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Alidar's DecipherCon Report
by Alidar Jarok Ah yes, the disadvantages of writing a report two weeks after an event - you have to stop and actually remember what happened. ;-) Basically, I left Philadelphia at about 1:00 AM on Thursday, November 11, where I met up with Vince Berardi, who drove me down to Virginia Beach. We finally arrived at about 7:30, two and a half hours before registration was even scheduled to begin. So in the meantime we basically killed some time. To our dismay, Rules of Acquisition would not be available until Saturday morning, if even - there was supposedly a printing error and they might not even be out during the weekend. I brought along an anti-cheese version of my trusty Bajoran deck - Kira and Krim's Excellent Adventure, which can be found in WNOHGB Print #3. I took out Bajor (to protect againt Borg decks) in favor of Iconia Investigation (to combat PNZ decks). In addition, I included a ton of Intermix Ratios and Bajoran Interceptors in my draw deck. I had to combat PNZ and Bonus Point decks quickly, and Tenting was very unreliable. A Neutral Outpost would allow me to have easy access to the Neutral Zone. A Donald Varley in the Tent (and to a lesser extent a Riker Wil in the deck), coupled with a Federation/Bajoran Treaty for just this purpose, allowed Iconia to me more than just a dead mission slot (which I surprisingly completed a number of times). DS9 would allow me to download personnel to combat the heavy anti-cheese draws, as would a few Renewal Scrolls. Stuff in the Tent to combat VCM and armadas, a number of seed slots spent to combat abusive strategies... and I was ready to take on every cheese player at the Open. One problem: almost no one was playing cheese. My first game was against Randy Demsetz, who was playing a Romulan deck. Very quickly, he tripped a Sheliak under my Investigate Coup, reducing it to nothingness before long. The same happened to Iconia Investigation. However, Odo and Donald Varley were able to overcome the remaining Founder Secret and Balancing Act, gaining me 35 points. Then he played a Q's Planet, used a Pla-Net to take out my Dead End, and earn a Tox Uthat. Suddenly my DS9 was toast and my spaceline was unbalanced. At that point I was forced to stop attempting missions, as each mission had a Balancing Act and would actually cause me to lose points if I solved them. However, even with a Pla-Net under just about every mission, my combos were still enough to slow him down. He ended up eventually completing two 35-point missions (hitting a Balancing Act under one of them), bringing the score to 60-0. Soon I began to raise a mighty Interceptor fleet to try to take him out, but another Supernova killed off my only remaining outpost, leaving me a number of WEAPONS short and without a facility (and this deck didn't include any Palor Toffs). He tried to use a Colony for the rest of his points at the end. However, by this point, I literally had about six or seven Intermix Ratios in play (like I said, I included a ton of them to ensure that I would get one, plus an Interceptor, in my opening hand). Time ran out, and I started off at 0 (-60). Naturally, six of my bottom eight cards were Temporal Vorticies, which would probably have given me enough time to win (Sheliak / Founder Secret / Balancing Act is really easy if you have Odo). The Alidar Shuffle? My second game was against Cristoffer Wiker, a Swedish player who was also playing Bajorans. His idea was to use the T'Ong with a Treaty to get Bajorans to the Gamma Quadrant quickly to set up a Colony. He had five Gamma Quadrant missions, and two universal Space missions in the Alpha. I knew that he was going to try to suck up the Alpha Quadrant, but he never tried to - he knew that I had an Examine Singularity, so he held off. Fortunately, he seeded Changeling Research. I seeded a Lack of Preparation, Chula: The Dice and Berserk Changeling under it, rearranging my combos accordingly (which didn't matter much as I had six combos to seed under five missions). After downloading Mora Pol, Odo, Weld Ram, and one other Bajoran, I quickly jaunted over to the Gamma Quadrant and stole his mission for 40 points. Note: By this point, I was writing a new message on my hat after every game. I don't really know why I started this, but severe lack of sleep probably had something to do with it. Anyway, it kinda got amusing near the end when literally half of the tournament would hover over me at the end of the round just to see what pearl of wisdom I would write next. ;-) Game three was against none other than Vince Berardi, whom I came to DecipherCon with. We each helped polish off each other's decks, so we knew what we were up against. And I knew that my deck wasn't built to defeat his deck; it was all a question of how many points I would score before I lost. I also became convinced that they forgot to list a card on Writ, as the 40 or so of the card that he abused in this game was kind of annoying. To sum things up quickly without giving out his deck idea, I was able to squeak out 60 points from Investigate Coup and Relocate Settlers before my DS9 was dust. 100-60 him, and I now stood at 2 (-60). My fourth game was against William Perdue, who tried using a VCM deck against me. The Office of the President was a mistake, especially with my treaty. Of course, getting The Emissary in my opening hand helped too. And not long after that, the Emissary tripped a Sheliak underneath the nearby planet mission that his outpost was at. However, I soon made the stupid mistake of