Why we should make it an official Glühwein-Meisterschaft. | openCards

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Why we should make it an official Glühwein-Meisterschaft.

    This Tournament-Report article was written by openCards user Tribble at Dec 15th, 2008.

    Tournament-Report from the Tournament "Hannover #99 - Race to Santa Clause".

    As with my last three tournaments, my deck didn't see any playtesting and was put together more or less the night before the tourney, a night marked by less than three hours of sleep. This time I wanted to do a classic discard Dissident deck, with Terok Nor and Romulus, Historical Research to download Jake Sisko (other missions were Iconia Investigation and Advanced Battle Simulation), and bonus points with "Getting Under Your Skin", "Prejudice and Politics" and "Tongo: Confront". Originally I wanted to use "Kotra" too, and an elaborate set-up with throw-away Bajoran Diplomats, "Steeled By Loss" and "Lasting Piece", but to keep my deck under 70 cards (astonishingly slim for me), I got rid of all but three Bajorans (Dissidents Kira, Leeta and Odo) and four Cardassians (Dissident Tora Ziyal and three copies of Thorel, the cheap Archaeologist playable at Terok Nor). Okay, two copies of the non-aligned Dukat to streamline my opponent's discard pile should be mentioned, and since the whole "Race to Santa Claus"-deal would lead to early mission attempts I also included three copies of "The New Resistance".

    Before the tournament had started, I already furnished Carsten Hartmann with a "German Biermeister 2008"-badge and awarded Alexander Bank, one of the inofficial founding fathers of the "Keep Patience Alive"-movement, with an appropriate badge, which he immediately hung upon his chest (unless memory deceives me). For those unfamiliar with Alexander and the KPA-movement: Alexander is a notoriously slow player often performing a tightrope-walk just this side of stalling, and he (and some choice other players whose names I promised Sandra Wanek not to reveal) as well as TD Thorsten Wanek, who repeatedly has been reported to start a tournament on time, were the main reasons why the famous quotation by (rumoured presidential campaigner) Horst ("Keep patience alive!", spoken with as much pathos and gusto as other rhetoricians may pronounce "I have a dream", "Yes, we can!" or "Ich bin ein Berliner!") now is well-known slogan in the German STCCG-scene. Almost as well-known as "Ich habe einen Ulf gebaut!"

    Before the first round had started I already had finished my first mug of "Glühwein" (a spiced hot red wine designed to provide its consumers in cold environments with a nose colour reminiscent of the famous reindeer Rudolph) and then took a seat opposite my first round opponent Alexander, who already had given back the Santa-rule he originally had drawn, since it was bad, and he only wanted to play two rounds, so what could possibly happen? Well, of course bad went to worse and he found himself with the rule allowing mission attempts only with teams of nine or more personnel. Not exactly the greatest invention since sliced bread if you have to play a Reyga deck you're not familiar with ...

    My rule said, I could play more than one copy of unique personnel (which never happened during this game). After guessing correctly the headquarter between two face-down cards to decide the starting player, I mock-innocently asked if that meant that I was to start or if I now could decide who was allowed to start, but Alexander knew what I was up to and so I had to start, so now quick download of Jake. I drew my seven cards and showed the Jake drawn as third card with a wicked smile. Since it seemed futile to wait for the conditions enabling me to play my "The New Resistance" (remember the nine-personnel-rule), I played a many Dissidents as possible and started to discard Alexander's deck. Meanwhile I explained the mechanics of Ishka and Zek to him, since he reportedly was not familiar with the Ferengi affiliation. When he was left with eight cards at the end of one turn, I also recommended to him to get rid of an Arridor, since he just had played a copy of that personnel. But he preferred to wait another round before he followed my advice. I also had ample time to finish my second Glühwein during this part of the game.

    Alexander was very unhappy with the deck he had borrowed, he would have much preferred a Klingon solver or something similar, but, as the French say, tough shit, pardner! I had a copy of "Tongo" in my hand for a long time, but had discarded Rom (one of my two Ferengis) early in the game, so the use of Tongo was dubious. But then I drew Quark, realized at the same time that I had Tal'Aura (a Senator) in play and so played "Prejudice & Politics" and "Tongo" during the same turn. Alexander won five points with my "Tongo", but I was able to level the game by a successful probe with my Senator. By now Alexander had played both a ship and eight personnel (I was also contemplating to play a ship to get the thing rolling), but he decided to wait another round. I played (and lost) Tongo again, and had now discarded approximately twelve of Alexander's cards, but unfortunately his draw deck still seemed about thirty cards high. The only relaxing factor was that I hadn't seen a Reyga so far, and I was pretty confident that among the four or five cards under Ferenginar there were only about two Rules and one Interrupt. My use of "Prejudice and Politics" also backfired and Alexander was allowed to draw his Kol while I ended my turn. He played Kol, realized that he doesn't HAVE to put a card under Ferenginar (it's not always an advantage to have several cards under Ferenginar - especially against a discard deck), and then asked if he may look at the top card of his deck somehow utilizing Kol, which is of course utter rubbish. Then he realized that he forgot something and wanted to take his Kol back, to which I at first agree, until I see he doesn't simply want to change the order of some cards played but wants to exchange a stupid Rule in his core with the nine-cost-Rule beneath his Ferenginar (he had one or two Moriks in play, I had only discarded one of them). Which I won't allow. He then informed me that he wouldn't continue this game since he had thought the whole tournament was about having fun and he was of the opinion that my stubborn insistence on rules is incompatible with a fun game. Since he already began to collecting his cards, I complied with his decision. First game I ever won because my opponent conceded while he was in the lead (10:5). Full Win.

