Online Sealed Series #1: PaQ AttaQ (Part 2)

by Daniel Matteson, Director of Communications

30th January 2019

Last week I introduced the first event of the Online Sealed Series, a First Edition event called PaQ AttaQ. This format includes an Official Tournament Sealed Deck (OTSD), plus an additional pack of Alternate Universe and two packs of Q-Continuum. At the end of the article I included an example cardpool similar to those the competitors of this event might open. This week, I'll attempt to whittle down my 140 cards into a functional - if not necessarily powerful - deck.

Let's break down the choices I made.

Doorways (and Seeding Decisions)

At first I got excited about the Q's Tent in the pool and had wild dreams of being able to move my Spacedock, Reflection Therapy, and all my ships over to my Tent and trim my draw deck to the minimum. Unfortunately, that would not be the case. I'm very light on personnel, so there's just no way my deck will work without a treaty. The only treaty in my pool is the triple treaty, which only works if I have no side decks. So I won't be able to run the Q's Tent. Likewise, can't run Q-Flash, but I didn't get any of those anyway, so all the Q cards are out (except, of course, for Hide and Seek).

I'll seed the Alternate Universe Door as well as the Space-Time Portal, so I can continue to play my AU personnel even if the Portal gets discard for another purpose (bouncing a ship to hand, or using as a wormhole). The Devidian Door is a fun little emergency free-play that'll make it into the draw deck for sure.

Missions

I tried to go with skill-light missions as my personnel are not very skill dense. Establish Relations was required as it's the only mission with a Non-Aligned icon, so it's needed to seed my Husnock Outpost. I added Explore Interstellar Matter as a location for my Neutral Outpost, but it's my only space mission, which should make my opponent's dilemma seeding decisions interesting.

Facilities and Other Seeds

I have three different outposts, so they're all going in. (With no civilians to speak of, the Colonies can stay out of the deck.) With all my doorways, facilities, Open Diplomatic Relations and treaty, I still had to stretch to get to 30 seed cards, and using every dilemma in my pool plus the artifact Canar (I guess?) got me right to 30. The dilemmas themselves aren't fantastic (three Impassable Doors??) but Cardassian Trap almost always gets somebody, Outpost Raid is fantastic if planned correctly, and The Higher... The Fewer will surely annoy some people.

Draw Deck - Personnel and Ships

Since I'm playing a planet-heavy strategy, I cut all the holograms as they're only good in space. I also cut the Mots and any duplicates to trim the deck as much as possible. I got a couple decent personnel in the Federation crew but nothing to write home about. The Targ is a nice include as it'll protect me from losing turns to Rogue Borg Mercenaries. As for ships, I cut to three universals. I took out the Zalkonian Vessels as they require too many non-aligned personnel, and the Yridian Shuttle is just too slow and weak for me. Unfortunately, all my ships were Non-Aligned or Romulan, and I finish with only three personnel from each affiliation, so this will be a fragile army.

Draw Deck - Other Cards

For equipment and verbs, I try to keep it to game-changing cards only. Some interrupts and events can be fun situationally, but just aren't broad enough to stock in the deck. The only equipment I kept was Plasmadyne Relay for range bonuses. I didn't get any skill-granting equipment, so everything else was mostly unnecessary PADDs. For events I took Spacedock (downloadable with Spacedoor), Static Warp Bubble (which can be nullified with Spacedoor but it'll definitely annoy your opponent for a turn), and Yellow Alert (to prevent Red Alert and give me a cunning boost, reducing the need for the PADDs). Finally, the interrupts. I didn't get any guaranteed "stoppers" (such as Rogue Borg or Loss of Orbital Stability), but Hail is the closest I have, so that'll get in there. The three Wormholes will have me zipping around the spaceline wherever I need to go. Three copies will allow me to draw into them sooner, but in a pinch, I can pair the odd copy with Space-Time Portal for an additional trip.

Final Thoughts

I managed just enough seed cards to get to 30 without the need for "bluff seeds," and I trimmed the draw deck down to a respectable 35. Though this deck is far from the greatest I've seen played in OTSD formats, I'd say it's certainly not the worst, either.

The first Online Sealed Series event, PaQ AttaQ, is underway right now, at the beginning of week one. It's not too late to jump into the event if you're interested; leave a post in this thread or contact me to get entered. If Second Edition is more your style, stay tuned for the second Online Sealed Series event, Big Evil, coming in February (I'll be writing articles about that one as well).

Good luck, and happy gaming!

 

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Decklist

Print Decklist • Copy Deck

This deck is legal in the following Card Pools:

• Complete
• Traditional

This deck is legal in the following Rules Sets:

• Modern
• Open
• Revised
• Warp Speed

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

• Klingon Player
• Rag-Tag Fleet
• We Don't Need Your Help, Q

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