Tournament Report (Director's Perspective) -- Seattle, WA; February 25, 2001

Sunday's tournament was the first I had directed.  Everything went smoothly for the most part... about the only significant "oops" was my scheduling play to begin at the time the store opened -- I assumed the store's hours were the same from Saturday to Sunday.  Other than that, everything went well.

Although speed was still a major part of the Northwest metagame, I saw a number of battle decks as well.  Of the eleven players, I know at least two -- Ryan Agnew and Keith Watabayashi -- were playing decks with a significant battle component.  In some cases they could out-speed their opponents; in other cases, not.  Mission stealing was also a big strategy of the day.  One player tried a Q-Bypass, and was very upset when an opponent stole two of his missions... using the first player's own self-seeded Q's to get by the dilemmas!  A few players were still trying to risk Red Alert!, surprisingly, and a few went by without any Q the Referee, hoping enough opponents would include them to discourage cheese.  A number of players were also using the Transwarp Conduit/Distortion of Space/Time Continuum combo for quick movement.

Eleven players showed up, with Keith Watabayshi winning even though Todd Soper stood at an impressive 6 (+300) after three rounds.  Keith's deck was focused on slowing speed decks through Mission Debriefing, battle, and Destroy Radioactive Garbage Scow.  Todd was playing a Ferengi Cargo Run/Devidian Door deck using the Transwarp Conduit/DSTC combo and Multidimensional Transporter Device and the Mirror Quadrant to beam his personnel around without walking, allowing many more cargo runs each turn.

I brought a Romulan Cybernetics/STA deck to play in case of an odd number of players, which there was.  The deck was in a very, very raw form and I knew it wasn't very good.  I only got to play one game with it, winning 100-0 but going much slower than I would have liked to.  Against a speed deck I would have been toast.  I didn't get to play the other rounds -- one round I was helping a player tune a deck, in another the bye player wanted to get some food instead of playing, and I got the prize support ready in the last round.

Here are the final standings with four rounds of play, with a summary of the player's deck if I remember:

1.  Keith Watabayashi	7 (+274)	Klingon anti-speed battle deck
2.  Todd Soper	6 (+200)	Cargo run/Devidian Door
3.  Jacob Edwards-King	5 (+119)	Mission stealer
4.  Eric Wood	4 (+55)	Federation Q-Bypass
5.  R.J. Smith	4 (+28)	Federation space speed deck (w/Red Alert!)
6.  Tom Vuchelen	4 (-44)	Don't recall; usually plays Klingon battle
7.  Tigh Bradley	3 (+30)	Bajoran Orb deck
8.  Ryan Agnew	3 (+13)	Cardassian Patrol Ship armada
9.  Marcus Yarbrough	3 (-195)	Pakled-themed deck (!?)
10. Leianne Kilkenny	2 (-300)	Ferengi standard mission-solver
11. Mike Long	1 (-180)	Don't remember

Thanks to Broken Games for hosting the tournament, and thanks to everyone who came making it a success!

-Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles