Into the Final Frontier, Part 2 - Getting Oriented in the Galaxy (3 of 5)

by Chris Heard; Updated by Darren Lacoste, Editor in Chief

17th February 2009

< continued from Page 2

Like most other cards, dilemma cards have cost numbers beside their icons. Since seven of Jane's personnel are attempting the mission, Bill can use dilemmas whose total cost does not exceed seven. Bill wants to be sure that Jane's personnel do not get to complete the mission this turn, but he does not want to use too many dilemmas (for reasons I'll explain on Jane's next turn). Therefore, he decides to use only two dilemmas.

Bill's been paying pretty close attention to Jane's cards, and he's pretty sure he's only seen one personnel with Anthropology or Archaeology (namely, Jean-Luc Picard (Explorer)). Therefore, Bill decides that one of his dilemmas will be Authenticate Artifacts. He knows for sure that Authenticate Artifacts will stop Jean-Luc Picard, which will prevent Picard from assisting the other personnel in completing the mission.

But Authenticate Artifacts would be even better if Jean-Luc Picard were somehow stopped before the personnel attempting the mission ever saw Authenticate Artifacts. Bill therefore decides to use Kolaran Raiders as a lead-in to Authenticate Artifacts.

Once he has decided to use just these two dilemmas, Bill takes the other five dilemmas that he drew and places them face up on the bottom of his dilemma pile. He then takes Authenticate Artifacts and lays it face down on the table, and places Kolaran Raiders face down on top of that. These two cards form Bill's dilemma stack for this mission attempt.

Now that Bill has chosen his dilemmas, Jane is ready to proceed. Bill turns over the top card in the dilemma stack (note well that the cards in the dilemma stack are revealed from top to bottom) and Jane finds it to be Kolaran Raiders, which forces her to choose a personnel who has Leadership or Security to be stopped. Jane's personnel include Lopez, who has Security and a Cunning of only five. Jane decides that Lopez is the most expendable of the group at this point, so she tells Bill that she is stopping Lopez. Now Lopez cannot do anything else during Jane's current turn. Having faced Kolaran Raiders, and suffered its consequences, Jane takes the dilemma and places it face up underneath Geological Survey (many players like to place such dilemmas crosswise). That dilemma is now considered to be overcome.

The other six personnel go on to face the second dilemma, Authenticate Artifacts. Authenticate Artifacts allows Jane to bypass its effects if she has a single personnel who by himself or herself has 2 Anthropology or 2 Archaeology. Jean-Luc Picard has Archaeology, but does not have 2 Archaeology, so Jane fails to meet this dilemma requirement. Therefore, according to the game text on Authenticate Artifacts, Bill gets to choose an Anthropology or Archaeology personnel to be stopped. Since the only Archaeology or Anthropology personnel in Jane's team is Jean-Luc Picard, Bill chooses to stop him. Jane places the overcome Authenticate Artifacts beneath Geological Survey.

Jane now has five personnel left and no more dilemmas to face, so she checks to see if her personnel can meet the mission requirements. Pran Tainer made it through the dilemmas without getting stopped, so Jane knows she has the skills to complete the mission. However, the five remaining personnel have a total Cunning of only 29, which is not enough to satisfy the Cunning>30 requirement. Jane's personnel fail to complete the mission, and are therefore stopped.

With all of her personnel stopped on Geological Survey, Jane yields the turn to Bill. In his hand, Bill has a copy of Borg Cutting Beam, a powerful event card that will allow him to "assimilate" (take control of) one of Jane's personnel! However, Borg Cutting Beam will only work for Bill if Jane's personnel are on their ship. Right now, they're stuck on the planet, so Bill decides to wait and use the Borg Cutting Beam later.

He plays two personnel with a total cost of three counters, and uses his other four counters to draw four cards. Bill now has seven Borg personnel, who easily cover the four staff icons needed to staff his Borg Sphere. He beams his personnel aboard the ship and, looking over his missions, tells Jane that he is moving to Assault on Species 8472. Because of the large span on Assault on Species 8472, this move will cause Bill to expend six of his Borg Sphere's nine Range. With only three Range left, he won't be going anywhere else this turn.

Assault on Species 8472 requires 2 Engineer, Exobiology, Physics, and Cunning>34. Bill's ship has three personnel aboard who have the Engineer skill, but only two have Exobiology and only one has Physics. Therefore, Bill decides to use some of his personnel's special abilities defined in their game text box.

First, Bill uses Borg Queen (Bringer of Order). In her game text box, she has an ability that reads, "Order - Discard the top card of your deck to name a skill. Each of your Borg gains that skill. This effect lasts until the end of this turn. You may do this only once each turn." The word "Order" at the beginning of this ability means that Bill can only use this ability during the execute orders phase of his turn, which he's in now, but it also means that Bill cannot use the ability during a mission attempt (because attempting a mission is an order, and no order may be executed until the previously-intitiated order has been completed).

Before announcing the mission attempt, Bill discards the top card of his deck and tells Jane that he is using the Borg Queen's special ability to give all of his Borg Exobiology. Then he tells her that he wants his seven personnel on the Borg Sphere to attempt Assault on Species 8472. Since Assault on Species 8472 is a space mission, all of the personnel on the ship must participate.

Now it's Jane's turn to draw dilemmas, as described above when Jane's personnel attempted Geological Survey. Let's assume that Jane chooses two dilemmas that both get overcome in the course of the mission attempt, but which stop a couple of Borg drones and thereby prevent Bill from completing the mission this turn.

Now it's back to Jane's turn. Jane has five cards in hand, but doesn't really like them all that much. Fortunately, one of her cards is an event called D'Arsay Archive. Jane spends two counters to play D'Arsay Archive. Following its instructions, Jane takes the other four cards in her hand, shuffles them together, places them (face down) on the bottom of her draw deck, and then draws four new cards. Having done that, she follows the last instruction on D'Arsay Archive—"Destroy this event"—by placing D'Arsay Archive in her discard pile. She uses three more counters to play personnel (William T. Riker (Number One) and Daniel Kwan), and then uses her final two counters to draw two cards.