Since the infidels (or "decktech", as some call them) gave me a lousy two out of five review for my last literary masterpiece (last week's tournament report), never again will I write for them! So, I present to you, my fellow WNOHGB readers, this week's tournament report. See? WNOHGB is better - not only do we have *spelling* and *punctuation*, we also have more up to date tournament reports from Cape Town, South Africa. Beat that, DT!

I present:

"DECKTECH CAN'T TOUCH THIS - a Tale of Glory and Honour"

Our hero, one Fritz Meissner, finds himself awake at three AM on the morning of Sunday, May 27th. Unable to sleep, he attempts to put together a "deck" for his next contest - that grueling challenge known only as the "Star Trek: Customizable Card Game". He knows that in less than eight hours time, he must face the moment of truth - a battle of wills and a dueling of the minds, against no fewer than eight opponents. Eight of the strongest contestants in all of Southern Africa.

Knowing that he must seek an ally to help him in his quest, he arranges a secret meeting with the Continuing Commitee, the head of the ruthless Tal Shiar. He learns of...

OK, I'm bored now. I'll try continue the story at some other stage, but for the moment, you're just going to get a boring old tournament report. Sunday's tournament was held (as usual) at Wizard's Books. I arrived slightly late because of a ridiculous string of events which involves our cat, setting the burglar alarm twice and receiving a phone call from a very flustered Shaun Kennedy telling me why he couldn't make it. Something about a Pharmacy at midnight. You probably shouldn't ask.

The night before I spent trying to put together a first turn win deck that has been trying to get out of my head for the past few weeks. It was quite late (see earlier paragraph) when I tossed that idea (not literally, in case you were wondering) out of the window and settled on plain old boring Romulans. You know - the usual Continuing Committee, STAs, Kivas Fajo coming out of its proverbial ears kinda deck. The basic plan was to solve Compromised Mission and Covert Installation to bring to 95 with AMS points, and I had the Phoenix in my Q's Tent to bring to 100.

We sat down some time around 10:30 for the first round.

Round One vs. John van Rensburg
Good ol' self-sacrificing TD John. Spends way too much of his time answering rules questions and far too little time actually playing the game. This time he's playing his Brat Pack deck.

My deck works reasonably, even though a Dead End stops me from solving Compromised Mission, and I have to run around cloaked for a while to avoid his Klingon hordes. On the fourth turn, I tent for the Phoenix, play it, solve Covert Installation (bringing me to 55), move to Compromised Mission, overcome his Dead End, and suddenly I'm on 100. John seems somewhat surprised.

Score: 2 (+100)
Cumulative: 2 (+100)
 

Round Two vs. Rethea Deetlefs
Four full wins (three 100-0) in round one mean I end up playing Rethea at table two. She unveils pretty much the same deck she played last week - Admiral Riker downloads starship enterprise... you know the drill. Oh, for a Containment Field! She also has a Tox Uthat\Supernova for spaceline unbalancing.

I'm quite relaxed after the last game, and I start getting lazy. She hits my Dead End and after that I just switch off. Turns two to five I spend Kivasing and making lots of free reports, knowing full well that I should probably be playing a ship and attempting my missions. When I finally get around to it, I hit Cytherians. Hmmm.... I discard my Space-Time Portal to return my D'Deridex Advanced plus ten or so personnel to my hand. Luckily she doesn't seem to have scorched hand in her deck.

Meanwhile, she's scanning her missions. Cheese? No problem - I QtR download Panel Overload, but she doesn't have any computer skill personnel on board her ship. No matter, I'll just download... no Scanner Interference in the deck. That must have been one of the cards I threw out. Interestingly enough, I was also toying with Access Denied last night, but threw it out in favour of one or two more dilemmas. I didn't see her playing a single computer skill personnel all game, so the Access Denied could have won it for me right then.

She scans two missions and megacrews her way through my Unscientific Method\Scientific Method combos with Senior Staff Meetings to help her out. This is also the point at which her Horga'hn appears and things are looking pretty desperate for me. When my next turn finally rolls around, I have four mission specialists, Telak and a Soong-Type neuter MEDICAL in play. Somehow I get through the remaining dilemmas under Compromised Mission and Covert Installation, bringing the score to 95-60 in my favour. On my next turn, I know I'll be able to tent for the Phoenix for the win.