    I took this astonishingly quick game as an incentive to write this tournament report and only realized much later that Alexander's decision may also have been motivated by my ridiculing him publically for his choice of playing tempo. This game he had ended much faster than I would ever have anticipated! In another game I heard that Santa (actually Parek with a red bobble hat, who could join the team's of the players who found him) had been killed by Daniel Sinner. Christmas was now officially cancelled.

    I started my second game (against Lars Flitter with an optimized version of Alexander's Reyga deck) well into my fourth Glühwein, but, as it would been proved repeatedly in the following games, my playing abilities had been rather chiselled than diminished by the alcohol. My sober opponent, on the other hand, used the ability of his Ishka for approximately six consecutive turns before he was caught off-guard by finding a copy of Ishka in his discard pile (one of my shenanigans had worked) and had to admit he never had played Ishka so far. But later I realized I had two Donatras in play (I wasn't even aware of the fact that I had two copies of her in the deck), discarded one voluntarily, and had to witness her twin sister getting killed roughly 30 seconds later. Another great moment of the game was my download of "Prejudice and Politics" with "If Wishes Were Horses" and you all can guess which card was ramdomly discarded from my hand ...

    Lars managed to solve a mission before I had managed to kill off two of his Reygas (he had discarded the third one voluntarily early in the game) and at least one Rom. When I had unsuccessfully tried to kill Reyga with "Unscientific Method" I was informed that the "Science" was not a skill requirement, so during a later mission attempt I got rid of Reyga with "Secret Identity" and killed Rom with another copy of "Unscientific Method". I liked this game a lot. Two copies of "Whisper in the Dark" had also killed off six of his Ferengis, and when he attempted a space mission with his remaining six Ferengis he encountered first "Tragic Turn" and then "Tsiolkovsky Infection" which delicately impeded his attempts to staff his Kurdon with the remaining two people. Meanwhile I had been busy with attempting my own space mission but had been sent "Where No One Has Gone Before" while the time was slowly running out. Lars did another mission attempt with the two people on his Kurdon, and since his deck was depleted and he had only one Ishka enjoying the rainy season on Ferenginar, I used my copy of "Machinations" to put a "Skeleton Crew" on the mission to thwart future stalling attempts. Unfortunately my ship did not return from WNOHGB in time, in two more minutes I would have surely won that game (under the space mission were about six dilemmas and I would have needed five, maybe only four people to solve it). Modified Loss.

    Did I mention that I also drank my fifth Glühwein during that game? No wonder I liked it - apart from the result. At some point Thorsten Wanek, mumbling away on some "Spekulatius", made some important announcement, to which Carsten Hartmann commented "Ich hab kein Wort verstanden. Kannst Du noch mal abbeißen?"

    In round 3 I was paired against Sandra Wanek, always a reason for celebration. When I went to fetch my sixth Glühwein, we had unfortunately managed to obliterate the supply, with the particular assistance of WBA veterans Daniel Sinner (5 mugs) and Carsten Hartmann (nobody knows how many mugs, because Carsten can't count beyond 3 if he's drinking).

    Unfortunately the time limit for this round had been shortened to 50 minutes, and so I lost another game, because even though we both solved only one mission (at least I believe so), in the end Sandra had 10 more points (she also relied heavily on bonus points in her Romulan deck). Since I had no time to take notes after the game my memories are rather shifty, but I do know that at one point Sandra wanted to use her die to mark another five bonus points gained. Before the cube had showed a "4", and Sandra astonishingly was of the opinion that 4 plus 1 equals 6. But I was sober enough to point out her mistake and even recount the last few instances she gained or lost points. Why do people always try to take advantage of drunkards? Modified Loss again.

    In the last round my opponent was Mark Preusse. I knew his Klingon deck to a certain degree from an earlier tourney, it was a one-trick-pony which looks like a battle deck but is more interested in solving "Commandeer Prototype" to make a Phoenix appear (at least that was the ship he used last time). Our game had one particular problem, a distortion of the Space/Time Continuum. At one point, I asked the TD how much time was left, and he said "11 minutes". Approximately a quarter of an hour later I asked again, and this time his answer was "8 minutes", followed by a "time-out" no longer than two minutes later. Neither Mark nor myself were able to solve a mission (one turn later I would very probably have solved the mission were my Santa was hidden and earned the special prize since no one so far had been successful in that round), and so the game was decided by bonus points. I had made two attempts to earn points with "Prejudice and Politics", but all to no avail. But my four games of "Tongo" amassed a nice 20-point cushion - for Mark. Modified Loss, again.

    All in all I made it to eighth place out of ten players, had a very nice day (we went to a pub afterwards where I continued my drinking with a nice Caipirinha), and even found several cards for my Transwarp decks and two Uncommons still missing in my own playsets. The notes for this tournament report end with something I would decipher as "6-Mach AnIssu". Fascinating, but highly illogical, I'm afraid ...


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    Google-Bildersuche "Glühwein", Platz 11