Welcome to the Station

by Derrick Marsh, Guest Writer

18th November 2017

"Station log, stardate 46390.1. The Enterprise has been ordered to the Lapolis system. They're scheduled to depart at zero-five hundred hours after offloading three runabout class vessels. Meanwhile, our medical and science officers are arriving... and I'm looking forward to a reunion with a... very old... friend."  ~ Benjamin Sisko

So it is the final article in this week’s Spotlight Series of Deep Space 9. Maggie and the rest of the CC has done a great job of revisiting factions throughout the Spotlight Series. About a month or so ago, Maggie approached me based off my comments of my enjoyment of the DS9 team and I was delighted to help write an article about playing the 1E DS9 decks.

We had done some discussion initially on why a lot of folks don’t care for DS9. The first simply being Deep Space 9 itself. The facility type “Nor” was introduced in the DS9 set and with that, introduced a new card called a “Site.” Nors played differently from just a normal outpost which, up to this point, is what everyone was used to. What made these difficult to use was that a Nor used these Sites to do its reporting of personnel and ships. Something that was vastly different from just a typical outpost which as long as a personnel could use/mix, it could report there. Same thing with a ship.

Now, the actual reporting was being done by a Site. And a Site is typically restricted to just allowing a personnel with that classification to report there. Note that a personnel often cannot have that skill, but must have the actual classification. Then, how you could report a ship was based off three different Sites, which in their turn were based off the number of staffing icons needed to fly the ship. Now it doesn’t sound very difficult, but what made it very tricky was that you could only initially play 6 Site cards to the station in the seed phase. While those 6 Sites were not part of your initial 30 seed cards, it still made it very difficult when alone there are 7 classifications, not even including at least one site to report/dock your ships.

Then to add to that, Decipher introduced movement restrictions on Nors between the Sites themselves. A personnel can only move between one site to another, once per turn. There was no beaming allowed between Sites (without specific cards introduced later) so now that you had some reporting restrictions, it took some understanding to move them to the ships you had at DS9 and then back and forth.

Lastly, the initial difficulty of using a Nor was that your opponent could steal/commandeer the station itself! Who wants to play something that my opponent can have an easy time of taking my facility and shutting down my report functions? We call like a challenge, but it definitely made folks turn their heads when this first came out.

So why would you want to play with a Nor? Well one, it is a very thematic play style. It is very cool to see the “inside” of the station with the site cards which differ from just an outpost or even the Headquarters (which were also introduced in DS9). Number two, the sites themselves can have some very powerful functions, specifically allowing the download of personnel/equipment/ships, whatever can actually report to that site. Initially this comes with a cost, not being able to draw cards at the end of your turn, but one of the key cards in this deck is We Need You Here introduced by the CC that foregoes this penalty for downloading a card in place of your normal card play as well as allowing you to get more Sites onto the table quickly. So doing this now basically allows you to “Dial-A-Skill” which to me is definitely a game changer. It allows you to early on getting certain personnel/ship out there to start your play engines or card draw engines and then late game, get out that skill you need to bypass a troublesome dilemma or whatever skill you need to pass that final mission.

The second thing that the DS9 set introduced was the first true introduction of a different Quadrant. The Gamma Quadrant (where the Dominion hails from) is where we actually get to take our personnel on a ship to a completely different side of the galaxy through the Bajoran Wormhole. However, it was very cumbersome to use this as it was difficult to travel back and forth with the Wormhole because the doorway itself would stop your ship unless you used certain cards to unstop you. And then when you finally got there and were able to move, the missions themselves had such large Span that it could take you multiple turns to just to move back and forth to those Gamma Quadrant missions. Luckily the CC recognized these issues and addressed both with the introduction of The First Stable Wormhole.

So after kind of understanding what some of these downsides were to DS9, I wanted to create a deck that was going to create a fun thematic feel for folks for the DS9 Federation that I feel like people would hopefully get the same enjoyment out of playing DS9 as I have. The main focus of the deck is playing the Federation personnel with the DS9 property logo, so using Reshape the Quadrant is key to allow you to play Here by Invitation getting that free play of Federation personnel. Then with Trust the Prophets turning the station to allow Federation to match, it now allows you to download any Federation to your sites, including getting out the U.S.S. Defiant and the shuttles. The idea is to solve a mission in the Alpha Quadrant and to visit the Gamma Quadrant and solve a 2^nd mission. You can then get some additional points with the three Objectives in Q’s Tent. And then solve a third mission to round out your 100 points needed to win the game.

