck-check
Round 2: (Bye)
To add insult to injury having failed the deck-check I then get
handed the bye for round 2. I sit down to write some notes for this report but the deck-check
is still on my mind (and would be for the rest of the day), so it isn't as detailed as it
could have been.
Mark wants to test out his new Borg deck, so we have a friendly game while everyone else is
playing. Mark's deck won the Reading TOC a few weeks ago but he's since updated it with some
Strange New Worlds cards. It was a super-fast Borg mission solver using the Annexation Drone
to score early points which he could then spend on You've Always been my Favorite to download
more copies of the Annexation Drone and YABMF. They in turn would download At What Cost?'s and
various events/interrupts he needed to bust through dilemmas. The main addition to the deck
was Ascertain to be used to get through dilemmas even easier.
This game is a bit of a blur (owing to the aforementioned activity that took place after my
first round match), but I do remember hitting his sphere with Where No One Has Gone Before. It
turns out Mark could have used Ascertain to get past it but forgot to use it. The only other
event of note was Mark targeting my James T. Kirk's for death. At my first mission he used
Secret Identity followed by Charged-Particle Precipitation to kill two of the three I had in
my deck. Unfortunately this wasn't enough to keep him out of the game as I could use both
Runabout Search and The Edge of Forever to get a total of 5 Kirk's into play during any one
match.
I end up winning the game 100-35.
Round 3: (Tony Gammell – Romulan FSE)
Tony is one of the two who travelled over
from Ireland to play in our TOC. He's also a dAgent and has a higher rating than me on the
Decipher website. Mark had told me that Tony had been working on his Far-Seeing Eyes deck for
the last 18 months so I was expecting a tough match when the pairings for round 3 were called
out.
It seemed to be a pretty normal Far-Seeing Eyes deck that got bonus points from Getting
Under Your Skin to fuel the FSE. Tony didn't seem to have the best draw as he spent several
turns looking for GUYS, and once he did play it I used Luthor Sloan soon after to destroy it.
This wasn't before he had managed to score some points though, which he then used to remove
two copies of Kirk from my draw deck. Fortunately I had several other dilemma busting cards in
there and he couldn't take them all out before I started attempting missions.
On our first respective mission attempts we both managed to use Dreamer and the Dream
against each other – to make us both discard our hands. While Tony only discarded four cards I
had to discard a full hand of seven cards, including an Escape and a Rites of Emergence.
Things were fairly level when we moved onto our second missions. I had more personnel on
the table but Tony had more events out. I managed to kill Crosis and stop his attempt while he
used, what seemed to be his favourite combination, Harsh Conditions and Unknown Microorganism
to lock me out of the mission.
On the next turn Tony attempted his mission with his remaining six personnel. I drew my
three dilemmas to see two of them were space-only and the other was Secret Identity. As Tony
was attempting a planet mission I gave him the only dilemma I could use, Secret Identity,
hoping that I could manage to take out one of his mission solving skills without him noticing.
This never happens but you always hope it will when that's the only dilemma you draw that you
can play.
Looking through his team of six personnel I couldn't see any Security (which he needed for
the mission). Unfortunately he had two copies of all the other skills he needed for the mission
so I was screwed. Whoever I took out he would replace with someone who had Security and he
would solve the mission to take the lead. Tony almost didn't notice the lack of Security as he
had forgotten I had killed Crosis (his only source of it when he first attempted). It was only
when he looked through his team for the third time that he noticed and proceeded to bring in
someone with the skill he needed.
On my turn he tried to use Counterinsurgency Program to stop my attempt. I had a Rites of
Emergence in hand though and used it to name the skill I needed. I then flew over to my final
mission and attempted with nine personnel. Tony looked at his dilemmas and said "it will
either work well or it won't". I hate it when my opponent says something like that
because, more often than not, it does end up "working well" against me. Today was a
"won't work well" day though as he used another Counterinsurgency Program (naming
Treachery which I had in the team), and then Tsiolkovsky Infection. I used my Security Drills
to double up the skills I needed and solved the mission for the win.
FW: 100-65
Round 4: (Nick Yankovec – Dominion solver)
Nick and an American player called
Sandy had recently been having an argument, on the Team Jersey website's message boards, over
the best Dominion ship to use. Nick preferred the Defiant while Sandy preferred the Battleship.
They couldn't come to an agreement so decided each would use the other's favourite in a
tournament to see how well they would do with it.
Today was the day Nick tried out the Battleship. He was also using Distant Exploration and
Duran'Adar to score enough bonus points so that he only had to complete two missions for the
win. In previous games I had managed to get Luthor Sloan out to destroy my opponent's events
but I couldn't find him in this match so Nick would only need the two missions for the win.
The Dominion Battleship's staffing requirements are quite high and I think Nick was wary of
getting de-staffed at his first mission so I ended up making the first mission attempt. Nick
went after Kirk with a vengeance. Like Mark earlier he also used the Secret Identity,
Charged-Particle Precipitation combo to try and kill two Kirk's. I wasn't about to allow this
so I used Escape to save him. He had used enough dilemmas so that I could solve the next turn
though.
