Playing Star Realms is such an emotional roller coaster. The cards one day are with you and you get a winning streak, everything works, combo after combo falls into place, the ships and bases you want are available on your turn to buy. The next day the cards turn on you and all of sudden you are in a slump. Grasping, hoping for a win, nothing works for you. Instead of combos you get single ships surrounded by the starting cards. It gets nigh on impossible to accrue enough attack points to destroy the weakest of outposts.

After the high of Saturday and that 54 point cardtastic combo attack on Freddy. It was my turn to be on the receiving end of another first for me. I've been playing Crshaner for about a week now. I've won some games against him, but on the whole he has won the majority of our games together. In this particular game Crshaner's authority just kept going up and up. I couldn't get through his wall of bases and outposts that he threw up. My own wall of outposts was pathetic, a token resistance easily taken out by Crshaner.

Once again it was one of those games were I was just delaying the inevitable. Nothing was working for me. I wasn't exactly making a dent in Crshaner's authority. Everything I did seemed futile. With the finishing blow the final authority gap was 124 to 0! It was an awesome finishing blow too, 41 points. My biggest loss to date in a game. Previously I've been on the wrong end of a 76 – 0 score line, but nothing like this. This game will live on in my newly built hall of infamy that has been built next to my rather shabby looking hall of fame.

I've mentioned before I think, my inability to finish off an opponent. I've done all the hard work, and then the cards turn against me. All I need is a handful of points to get the win, and all the cards give me are coins to buy cards! This usually ends up being enough of a breather for my opponent to pull off a couple of turns worth of combos to get the win. In this game with gman yesterday it looked like I was falling into this familiar pattern again. I'd got him down to about 8 authority, and then the run of cards from my deck hit where all I was drawing was currency. At this point I was on a healthy 30 odd points. Within a couple of turns gman had me down to 3 authority I was once more looking at having victory taken away from me. If my next draw of cards didn't give me enough attack there was no way I'd survive the gmans next turn.

The cards are really a fickle master/mistress (depending on your point of view). Suddenly the cards took pity on me for once. From the depths of despair and an inevitable loss, I had enough to snatch the win. The releaf of getting the victory, the feeling of having stolen the win against the odds. Which is odd really because before I failed to draw the cards to finish off gman for the win I had the upper hand.

Last night also saw me take part in my first Star Realms Casual Tournament that is organised by Matt “TheCutter” Newburg on the Star Realms Fan Created Community Page. Before the tournament I had played Matt for a couple of days. How to sum up those games? Well it would be fair to say that Matt has won all of them except one! So not a great record against Matt. But I do enjoy my games, I may not be a challenge to Matt but I will defeat him on a more regular basis as my game improves or the cards get kinder to me.

The prizes for this tournament were some signed Star Realms cards which would go to the top 8 players. A pretty cool prize. Because of the number of players the draft for the first round went up in three parts. The first part of the draft went up, Freddy had been given an opponent. However my name was missing, my name was also not on the second part of the draft. So I still had no idea who my opponent would be.

Then the third part of the first round draft list went up. I had been drawn against Matt. I had just been given this tournaments version of being drawn against Ronny O'Sullivan one of the best snooker players in the world.

Did I have an impending sense of doom? Hell no! I'm a Liverpool supporter. I had hope in my heart. Ok my track record wasn't brilliant against Matt but I had beaten him once. So it was possible. Not likely but possible. A slither of light at the end of the tunnel. I'll take those odds!

Matt and I finished our current game we were playing. Oddly enough I lost that game.

I then issued the challenge for our first game for this round. I chose to play with the gambit expansion that had just came out. I've been enjoying that expansion since it was available (a look at the app and expansion will appear later in the week). Matt then messaged my saying he had been one of the testers for the gambit expansion and had a lot of experience with it. I replied I knew because Matt had already talked about this on the Megahaulin Podcast (I do hope that if you are a Star Realms fan you are listening to that podcast). Plus I didn't really care I'm having a blast playing this game win or lose. And as I have already said I like playing this expansion.

I won't bore you with a long winded blow by blow account of the games. It is suffice to say that the games went true to form and I lost 2-0. There wasn't much point playing the third game of the round.

My first Star Realms Casual Tournament ended at the first hurdle. A little disappointing, I'd of liked to have won one game. Buts that cards for you. Sometimes they are cruel the next moment they are your best friend. Today they decided to kick me when I was down also.

I'll be back in for the next tournament, it was a fun but brief experience for my first one. But it's this roller coaster of a game that I love so much. It's such and addictive and fun game. And now I'm playing a variety of different players my game will improve. Watch out for me world!

Freddy won his first round match 2-1, so is through to the next round. I wish Freddy and Matt all the best in the rest of the tournament, and hope they both make the final 8 for a prize.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app