The challenge: what is the most brilliant/stupid move you or your opponent ever made in a game of ST:CCG?

It was the OTSD Prerelease. First round, yeah. Of course. Tournament
luck struck again and I was paired with no one else than our favorite
Betazoid Lwaxy. I got off to a good start (having realized right away
that the three-way treaty was a bad idea if you had a solid two-color
deck) and at one point found my Vor'Cha across her midsize Federation
ship full of people. I had no Feds aboard so I fired a shot. Her ship
was damaged, mine not. I drew and ended my turn.

Now Lwax, faced with her nice and safe outpost one location to the left,
took a long look at the board, reported a personnel, moved the ship
RIGHT (to a space location, too) and ended her turn. I looked her in the
eyes and said "Sure ?". She nodded. I said "Was that REALLY what you
wanted to do ?". She nodded again. So I reported something, flew over
and blasted her ship to kingdom come. She picked up the cards and
discarded them, giving no sign of surprise.

The rest of the game was a matter of formality and after the game I
asked "Did you see that you were in range of your Outpost ?". To which
she replied "Yes, but I wanted to go THAT direction".

And there I thought *I* should have been the one not quite awake, having
returned from the states just the day before and basically not seen
sleep for 60 hours...

(Of course the same tourney also had an opponent cursing my luck of
having a Red Alert out and never touching his Spacedoor... Prereleases
;-) )

Wes

PS: "Did you know you flew in the wrong direction" is still a great way
to get an ARGH out of Lwax ;-)

 Well, at the Betazed Rebellion, I was playing a Non-Aligned smackdown deck using Jem'Hadar Warship, Lam, and some AQ Jemmies, along with Empok Nor and a ton of NAs.  So after getting Empok, I downloaded a bunch of weapons and went hunting.  One particular opponent of mine was Skullduggery.  I was able to catch up to his Bird of Prey, and beamed over everyone except Nick Locarno, who stayed to use the Invasive Transporters.  I succeeded in killing his entire (and quite large) crew of Klingons on the ship.  So I was stopped and my turn ended.  Skull was getting nervous with a hoard of NAs on his ship each with STRENGTH +38. Finally, he made a decisive move right before he ended his turn and cloaked the Bird of Prey with my people on it.  Unfortunately for me, Rom had advised me the night before to remove the Tachyon Detection Grids and LaForge Manuveuers from the deck, since he thought they weren't needed (Kor was the one who suggested them).  And my only Commandeer Ship was on the table, preventing Skull from STPing the ship back to his hand.  So I sat there, most of my people on a cloaked Bird of Prey, unable to do anything.  Needless to say, Skull won the game.

-Brak

I know it's foolish to only have 1 SECURITY during mission attempts.  So in
a game last Saturday, I checked my crew prior to a mission attempt, and saw
I only had 1 SECURITY on hand.  My ship is already at Empok Nor, so I report
Subcommander Tal there and download his Classic Disruptor, giving me a
comfortable 3 SECURITY.

Then...I forget to bring Tal and his toy on my ship, fly out, and SSM a
mission.  Dilemma discarded is a Komar Possession.  Great!  Next
dilemma...Kazon Bomb.  And I have a total of...1 SECURITY.

Oops.

After kicking myself a few dozen times for not picking up Tal, I discard my
people, including a D'Vano and Centurion that I REALLY wanted to keep.

The Moral of The Story: SECURITY is good.  Actually picking UP your SECURITY
is even better.

-Charles Schwartz
 

In the first round of a tournament I played last
Saturday, my opponent was playing Borg. He wins the
toss and goes first. After a few downloads and a card
play, he discovers a big problem - he stocks NOTHING
to get himself out of the Delta Quadrant. I win 100-0
next turn.

