So, You're New to Klingons?

by Maggie Geppert, Vice Chairman

14th September 2017

“You both fought as warriors. You have proven your hearts are Klingon.” – Gowron, “Redemption”

The major flavor of the Klingon affiliation is battle.  This deck is designed to show off how Klingons can benefit from battle and how you can make your dilemma pile support that archetype.

Missions

This mission selection is very tight in terms of skills.  All three of the non-Alpha 5 Approach missions require Leadership and Security.  Of course, the downside to this is that Agonizing Encounter is in the current Excelsior pool, allowing that dilemma to stop three personnel.  When solving all three missions, I would probably attempt Advanced Combat Training first.  This mission will let you discount your Assault events after it’s completed.  Everyone is , so Brute Force will automatically net you an extra 5 points. The current Excelsior pool forbids dual-headquarters decks, so the text on Provoke Interstellar Incident is moot, but the skill set is so good for Klingons that I couldn’t pass it up.

Draw Deck

The Klingons in this deck get several types of bonuses from battling their opponents.  In Second Edition battle comes in two flavors.  Personnel combat is represented by cards with the Assault keyword.  The Spirit of Kahless is an Assault that allows you to get a few dilemmas beneath one of your missions.  This is great because one of the problems with playing battle decks is you have to divert ships and personnel from the primary goal of the game, mission solving.  Getting dilemmas beneath missions while beating up on your opponent is a nice way to get around that limitation.  No Peace in Our Time is a great example of how ship engagements are represented by cards with the Maneuver keyword.  I would probably not use it to start an engagement in this deck.  I’d rather get the cunning boost for my Treachery personnel (House of Duras FTW!).  You can try for a two-mission win with A Chance for Glory.  You can start an engagement or combat with this dual keyword event.  If you complete Brute Force and Provoke Interstellar Incident, this event will bring you “around the corner” for the win. No matter how you want to engage you're opponent, it's generally a good idea to hold onto your events until the turn you're ready to go fight.  Otherwise, they're vulnerable to destruction by your opponent.

As mentioned before, the skill set for these missions is tight, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting out the appropriate personnel for solving missions.  If you’re not willing to try for the two-mission win, you can make use of all those extra points with At What Cost?.  You’ve got some big ships, so Miracle Working will let you cycle through your deck.  Klingons tend not to have very high cunning, so Warrior’s Birthright is a nice support card to let you use strength instead of integrity or cunning for dilemmas.

Dilemma Pile

This dilemma pile is set up to support the battle theme of the deck.  It makes use of several Damage dilemmas to weaken your opponent before you take them on with your Maneuver events.  You can set up Greater Needs with Blended, Back Room Dealings or Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?. In space, you could use Adversarial Trial or Magnetic Field Disruptions to filter out a personnel for Quantum Filament and then hit them with V’Ger.  Damage dilemmas also offer a big benefit, they aren't overcome, so do not go beneath your opponent's mission for subsequent attempts.  Also, if your opponent removes them from their ship, they go back to your dilemma pile, so can be faced again!  The only downside to these combos is that the Excelsior pool currently doesn’t have any Damage Maneuver cards, so you can’t currently use engagement to make your opponent’s ship go BOOM by placing a third damage marker on it.  However, feel free to make that sort of change to this deck if you want to bring it to tournament with a complete card pool.

Excelsior

This deck is compatible for the Excelsior format that is currently in development.  It pulls cards from Version 0.3 of the restricted card pool and rules document.  Feel free to print this deck and give it a try!  The next public playtest for Excelsior will take place at the World Championships in Orlando in October.

Discuss this article in this thread.

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

• Klingon Player
• Overused Problems I
• Unbroken I
• We Fear Change
• How About a New Mission, Admiral? I
• Overused Problems II

Decklist

Hide Deck Stats

Dilemma Deck Total Dilemmas 28 Space 8 (29%) Cost 1 3 Cost 2 1 Cost 3 4 Planet 8 (29%) Cost 1 3 Cost 2 1 Cost 3 4 Dual 12 (43%) Cost 0 1 Cost 2 7 Cost 3 1 Cost 4 3 Total Dilemma Deck cost 63

Draw Deck Total Draw Deck 45 Equipment 3 (7%) Cost 0 2 Cost 2 1 Event 14 (31%) Cost 0 4 Cost 1 2 Cost 2 4 Cost 3 4 Interrupt 2 (4%) Personnel 21 (47%) Cost 1 3 Cost 2 11 Cost 3 7 Ship 5 (11%) Cost 5 2 Cost 6 3 Total Draw Deck cost 98

Skills Count Skill # Missions # Personnel 1x 2x 3x Total Acquisition 0 1 1 Anthropology 0 1 1 Archaeology 0 3 3 Astrometrics 0 3 3 Biology 0 4 4 Diplomacy 0 1 1 2 Engineer 0 2 2 Exobiology 0 3 3 Geology 0 2 2 Honor 0 7 1 8 Intelligence 0 1 1 Law 0 2 2 Leadership 3 6 2 8 Medical 1 5 5 Navigation 1 6 6 Officer 1 6 6 Physics 0 4 4 Programming 0 6 6 Science 0 5 5 Security 3 4 2 6 Telepathy 0 0 Transporters 0 5 5 Treachery 0 1 4 5 Icons Count Icon # Personnel % Personnel Staffing Icons Command Star 12 57.14 % Staff Star 7 33.33 % Keyword Count Keyword # Cards Assault 5 Chancellor 1 Cloaking Device 5 Commander: I.K.S. Bortas 1 Commander: I.K.S. Maht-H'a 1 Commander: I.K.S. Vorn 1 Hand Weapon 2 High Council Member 1 Maneuver 4 Persistent 2 Recall: 1 1 Region: Qo'noS System 1