Fortune ....

by Ross Fertel, Second Edition Brand Manager

26th January 2018

Dilemmas have always been the life blood of this game. Whether you love the theme of the expansion or not, chances are you’ll check out the dilemmas. Under the original run by Decipher, there really was no opportunity to focus on them for an expansion. In the virtual era, they would be revisited and focused on often. Probably the biggest concentration of both dilemmas and cards that play with them are found in Favor the Bold.

Of course, the Maquis card is a part of the dilemma theme if only marginally. Still, but it shares space with a Bajoran and a Voyager card at the same time! That being said, it does nicely blend the neat skills you would expect on a Voyager crew, the discard pile fun you should expect on a Bajoran and the trickery you would expect from the Maquis. The attribute bonus isn’t that hard to achieve late game and his game text helps him stay around. It’s a perfect microcosm of all three elements blending together perfectly in one little card package. Add in a staff icon to the mix and you have something all three factions are proud to call theirs.

But that’s not all that the expansion has to offer the Maquis. There’s a fun event in The Undiscovered Country, which plays on a mission. It would take time for this part of the game to get into their wheelhouse, but it does fit very nice into their cards. A bit on the pricey side, not to mention one use only, but it helps them get rid of That One Guy. You’ll probably use it for the effect, but until then, you could get other uses out of it simply by virtue of it being an event.

The free Delivery Boy will make your other cards cheaper while Hindrance expands your dilemma selection, albeit at the cost of a future personnel. Uninvited would become a staple letting you get your cheaper dilemmas right where you quickly need them. Telle would be instrumental in keeping you alive and unstopped during an attempt and Arak’Taral keeps the important people safe and George Primmon similarly enacts his revenge. Helen Noel keeps some of the nastier dilemmas out of your hair. Klag and Neral keep the right crews out of harm’s way.

But who cares about those, this was the dilemmas expansion. Starting off with the card developed by committee, All Consuming Evil causes laughter of both joy and sadness. Bold Plan is expensive but helps with the shell game that dilemmas can turn out to be. In Fighting will help those who excel at skill tracking and The Seen and The Unseen would make heavily relying on non-aligned a riskier proposition. Unwanted Guests can prove to your opponent just how tough your hand can be. And of course, there’s a Chula dilemma in there, too.

The first run at dilemmas as a focal point proved to be a success paving the way for more down the line. They wouldn’t always appear in a set, but they are an integral part of the game. Laying the foundation correctly, Favor the Bold would lead the way for other expansions to follow in its steps.

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