leaving Ops unopposed, feeling a little too confident. Soon he took it over, and started to download personnel like Data, Lightner (with Rifle), and all of his bridge crew. Ouch. My fourth game was against Sheri Pocilujko, better known as Vash. She was, of course, playing Federation. Her idea was to get Crew Reassignment into play and start reporting AU personnel to a cloaked Future Enterprise. Game six was against Erik Bell, who was playing an Empok Nor deck. My Friendly Fire slowed him down a bit, but eventually he got the station and downloaded a ton of sites and equipment. I, however, also got out to a great start, solving Refuse Immigration and Relocate Settlers, plus scoring points from his dilemmas, for a 90-0 lead. My 7 (+59) finish was enough to put me in 15th place overall. However, I noticed a week ago that I took a severe 50-point ratings hit from the tournament. Oh well, as long as I'm still qualified for Invitationals it doesn't matter much. Vince ended up finishing 11th. He probably would have ended up finishing much higher (verly likely in the top two, IMHO) if the TD didn't rule that you could play Rogue Borg on landed ships. I so wish I could have gone up against some of the top finishers. Daramere finished in second with his PNZ deck. He would have had a lot of trouble against my deck. As would the Cytherians Shufflers and other gimmick decks. Unfortunately, I couldn't draw a Temporal Vortex to save my life in the first game. Ironically, I had more than enough in every game after that. What did I do to deserve that, really? :-( At that point, we were both very tired and decided to go and find a motel somewhere (such is the problem when you don't plan things in advance). Friday saw Vince and I start off with a multiplayer tournament. Since I felt more like having fun for this unsanctioned tournament than trying to be competitive, I decided to go with my Cardassian System 5 deck. Double Ore, Military Freighters report for free to the Ports, System 5's report for free to one of my Nors at Security Briefing, Guls report for free to the nearby Central Command. I noticed right before the game that it was only capable of solving two of my missions, so I threw in a few extra personnel. Naturally, I get paired up with players that I normally play against, that being Greg Dabjowski and Larry Plano from Connecticut. Also present, I believe, was Susan Piper, plus one other player whose name I can't remember. Greg was playing his usual Cardassian Ore Processing deck, Larry was playing a Klingon Empok Nor deck, Susan was trying a regular Klingon deck, and the remaining player was playing the Borg. It took Larry forever to get to his Empok Nor because of my Friendly Fire and Greg's Sleeper Trap. Greg tried opposing one of my Nors, but Damar was captured by Intruder Alert! and his Gul Madred was killed by Dejar and Co. using one of my Defensive Measures. The Borg player quickly realized what I was doing and tried to assimilate my key Nor. However, Greg and I soon teamed up and started to Thine Own Self his drones like crazy (we must have gotten about five or six of them at least). Soon my fleet was ready and attacked, but two Awakens boosted his SHIELDS high enough only to be damaged. I discarded my four ships because he had a Multiplexor Drone. Well, I found out on the next turn that he didn't really have a Multiplexor Drone; he announced that he was downloading one on an earlier turn, but grabbed the wrong Defense Drone. I took a little bit of time off that afternoon; I didn't have quite enough time for an eight-man tournament, so I spend about an hour fighting over a TD computer with Mael. I won, of course. ;-) I wanted to play in the Affiliations tournament on Friday night, but I just couldn't. Since Decipher only revealed three days before what the tournament was in the first place, I barely had enough time to build the four decks necessary to play (and having four exams over the three days before the convention didn't help much either). Turns out you couldn't use any neutral or non-aligned cards at all, which hit two of my decks kinda hard. So I instead went with the Galactic Supremacy tournament. Too bad, too, as only three players showed up for Affiliations, and all of their decks were faced with similar problems. They all ended up splitting the Limited Premiere set equally too. Oh well. I went with my Bajoran deck in Galactic Supremacy, with a few small changes in the seed deck (Iconia and the Treaty were exchanged for Bajor and Secure Homeworld) and the Tent, and major changes in the draw deck (specifically, a ton of Intermixes and Interceptors, among other things, were removed, trimming my deck in half). My first game was against a Borg player from Sweden. My Berserk Changeling at Tarchannen Study took out his only Seven (after Common Thief took out his Bio-Med Drone; he forgot to download his Interlink earlier), taking away a major advantage in his deck. Anyway, I slowly whittled through his dilemmas at Refuse Immigration, and he eventually got the 50 points at Tarchannen. A redshirt tripped an Edo Probe at Relocate Settlers. In the meantime, I Spacedoored for an Xepolite Freighter at my outpost, reported a Shakaar there, and tented for Lore. Next turn, he cleared away the dilemmas at Deliver Supplies, which I promptly stole. My Kira was just about to beam down and solve Relocate Settlers (going through the Dead End there) for the win, but time was called. :-( I still ended up winning 75-50 on the timed win, placing me at 1 (+25). My second game pitted me against a Romulan player. He promptly