 -Nash Bridges

In a local tourney I attempted and cleared two of my opponent's 35 point
missions, each time forgetting that he had fair play on the table. Obviously
he then easily completed them.
 -Steve Upton

I was playing against one of my favorite opponents, Lord Xyron, when I
stopped temporarily form solving my own missions because of a lack of
security. So I wend over to his part of the spaceline and tried to pick up
one of his easy missions. I easily passed the dilemma combo, but he
revealed Fair Play. So he got the mission easily on the next turn. Still
stalled a couple of turns later and things were looking gloomy, he was
close to a win, I attempted another of his missions (forgetting the Fair
Play) and went through all the dilemmas and he pointed out the Fair Play.
The next turn he swooped in for the win!

--AaJ

A long time ago, I was playing my friend who had a Klingon Armada deck.  Mine was a Federation speed deck.  For much of the game, I was able to hold him off with a Q-Net.  I needed to solve two more missions to win.

He eventually drew Kevin, killed my Q-Net, and onward came the armada.  It had almost reached my outpost, and the Enterprise was not far beyond.  I gambled that I'd solve two more missions that turn, thereby winning, before he had another turn to bring in the Armada.  I hit a wall dilemma that I couldn't pass.  I thought I was toast.  After all, him being Klingon and me being Federation, he could whoop me in both ship and personnel battle.

Then, in desperation, I used Troi (FC) to "unstop" the Away Team.  The Enterprise, which still had all of its RANGE, flew straight toward the armada, to dock at my outpost for a 16-SHIELD bonus.

He damaged the outpost.  I hurriedly reported The Traveler, who was in my hand from using him earlier.  I suddenly realized I had lost the only Youth in my crew, making the Traveler ineffective.  I ran for it, wishing I had drawn my Plasmadyne Relay earlier.

That turn, after I flew away from the Outpost, I drew Jake and Nog.

The armada gave chase.  I suddenly realized that there was a 4-span mission coming up on the spaceline that would allow his armada to catch up to the faster Enterprise.  I wished even more for the Plasmadyne Relay.  But then I reported Jake and Nog.  I flew right past the Armada to my outpost, picked up Jake and Nog, and Traveler'd to the other end of the spaceline.   He knew he couldn't catch up for a while, so he gave up on that.  Then he made his critical mistake: He let loose his ships' fire one more time, destroying my Outpost.

I immediately Palor Toffed the Outpost, built it at the mission where the Enterprise was, and reported The Traveler with glee.  (I guess neither of us noticed that I had forfeited my card play that turn by building the Outpost, or maybe there was one more turn in here than I remember.)  I attempted the mission I was now at, solved it, reported a personnel who could finally overcome my wall dilemma of long ago, and Traveler'd across the spaceline (past the armada once again).  I dropped down onto the planet -- his armada still menacingly close -- and attempted the mission.  Wall dilemma gone, mission solved.  I win.

He was pretty upset, although he's a good sport and didn't get angry.  He made sure he had more mission-solving capability the next game.

- Drazuv

I played a tournament game against a Black Hole deck
using 8 of the universal Space locations, a planet
mission and a Hunt for DNA, which we duped. After using
Ajur to get the dilemmas and self seeds @ DNA, I
picked up my opponent's Blade of Tkon seeded there.
The Black Hole was moving next turn, so I placed his
planet location that included his Romulan outpost and
all his personnel in play to the Hole's location. I
don't think he meant for that to happen...

Oh, I forgot a very applicable one...

My Fed Diplomacy megacrew is attempting Diplomacy
Mission. I hit the Sheliak, then Q. After 5 agonizing
minutes, my opponent rearranges the spaceline so that
my location is @ the end of the spaceline, with the
Sheliak right next door for the kill. My ship has used
all but 4 of it's range, and the Sheliak's on a
mission with a 5 span, so he's confident that I'll be
squashed. But what he failed to realize is that I had
a Where No One Has Gone Before on the table. I solved
the mission, flew to the other side of the spaceline
(mission had a 3 span) and ended up winning the game
soon afterward!

// Editor's note…maybe neither of them realized that Q stops
// him, or he had FC Troi?

