So, You're New to Ferengi?

by Maggie Geppert, Vice Chairman

1st February 2018

“As far as I'm concerned, the Ferenginar that I knew doesn't exist anymore. No... I take that back. It will exist, right here in this bar. This establishment will be the last outpost of what made Ferenginar great: the unrelenting lust for profit!”

                                                                        -Quark from “The Dogs of War”

The Ferengi are very good at accumulating resources.  They can use these resources in a variety of different ways, from getting extra counters to bouncing dilemmas.  My fellow Chicago player Casey affectionately refers to this tendency as “Ferengi shenanigans.”  Now, because of these shenanigans, the Ferengi are definitely not a beginner level affiliation, much like we saw in my First Edition article.

Missions

Ferenginar shows the flavor of Ferengi pretty plainly.  They hoard their resources for use in the game.  In this case the resources are cards underneath their headquarters.  There are a lot of ways to get cards underneath Ferenginar and later retrieve them.  I will highlight some of these later.  The first mission you should attempt is Falsify Distress Signal. The mission skills are very easy for them.  Just make sure you have six cards under Ferenginar when you complete it.  I think that an additional turn is well worth not being able to use Reyga or Rule 144 for the mission.  If you get an extra turn, you can easily move onto Mine Vendarite, which is in Region: Ligos System with Falsify Distress Signal.  This mission is great because it lets you restore the range of your ships, so you can go home to Ferenginar and then onto The Last Outpost for your final mission.  The only tricky thing about Ferengi is they tend to have low attributes, so you may need to slow your opponent down a bit.  That’s why Alpha 5 Approach, Transport Crash Survivor is here.  It’s rare that the personnel in this deck can microteam.

Draw Deck

The two most important cards in this deck are Par Lenor, Lascivious Emissary and Rule of Acquisition #141. Par Lenor will give you an advantage on counters over your opponent.  You need to get Rule 141 under Ferenginar (I recommend Quark, True Ferengi or Quark’s Advice for this) and then out on the table.  I recommend exchanging it with a 0 cost Rule like Rule of Acquisition #6 or Rule of Acquisition #76.  Even if you can’t get 141 out quickly, you’ll want to have Rule 6 out as early as possible to get a card draw advantage. Par Lenor can be fetched by Call of the Nagus, though a smart opponent will make sure he goes under Ferenginar rather than in hand.

Now, you may be wondering how you get cards out from underneath Ferenginar.  Ishka, Moogie can exchange a card on top of your deck with a card from under Ferenginer.  She works especially well with Zek, The Grand Nagus to make sure you have excess Rules under there to work with Reyga, Young Scientist.  Maihar’du, Silent Servant and Uri’lash, Silent Servant can both stop personnel (Leadership or Treachery, respectively) to get cards out from Ferenginar.  Finally, Rom, Professional Soldier can retrieve interrupts in exchange for cards from hand.  Rule of Acquisition #33 has saved my bacon more than once in a game.

Dilemma Pile

I decided to keep with the idea of having big resources available to me with the dilemma pile for this deck, so I paired the draw deck with an Unfair Comparison dilemma pile.  This dilemma reveals the top three cards of each player’s dilemma pile.  If the attempting player reveals a lower total cost of dilemmas than their opponent, three personnel are randomly selected to be stopped.  I put in a number of very high cost dilemmas to make this connection work and almost all of them actually play for much lower cost than what is printed on them.  For instance, the Whisper in the Dark, Tsiolkovsky Infection, Sylvia and Formal Hearing will pair well with all the events that play in core in this deck.  I particularly like Ominous Presence and Pitching In, which have big discounts if your opponents are playing with many of the same species or weenies.  Finally, Agonizing Encounter and Moment of Doubt have good discounts if your opponent is playing with multiple Headquarters (though I still wonder why Officer and Security weren’t bolded on the latter card to make it a skill dilemma).  I will warn you all that this time I just gave an outline of a pile.  Most successful Unfair Comparison pile I have seen splash in a few lower-cost dilemmas just in case.  There are also quite a few of high-cost dilemmas that get discounts if you have missions worth 40 or more points, but those don’t work well with this deck.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot going on in this deck.  I recommend you explore a few of the other personnel who are sneaky good.  I especially recommend M’Pella.

Discuss this article in this thread.

This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:

• Ferengi Player
• Unbroken I
• How About a New Mission, Admiral? I
• No Crutches II
• Good Casting: Combs (Brunt)

Decklist

Hide Deck Stats

Dilemma Deck Total Dilemmas 25 Space 3 (12%) Cost 6 1 Cost 8 1 Cost 9 1 Planet 4 (16%) Cost 5 1 Cost 6 1 Cost 8 2 Dual 18 (72%) Cost 0 1 Cost 2 4 Cost 4 6 Cost 5 4 Cost 6 1 Cost 7 2 Total Dilemma Deck cost 122

Draw Deck Total Draw Deck 63 Equipment 1 (2%) Cost 2 1 Event 21 (33%) Cost 0 8 Cost 2 6 Cost 3 4 Cost 9 3 Interrupt 4 (6%) Personnel 32 (51%) Cost 1 3 Cost 2 9 Cost 3 15 Cost 4 5 Ship 5 (8%) Cost 5 3 Cost 6 2 Total Draw Deck cost 166

Skills Count Skill # Missions # Personnel 1x 2x 3x Total Acquisition 2 15 5 20 Anthropology 0 5 5 Archaeology 0 2 2 Astrometrics 0 4 2 6 Biology 0 5 5 Diplomacy 1 8 8 Engineer 0 4 2 6 Exobiology 0 7 7 Geology 0 7 7 Honor 0 7 7 Intelligence 0 0 Law 0 3 3 Leadership 1 3 2 5 Medical 0 4 4 Navigation 0 9 9 Officer 1 6 6 Physics 0 4 4 Programming 1 5 5 Science 0 4 2 6 Security 2 5 1 6 Telepathy 0 0 Transporters 0 2 2 Treachery 3 10 1 11 Icons Count Icon # Personnel % Personnel Staffing Icons Command Star 13 40.63 % Staff Star 10 31.25 % Faction Icons Deep Space Nine 3 9.38 % Temporal Icons Alternate Universe 3 9.38 % Keyword Count Keyword # Cards Commander: Aurulent 2 Commander: Krayton 1 Commander: Kreechta 1 Consume: 1 1 Dabo Girl 1 Region: Ligos System 2 Rule 15 Smuggler 2 Thief 2