When Nick first attempted I tried my best to de-staff him. I drew Harsh Conditions, Psychic
Receptacle and Biochemical Hyperacceleration. Knowing he only had one personnel with biology
in his team I knew I could return 3 personnel to his hand, but unfortunately this wasn't enough
to de-staff his ship. I had also given him enough overcome dilemmas that he could solve next
turn.
On my turn, I did solve my first mission and moved onto my second. Nick remarked that his
dilemma pile wasn't working very well and this proved to be true. I breezed through his
dilemmas and solved the mission. I was out of range though and couldn't move to my final
mission.
Nick solved his first mission without too much difficulty. The bonus points from Distant
Exploration and Duran'Adar allowed him to score 55 points from that one mission. I looked at
his other missions and realized that he only needed one more mission for the win. After
solving Nick flew back to his headquarters. He had the range to fly to another mission so I
guess he was waiting for a particular skill before he made the attempt.
At this point we both needed one mission to win, although there was a small possibility
that I could force Nick into having to solve three missions, if I could just get Luthor Sloan
out of my deck. As I said previously this didn't happen, so I've decided to put another copy
of Sloan in my deck the next time I play it.
Moving to my third mission, Nick managed to stop me using 5 dilemmas. If I had the right
personnel out, I could solve it with 5 personnel the next turn. However Nick wasn't to know
that I didn't have the right personnel out. He'd killed some of them earlier and I hadn't
found their replacements yet.
Nick played the personnel he wanted (I assume) and moved to his second mission. I figured
that I could solve my final mission the next turn so I had to make sure that I stopped him. I
used Secret Identity, Magnetic Field Disruptions, and Wavefront. This was my intended combo
for use before Where No One Has Gone Before, but I hadn't drawn it. Using Secret Identity I
took out Nick's only personnel with either skill needed for the next two dilemmas (Astrometrics
or Navigation), and he replaced them with Martok Founder. I was ecstatic at his choice as it
meant I would stop him and probably win the game next turn.
When Nick flipped Magnetic Field Disruptions he checked his team for either of the skills
he needed. I assumed I'd get a kill here, as he didn't have either, but Nick showed an Explicit
Orders allowing him to add a skill from hand. He then changed his mind and took it back into
hand, at which point I was very worried. He could use Explicit Orders to get past my final
dilemma without being stopped – meaning he would win the game. Luckily for me, he then changed
his mind again and decided to use it to prevent me getting a kill. On flipping my final
dilemma I was relieved to hear him say he was stopped, and most relieved that he hadn't had a
second Explicit Orders in his hand.
Nick was stopped and it was up to me to win the game next turn. I had a gamble to make at
this point. There were 5 overcome dilemmas under the mission, Nick had one copy of Machinations
out, and I had 12 personnel who could attempt (from two ships) – although I only had one team
of six personnel who had the necessary skills. I decided to bluff my first attempt with five
and hope Nick would burn his Machinations stopping a team that couldn't solve anyway. He read
my bluff and decided not to use it.
I then attempted the mission again with my seven remaining personnel. I knew that even if
Nick stopped one of them I could still solve with the other six, and Nick would have a lot of
trouble stopping two of them using only two points worth of dilemmas. He did use Machinations
and managed to stop one of my personnel but this wasn't enough and I solved for the win. Nick
reflected that if he had used Machinations on the first attempt to get a Timescape he would
have had another turn and would have won the game himself.
FW 100-55
Final Result
Despite being undefeated all day, one stupid error had cost me the
tournament (ok, ok, I promise not to mention the deck-check again). Johannes also went
undefeated to win the tournament. I didn't see his deck but was told it was similar to mine
but used more events - I wonder who would have won had we played? (Johannes probably!)
So DS9 took the top two places. Matthew came 3rd playing Maquis, Nick was 4th playing
Dominion, Tim came 5th playing Ferengi (hats off to Tim from trying them out), Fergus (the
other Irish player) was 6th playing Romulan, Will came 7th playing Dominion, Steve was 8th
playing Cardassian, and Tony came last playing Romulan.
There were some cool prizes handed out by Mark. On top of a Brunt promo for everyone there
was also an Enterprise-E T-Shirt, a Star Trek quiz book, a complete Call to Arms set, lots of
Strange New Worlds common sets, as well as the usual foils and boosters.
Even though Tony came last I would like to say he's the best Irish player I've ever played.
That's not just because he asked me to write that, but also because he's the only Irish player
I've ever played :)
Thanks to Mark for organising the tournament, to Tony and Fergus for coming all the way
over from Ireland to play (and being such good sports), to Nick for making the decisions he
did during our game, to my three Where No One Has Gone Before dilemmas who conspired to only
show themselves when my opponent was at a planet mission (the only time I used it all day was
against Mark, and that was in a practice game), and finally to you - the reader - for reading
this whole report when you surely have better things to do with your time.
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