I tried to make everything in the deck DS9 property logo, including the dilemmas, but obviously a few cards I included didn’t follow that criteria. I also know the deck isn’t going to game change and win a bunch of tournaments, but again it isn’t designed for that. It key components allows folks an introduction into the world of DS9 through Nors, Sites, and the Gamma Quadrant. It allows some simple cool tricks and the ability to play your favorite DS9 personnel while they go on some crazy fun mission attempts, because that’s what 1E is all about. Reenacting our favorite scenes from our favorite shows!

Discuss this article in this thread.

Decklist

This deck is legal in the following Card Pools:

• Complete

This deck is legal in the following Rules Sets:

• Modern
• Open
• X-list
• Revised
• Warp Speed

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

• Bajoran Player
• DS9 Player

Hide Deck Stats

Dilemmas
Total Dilemmas		22
[P]		5 (23%)
[S/P]		11 (50%)
[S]		6 (27%)

Seed Deck
Total Seed Deck		30
Dilemma		22 (73%)
Doorway		2 (7%)
Facility		1 (3%)
Incident		5 (17%)

Draw Deck
Total Draw Deck		50
Event		6 (12%)
Personnel		38 (76%)
Ship		6 (12%)

Q-Tent Side Deck
Total Q-Tent Side Deck		13
Equipment		1 (8%)
Event		3 (23%)
Interrupt		1 (8%)
Objective		3 (23%)
Personnel		1 (8%)
Site		4 (31%)

"Outside the Game" and/or Seed-Phase Downloads
Total "Outside the Game" and/or Seed-Phase Downloads		5
Doorway		2 (40%)
Event		1 (20%)
Incident		1 (20%)
Time Location		1 (20%)

Skills
Acquisition		2
Anthropology		4
Archaeology		1
Astrophysics		5
Biology		6
CIVILIAN		3
Computer Skill		12
Cybernetics		0
Diplomacy		8
Empathy		2
ENGINEER		9
Exobiology		3
Geology		3
Greed		1
Honor		15
Law		4
Leadership		10
MEDICAL		5
Music		3
Navigation		14
OFFICER		8
Physics		5
SCIENCE		9
SECURITY		17
Smuggling		2
Stellar Cartography		5
Transporter Skill		3
Treachery		8
V.I.P.		7
Youth		3
Rare Skills
Barbering		0
Cantankerousness		0
Guramba		0
Mindmeld		2
Miracle Worker		0
Orion Syndicate		0
Resistance		1

Skill			On # Missions	Skill Dots	Classifications	Total
Acquisition				2		2
Anthropology			1	4		4
Archaeology				1		1
Astrophysics				5		5
Biology				6		6
CIVILIAN					3	3
Computer Skill			2	12		12
Cybernetics						0
Diplomacy			2	8		8
Empathy				2		2
ENGINEER			2	5	4	9
Exobiology				3		3
Geology				3		3
Greed				1		1
Honor				15		15
Law				4		4
Leadership			2	10		10
MEDICAL				2	3	5
Music				3		3
Navigation			2	14		14
OFFICER			1		8	8
Physics			1	5		5
SCIENCE			1	2	7	9
SECURITY			1	10	7	17
Smuggling				2		2
Stellar Cartography			1	5		5
Transporter Skill				3		3
Treachery			1	8		8
V.I.P.					7	7
Youth				3		3
Rare Skills
Barbering
Cantankerousness
Guramba
Mindmeld				2		2
Miracle Worker
Orion Syndicate
Resistance				1		1
Intelligence Skills
FCA
Intelligence
Klingon Intelligence
Memory Omega
Obsidian Order			1
Section 31				2		2
Tal Shiar
V'Shar
any Intelligence				2		2

Traits
Card group
Captains Order		2
Capturing-related card		2
Harvester Virus-related card		3
Dilemma group
Empok Nor-related dilemma		2
MEDICAL-related dilemma		2
Virus-related dilemma		4
Mission region
Bajor Region		1
Demilitarized Zone Region		1
Mission trait
Array mission		1
Homeworld		1
Personnel gender
Female		11
Male		28
Personnel group
Deep Space 9-related personnel		21
Personnel trait
Admiral		2
Ambassador		3
Captain		1
Cardassian resistance		1
Chairman		1
Cook		2
genetically enhanced		1
Infiltrator		2
Shape-shifter		1
Support Personnel		7
Thief		1
Trill with symbiont		2
Ship equipment
Cloaking Device		2
Tractor Beam		4
Ship trait
Federation ship		6
ship trait
No staffing requirement		4
Ship trait
Scout		2

Icons
Expansion
		1
Faction
		4
Infiltrator
		1
		1
Special
		4
		1
		4
Staffing
		15
		20