 -Nash Bridges

It was the final round of the provincials in Alberta. I knew my opponent (Olav Rokne's) deck very well and he knew mine too.  He was playing destroy radioactive garbage scows, so if you had any hope you had to go for space missions. I was playing
"Hell Bent for Leather v1.71" and the point of the deck was to get a lot of people out fast, then go attempting missions. The deck was a big hit obviously since I had made it to the final confrontation, but very stupidly I got a semi decent hand, got 15 or so people out and went to the next door mission to attempt. I didn't realize till too late what I was doing. I beamed a lot of people down and hit a radioactive scow combo, and that was the end of the game...costing me my bye to the world championships

 -Gazi

// Editor's Note: Olav points out that he already had 70 points, a Horga'hn,
and Mission Debreifing...but good story anyway ;-)

It was the state championships and my opponent had 90 points.  He got to a space mission, played Senior Staff Meeting…and discarded his own Barclay's!  Not to be outdone, I promptly forgot to play a Klingon Death Yell when one of my Klingons died, stalling myself at 95 points and forcing me to solve another mission for the win.

 -Spock

Well, this happened a couple of months ago, before Voyager was out.

I was playing in a tournament using my Ferengi/DS9 deck. I was playing
against a Ferengi/Empok deck. We seeded 2 of the same missions.

I started off well. I put Morn, Ferengi Credit Exchange and dabo at Quark's
Bar. He goes over to Empok with some people and commandeers it. We both get
our people ready and we go off attempting missions. With one minute left, I
was at 92 and he was at 90. He got his points only from some missions while
I got mine from both missions and dabo. It's now my turn. He just has to wait
a turn for my friendly fire to countdown once more on one of his missions
and he would win. I didn't have enough time to do a mission so I had to think
up something fast. So I look at what I have out. I look at Quarks bar with
the dabo and the credit exchange. My people were in their ship and had some
latinum with them so I got them over to the bar, then placed out of play 2 latinum
to get 4 points. I'm at 96. I put 2 cards up for dabo, probe, successful!
Thus winning me the game.

<BEEP><BEEP>

The timer goes off. I finished just in time to win! My opponent is in shock
cuz I won thanks to the credit exchange. Simply brilliant!

 -Gold Pressed Quark

I just started playing STCCG in the last year. My memorable moment
comes from one of my first STCCG games. After 2.5 hours of play (we really
didn't know about card drawing engines except Traveler: Transcendence, which
I'm still lacking a copy of, and a Kivas or two thrown in; nor did we use any
free reporting), I was stalled out late in the game. We both had big draw
decks and were playing pretty slow. I found myself trailing in points and my
draw deck had disappeared. A handful of personnel remained at my outpost, all
lacking necessary skills to overcome any remaining dilemmas and mission
requirements, and no help was to be found in my hand. I had no other ways to
score points (ie Phoenix) nor ways to cause my opponent to lose points (ie
The Higher the Fewer). Feeling a bit bored (not to mention desperate), I
decided to play an Anti-Time Anomaly to try to hang in for a timed loss. My
opponent started smiling with glee and could hardly contain himself. A
couple of turns later, I found out why: earlier in the game, he had earned
the Fajo artifact Persistence of Memory and was eager to play his newly
acquired card. We both reported at least 30 personnel each from our discard
pile. That was just the boost I needed as on my next turn, my mega away team
cruised through my remaining dilemmas and missions for my first STCCG win.

 -Ed Bartholomew aka Jened

I've been playing an Oooby-Dooby deck a lot recently. Now it's a
good deck, because even without getting last seed, I'm certain that I can
win because I can SSM past the last seed.