downloaded a D'deridex, Ready Room Doored for Tomalak, and cloaked his ship with his mission specialists on Engage Cloak. I knew that he planned on attacking my ships as soon as they left my facilities. However, he ended up seeding his Investigate Coup before mine, and didn't self-seed to protect it. I stole that mission much like I did in the second game of the Wild Card. Luckily, my planets and facilities were lined up just right for my Interceptor to move all the way to the mission and be either docked or landed after every turn, avoiding his trigger-happy Tomalak. He moved on to try missions, only to scan them and realize that he didn't have any of the necessary skills. I soon learned that all of my missions had a Unscientific Method / Hippocratic Oath / Barclays Protomorphosis Disease under them (he seeded Aid Fugitives). Being the idiot that I am, I forgot to send enough SCIENCE in my attempt at Refuse Immigration. Ouch. But that's why I double up on the four most important personnel in my deck. With DS9, I was soon able to download them again and solve the mission. I them moved over to Relocate Settlers, remembered to send enough people down, and solved it for the 100-0 win. This put me at 3 (+125). Keeping up with the "familiar faces" theme, my next opponent was former NYC Ambassador Jason Miska and his Dominion Kar'takin deck. I was able to score one fast mission before he came over and beat the snot out of all my Bajorans. He was always nearby, keeping me pinned at the end of the spaceline away from him. He completed a Construct Depot, but only barely after his worst fear was realized - a Lack of Preparation / Borg Ship combo. He went back to the Gamma Quadrant to resupply, and decided to attempt Rescue Founder, the site of his Primary Supply Depot. He tripped a Sheliak, then a Blended stopped almost all of his Vorta. The remaining Q he passed easily with literally over a hundred INTEGRITY from his megacrew. However, one key personnel was stopped by Blended, so he couldn't solve the mission. My Mission Debriefing stopped his entire team on the planet. Since Intelligence Operation was the only other mission in the Gamma Quadrant, his entire force was killed at the end of the turn. I quickly raised enough of a force to complete two more missions for the 100-30 win, putting me in second place at 5 (+195). Well, being in second I got paired up against the person in first. Unfortunately, he was playing a Rogue Borg deck with double Nors heavy on counters. Basically, since he was at 6 (+300), I decided to try to get one mission before being pummelled. I quickly downloaded The Emissary and played an Interceptor and took off for Bajor. I landed there and was safe from his RBM's. Luckily he seeded Bajor first, so my favorite stealing combo was there. However, it took me a while to draw an Odo or a Mora Pol. Finally I did, and scored 35 points. But the end was inevitable, and I ended up losing 100-35. My 5 (+130) finish dropped me back down to sixth place out of 31. Still, at the end of the first day, the Bajorans were in the overall lead in Galactic Supremacy. Yay Bajorans! Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to any more tournaments to finish the task. :-( On Saturday morning, we awaited the release of Rules of Acquisition. At the last minute, they actually got them in on time. And boy were there a lot of cases. I should know, as I had to help carry them. :-( However, I soon got a little more than a box and a half, and spent quite a while opening and reading what all the cards do for the first time - at this point, no one has seen any of the cards except for about eighteen. Quark created quite a first impression, as did Plasma Energy Burst and Runabout Search. The coalation was pretty good. After 49 packs and a bit of trading, I was missing only five cards, and had four extras to trade. I got an extra Nog in hopes that I could trade him for a Leeta, but no one seemed to pull more than one Leeta. :-( Unfortunately, the Rules pre-release tournament was too soon after the set was released, IMHO. Those that bought the set as soon as it came out had a little over an hour to open their boxes, read what all of the cards do, and incorporate them into a deck. Obviously, Ferengi decks were impossible to build in this time. I don't think I opened all my packs in an hour, let alone carefully read each card and decide whether or not to include it into a deck. And it's not like it would have required a lot of changing - my Bajoran deck would have stocked Kasidy, Rom, Cargo Run, the Orb of Wisdom, and maybe a new dilemma or two. Oh well, hopefully Decipher figured out the mistakes it made on its first attempt at a convention, and will have them worked out for next year. At this point, Vince and I had to leave early because an unexpected situation arose back in New Jersey. However, it was still a fun way to spend a few days. So I'm back here in college now, being overworked as usual. And Vince is back home thinking up new ways to make new cheese thrive. ;-) Alidar Jarok
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So I basically hunted down a number of online personalities that I haven't met before and got some cards signed. Wesley Crusher, Major Rakal, Tomek, Goddess of Empathy, Daramere, Maelwys (whom I got to <kick> repeatedly, fortunately ;-) ), Vash, Sirna, Red Hedgehog, Mortal Q2, and others. Well, none of them really recognized me at once. However, using paper clips, index cards, markers, and my cap, soon everyone knew that I was Alidar. ;-) Before long, the Wild Card was about to start at 2:00 PM.
