The Perils of Peacemaking

by Johannes Klarhauser, Staff Writer

28th April 2008

Those of you who have listened to Section 31's latest podcast already know about The Perils of Peacemaking. This little interrupt gives you the chance to reduce the options your opponent has for playing dilemmas.

Every time you reveal one of your dilemmas, you can use The Perils of Peacemaking to make your opponent remove a copy of that dilemma from his or her dilemma pile. This will leave players with tough choices – if they attempt a mission first, they risk losing staple dilemmas like Hard Time or Where No One Has Gone Before to this interrupt; however, waiting until the opponent has attempted and playing from behind is usually not the best choice either. So what to do?

The Perils of Peacemaking only works on dilemmas that both players have stocked. If you're planning to use it yourself, you will probably want to target the dilemmas that hurt your deck most: for example, many Klingon and Ferengi players will gladly take the opportunity to filter an opponent's mission team with An Issue of Trust, and at the same time remove one of their best weapons against your deck. In combination with cards like Ohhhh! Nothing Happened!, Krim (Thoughtful Tactician), or The Genesis Effect, The Perils of Peacemaking can be used to create a deck dedicated to eliminate or avoid a wide range of those nasty dilemmas that always slow you down. Note that the interrupt is placed on the bottom of your deck after use, so with the help of cards like Sarina Douglas (Cataleptic Conundrum) or What You Leave Behind, you can quickly get them back into hand and use them on the following turns.

On the defensive side, your best bet to take the steam out of The Perils of Peacemaking is of course to change the way you build your dilemma pile: obviously, bigger dilemma piles can cope with some removed cards much better than slim piles in the 30-35 card range, which might eventually run out of playable dilemmas; therefore, it would be wise to include multiple copies of popular dilemmas. Also, if you try to build a dilemma pile that avoids the most common cards, you might be able to dodge some of the calls made by your opponent, and they will have wasted precious card slots.