Well, this is it, my first major ST:CCG tournament (and my very first tournament report). Since I had a very busy time at school, I didn't really have time to prepare and build new decks, so I decided to take my Klingon Armada deck, which would most of the time end up solving missions instead of killing off outposts, and slightly modified it to deal with the tough competition of a national.

I left my house at about 9 am, with my parents and my friend Niek. I had convinced my parents it would be fun to go to Amsterdam and visit the Rijksmuseum, so they could drop us at the European Go Center in Amstelveen, near Amsterdam. We arrived on time and first spent some time trading and chatting with the other players, until our tournament director Eelco de Gooijer officially started the first Open Dutch Championship, which had attracted 28 players from around the country.

Round 1: vs Alexander Bloemen (Ferengi Bonus Points/Black Hole deck)

Alexander, the highest ranked Dutch player in the world, started with the typical Ferengi jump start: WoA gets Brunt, QIR gets Quark, 1st Rule gets Zek. Then we both started playing personnel for a few turns, he played a Black Hole in the middle of the spaceline and I plopped down soms K'Vorts and started moving towards his DS9. Then he took a ship with a few personnel, including a Quark with HQ:ROtB, and attempted Orb Negotiations, passed a self-seeded Barclays, grabbed two Orbs and stopped at a Sarjenka. I hadn't drawn a K'Vort for some turns, so I decided to switch to mission solving mode and retreated to my Great Hall. Alexander then scored bonus points with HQ:ROtB, Devidian Door/Samual Clemens, a Phoenix, some Dabo and other stuff I can't remember, so I decided I had waited long enough, flipped my QIR and downloaded Intermix Ratio. Needless to say, Alex wasn't too happy when he saw that. He muttered something about hating to do missions and I actually started to think I could win this one. Then it happened. The Black Hole had been sucking its way to Qo'Nos and was about to destroy it. I divided my personnel over 3 K'Vorts and wanted to move out when he RBM-pinged all three of them. Ouch. I pulled some of my personnel back to my hand with an STP, including 3 of the Blood Oath quartet. After that he hit me with a Scorched Hand and it was game over for me. I slowly played some personnel to my outpost, lost points to a LoP and solved 1 mission before Alexander completed two of his own and won the match.
0(-80)

Round 2: vs Matthijs Vink (Cardassian Ore Processing/Armada)

This round, my K'Vorts actually showed up so I started reporting them and used RRD to get their matching commanders. Matthijs set up his ore processing and started to download a ship each turn and also used RRD to get commanders. He flew to my outpost and damaged it, but next turn my K'Vorts arrived and blew up some of his ships. He then fired at my outpost again, forgetting that he had lost part of his fleet and did no damage. Next turn I blew up some more of his ships. He then retreated his crippled fleet to his Nor and I started doing missions. He had problems with my dilemmas and I won this round 100-0.
2(+20)

Round 3: vs Andrew Benton (Borg Assimilation)

I knew Andrew and his deck, since we played each other at the previous local tournament (and I had defeated him 100-0). Since then he hated Klingons and I have always hated Borg, we were up for a great game :-) . I knew I could be faster than his deck so I started reporting my personnel and attempted It's A Good Day To Live with all four nemesis personnel and solved the mission for 50 points. For the first time I acquired my Sword of Kahless, which I had put in my deck the night before. I got stopped because of a Mission Debriefing and the next turn Andrew first opened a booster of FC thanks to an Add Distinctiveness, after that his Cube flew in and tried to assimilate Kor. He won the personnel battle with ease and abducted and assimilated Kor. He randomly selected my Kahless to die but he lived through the experience thanks to my Sword. This essentially won me the game since next turn I beamed back aboard one of my K'Vorts and started moving towards the far end of the spaceline to solve Wormhole Negotiations. With the Cube right behind me, I made it to the Negotiations, passed an Edo Probe, Temporal Vortexed a Borg Ship and solved the mission for 45 + 5 AMS points thanks to my Kahless.
4(+87)

Round 4: vs Jeroen Kreijne (Borg Dual Icon Missions)

This was definitely my weakest game of the tournament. It started in the seed phase when I wasn't really paying attention and seeded my Edo Probe/THTF/Dead End combo at the dual icon mission which was located at the far end of the spaceline. He quickly got his cube into the Alpha Quadrant and first Established a Gateway at and then assimilated abovementioned mission and established another gateway at the neighbouring mission. I then took some of my personnel and started battling him. I lost points to an Edo Probe but solved another mission for 35 points. My opponent then moved his Cube, used Launch Portal to download a Queen's Borg Sphere, moved away and probed for the win.
4(+12)

Round 5: vs Niek van Uden (Federation AMS/VCM)

I knew his deck, he knew mine. I knew his dilemma combo's, he knew mine. You can understand why we didn't like to play each other now. My deck was moving really fast this time and so was his. I quickly moved some K'Vorts to his HQ, not having enough weapons to damage it but I was able to kill his Sao Paulo and his Runabout. He must have felt very threatened, because next turn he played a Thunderchild and moved out with all his personnel to attempt his Repair Mission. For some reason he didn't have 3 engineers to solve the mission and certainly didn't have the 4 needed to prevent a Gravimetric Distortion. Next turn my K'Vorts finished off his crippled ship with crew and I started attempting missions. I was at 70 when he played a Defiant at his outpost, beamed the remainder of his deck aboard and set out to do a planet mission. He got past my dilemmas but got stopped by a Mission Debriefing. I destroyed his Defiant, then his outpost, then the Thunderchild he had Palor Toffed, leaving his people stranded on the planet. I then solved my last mission for victory.
6(+72)

Round 6: vs Dennis Naulohy (Romulan Dual HQ/Memory Wipe)

Dennis had had a really bad starting hand since his deck was moving very slowly, not reporting any personnel for free. Because his HQs were at the other end of the spaceline I decided to ignore him and go for missions instead. Things looked good until he started playing Memory Wipe on my ships, disabling my mission solving capability for a while. After a few turns, I reported a new ship and solved 2 more missions for the win.
8(+172)

It turned out my score was enough for 4th place. I received my 3 premiere boosters, with which I was quite happy, because I started playing with the DS9 expansion and actually didn't have any of the premiere bridge crew and not nearly enough of the other useful commons and uncommons. Niek finished 12th and was also satisfied because he had won half of his games, which was his goal in his first constructed tournament.

Final Standings:
1. Bjorn Neervoort - 12(+505)
2. Harold Berendsen - 10(+192)
3. Michael v/d Sman - 8(+192)
4. Stefan Frijters - 8(+172)
5. Tristan Marsman - 8(+95)
[...]
12. Niek van Uden - 6(+32)

Stefan Frijters