Playing Jason Drake in the finals of the Vancouver Opens, I had the
perfect seed-- I had last seeds under all my missions, I was set up for the
quick win and I had the perfect opening hand. I dropped my crew with a ship
to the array, DQSSed and played two revolving doors, leaving only an SSM in
hand.  I set off all my pre game downloads and went to the mission I had
rascals/ooby-dooby seeded (each of the other missions had only ooby-dooby
seeded under them)

At any rate, while I was thinking "wow! I don't even need this SSM"
I said aloud "I'll play SSM  and attempt this mission." Now as I said this,
another part of me screamed "NO YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE LASTSEED!" but it was too late, Jason flipped over the rascals which was discarded and I encountered
the ooby dooby which stopped all but one of my people, leading to the
annihilation of my crew at the hands of my opponent's next seed card :-(
        Over the next 7 turns (I would have won in 3) I sat helplessly as
Jason Drake took the game.

 -Olav Rokne aka The Pendari Champion

It was the 2001 Texas State Championship, and I was playing last year's
Runner-up. Well, it was a tense game all through it all until the tournament
director informed us it was 5 minutes until the round ended so we both
stepped it up since the score was still 0-0 and with only a minute left he
drew and played an Arbiter of Succession, which gave him a 10 point lead. Time
was called soon after and I was kicking myself for not discarding my Q-the
Ref to get Intermix Ratio. Well, the tournament director was about to come
and ask for our score when I released that he had his own Intermix Ration out
and needless to say he was kicking himself now.

 -Spencer Peeler

Well, everyone on Kedanya's heard this story by now,
so I might as well share it with everyone online. :-p

I was playing Borg Population 9 Billion (this is
pre-Voyager, so none of those pesky DQ decks).  Going
into the fourth round I was I believe 4 (+91), which
was good enough for third place, only 7 differential
back from 2nd.  Winning gets second place; losing
gets...well...something low.

Anyway, I end up playing Kor, who by all accounts is
quite a good player.  My hand is horrible, having
drawn the only Borg Cube and Locutus, and one of two
Queens.  But of course, no Awakens...and I can't
Masaka because then Locutus ends up on the bottom of
my deck.  So I go through play/draw for a couple
turns until it's safe to Masaka, and grab a couple
Awakens.  Well, now I'm all set, and in the Alpha
Quadrant ahead of Kor, who's also playing Borg, but
with a Service twist.  He hits a Cytherians and
doesn't STP back to hand for a couple turns, giving me
time.  I complete SFC, placing all his human drones
OOP, and move on to Secret Salvage.  Clear the
dilemmas there, probe: Awaken, good probe.  I start to
get up...and he points out I forgot to flip P9B.
Well, there goes the 60 points I wanted from Salvage
Starship...instead I'm stuck at 70 points and having
dropped Establish Gateways for Assimilate Planets with
no 35+ point planets in play save Bajor and Cardassia,
I'm stuck.  I manage to play a Resistance is Futile,
netting me 10 points, and a Brog Servo/Add
Distinctiveness nets me another 2 points, but I'm
essentially locked out.  End up losing 100-82, instead
of winning 100-25, and drop to fifth for the
tournament.

 -Dogbert

Recently at a Voyager warp speed sealed tourney, I was half way through the tourney at my third game, and I was in first place so far.  I was going to win next turn most likely, so I had to finish my planet mission and the game would be mine.  I beamed down everyone only to find spatial rift.  My Rudy disappeared with someone else, and we didn't know it stopped me, so I had the needed skills.  Next up, I hit (and this was the last dilemma) Subspace Fracture.  Well let's see, I knew I had leadership somewhere, oh, it's in my discard pile! I didn't read the whole thing and thought I was stopped.  Well, ignorance is bliss, and well, I unfortunately found out everyone died. my hopes of first place died there.  oh well......

(by the way, he won the game....., and I think the tournament too.)

-Corbin Q

I've been playing Trek seriously for nearly a year now, I'm even a registered TD.  Somehow I didn't know one crucial rule though: you cannot solve missions where you have mis-seeded.

