Sunday heralded my first attempt at running a tournament. I hadn't really had time to advertise it properly, so I think we were lucky for seven others to turn up, myself making it eight. I also didn't have time to put together a new deck, so I went with exactly the same one as I played two weeks ago. I wasn't too worried about this, as there weren't any funny gimmicks that wouldn't work out if people knew what I was doing.

My deck was straight Fed\Vidiian, with free reports from Home Away from Home and The Vidiian Sodality (I wasn't running DQSS, as I didn't get enough duplicates from my one box). For card draws I threw in a couple of Handshakes and Kivas Fajo's. I planned on solving Cure Deadly Virus and Return Life-form for 50 each with AMS points, with a single Senior Staff Meeting in the Tent for the space mission, and Ajur for CDV. The rest of my missions were all worth 40 points or more (apart from Liberation, which was just in there to seed Caretaker's Array) so that I wouldn't be giving my opponents any clear signals as to which missions I was attempting. Other than that, the deck was pretty straight forward - I had 3 self-seeds for CDV, including a Horga'hn, so my dilemmas were pretty thin, but I only planned on slowing them down with six two-dilemma combos.

Around an hour later than the advertised 10 AM start, we decided to stop waiting and just begin (a wise decision, as only one other person turned up, and he decided to play in a MtG tournament, the fool).
 

Round One - Rethea Deetlefs (Fed AQ AMS)
I had problems drawing cards all game, as I had neglected a way of recovering discarded cards, so I could only use the first function of Handshake safely. Rethea must have had a lot of fluff in her deck, because every time I offered her the choice between allowing me to draw or discarding, she chose to discard three. Without cards in my hand, I struggled to find the necessary ENGINEERs to get past her FLI/Scow combos, and she took an early 65 point lead.

In my haste to get some points on the board, I made the mistake of attempting Return Life-form with Janeway in the crew, but without a second Computer Skill, so I only got 40 points for the mission, meaning I was forced to solve a third mission after completing CDV to put me on 85 (I lost 5 points to some dilemma). I went after Liberation and got stuck with an 11 card encounter from a Q-Flash. I went through her entire Q-Continuum side-deck, but I wasn't hurt too badly. The biggest problem was a Hide & Seek that stopped Neelix, Paris, Janeway and two or three other highly skilled personnel, but fortunately, with my Horga'hn now in play, I took my second turn and solved Liberation to win 115-65 with one minute remaining.

Score   :          2 (+35)
Cumulative:     2 (+35)
 

Round Two - Warren Cramer (Romulan PNZ)
Warren's deck included four PNZs, Covert Installation and Romulus, for his Headquarters. Although I didn't have any way of playing in the Alpha quadrant, I wasn't worried because I won against a PNZ deck two weeks ago with exactly the same deck. I was banking on my Spatial Rift + Implication combos working against his Romulans.

During the seed phase, I suspected that he might be planning on doing some self-seeding (the deck I played against last time used Pla-net to get rid of my dilemmas), so I passed until he had seeded what looked like a sufficiently dangerous number of dilemmas under CDV and Return Life-form, and then seeded every other card I could possibly seed before placing my own dilemmas at his missions. As it turned out, he wasn't planning on anything so cheesy, but I would have been in trouble had he only had to face one dilemma at each of his PNZs.

After playing a few free cards on his first and second turns (he had first go), he attempted the PNZ closest to Romulus and lost ten points and a ship full of personnel to an Edo Probe-Borg Ship combo. Next, he tried another PNZ and lost two personnel to Spatial Rift, before attempting Covert Installation (!) where he was locked out by my Chula: the Chandra-Friendly Fire combo. At this point, he didn't manage much more, because he didn't seem to have any Leadership personnel left. Even after Friendly Fire counted down, with the dilemmas cleared out at both Covert Installation and one of his PNZs, he couldn't solve anything.

By this point, even though Ajur took out all three of my self-seeds at Cure Deadly Virus, it also took out his Scientific Method, leaving only Hazardous Duty and Unscientific Method, which didn't bother me too much. I solved the mission for 50, putting me at 45 after Hazardous Duty, and then Return Life-form for a further 50, giving me 95 (grrr..). After waiting a turn or two to build up, I attempted Prevent Annihilation, and scored 5 points off his Tarellian Plague Ship combo dilemma.

Score:             2 (+100)
Cumulative:     4 (+135)
 

Round Three - Craig Gainsborough-Waring (DQ, Fed-Kazon)
Craig and I duplicated Liberation, but he got it down first, meaning that my USS Equinox was more than 20 span away from my other missions. We also duplicated the Caretaker's Array and both seeded the Equinox, but while I had my Vidiians, he had a Kazon OP next to Liberation. Interestingly enough, his missions constituted five space, one planet, but I only had one space and one planet dilemma in the deck, so this didn't worry me.

A first turn Kazon warship had me worried, and had he attacked me then and there, it would have been pretty much game-over, as my deck slows greatly without the free plays to Home Away from Home. Fortunately, he left it (I'm not sure why, possibly staffing), and on my first turn I grabbed Rudolph Ransom from my Tent to pump the Equinox up to 11 range, sufficient to run away from the Warship. He didn't bother pursuing me, but instead concentrated on mission solving, which, IMO, was a mistake. After all, why go to the effort of getting the Warship out if he wasn't going to use it? My super-skilled bridge crew and their beautiful Vidiian friends made short work of his dilemmas, with some help from Ajur (another good looker) who took out all (every single one!) of his dilemmas at Cure Deadly Virus. Unluckily for him, Balancing Act was one of my self-seeds, which remained, so he was down 50 as well. That'll learn him ;-).

I can't remember much else of this game, except that I didn't have much trouble scoring 100 points according to the two-mission plan to win. Sadly, this is probably the last time I'll play Craig, as he is immigrating to Auckland, New Zealand on the 27th of August, following the footsteps of Matthew Sliedrecht, another South African ST player who left for Auckland a couple of years back. Hopefully they'll be able to get ST there going, as there doesn't appear to be much by the way of tournaments out that way. Of course, if I'm wrong, please, email me, and give me details that I can send to him.

Score:             2 (+100)
Cumulative:     6 (+235)
 

Round Four - John van Rensburg
Fellow TD John is doing well for himself this tournament, probably as a result of not having to worry about making rulings on other games while playing. Two full wins and a timed win put him in second place, followed closely by Warren who won his previous game on the first turn, due to some sloppy seeding by his opponent (I know this because Craig and I were at the table next to him). John can still win, but by this stage everyone else is out of range of first (although Warren could end in second if John loses heavily).

As it happens, I didn't see much of John's deck this game. At the sight of Hunt for DNA (his only planet mission - that's right - another unbalanced spaceline), I start passing in the dilemma phase, just to see how he reacts. He looks *very* nervous, and starts asking me why exactly I was passing. I think he though I was planning on bypassing or something, but he carries on seeding pretty normally.

On my second turn I catch him with Balancing Act, and it seems as if he lost his will to compete from there onwards. His dilemmas give a little trouble, but nothing I can't handle by Tenting for the right personnel, and after using SSM at Return Life-form, it's game over - at 55 points I cruise past his Dead End, and win 100 to -50.

Score:          2 (+100)
Cumulative:     8 (+335)

The final standings:

Fritz Meissner	8 (+335)
Warren Cramer	5 (+95)
John van Rensburg	5 (+ 69)
Rethea Deetlefs	3 (- 2)
Richard Slater	2 (- 39)
Craig Waring	2 (- 50) - left after 3rd round
Jarred Cramer	2 (-108)
Terri Nicole	2 (-300)

Fritz Meissner
meissn@mweb.co.za