Unfortunately, on her next turn, she scans and solves her third mission for 55 points, making the score 100-95 to her.

Score: 0 (-5)
Cumulative: 2 (+95)
 

Round Three vs. Jarred Cramer
I didn't see too much of Jarred's deck - it had a couple of neutral zone missions, but only one PNZ, so that wasn't a threat, and otherwise it didn't seem to have any free reports. My deck made short work of this one - four turns, 100-0.

Score: 2 (+100)
Cumulative: 4 (+195)
 

Round Four vs. Warren Cramer
Rethea only got a modified win in her previous game, so I'm still in with a chance to win the tournament if I beat Warren and Rethea loses to her opponent. Then again, there are three other players who're also on 4 victory points.

Warren lays down a rather weird spaceline including Tarchannen Study and Investigate Legend. I have no idea what on earth he's planning on doing. I win the flip and go first, only to lose my crew to his Aphasia Device\Tarellian Plague Ship combo - he caught me with this one the last time we played as well. I Regenerate and spend the next few turns putting my crew back together. Around turn six I've solved the now dilemma-less Compromised Mission for fifty.

In the mean time, Warren is merrily reporting and drawing lots of Feds. He doesn't seem to be doing much else - until he attempts Investigate Legend, hits his own Q (how on earth did I miss the self-seed?) and removes all my dilemmas. He solves the mission for 55, gets his Ressikan Flute, but only has three music personnel, bringing him to 70. On the next turn, I tent and play the Phoenix, then solve Covert Installation to win, 100-70.

If he had had just one more turn, he could have solved his Repair Mission where he had encountered my Dead End earlier. Tense stuff.

Score: 2 (+30)
Cumulative: 6 (+225)
 

Round Five vs. Craig Gainsborough-Waring
Craig did just what I needed him to do, beating Rethea 100-0. This meant I was in first, so everything was right with the world ;-). What was a bit more of a surprise, though, was to find that Craig was in second, also on six points, in only his second tournament.

He was playing with a pretty standard Fed AMS-ENGINEER setup that I had loaned him. The only thing that wasn't standard was the number of dilemmas he had - twenty-six in all. He won the toss and got to go first.

Craig is a bit slow in starting, but soon he's attempting missions. Fortunately, my dilemmas lock him out at three missions. He manages to overcome my Chula: The Chandra-Alien Parasites-Armus Sticky Situation combo at his Cargo Rendezvous, but lacks the skills to solve the missions (lack of physics in a Fed-ENG deck? How on earth did I do that?).

My deck gets itself rolling pretty smoothly as well, so I lose concentration. Suddenly, I find myself lacking a geology to pass Seismic Quake at Covert Installation, lacking a Navigation to solve Expose Covert Supply, Dead Ended at Compromised Mission and lacking a second leadership to solve my HQ: Secure Homeworld at Cloaked Mission. And then he's solved three missions, won the game, and with it the tournament.

Huh?

Score: 0 (-60)
Cumulative: 6 (+165)
 

Here are the final standings:

1. Craig Gainsborough-Waring    8 (+235)
2. Rethea Deetlefs              7 (+130)
3. Warren Cramer                6 (+175)
4. Fritz Meissner               6 (+165) mutter, mutter...fourth. Grrr.
5. Terry Nicole                 4 (- 75)
6. Jared Cramer                 4 (-120)
7. John van Rensburg            3 (- 10)
8. Jamie Francis                0 (-500)

Despite losing to me, Warren managed to sneak past me to come in third, and Rethea's only loss was to Craig, while Craig lost to Warren. All of which meant that I placed fourth - a testimony to the rising standards of ST:CCG here in Cape Town. Of course, from here on we start playing hard. It's time to whip out the old timing rules ;-).

I have no idea what happened to my deck. The only difference between this one and the one I used in our last tournament is that I had a few more referee icon cards in the draw deck. Last time, I didn't lose a game - this time I lost two. Grr.

Two week's time, I say.

Fritz Meissner
meissn@mweb.co.za