I then concentrated on Refuse Immigration, using the Science Lab to look at one dilemma at a time. I slowly worked through his anti-MEDICAL dilemmas, throwing a MEDICAL personnel away to Hippocratic Oath, then using Surmak Ren to nullify Aphasia Device then beam over to the Tallerian Plague Ship. After passing a remaining wall, I was winning 80-0. He soon amassed enough personnel to slowly take out my combo at one Colony Preparations to score 30 points and download a Colony, at which he scored almost 20 points a turn. But my deck included a few Intermix Ratios, as I've said before. ;-) My double-combos in the Gamma Quadrant kept him from scoring any more non-bonus points, and I eventually passed Relocate Settlers for the 100-60 win. This placed me at 2 (-20).
Soon he left DS9, and I took it back. I was able to complete Refuse Immigration, and he completed another mission. Two Q's, one run into by each, made the spaceline very messy. However, later in the game, his Odyssey was all alone on one end of the spaceline with his megacrew. He was forced to come all the way past my forces to get to any more missions. My four Interceptors made his trip a lot shorter. I believe that I then completed Relocate Settlers, running into a The Higher The Fewer or something like that on the way. Near the end, I made the stupidest mistake of all, sending one personnel into a Q-Flash under the Cardassia that I scanned. I realized this as soon as I announced the attempt, but by then it was too late. I Tried To Warn You took away my points at Refuse Immigration. I soon completed the mission, but time was called soon after. I don't remember the specific score, but I ended up winning by 34 points, placing me at 3 (-26). Stupid mistakes on my part kept me from winning this game.
All of her missions had a Q-Flash, which I was careful to attempt with two people each time. We basically rushed off to mission solving, and worked at whittling away at each others' combos. I can't remember much from this game (having received about one hour of sleep in the past 50 hours at that point), but I ended up getting three missions to her two, giving me a 100-65 win, putting me at positive differential for the first time in the tournament at 5 (+9). (Yes, the sign is kinda an in-joke that I have with her, who has a propensity to play the "inferior" affiliation. ;-) )
Then things started to go bad, as he had a big fleet at the time and had my Interceptor pinned on the planet. He eventually cleared Mining Survey for 50 points. I continued to report personnel to The Emissary's position. However, he got slightly greedy and started firing at my DS9. His ships were positioned in a way that I wasn't totally pinned anymore, and I used the opportunity to quickly launch and ferry over to Investigate Coup. A hapless redshirt tripped the Sheliak / Chandra / Q, and Generak Krim strolled out for the 100-50 win.
Oh well, at least I got to yell, "Oh my God, you killed Tekeny!" ;-) Anyway, these games are very long, and we were soon upon our 90-minute time limit. I believe that I solved a mission somewhere along the line, probably Cardassia, and I think that Greg helped clear out some of the dilemmas on an earlier turn. Larry ended up solving two missions, but he ran into an Coalescent Organism on a planet without any Exobiology. My fleet (v2.0) came by to take out his ship, stranding him there. Unfortunately, time ran out and Larry moved on to the final. In this format, having a pure mission-solving deck and using missions in a region would definitely help, due to time limitations and the sheer number of counters among all the people playing.