An Englishman, an Irishman and a German...

Tournament-Report from the Tournament "3rd European Biermeisterschaft".

note: if you've already read this tournament report, there's nothing new for you here :)

The European STCCG Biermeister Championship 2009

 Last August, WBA founder and chairman Thomas Vorwerk was running the Biermeister Continental Championship for the third time now. Players from all over Europe were competing for the prestigious title this year, after Tony Gammell from Ireland and Will Hoskin from England had managed to win the trophy in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

My first outing at this special discipline of STCCG at the first European Biermeisterschaft two years ago ended in a desaster; after an early Bye, I found myself unable to keep up with the drinking and was disqualified by round two. 2008 was slightly better, I managed to convert all my victory points into drinks, and finished a solid 4th (out of 11). This year, though, I brought a proper, tested deck with me that would hopefully do better than those I played in the years before (in 2007, Auwerd Bijker was kind enough to give me one of his great decks - unfortunately, I was not familiar with it and made too many mistakes; my 2008 Thief deck was not too bad, but correctly calculating the various bonus attributes from cards likes Galen, Pickpocket and the Fortune turned out to be my undoing after a couple of beers.)

My deck:

 I played a No-Win Situation deck that tried to complete three easy Diplomacy missions. My headquarters of choice were Qo'noS and Mouth of the Wormhole, Deep Space Nine. It had started out as a Klingon-heavy Council deck, with DS9 only in it to exploit the event protection abilities of Nog, Jadzia Dax and Miles O'Brien. However, the deck underwent heavy modifications during the weeks before the event, and ended up as melting pot of about 25% each of Federation, Klingon, Bajoran, and non-aligned personnel. I used a deck posted by Mike Harrington at trekcc.org as a template for the changes, and, after a successful test run in an online tournament, decided to keep a good number of them, as they turned out to be rather effective. Some other cards I found less helpful, and went back to my original designs instead.

Of course, the idea of the deck was to use NWS to stop attempts with only one overcome dilemma. Without NWS support, the dilemma pile would hardly be effective enough to stop a well-played deck. With cards like Stripped Down, Temporal Conduit, Shran and The Manheim Effect, the pile would be particularly effective once a mission has been completed.

Setting up the NWS engine would take several turns, but I was willing to wait until I had the resources to protect my events in play before I started to attempt missions. And, if it turned out that I only could get modified wins because of the time limit, all the better (as it's one beer less per round...)

As my girlfriend and I had already arrived several hours before the tournament was supposed to start, we spent the time in the city, and even bought some additional prize support for Thomas (a bottle each of "Victory Ale", "Director's Ale", and "Fursty Ferret", which somehow reminded me of "Screwy Squirrel", a deck title Thomas had used a couple of years ago). Then we went to the Italian restaurant where the event was held, had a pizza, were joined by the Peter and Soren from Denmark, and waited for Thomas and the other players to arrive.

Round 1: Peter van der Helm (Borg)

 Peter played a Borg deck with a rather unorthodox mission selection, consisting of planet missions only. It turned out that he was trying to go for a two-mission-win, using cards like the Annexation Drone and Distant Exploration to score  extra points. With Expand the Collective, he not only reduced the heavy attribute requirements on the Genesis Planet considerably, but he also screwed up my plan of tracking Geology, the one skill I knew he would need to do that mission. By the time I had realized what the deck supposed to do, I had already wasted a couple of turns, because I thought Peter was amassing assimilation cards like Reborn in his hand, seeing how he had not played either At What Cost? or You've Always Been My Favorite when he was on ten points already. Luckily, I was able to take out most of his bonus point events with Korath and equipment, so Peter would have to complete three missions for the win. Miles O'Brien protected my copies of NWS, and so my dilemma pile was able to stall for most of the game. After time had been called, I had the option of intentionally failing my last mission, and end the game with a modified win, but somehow my "if-you-can-complete-a-mission,-do-it!"-instincts got the better of me, and I used Maras to prevent a kill, and did the last mission for a Full Win. Surprisingly, I had no trouble finishing off that first batch of beers in time, and I was confident going into the next round.

