Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So unfortunately I live in the Baltimore metro area. The up side to this is that I was able to stop in on the finals at Nationals yesterday. I wanted to play, but I had a prior commitment on Saturday. They had 16 players on Saturday so they qualified everyone but only 10 came back on Sunday. They let one guy walk in on Sunday who got there before the start. I got there at the end of the 1st round and asked if I could walk in. The local judge said it was up to the WK judge and he said no, oh well. I wasn't after any prizes, but was really up for some games.

As expected the field was full of Borg. There was an all Romulan fleet (Rommy ships not captains) that was only 5 points away from the top 4. There was an all cardassian fleet, I didn't get to talk to him, but it looked like he was having a rough day. One guy had a Fed pure fleet he made it to the top 4 just over the Romulan player. There was also a Fed/Klink/Cardi mix mosh. One guy had an all Klingon list butnhe quit in round 3. Oh and Dominion w/Fed fighters

So...
Feds
Romulans
Klinks
Cardies
Mixed
Dominion

Borg/Fighters x5

There was only one Tac cube, the majority were Sphere/Diamond/Fighter combos. One guy had an interesting Sphere with Dukat/Madred combo that was wrecking. 3 out of the top 4 were borg and Fed player. I didn't stick around for the final 2 rounds, wife was calling for dinner The judging was pretty good, but I did have to point out to the WK judge he was wrong on one call, someone had the proper ref card and her then agreed. The players all seemed like good sports, no real d-bags.

The only ungentlemanly thing I saw was in the last regular round the Romulan player forgot he had an evade token next to his Valdor and that made him take a Warp Core Breach. Only one ship could shoot at the Valdor so its not like he could have saved it for another defense. The Romulan player realized it before the end phase, but the Fed player wouldn't let him use it. Next turn Valdor blew up to the breach I would have let him use it. The Fed player didn't do anything wrong, but it would have been better form to let him. The Fed player ended up advancing because of that.

What was interesting was that in one round where Nebula was the Sector Condition the only one Borg fleet beat a nonborg fleet. The range 2 really hurt the borg. Feds/Cardies/Romulans/Mixed all smashed the Borg in tty he Nebula. Tty he Klinks had left by then and the Dominion got stuck against the Dukat/Madred Sphere, it did not go well. I have heard of venues restricting them to range 2, but never tried it myself. After seeing how it weakens them, I think it needs to be an permanent errata.

In all looked like a good event and good players.

Interesting review, and nice to see a different spin on this.

 inmygravenimage wrote:
Interesting review, and nice to see a different spin on this.

I see what you did there.