Peace Is Flowing Like a River

by Maggie Geppert, Executive Officer

17th April 2020

The problem is, is that one of the cooks has just been asked to broil reptile for the Anticans, and it looks like the Selay delegate."

- Tasha Yar from “Lonely Among Us”

Today marks a very big day for Second Edition, as the Continuing Committee releases its fiftieth set, The Omega Directive. The theme of this set is fifty-point missions, and today I would like to highlight one of the great missions that were designed under this theme. Parliament, Attend Diplomatic Conference, is a neutral planet in Region: Sector 500. The inhabitants of this planet act as arbitrators in their sector. The peace conference between the Anticans and the Selay in “Lonely Among Us” was facilitated by the Federation, so this mission is only attemptable by (or if you’re rocking Jonathan Archer, Headstrong Captain). It requires 3 Diplomacy and 3 Law and (Integrity >44 or Cunning >44), which are very typical attribute levels for a 50-point mission.

Where this mission makes its mark is the discount for playing Diplomacy personnel. The first Diplomacy personnel played each turn costs -2. This benefit goes to both players, but like many cards in the Federation “Sharing is Caring” theme, you will build your deck so that you get more benefit than your opponent does. Now, the drawback to this is you must get personnel of different affiliations together on Parliament to make this work. This means that you won’t get this discount out of the door, but it will be a boon to you mid-game. There are several interesting choices in how you use this mission and this discount. Do you play or , who natively have several different affiliation personnel in their factions and can attempt the mission easily? Do you do something off-the-wall like play , send people for the discount, and hope you draw into Jake Sisko, Reporter Behind the Lines to attempt? Do you play a dual-HQ build? That could let you do some interesting achievements. I opted to go really far out and build a Triple HQ / / deck. 

The predecessor of this deck was initially built after Symbiosis was released. I wanted to play around with the cards benefitting multiple-HQ decks, like Sfreet, Deadly Flower and Interstellar Exigence. I initially built it as a tribute to the TOS movie era and used Breach Barrier and Sha Ka Ree, Quest for Infinite Knowledge for my two-mission win. I relied on ship bonuses to go over the 100-point mark. These missions have a serious downside, in that the mission skill matrix doesn’t have any overlap. Even using Wixiban, Old Friend, getting these missions done was very dicey. As I looked to update this deck with Parliament, I decided that I could refine the selection, skew away from my theme a bit and get an easier two-mission win if I used Wormhole Negotiations instead of Breach Barrier. I felt that pairing TOS with an Underlying Influence/Pattern Loss dilemma pile would be a good choice, as I have enough personnel to run Coordinated Counterattack and stop folks from gaining skills.

As I wrap up this article, I welcome you all to start building your 50-point mission dream decks. The Omega Directive will be tournament legal once week from today, Friday April 24^th. Although our options for local play are restricted at this time, you can find several online tournaments that start after the set is legal. Keep your eyes open for a Lackey update from our online programming guru Markus Eberlein (eberlems). I’ll conclude this article by thanking Alexey Korolev (Ashbey), Michael Shea (The Prefect) and Nathan Miracle (gooeychewie) for all their design work. Thanks to the Playtesting, Rules, Creative, Art and Proofreading teams for putting together a great product. At this time, I am also delighted to announce the return of the cover sheet and pack art to Second Edition expansions thanks to the newest Art Team recruits, David Drummond (Daved1864), Marc Wagner (mWagner84) and Paul Karels (Tirius). Thanks guys!

Oh, and one last thing. Today doesn’t just mark the release of Second Edition’s fiftieth set. Coincidentally, it is also the fiftieth birthday of the new Director of Second Edition, Nick Yankovec (nickyank). Could everyone here please join me in wishing Nick a very happy birthday? We’re all bummed that you had to postpone your Milestone Tournament, but we hope that you will soon be able to hold a belated celebration with all your Trek friends.

Discuss this article in this thread.

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

• Triple Trouble
• Common Problems
• Overused Problems I
• How About a New Mission, Admiral? I
• Overused Problems II

Decklist

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Dilemma Deck Total Dilemmas 32 Space 9 (28%) Cost 0 1 Cost 1 4 Cost 2 1 Cost 3 3 Planet 9 (28%) Cost 1 5 Cost 2 1 Cost 3 3 Dual 14 (44%) Cost 0 4 Cost 1 1 Cost 2 4 Cost 3 2 Cost 4 3 Total Dilemma Deck cost 58

Draw Deck Total Draw Deck 51 Equipment 1 (2%) Cost 2 1 Event 6 (12%) Cost 0 2 Cost 1 2 Cost 3 2 Interrupt 5 (10%) Personnel 34 (67%) Cost 1 4 Cost 2 8 Cost 3 10 Cost 4 8 Cost 5 4 Ship 5 (10%) Cost 3 3 Cost 5 2 Total Draw Deck cost 131

Skills Count Skill # Missions # Personnel 1x 2x 3x Total Acquisition 0 1 1 Anthropology 0 9 1 10 Archaeology 0 3 3 Astrometrics 1 5 1 6 Biology 0 5 2 7 Diplomacy 2 14 1 15 Engineer 0 5 1 6 Exobiology 0 5 1 6 Geology 0 3 3 Honor 1 10 3 13 Intelligence 0 1 1 Law 1 6 6 Leadership 0 10 3 13 Medical 0 4 1 5 Navigation 0 6 6 Officer 0 13 13 Physics 0 5 5 Programming 0 8 1 9 Science 0 9 1 10 Security 0 2 1 3 Telepathy 1 0 Transporters 0 1 1 Treachery 1 5 2 7 Icons Count Icon # Personnel % Personnel Staffing Icons Command Star 14 41.18 % Staff Star 12 35.29 % Faction Icons Earth 8 23.53 % Original Series 19 55.88 % Temporal Icons Past 34 100.00 % Keyword Count Keyword # Cards Admiral 2 Assassin 1 Chancellor 2 Cloaking Device 1 Commander: Aurora 1 Commander: I.K.S. Kla'Diyus 1 Commander: Kronos One 1 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise 2 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise-A 1 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise-B 1 Commander: U.S.S. Excelsior 1 Commander: U.S.S. Reliant 2 Consume: 1 1 General 2 Genetically Enhanced 1 Persistent 2 Q 2 Region: Qo'noS System 1 Region: Romulus System 1 Region: Sector 001 1 Region: Sector 500 1 Species 8472 2