Full Complement

by Johannes Klarhauser, Staff Writer

19th January 2009

Ah, those were good old days, where a landing party consisted of the captain, the first officer, the chief medical officer, and the chief engineer. That should be enough to deal with anything, from computers gone wild to societies coincidentally modeled on past periods of Earth's history to disgusting alien weirdos that ask for some serious shirt-ripping, right? Not quite. As we know, the Original Series law of redshirts dictates that every landing party includes some cannon fodder, a mission specialist to demonstrate the seriousness of the antagonist of the week. Only then do you really have the Full Complement.

This dilemma is great in many ways. To begin with, it's dual, and with a printed cost of 0 it can always be fetched by Machinations. In addition, it's immune to no-skill-requirement haters like Reyga (Young Scientist) and Helen Noel (Enterprise Psychiatrist).

The effect is simple: if your opponent does not have five personnel in the mission team, one of his or her personnel is returned to hand and Full Complement returns to the dilemma pile. Note that it's a randomly-selected personnel, so this time the redshirts actually have a fair chance - maybe they would actually prefer to be returned to hand instead of going on to face that killer dilemma that comes next? Anyway, Full Complement should be a big help against all those minimum attempt decks that rely on sending down only four personnel to complete missions like Investigate Maquis Activity in the hopes of dodging Necessary Execution. Keep in mind, though, that if Full Complement is not the top card of your dilemma stack, its actual cost will go up by two.

Without further ado, here are some possible scenarios in which Full Complement can shine:

Full Complement vs. opponent's Voyager deck: many Voyager decks attempt Caretaker's Array with four personnel as soon as they can. After a one-personnel bounce courtesy of Full Complement, you still have enough counters to follow it up with Where No One Has Gone Before or a Gomtuu Shock Wave.

Destiny Reset plus Hard Time plus Full Complement equals: Fetch this combo against a five-personnel attempt to bounce two personnel and still leave no dilemmas overcome.

Hard Time plus The Dal'Rok plus Full Complement vs. opponent's dual-headquarters deck equals: Eight personnel attempt, two die, two return to hand, no dilemmas overcome. (Only recommended for experienced trackers.)

Biochemical Hyperacceleration plus Full Complement equals: Once successfully pulled-off (Equipment Malfunction might help), follow this up with Maquis shenanigans (Stalling for Time, anyone?) to destaff a ship.

Killer dilemmas plus Full Complement plus Kruge (Instinctive Commander) equals: Even if you know that your opponent cannot complete the mission with his five remaining personnel anyway, sometimes there's a reason to play just that one more dilemma…

Full Complement plus Temporal Incursion equals: It's almost like an upgraded Skeleton Crew.