Slipping you the Eel (part two)

by Paddy Tye, Eel Controlled Automaton

17th August 2022

So you're a genetic superman with a bunch of followers to do your bidding. Now what?

Khan's Augment crew may have some good but limited skills and high attributes, but that alone doesn't guarantee success. During Playtesting, Faux Pas became a regular roadblock I encountered! We have added to that skill set in Paradise Lost, albeit not comprehensively as the Augment faction should have some weaker areas. Khan's crew are not primarily mission solvers, and don't have a fully rounded skill matrix, even after some new additions from the 22^nd century. They will still be able to acquire some skills from the opponent's personnel you Eel, but you can't guarantee that the opponent's personnel will give you what you need. So what is their route to victory?

Ever since The Motion Pictures, Khan has had one crucial objective to achieving victory: acquiring The Genesis Device and scoring 30 points per turn using Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold. And he'll use your personnel to do it!

As part of that, Khan still needs to solve at least one mission to acquire The Genesis Device. Most likely two missions to overcome The Big Picture and Intermix Ratio rules that are integrated into OTF. So other than giving them more people and skills, how can we preserve their weaknesses but still give them other ways to ensure they can complete missions and overcome walls? Afterall we want to preserve the flavour of needing to Eel personnel, just not to the level of decimating the opponent. So we have one resource we need: skills. But we have a different resource: personnel we've Eeled… who probably don't have exactly the skills we need, unless we've been pretty lucky.

This is where today's new card, He Put Creatures In Our Bodies, comes into play. Originally it started out as an augment version of Adapt: Negate Obstruction, where you gave an Eeled personnel back to your opponent to nullify a previously encountered dilemma. But as it was just the missing skills to pass walls which was needed, we adapted it to be a simple skill add, but for all your augments at that location. If a wall needs two different skills you're short of, you'd need to return two Eeled personnel to your opponent. And no Eeling your own guys, has to be one of your opponent's personnel you Eeled, so interaction is still key.

So, Khan's path to achieving vengeance is quite a complex one. You need to attempt missions to acquire The Genesis Device, but at the same time you also need to interact with your opponent, Eel their personnel, and ultimately use those personnel as a resource to overcome any roadblocks stopping you from acquiring The Genesis Device. So 20 years on from The Motion Pictures, Khan is still a tricky deck to pull off – but it can be a lot of fun!

Discuss this article in this thread.