Ever since shortly after the release of The Enemy of My Enemy and Casualties of the Occupation many players have complained about the dominance of certain Cardassian build at high-level events. And, while both of these cards has received needed errata, design wanted to take an opportunity to provide a non-errata form of balance to this particular dominant build.
Today, we reveal two such cards, Garak Has Some Issues and Cardassia Prime.
Astute players will no doubt note that neither of these two cards strictly fits the 50 point theme. As designers, sometimes we have to choose between devotion to a creative theme and creating a card to fill a perceived need. In the case of these two cards, we opted for the latter as being more important than the former. We hope you'll come to agree.
Garak Has Some Issues follows in the footsteps of some popular affiliation-specific dilemmas, like Moral Choice, Discommendation, The Seen and the Unseen, Quarren Labor Shortage, and Weight of Command. When this dilemma is revealed, you name a skill (except the rare ones) and randomly select three personnel. Each one selected with that skill is stopped. Each unstopped Cardassian selected dies. Against a non-Cardassian build, with a little basic skill tracking it can prove a handy two or even three-stop dilemma if an opponent is playing heavy with certain skills. In this way, it's not unlike Put to the Screws, Overindulgence, or In-Fighting which are all popular dilemmas. But, against a Cardassian build, this dilemma can be a cold-blooded killer, much like Elim Garak himself. And, this is one dilemma that Central Command won't help with. Against a Cardassian player, playing this dilemma is going to feel good.
Speaking of Central Command, we also wanted to address the use (or even abuse) of interrupts played during mission attempts. Because the Cardassians excel at this, it felt only natural to let this be an attempt-able version of Cardassia Prime. Now, the mission itself is fairly straightforward. The skills are fairly common and fit with the story of the late-stage Dominion War. It's a 35 point mission, which isn't terribly uncommon at all, and his attribute requirements are a bit tough for a typical 35 pointer, but not unreasonable. The mission also features the affiliation icons of each affiliation featured in DS9. The mission's real value comes in its game text - with three or more dilemmas overcome beneath interrupts cannot be played during mission attempts. Certainly, that cramps a Cardassian player's style. But, we didn't want to just balance Cardassians. We also wanted to address interrupts like Uninvited, Bridge Officer's Test, The Promise, Covenant, Dominion Hierarchy, Enemy of My Enemy, and even Escape - in other words, interrupts that have either become ubiquitous or which have contributed to the NPE of having a well-crafted dilemma combo negated by a single interrupt over and over.
But, in a very Cardassian fashion, the mission isn't a guarantee of balance against those strategies. Your opponent could make the tactical decision to give you the mission with no dilemmas overcome beneath, and thus they might preserve their interrupt-heavy strategy for a time at a cost of a 35-point reward to you. Or, if your opponent decides to throw dilemmas like any normal mission attempt, you could end up having your own mission interrupts shut-down as well for a relatively common 35 points. And, there's always the chance that your opponent won't care much about mission-interrupts. Maybe they're playing Voyager and relying on Homeward Bound which isn't effected by Cardassia's text. Or maybe they're playing Starfleet and relying on noun abilities to get by. Like a game of Kotra, this mission encourages bold tactics and strategic thinking. It's the epitome of high-risk, high-reward.
To highlight these two cards, I've incorporated them into a Terok Nor deck. Terok Nor, like DS9, can often prove to be an effective "meta-answer" against certain kinds of decks, and Ruling Council is not effected by the text on Cardassia Prime (though Untapped Influence would be). But, I also just enjoy the idea of the Dominion-Cardassian alliance "winning the war" for Cardassia. This deck pairs the skill denial capacity of Weyoun and Keevan with a kill pile. Change of Venue and Self-Replicating Roadblock are in the deck to help you get by any dilemmas you don't think you can handle. The idea is to complete Cardassia Prime as quickly as you can and either get the free 35 points if your opponent decides not to throw dilemmas or eliminate the opponent's ability to play Escape if you can get three dilemmas overcome underneath. Then, omce you start killing people during an opponent's mission attempts, use Weyoun and/or Keevan to mop up any skills you can't eliminate entirely or to strand their ship at a mission if you can't destaff it. This deck requires a moderate amount of skill tracking to make the dilemma pile work well because the goal is to kill as many people with as few dilemmas as possible (which is why this isn't a typical "consume" pile using Tragic Turn), but otherwise it's fairly simple to play.
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This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements: