When we played in Littlehampton, it was the only time I ever beat Pie in OTSD, and might in fact be the only time I ever beat him in a tournament ever. I did drop a Governor Worf, K'chiQ and a IKC K'Tang on him in the first turn back then with a couple of Rogue Borg to boot, so I think he can be let off with that. Let's see if I still had the touch/luck... :)
The Draft:
The draft itself was always my favourite part of the whole OTSD tournament thing. Right when I first started out as a CCG'er, I was drafting Magic and those early learned skills from back in '96 & '97 went on to be of great use to me in the OTSD tournaments of Star Trek 1st Ed. I knew I was a fairly average constructed player with pretence to probably being better than I really was, but in OTSD I could really hold my own. Consequently I enjoyed it immensely. This is how card games should be played, dammit! :P
When drafting my first pack, there were 2 potential cards that I could have drafted first pick; Data and a Tarellian Plague Ship. Data isn't a bomb, but he's an awesome personnel in OTSD draft and with a Ro Laren that turned up a couple of boosters later, I was well on my way to playing Fed. I figured I'd get other dilemmas of similar quality and took the Data. Unfortunately the TPS was about the best dilemma I saw all day. I saw very few other than the awful Archer and Anaphasic Organism. Even in booster draft I can nearly always find a personnel that is worth picking over those. I suppose the other guys were drafting dilemmas very heavily or there were not many going around. Whichever way it was, I saw a lot of good personnel in the first booster that made my final deck. Cards such as Dr Reyga & Dr Selar were really good with nice classifications and useful skills or stats. I then started into Fed-Klingon when I saw a Toq and Ba'el (potential skills for unique Klink missions), but the Klingon personnel dried up after that. I was drafting very few if any dilemmas at this point, though I did manage to grab a 35 Evaluate Terraforming mission. I wanted to aim for a 3 mission strategy, as opposed to relying on the universal OTSD missions. So a good bonus point and a couple of 30 point missions and I could start honing my skills and thinking broader strategies.
In my second booster I found a Tox Uthat in the rare slot and I must admit I was unsure whether or not to pick it. I've picked them before and never seen light of a Supernova, so I passed it. Not only that, in draft the first few picks are were you can get a lot of gains and I think I took a mission instead. Unfortunately on the 3rd and 4th boosters 2 Supernovas turned up which I ended up having to hate draft. So that one non-pick ended up wasting 2 others for me - d'oh! I was still not managing to draft much in the way of dilemmas, but I knew that in the past I'd nearly always drafted lots of them in the AU pack so I left it to hope :)
As the second pack progressed, I plucked a Romulan outpost after seeing the quality of Rommies being passed from my right. The Galathon and Taul that followed an Investigate Rogue Comet sealed Rommies as my second affiliation. With a Sarthong Plunder and Ocett that I grabbed in the 3rd pack I was set up. It's funny, but I could have sworn Data had Archaeology when I went to build my deck and realised I'd inadvertently chosen Investigate Rogue Comet on that basis. Oops! I got a bit lucky there :)
I wasn't picking much in the way of bombs or tricks (no Loss of Orbital Stability, Rogue Borg or Q-Nets) and I was desperately low on Diplomacy (read: none). I did thankfully pick up a scan and full planet scan and the personnel quality was still good. In my 2nd or 3rd pack after picking Evaluate Terraforming I got a godsend in Beverly Crusher. Even in constructed a personnel who can solve a mission on their own is king, so in booster draft that's even more the case. I was having to draft a few Holo personnel (no holo projectors though) so I picked up a USS Yamato late on in the 3rd or 4th pack. Decent range, Holodeck, but not universal. It would serve as decent backup for the Darmok if I ever drew the thing :)
It's funny, but I was looking at Subspace Warp Bubble at one point and thinking "Yeah this is really good. But there's a reason in OTSD why it's jank, and I just can't remember what that is..." I didn't pick it on that basis, and let the mystery stay with me. Read Ian's report and I think you'll find I wasn't the only one who'd forgotten to play this game!
The AU packs were predictably crap, but I did grab a few of the janky dilemmas to fill up my deck a bit. Plus I also managed to grab a Montgomery Scott and Richard Castillo which would fit my deck nicely.
