Aurulent Gambit

by James Cream, Staff Writer

6th April 2012

I did something mad last night. I built a Non-Aligned OTF deck. Oh, I’m not talking about a fairly yellow deck with a sprinkling of affiliated key personnel or a Khan deck that relies on stealing affiliated personnel from the opponent. I’m talking pure 100% Non-Aligned, just like the old days. And it played 3-5 cards per turn and drew well and everything. And Barron was there, and Vekor, and Narik, and even Koral.

And then I woke up.

And I was particularly impressed by the deck as I never thought it could be done in OTF without War Council. Of course, it isn’t yet and won’t be until the release date for The Next Generation: April 13th, 2012.

And the key card to the whole thing is Raid Ancient Burial Site. You’d be surprised how necessary and useful it is to start the game with a Mercenary Ship in orbit of one of your planet missions. The mission itself is perfect for a Non-Aligned deck as it has skill requirements that are fairly easy to come by and rightly has only the NA icon.

The real flaw of the mission is how easily it could be stolen in OTF. Most decks you will face will have at least one Non-Aligned personnel to help solve this and it can’t be protected by HQ: Defensive Measures as it only has the one icon.

But I feel pretty strongly I could get those skills out first and I’m going to be looking for a weak seed here. Still, it is the major weakness of the deck and is absolutely essential to the build. It is always possible that the opponent will have a The Wake of the Borg to download with Tribunal of Q or Q the Referee and a well-planned combo could make it an easy theft.