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Strategy Articles
The Die is Cast
by Mike OShogay, Staff Writer
2nd April 2015
Unfortunately, in the show the Romulan and Cardassian Alliance was destroyed in the Gamma Quadrant en route to a false Founder’s Homeworld. As far as this alliance being portrayed in Star Trek : The Customizable Card Game : Second Edition (2E), there were a few cards from the Premiere set and beyond that it’s been almost completely ignored…until now. The Die is Cast grants something that’s been of limited availability to the Romulans and the Cardassians in stop prevention. Now, you will have to be attempting missions in the Gamma Quadrant, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
IN ANOTHER LIFE ENABRAN TAIN WAS WIMPY(By the way Boothby was in this film as well)
While this new card is available to be used by either affiliation, let’s take a deeper look into how this will impact the Romulan affiliation and their decks going forward (with potential errata on the horizon.) Likely, when the errata hits for The Viceroy, Advisor to the Praetor and for Tal, Alert Subcommander, their most competitive strategy will be dead. So like with all decks that get hit with errata, they will have to adapt. One of these potential changes could be to more of a solver build, as compared to the control build that it currently is.
The Romulan affiliation boasts some of the broadest range of skills amongst their personnel giving them game against most dilemmas. Now they lack one big ability, in Skill Gain, but now with The Die is Cast they do gain the ability to prevent stops. Sure it costs you two cards off of the top or an event in hand, but it’s totally worth it. You add this new ability in with some of their other dilemma interaction cards like Neral, Seasoned Politician, Donatra, Honorable Commander, Wariness, or even the much overlooked Kalenna, Sentry and you have an opponent that needs to give you dilemmas and figure out if it’s even possible to do enough to stop you.
The one thing The Die is Cast does discourage is the use of Non-Aligned personnel. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t use them, but it makes it much worse if they get stopped. This does take away from you being able to use The Triad of Non-Aligned Skill Gainers in Navaar, Experienced Gift, Gav, Diplomat, and Silik, Chameleon. It will even limit your counter efficiency, not being able to use Tolian Soran, Renegade Scientist or Ezri Tigan, Soldier of Fortune. This isn’t a bad thing though. Keeping your entire deck Romulan affiliated means it’s much easier to play into Secret Identity or The Caretaker's "Guests", which are two of the best dilemma filters in the game.
Let’s take a look at how The Die is Cast makes your deck more resilient. First off, it gives you great game to Personal Duty or An Issue of Trust when backed up with cards like Neral, Seasoned Politician and Wariness - giving you redundancy of this effect spread through a few cards. You are extremely strong to all stopping skill attrition based piles, as you can just walk through a Healing Hand, Honorable Pursuit, or even a Polywater Intoxication (I know it’s not a skill dilemma but attrition piles use this as insurance). So it’s unique, so what. You can always discard the second and third copies to its own ability if you have a hand full of them. You can also put them to other use by discarding them to Karina, Hindering Analyst or Optimism, if you are so inclined. Now onto the deck…
IN ANOTHER LIFE LOVOK WAS ON VOYAGER
This deck is a launching point for my version of a The Die is Cast Romulan deck. Let’s get a couple things out of the way. First, this deck is only a 35 card deck, so equipping this to be more competitive gives you a little wiggle room as far as adding to the Event/Interrupt suite. Second, this deck is only running Romulan affiliated personnel. There is room for some Non-Aligned, but I would stick to either: counter efficiency plays like Tolian Soran, Renegade Scientist, Ezri Tigan, Soldier of Fortune, Persis, Loyal Daughter, or Julian Bashir, Rebel Captain or go with the skill gain route in Navaar, Experienced Gift, Gav, Diplomat, and Silik, Chameleon. Finally, the mission set could be slightly altered, but using Stakoron II, Mine Miszinite is too good to pass up.
With Stakoron II, Mine Miszinite we get a mission in the Gamma Quadrant with easy skills to solve with for 35 points. However, the biggest drawback is the 36 Cunning or 40 Strength requirement. Obviously any affiliation other than Dominion or Klingons will be using the Cunning requirement. What you get in return is completely worth the higher attribute requirement in making dual dilemmas more expensive. This gives you a little more play to attrition piles and even kill piles as a lot of their best dilemmas are dual.
The good thing with the Gamma Quadrant mission set is that the Romulan affiliation has the Science based skills in spades. They have multiple non-unique personnel that help fill the mission skills in Ptol, Palteth, and Mareth. They have one super personnel for your trips to the Gamma Quadrant in Selveth, Tal Shiar Pilot, who has almost every skill you need for the Gamma Quadrant missions. Another benefit to the mission set is that being mostly Science based means less Treachery personnel. While a lot of the better Romulan personnel have Treachery, the need for them has lessened giving you a slightly improved chance against An Issue of Trust.
Just to touch on the draw deck portion a little more, what the solver based Romulan decks can do is turn a dilemma pile into swiss cheese. What does your opponent do if you send Donatra, Honorable Commander, B'Etor, Romulan Conspirator, Neral, Seasoned Politician, Karina, Hindering Analyst, Data, From the City of Rateg, and a couple of the non-unique personnel on a mission attempt while a The Die is Cast in play? The deck definitely has a slow start, with you getting out attempting on turn 4. But how does your opponent throw attrition dilemmas like Secret Identity, An Issue of Trust , or Personal Duty?
All that being said, the deck does have some glaring weaknesses. It is weak to kill piles, high skill dilemmas (e.g. The 8 costers or Overwhelmed), and extremely fast speed solvers. Though with those in mind, the deck itself can be adjusted or added to, to make it more resilient. As for kill piles, if these are prevalent in your meta, either a few Escapes or Emergency Transport Units can go a long way into really taking it to these piles. As for the high skill dilemmas, there are always the three Non-Aligned skill gainers. They play really well with These Are The Voyages as a way to cycle them back into your deck, which stops your opponent from filtering them away with Secret Identity.
How would you build this deck? Would you just add The Die is Cast to the big event Romulan decks and just move them to the Gamma Quadrant? Do you go with a two Headquarter deck? Or even consider a Cardassian Gamma Quadrant build…(be on the lookout for this in a future article)… The decklist can be found here. PM me here.
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