In the end my deck was a basic mission solver with a great selection of personnel, but with no tricks and no Diplomacy. I did try and keep an eye out for it, but alas. I didn't see a Fed outpost in drafting and only had a Romulan one. With my missions I only had one Rom icon, so I had to stick in an Establish Relations to give me options to seed a Husnock outpost. I did toy with sticking a Qualor II Rendezvous in but the whole stasis thing I felt too risky if I was in a desperate need for a mission and Quash Conspiracy just seemed daft with no ship-to-ship beaming at that location. It was kinda shite having to seed a mission you can't solve (without Relfection Therapy that is), but that's the way it goes sometimes. Back in the day I would have got creamed with this deck, and surely I would have drafted a lot tighter. But maybe, just maybe, I might actually win a game today as we were all very rusty. I only had 15 dilemmas in my deck, but then dilemma quality never really were a big part of draft with all the mission stealing, bluffing and mis-seeding that goes on. I was just hoping that the best part of my game (the seed phase) was gonna come back to help me out. I had 3 planet and 3 space, but I felt I could live with that, what with it being so long since I had last played and drafted.
The Deck:
Howard had me worried before the game when he told me how many dilemmas he had. I wasn't so much worried about getting past his, more that he'd get past mine much quicker! However, when the game kicked off, we were both doing the old "play a card, draw a card" and not a lot else. But then I hit a rich vein of personnel and I was off and flying. It was like "Oh, I need 2 computer skill" and I'd draw Data. Or "Oh, I need Physics" and I'd draw Sir Isaac Newton. So I was off and attempting missions, scanning mine and solving Howards. He seemed to be struggling with the wrong personnel and I could tell he wasn't enjoying it much. In the end, I finished 3 or 4 missions and Howard thanked me for the game but dropped out so he could watch the Newcastle game. Result: 100-0.
Round 2 Colm "Bowdy" McFadden vs Matt "Noddy" Slade
Matt won the draw and elected to pass his first seed step. I was tempted to pass knowing the basis of my personnel was good, but with him having the first go, I thought I couldn't risk it so I elected to seed. The seed phase took a long time, but then in fairness all my seed phases did. I had no decent combos, so all I could do was work out which missions I could steal and which missions he was not likely to attempt so I could mis-seed under them (thus saving me dilemmas for the more likely ones). In the end, my mis-seeding under 2 missions at the end of the spaceline did get me points and probably saved me from a 100-0 trouncing. Matt quickly nicked a Horga'hn from a mission steal, and started to drop personnel at a much accelerated rate. Thankfully the quality of his personnel was pretty poor compared to mine, so I managed to solve one of his but the multiple Test Propulsion Systems Missions on the spaceline really slowed me down before I could get over and solve a second one. Matt tried to pound me into submission with a Q-Net on the spaceline, but the Kevin Uxbridge: Convergence justified itself in the deck when I had it in hand so the Q-Net never affected me. It's possible I might have won if I had passed in the seed phase after Matt, but then hindsight has 20/20 vision and we're never to know now :) Result: 25-100.
Round 3 Colm "Bowdy" McFadden vs Mark "Radders" Radford
Mark was always renowned for his very inventive decks back in the day, and I was expecting some kooky things from him. He was in the midst of playing a 2nd Ed game at the same time as playing me - that's got to be a record surely for playing in a 1st Ed and 2nd Ed tournament game simultaneously? Anyway, don't remember too much about this game, other than I went about the usual mission stealing antics, but placed my mis-seeds in the wrong place and he quickly breezed past Establish Relations to an easy 25 points. However he was stuck towards one end of the spaceline and although he managed to slow me down with a Palor Toff-ed Rogue Borg, I was in the middle of the spaceline and I was able to nick missions ahead of him on I think 2 occasions that the next turn he would have completed himself. Result: 100-25.
Mark dropped out after round 3, so I ended up playing Ringo instead of Ian in round 4. After Ringo had already had a bye, we couldn't have him drop another round. He'd already played against Ian and Mike and was on too a low score to play Matt who was leading the tournament with 3 wins out of 3.
Round 4 Colm "Bowdy" McFadden vs Ringo "Ringo" Greenwich
Ringo was a Nemesis for me back in the day (besides being a good mate), as I could never seem to beat him in a regular tournament. Either I would do something silly like pass in the seed phase versus a PNZ deck (Wakefield regional qualifier in '98) or he would outplay me with sheer guile. However he wasn't having the best of it today with narrow losses in his 2 previous games. It was sure to be a tight game and it was. Ringo was playing all planet, Fed/Klingon and was dropping people at a good rate. Ringo had a reputation as a mission solver and he was true to his code. He managed to draft a distortion and ship hop very nicely to complete his first 2 missions. I can't remember who nicked who's mission, but after scanning my missions I realised I couldn't pass his dilemmas and mine were a lot easier! I completed 3 missions in quick succession but was stuck on 95 points with Ringo closing me up fast. He got to 80 points and then we both got stuck with needing one skill to complete a space mission with no dilemmas under it. I was lucky enough to draw the personnel needed first and hopped over to the mission to take me over the top. Result: 100-80.
The final Standings were a bit distorted with a couple of dropped players, but here they are for interest value:
Cheers,
Colm
Colm McFadden, 02-Oct-2006