Thursday, January 18th, 2001
Ah for the joys of battle! The 1999 Holiday Tournament was the last time the FLF got together for a regular constructed event, so it was certainly past time for a match. Benji brought out his experimental Klingon/Cardassian Alliance deck (similar to a deck used by Razor recently, but much more streamline and effective), against Razor's trigger happy Dominion deck. Once Razor made much effort to get out of the Gamma quadrant and establish an Alpha foothold, Benji was well on his way to the other side of the mirror and doing plenty of damage. However, the game continued slowly and timed out with Benji in the lead 95-40.
One loss away from losing the match, Razor brought out a new deck to combat Benji's KCA deck: The Hall of Fame deck, including almost all of the bridge crew and several alternate versions as well. This time Razor had a bit more power to solve a few missions and start getting some work done, but not before Benji got a full win, including creative use of The Art of Diplomacy to get through Razor's anti-diplomatic combo. Benji now captures his 5th tournament title, and is only one full win from the final stage of FLF rank.
As a special treat, we decided to test out the new Warp Speed format and put together decks from Enhanced Premiere packs. My choice of deck fell to Beverly and Will, while Benji opted for The Trois. I have never played a Trek game so fast in my life! From start to finish we played for about 9 minutes. Both of us completed a mission, but Benji's combo dilemma featuring a Radioactive Garbage Scow prevented me from completing my space mission, with a Q-Net keeping me locked at my outpost with only one Diplomacy left. I got to regenerate my cards, but only could get one and needed more, so the game ended there with Benji in the lead. I am anxious to try this format out again sometime, and maybe get different results.
-Summary by Admiral Razor
to the outpost.