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Qo'noS Regional Report
by Mike Mannino I was running my old Fed/Klingon double headquarters Q-Bypass deck that plays a bunch of guys for free, hidden fighters for ships, Kivas's for card plays then Bypasses at Wormhole Negotiations and Pegasus Search. Round 1: vs. Aaron Macoulough (probably screwed that spelling) Well, there were five World Finalists there so it figures I'd have to play at least one of them, first round is as good as any. Aaron was running Cardassian free ore processing (with Singularity) with an Armada and some Gamma Field Trip thrown in for good measure. Early on, he wormholes me to the Gamma Quadrant, the plays Bajoran Wormhole. Somewhat mystified I flew back to the Alpha Quadrant. He moved a couple ships over and Outgunned me, capturing my ship and about 10 guys. After that, I didn't really bother moving ships anymore. He nuked my Treaty as well so my guys couldn't even work together. Things were looking grim. Aaron and I both thought I was out of the game so he took his time building up crew without attempting any missions. That was his downfall. I dropped my Goddess of Empathy, got enough Feds to Bypass by themselves. Bypassed Wormhole Negotiation. Out of range I tried to Wormhole myself to Pegasus. Whoops, that Goddess affects both players. I Ux my own Goddess, he wormholes me to Gamma, I wormhole myself back to Pegasus and bypass it for the win. 100-0, me but really a lot closer than that. Round 2: vs. Patrick (I think that was his name, one of the Canadian players) I drop STP x2, Tent, ODR and Treaty in the Doorway Phase, he drops exactly the same cards. I knew that was a bad sign. We were playing very similar decks except he concentrated on planet missions (six of 'em actually, wished I had that Balancing Act) He got more Going to the Tops and AMS's and just plain old out ran me. Not much more to say. 100-0, him. Round 3: vs. ??? Playing what looked to be a variation of my deck from when I took it to GenCon. Back then it had the Three-Way Treaty and all three HQ's. As I found out, the modifications I made to the deck for Regionals were better than the ones he had made. We duped 4 or 5 missions including Wormhole and Pegasus. Since they were both his, he didn't seed dilemmas under them. He killed all my guys at the HQ's but it didn't matter. I played guys one by one to the outpost and still breezed through the fluff I seeded there for a quick 100-0. Round 4: vs. Evan Steiner Evan is an excellent player and we are very even matched. Every time I play him it's a battle from beginning to end and this one was no exception. When he seeded 12 Hidden Agendas I started to get scared and when on turn one he flipped three Scanner Interferences to lock down my planets, a couple Plans to do the discard to draw thing and a few other neat little tricks that allowed him to draw most of his deck that turn, I started to get real scared. Luckily I had drawn my Intermix in my opening hand and decided that since he was running two Explore Interstellar Matters and two Establish Relations he probably wasn't doing missions and I should drop it immediately. That was the only thing that saved me. Next turn he STP dropped a Vulcan Lander with most of his deck aboard including the Traveler who he used to jump around the spaceline all day. He played a Black Hole and closed it, he Cytherianed himself but all to no avail thanks to IR. I soon went after a mission. He had gotten under one of my Q's so I had a dilemma to face. Borg Ship. No problem, that's what my Temporal Vortex is for. Nope. Evan plays an Energy Vortex to make me return it to my hand and my ship gets blown away. While I'm rebuilding, Evan takes my Study Hole in Space for 35 plus 30 bonus but I soon get out another Bypass crew and pop my two missions for the game. A close one but I pulled it out, 100-65 Round 5: vs. Kevin Markman Kevin was playing a BOG enhanced version of Dan Allman's GenCon winning deck, basically scan and AMS for what you need. He gets a couple missions early on but thanks to my Founder Secret/Higher the Fewer combo he loses some points and ends up at 95. I go after my missions, he nullifies the Q's and I have to fight through 2 combos (Did I mention I hate Gravimetric Distortion and Stellar Flare). I wormhole his ship to the far end of the spaceline, away from any of his missions which buys me some time. I get through everything except 1 Gravimetric at Pegasus. I'm short an Astrophysics but I've got a Reflection Therapy in my hand. Next turn I'll win. Kevin has built up a Medical, Science, and Security and is going to his far mission which has one self seed under it. Gee, he's already popped two self seeded Barclay's, I wonder what it is. He's about to score it and win. I forget I have another wormhole in my hand. I could have wormholed him to the far end and bought myself the turn I needed. But I forgot, oh well, that's how it goes sometimes. 100-55, Kevin. Round 6: vs. Martin Shultz He's playing a basic Rommie mission-solver to pop three Treachery missions and win. Simple but can be effective. Early on he goes after my Wormhole Negotiation (I should have seen that coming a mile away but didn't, stupid) He clears out everything for me, even nullifying the Q there to get through. Finishes it and only has three Treachery. I breathe an enormous sigh of relief and go finish the mission. He then goes after Expose Covert Supply and clears it only to find he doesn't have the Navigation, it was one of those days for him. He does manage to get the Treachery x3 + STRENGTH greater than 30 mission whose name I can't remember and AMS's it for 40 but loses 8 to The Higher The Fewer leaving him at 32. I go through Pegasus Search, Temporal Vortexing his Borg Ship for the win. 100-32, me. That left me at 8(+158), good enough to take home 7th. The rundown as I remember it: Lorne Kates took first (Congratulations), Raven Karuna took 2nd, Guy Lima 3rd, another Canadian whose name I don't know took 4th, Scott Roszowski 5th, Allen Pike 6th, I took 7th and Kevin Markman took 8th. It was a great tournament, I'd like to thank Kim Burns, David Bowling, Chris McKenna, and Chris Dilloway for running it and everyone involved for making it a great time. Good Luck to Dave and Lorne at Worlds. I'm sure they'll bring glory to the Empire. Qapla'! Mike "Jade Monkey" Mannino
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