How to increase your rating by losing games ... | openCards

You are here

How to increase your rating by losing games ...

    This Tournament-Report article was written by openCards user Jaglom Shrek at Feb 21st, 2010.

    Tournament-Report from the Tournament "Koblenz Turnier".

    Every man has a goal, a white spot on the map yet to explore ... now this is the story of me achieving this goal. How to finally visit Koblenz again after being there once when running the Call to Arms promotion tour in 2003. Thinking about that period of time nearly everything has changed. Trek is no longer available on TV but had a great movie in theatres with a complete new cast. Decipher is no longer producing any of its former licenced trading card games. Hobby became profession for me. But the STCCG is still being played!

    As described in my report covering the Kaiserslautern tournament I still had some idead for my current Bajoran deck to test out. Now this Saturday morning - already sitting in my car - I threw in each two Bridge Officer's Test and Stricken Dumb interrupts plus an Uninvited. In exchange I removed nearly all my combat events like No Love for the Spoon Heads and Rash Aggression along with Deep Roots and the unusable Deal With the Count Man. This left three Just Like Old Times in my deck and - to still make planets dangerous for my opponent's and to be able to kill in addition to my Tragic Turn pile - my two Assassins Neela and Trazko as well as Kurn. Now my strategy was clearly defined as just to battle in order to avoid the need of completing a third mission. This caused my tactic to download an Assassin with Winn Adami to change a little. Now I used her download to get Day Kannu, which allowed me to play Conflict. Speaking of interrupts I merely included Stricken Dumb to get a personnel in my discard pile - too often an opposing Dukat had removed them and had rendered my Covenant interrupts useless.

    Before starting first game I was offered both soft drinks and hot coffee by our tournament host Tjark. Formerly working in the hotel industry I really appreciated this exemplary service offered to each tournament participant. (Remark to myself: Offer soft drinks and hot coffee on my next tournament!) Now this first game let me face my last tournament's opponent again: Thomas aka European OP Coordinator. He had decided to give Starfleet another try and played a new Future Enterprise (remove personnel from the game) deck. To be honest I really liked the look of the new cards and became more fascinated by their pictures than by their skills. This lead to a game in which I tried to beat my opponent through the shades of a heavy fog. Nevertheless this confrontation became quite entertaining and thrilling to the end. At his first mission attempt I used Uninvited to place a Skeleton Crew on his Investigate Alien Probe. My Left Behind worked fine and resulted in 15 points via Just Like Old Times. I completed my space mission without further problems and made it to my planet mission Expose Changeling Influence. I remember making a fatal mistake by placing Secret Identity followed by Outmatched on his planet mission, removing the right personnel and then using Outmatched to stop the attempt - although I already made his completion impossible! In the end this mistake turned out to be the decisive factor as Thomas later won this game on the edge of losing it. He attempted with 12 personnel and a Tox Uthat. Knowing that and remembering there was a Lorian on Thomas' side of the table I first placed a Chula: The Chandra to minimize his abilities to attempt with two teams after cancelling the mission attempt. But I just stopped two personnel and one of them happened to be Karyn Archer who made attributes of all his Starfleet personnel +2 now! The following dilemma was No Kill I which he cancelled with Tox Uthat and I was not able to stop both his following attempts at this mission.

    After this game Tjark we had a great lunch of Lasagne that had been prepared by Tjark's wife. (Remark to myself: Offer warm lunch at my next tournament!) My next opponent then was Marco playing a traditional Klingon solver with the Klingon Picard that is able to replace a selected Klingon. Exactly this ability caused my Left Behind to fizzle and in the following rounds it even became worth. In the end Marco clearly won this game without notable problems.

    My third game was against Tjark. And not to forget: Another cup of hot coffee made my day! (Remark to myself: Offer coffee after lunch on my next tournament!) Tjark played a Next Generation solver focussing on The Vintner and lots of kill-avoidance. With the Vintner he downloaded the future time Data, Keiko and old Leonard H. McCoy. Later two Emergency Transport Units, Alyssa Ogawa and Beverly Crusher entered the game. Therefore it became difficult to constantly kill people with my dilemmas but I still tried my best. I quickly decided to focus on removing Exobiology personnel with The Clown: Guilotine and All-Consuming Evil as he needed that skill for nearly all of his missons (and in difference to Biology he hadn't played an equipment to add this skill to his personnel). I also removed McCoy with Secret Identity hoping there wouldn't be a Kirk replacing him. Kirk didn't appear and so I could stop him.I was able to score 35 points with Just Like Old Times and Day Kannu and was about to complete my planet mission the next turn. Time out was called and Tjark attempted his last planet mission as well. I had used all my dilemma manipulators before and played all I had. But then a 4-personnel attempt ended the game and Tjark won. Too bad I hadn't placed a Skeleton Crew on this mission as well ...

    The fourth game was against Kathleen who had won two games already. She played Bajorans and by her first move (download Dangerous Missions Bareil with Historical Research) I recognized this deck. Expecting a quick game with small teams attempting the missions I did everything I could to stop her from completing her first mission. As she consistently attempted her Investigate Maquis Activity with five personnel (and needed all five to complete it) I stopped/killed/removed one personnel every attempt and stopped her. This began by drawing the right dilemma, continued with playing Uninvited and ended when using Machinations. Finally she was able to complete her mission but by that time I had score 30 points from hunting poor Kira lonely trying to survive on Expose Changeling Influence and had completed my space mission. I then solved my planet mission and won the first game of the day!

    The tournament wasn't over yet and so I faced Tyler as well. He played a straight Deep Space 9 mission solver with Under Siege and all the new personnel receiving a bonus from being under siege. He also deployed U.S.S. Defiant, Patrolling Warship that helped to hinder me from combatting him. Once I was able to send one person to another mission by Arena but he rescued that one the next turn. After that he placed Sisko aboard the Defiant and orbited the missions in order to save his away team from my Bajoran fighters. He also played Tongo but made sure never to use it when I was near 30 bonus points. So this meant that I had to complete three missions on the one hand but also had some points to use with Krim. I stopped him to remove An Issue of Trust from Tyler's dilemma pile and later did it again for Skeleton Crew. But to my surprise he didn't have one in his deck. This game I was able to use all my interrupt combinations I had previously planned to use. One attempt he played a Caretaker's "Guest" assuming I wouldn't be able to get back the skills needed for my Investigate Alien Probe. He selected my personnel, I played Stricken Dumb and placed a personnel from hand in my discard pile. Then they got exchanged and I completed my mission. Later I overcame Rogue Borg Ambush with Natural Instincts and finally at my last mission I placed a Bareil into my discard pile to get his skills and attributes back with Covenant. Mission accomplished. I had won my second game and thus even gained 4 rating points - although losing the majority of my games.

    A great tournament had ended and the white spot on my map shows the green and gray of Koblenz now. Let's see which other white spots I may find on my map of Trek tournament locations. Another story is waiting for me ...