Round 2: Soren Ramme Nielsen (Klingons)

 During one of his first turns, Soren played either a battle card or Kruge, I can't remember exactly, but it was something that made my spider-senses tingle. I decided to stay at my headquarters for a couple of extra turns, and made sure to download Bustling with Activity as my first event, then use that card to get Miles, Jadzia Dax and Nog into play. Next, I used Guidance of the Council to make sure I had enough events in hand all the time to fuel Miles against Soren's Korath. Only after that was done did I bother assembling a mission team. Of course, it had to include the USS Defiant, Patrolling Warship, and one of its commanders. In my case, this was Worf. His high integrity, great skills for my two planet missions, and attribute bonus were sorely missed in the away team, but it was necessary to keep him aboard the Defiant to stave off any attacks that Soren's armada might fly. I breathed a sigh of relief as A Few Minor Difficulties didn't show up, and so, safe from attacks, both Soren and I slowly worked on our missions. In the end, I got away with a modified win, thanks largely to the NWS that allowed to play more efficient dilemma combos. This time, I had hardly time to drink during the game, but with only two victory points to convert, I survived round two without disqualification.

Round 3: Carsten Hartmann (Klingons)

 My next opponent was Biermeister veteran & German Biermeister 2008 Carsten Hartmann. He surprised me by dropping four cheap personnel like Kahmis and Togaran on turn one, then following it up by another personnel and a ship, and a mission attempt with five at Rescue Prisoners on turn two! This was not at all what I had in mind, since my deck needs at least four or five turns to set up properly. My dilemma pile also let me down, since I found neither a Hard Time nor The Dal'Rok nor Unscientific Method nor Dangerous Liaisions, any of which would have been able to stop the attempt cold with no overcome dilemmas under the mission. I had to resort to playing a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner instead. Carsten's speed left me no other choice than to forget about my pretty little download chain, and I chose to simply draw until I found cheap personnel, a ship, and as many NWS as I could find. I played them for the regular cost of 5, because I simply had no time to go through my usual routine of Guidance-K'tal-Energize-K'mtar, and the card draws were not in my favour either. By the time I finally had a second NWS in my core, Carsten had already completed his first mission and was well into his second. Then, I was finally able to catch up with him. After a lucky random selection at Evacuate Colony, where George Primmin cheated Gorkon past a dilemma, I completed that planet with 32 Integrity left, and went on to work on Transport Delegations. Carsten was able to finish his second mission, but now my core was filled with support cards like The Manheim Effect, and the dilemmas worked great. Among my core events was also a Tampering With Time, which allowed me to rig Carsten's dilemmas for a quick walkthrough of my remaining missions well before the time limit. I now had about 45 minutes to adjust my beer level to my victory points, which was enough. The great company of course helped with the drinking, and many deep thoughts were shared, or so I remember.

Round 4: Peter Moller (Starfleet)

 Like last year, Peter had a deck with him that consisted only of card images of one particular Trek franchise. This time, it was the fifth show, Enterprise. His Starfleet deck worked quite well, but the selection of useful dilemmas is not overly impressive, so I was able to do my missions slowly but steadily. Also, as Starfleet is not necessarily feared for its impressive array of event destruction, I decided to neglect the DS9 branch of my download chain and focus on mission solving. By now, keeping track of what's going on on the table was a serious challenge for me anyway, so I mostly kept throwing personnel at my mission until they were solved. My dilemma pile must have done its job, since another Full Win was recored for me.

Somebody then told me that I had a shot at winning the title if I managed to drink my beers for this round, so I ordered more of the good stuff. Our waiter, who did a great job and kept his cool for the entire event, was back immediately, and I was able to finish my last drinks, just in time, under the watchful eyes of 2008 champion & FCA Will Hoskin. It turned out that Will and myself had managed to stay unbeaten, record three full wins and a modified win each, avoid playing each other for the entire tournament, and end up on 11 victory points each. Even though Will had a clear advantage in drinks, Thomas decided to go with the regular tournament procedure, and awarded the tournament win and title of European Biermeister 2009 to me based on Strength of Schedule (however, the Biermeister rules were changed immediately afterwards: ties shall henceforth be broken by beers consumed.) In addition to the winner's badge, Thomas also had a certifiate for me, as well as a T-Shirt that says something like "cold beer and hot chicks are my favourite pastimes.

Finally, I'd like to say a huge Thank You to Thomas Vorwerk for running another great event. I can heartily recommend this form of STCCG to anybody out there. Even if you don't drink alcohol at all, you're guaranteed to have tons of fun! Try it! (As a little incentive to join the fun, the first round of drinks for all Biermeister newcomers next year will be on me.)