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Playing Against the Fish Bowl by Jeff Thomas So you have a new deck? We all do at some time or another. Getting ready to play in a tourney this weekend? Happens to all of us. But, if you have nobody around to play, how do you know if your deck is effective? Simple, play against the fish bowl! Play against what? For those of you that are not familiar with this term, "playing against the fish bowl" is when you simply play against yourself. Now, this doesn’t mean you play two decks. Here are some suggestions. Test the Speed This part is fairly simple. Set up your seed cards and draw deck, and just run through drawing cards. This will help you determine how fast your deck actually is. You can determine the following: How many turns before you can solve a mission? How many turns before your fleet is ready? Do you have an opening strategy that gets going fast enough? Remember that speed is critical to a competitive deck! Either you have to slow your opponent down long enough to have your cards ready, or be quick enough to outpace him/her. Test Dilemmas Seed your own dilemmas under your own missions, and then attempt them! Can you breeze through them? If so, your opponent probably can as well. After you have some dilemmas that are fairly nasty, and your crew can bypass them (I know, sounds counter-productive, but you really need a good balance between both.), you are ready to move onto the next dilemma testing phase. Chances are that you are playing with some seed cards other than dilemmas. (Maybe some hidden agendas, and so forth.) Now, set up some of the nastiest dilemma combos that you think you will face in your area. (Assume that your opponent will be seeding one outpost, so you should have a total of 29 dilemmas.) This can have benefits in two areas. It will again test your crew against some of the nastiest dilemma combos you can come up with. And, it may just provide you with a better dilemma combo than before. Evaluate the Cards Let’s face it, we all know that the size of our deck can be a hindrance. As you go along, watch to see which cards you don’t use very much, or at all. Maybe you find you don’t need as many personnel, or equipment. Maybe some of your missions take longer for you to be prepared for. You will eventually find that you can "cut out some of the fat" in your deck, or replace some cards with more useful ones. Remove the cards that you find you don’t use. If you always have an extra ship in your hand, why keep it? How about that personnel that you never seem to use any of his skills? Get rid of him! Remember that playing against the fishbowl may not give you the real feel for playing against an opponent, but it will help you get a feel for how to play your deck properly. How a deck works in theory and how it actually works can be learned before taking it into a match. And, if a fishbowl is not available, feel free to make a substitute, such as a hamster cage. ;-) Good luck in your upcoming matches. Jeff "Eleventeen of Alot" Thomas Ambassador - Tau Alpha C