Shootout at Game Kastle Fremont
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 2:04 pm
We played one three player game on Wednesday with Kevin, Ian and myself. I think all of us were playing new decks at the time and the game ended up being pretty close between Ian and myself with a couple of card plays that could have made the game go either way. Ian was playing some kind of Beowulf generalist deck, Kevin was playing a Far Trader deck that I didn’t quite understand, and my deck was built to focus on a few mechanics that I think are good but didn’t win me this game. I learned quite a few lessons from playing this deck which I’ll try to get into.
I think our game lasted 4 turns. Early game we all were focusing on building up our positions as usual. I think all of us were expecting crew kill and piracy to show up big in this game as that has been the trend in the recent past with our group but I think that the only wounds inflicted came from complications this game.
My deck was banking on getting pseudo VPs from Diverse Dynamics but I ended up drawing both copies in my deck in my opening hand with no way to play them so that strategy was pretty immediately out of the question.
The closest I came to victory was in the second to last turn when I fetched my only copy of First Empire Star Jumper with Breakthrough into hand. On the next turn I tried to play it at the very end of the Adventure phase after everyone else had committed to bump my contract up by 2 VPs but was thwarted by Kevin jettisoning Liach, T’zen and Giiar to cancel the card. I asked if he would rather redirect the target onto the mission that he and Ian were jointly pursuing but he declined as he felt he had overlooked this possibility and already declared the action. If he hadn’t cancelled the card I would have won on that turn, if he had redirected it Ian would have won on that turn but the game ended a turn later with Ian at 23 and me at 22 with Kevin somewhere below 20.
My big realization from this play session was that Breakthrough at the
level is a very different card than the 
version and has a very different outcome. Due to the timing I found myself putting a card I would want in hand onto the top of my Captain’s deck but then I wouldn’t have the option of spending any 
from the deck until my next draw phase. It was basically impossible to avoid losing the cards before I got a chance to use them.
The obvious choice here is to fetch a card that you don’t want to draw and that preferably has a high value so you can flip it off the top to gain the EV reliably. Something like Ablative Armor comes to mind here. I’m going to try and pair it with The Lucky Star to get the most mileage out of it.
One other fun interaction I noticed during playing this deck was that with all of the seeking using Alien Quarter Merchant and other cards like Breakthrough the Replenish cards from the Subsidized Merchant ability would get shuffled into the deck and could be drawn again easily.
I think our game lasted 4 turns. Early game we all were focusing on building up our positions as usual. I think all of us were expecting crew kill and piracy to show up big in this game as that has been the trend in the recent past with our group but I think that the only wounds inflicted came from complications this game.
My deck was banking on getting pseudo VPs from Diverse Dynamics but I ended up drawing both copies in my deck in my opening hand with no way to play them so that strategy was pretty immediately out of the question.
The closest I came to victory was in the second to last turn when I fetched my only copy of First Empire Star Jumper with Breakthrough into hand. On the next turn I tried to play it at the very end of the Adventure phase after everyone else had committed to bump my contract up by 2 VPs but was thwarted by Kevin jettisoning Liach, T’zen and Giiar to cancel the card. I asked if he would rather redirect the target onto the mission that he and Ian were jointly pursuing but he declined as he felt he had overlooked this possibility and already declared the action. If he hadn’t cancelled the card I would have won on that turn, if he had redirected it Ian would have won on that turn but the game ended a turn later with Ian at 23 and me at 22 with Kevin somewhere below 20.
My big realization from this play session was that Breakthrough at the
level is a very different card than the version and has a very different outcome. Due to the timing I found myself putting a card I would want in hand onto the top of my Captain’s deck but then I wouldn’t have the option of spending any from the deck until my next draw phase. It was basically impossible to avoid losing the cards before I got a chance to use them.The obvious choice here is to fetch a card that you don’t want to draw and that preferably has a high
value so you can flip it off the top to gain the EV reliably. Something like Ablative Armor comes to mind here. I’m going to try and pair it with The Lucky Star to get the most mileage out of it. One other fun interaction I noticed during playing this deck was that with all of the seeking using Alien Quarter Merchant and other cards like Breakthrough the Replenish cards from the Subsidized Merchant ability would get shuffled into the deck and could be drawn again easily.