// Editor's note: technically, you cannot solve the mission *if you reveal your own
// misseed*

So without this knowledge, I entered into a Starter Deck II sealed-deck
tournament.  After having won the first match I went into round 2 against a formidable opponent, who was playing all space missions.  Being sealed deck, I only had 6 space dilemmas and 5 planet dilemmas, so I seeded cosmic string fragment under
Investigate Anomaly,  thinking I would solve that for 5 points and then steal the mission with my luckily-pulled Julian Bashir.  Not wanting to be beaten to the mission, I placed Malfunction Door under the mission as a bluff.  I made it to IA first, and after easily getting through Cosmic String fragment and discarding Malfunctioning Door, I showed my opponent the exobiology and strength greater than 35.  He smirked at me and told me, "You can't solve that mission, you mis-seeded."  After a bit of swearing and kicking myself, my opponent went on to complete the mission which I had so kindly cleared dilemmas from, to win the game by 30 points.

Psy-Jedi

Ok the stupidest move I made was I was at Oregon States. I was playing my
4th game and the person I was playing was from Coos Bay, OR and was
playing Borg. I was playing my new Empok Nor/Federation Engineer Deck, I had
lost all of my other rounds already but oh well.   Well, I had Berry Waddle
on Promenade Shops and Admiral Hayes on Guest Quarters.  Well, I tried to do
them both on one turn, I knew I could and I had done it before in previous
games.  I started it, I said what I was going to do and the guy I was said
that I could not do that. Well, I said yes I can.  Well, I found out he was
a TD and well, I though "he is a TD so he knows the rules better then me"
well I was wrong, I should have asked DS or one of the other people in the
room. Well, it ended up making me loose the rest of the games that day
(except my bye).  I know that if I could have done it I would have the cards
that would have gotten me the wins I needed.

 -Daniel Vore

I won a timed win when somebody kept Discarding my Mission Debriefing so on my
last turn I solved almost all my missions and got the timed win, coming from a 0-80 deficit. :)

 -Ens Red Shirt

And the winner..
I don't think there's any way to beat this one; congrats, Steve!  Send me a wantlist of Enhanced Premiere premiums and I'll try to match them.

OK, I've got a stupid move that's going to be tough to beat.

It was on the second day of a Seattle two-day tournament.  The first day was
sealed deck, and I turned in only a lackluster performance.  So, for the
second day (which was Constructed) I brought the Q-Bypass deck I had built
in case I made it to day two of Worlds (which I didn't).  In any case, this
was right after Rules of Acquisition released, and I could get fourteen
personnel into play in three turns, so I thought I was all set to blow
everyone out of the water.

So, I win the first game 100-0, lose a squeaker to James Monsebroten 100-95,
and then get my butt kicked 100-0 by Todd Soper.  So, with any chances of
winning the tournament gone, I set about to win the last game and at least
end up with a positive differential.  My opponent, Nate, who was also only
at 2 victory points, only had about 3 personnel in play when I solved one
mission for 50 points (not one of the missions I seeded a Q at, since he
infiltrated me and Dialed Martok to murder one of my mission requirements).
Anyway, he notices I have a bunch of self-seeds, so he Devidian Doors Brunt
into play and downloads a Writ.  No prob, I think.  There's another nearby
mission that will get me to 100, so I'll just trip my Q without passing it,
then blast through the dilemmas with my 14 personnel and win, since I don't
think Nate was anywhere near passing my dilemmas.

Small problem: he outseeded my Q with one dilemma.  OK, I think to myself.
Still no problem.  I built this deck to pass dilemmas in case of Hide and
Seek, so one shouldn't be a problem.  Ready to end the game quickly, I look
through my stack of personnel, choosing personnel that can cover the
dilemmas I suspect.  One or two of each classification, a couple of needed
skills.  Now, remember, there's a Writ already in play.  So, without
counting up the attributes of my personnel, I throw them all at Espionage
Mission.

And yep, you guessed it, I breezed by his dilemma and hit my own Q with
about 62 INTEGRITY, bringing a screeching halt to a promising 100-0 victory
and turning it into an ugly 100-0 loss.

So there you have it, folks: I have Q-Bypassed with a Writ already on the
table. :-)

I'd like to see something dumber than that. :-)

-Steve Boyles