Find the winning deck here.
Deck Design
The deck is all about maximizing downloads of personnel. Download personnel using: Assign Mission Specialists, Assign Support Personnel, Defend Homeworld, Temporal Micro Wormhole, Son'a Observatory, Blood Oath, Brigadier Kerla, Koroth, I.K.C. Gro'th, Antaak and maH nlv. The idea is to perform almost all of these downloads on turn one since there is no Shape Shift Inhibitor to make you pay for downloads.
As the Klingons have trouble with some dilemmas, the deck is geared for a two mission win. A Good Day to Live OR Hunt for DNA can be solved for a 50 point planet. Warped Space or Seek Life Form yield 40-55 points. Then follow up with Arbiter of Succession for 10 points if needed.
With high level games so heavily tilted towards downloads, free reports and card draws are secondary. The deck has no HQ and no Time Location. The only free reports are from Son'a Observatory. The deck doesn't even need to pick up the Son'a from Insurrection to win. Son'a are in the deck for five reasons:
There are two draw engines in the deck (Remote Interference and Duck Blind). The deck doesn't really need draws, because of all the downloads. The draw engines are there just to get Arbiter of Succession into hand and to provide some options mid game.
There are two back up play engines in the deck. The possibility of a Space Time Portal drop and I.K.C. T'ong. I wound up only needing them in one game (against Ken Tufts). See Part III for the details.
Dilemma Strategy
The dilemmas were designed to buy turns against DQ download decks. The best way to do this is to drain points and punish mega-crews. Killing personnel or focusing on skills isn't that useful as the DQ can play a very high skill concentration for free very quickly. The DQ can also share skills via One and Rituals of the Hunt. The goal is to make the DQ lose enough points to do an extra mission. That equates to an extra turn or two for the AQ to catch up. The drawback here is that the Borg roll through point drain like download decks roll through free report decks. To counter the Borg, the deck plays two copies of Raptor One and several Mutations. The idea is to attack the Borg with Raptor One to stall probing. Mutation the drone back into the deck as needed.
First Turn Sequence
Seed the Klingon Outpost at a Good Day to Live. Play Antaak (there are nine copies in the deck). If you didn't draw Antaak, download Masaka and wait for turn two. Download Targ with Antaak. Download Brigadier Kerla with Defend Homeworld and then download a Chancellor. Download Divok with Assign Support Personnel. You should now have seven Klingons in play (Two AMS, one ASP, two from Defend Homeworld, Antaak/Targ). I generally save the Son'a Observatory and Temporal Micro Wormhole downloads for when I need them. Do NOT download maH nlv yet.
Beam down the seven Klingons and attempt A Good Day to Live. As soon as you hit a dilemma that will kill any one suspend play to download maH nlv. Download all of the replacement Klingons to the outpost to end the mission attempt without anyone dying.
maH nlv download (seven personnel)
If you happen to draw Komal, a Blood Oath guy or Sons of Mogh in your opening hand. Consider not downloading them and instead preserve one of the starting Mission Specialists. The extra points/skills might come in handy.
During the game, if you need range, use Mutation or a Referee cycle to get another Blood Oath ship.
Next, use your knowledge of what is under A Good Day to Live to re-attempt. Hold the Blood Oath guys back. If you need to get past Lack of Preparation, send Kor. If he dies, Mutation him back into the deck and re-download him. Solve the mission for 50 with four Blood Oath personnel (they can solve by themselves thanks to Kor and Jadzia attribute boosts).
The Blood Oath guys have Anthropology for Duck Blind if you need draws.
Next, send a small, but prepared team on the I.K.C. Gro'th to attempt Warped Space. Hold back a crew that can solve. If Astrophysics died at the planet mission, download Dr. Telek R'Mor via Temporal Micro Wormole or Ru'afo with Observatory. If Navigation died at the planet, download Sam'po via Son'a Observatory. Continue to send small/medium crews on the Blood Oath ships to clear all the dilemmas under Warped Space.
The Arsenal: Divided followed by V'Ger is popular in the meta game. That is a dream come true for this deck. You can easily split your crew into two teams that both pass V'Ger and score 5 points. Scoring points off your opponents dilemmas means you don't have to play Arbiter of Succession or attempt a third mission. During the world championship I think I scored V'Ger twice as well as two other point dilemmas in various games.
If things go badly, try to solve Romulus (all you need is the Sons of Mogh) or Insurrection. For the final confrontation or top four play off the plan was to preserve the Astrophysics mission specialist and solve Hunt for DNA followed by Seek Life Form. Just to mix things up.
Weaknesses
I realized after the event that some last minute cuts had reduced the deck to only two female personnel. Female drain would have messed me up pretty good. If I play the deck again, I'll add back in 1-2 females.
With nine copies of Aantak, Kitrik and Komal, I felt well prepared about Medical drain.
There is only four Archeology in the deck. Three are required for Hunt for DNA. The deck downloads three, but careful play is needed.
The biggest weakness in this deck is the mirror match. Another Klingon player can steal the high point missions as well as deploy weapons/strength/battle at the same rate to generally disrupt the deck. I was betting the farm on nobody else playing Klingon. There were two other Klingon players in the tournament but I wound up not playing either of them.
Manage the personnel and mission attempts well, and that turn one download should last the entire game. The goal is to make two mission attempts each turn, starting on turn one. The game should be over turn 4-7.