 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
All Categories • Continuing Committee • Organized Play • Rules Committee • Deck Designs • Virtual Expansions
Card Extras • Special Events • Tournament Reports • Everything Else • Spotlight Series • Contests
Strategy Articles
Beginner Deck: TOS
by Lucas Thompson, Ambassador
21st February 2020
"The mission of the Enterprise is to seek out and contact alien life." Bold explorers, the crew of the Original Series Enterprise can really step up when called upon to do so: almost every personnel in this deck has an ability that allows you to pay extra when you play him or her in order to use. Even the Headquarters mission itself can pitch in and, once per turn, draw two cards for the cost of one counter when you play a ![[TOS]](/images/icons/tos.gif "[TOS]"){kind=icon}
personnel - it is recommended to try to use this ability every turn.
This feature makes the Original Series Federation a great faction to play when you're first learning the game. If you don't want to deal with the complication of your personnel's ability text, don't! You can safely ignore all that text and this deck will function just fine. As you get more comfortable with the basics, you can start doing things like using Giotto to prevent dilemmas, or Spock to remove them from the game.
The dilemma pile, while largely identical to other beginner dilemma piles, contains one dilemma that is specific to this deck. Many dilemmas don't expect you to do much while your opponent is facing them. Excalbian Drama, however, becomes much more effective if you can afford to discard some cards. Hopefully you've been using your Headquarters' ability to stockpile some extra cards, and you can stop your opponent's whole crew for zero cost.
Once you're comfortable with this deck, you might want to personalize it. It is loosely based on the deck that Mike Harrington used to take third place in day one of the 2014 World Championships - in a field of forty three players. You may take inspiration from that deck list, or consider these cards:
The Motion Pictures
- The crew of the classic Enterprise from The Motion Picture all costs four at baseline, but you can opt to make them cheaper if you don't want to use their abilities. They're a little more complicated to use, but are great against common dilemmas like In Development.
Trials and Tribbleations
- Benjamin Sisko already makes an appearance in this deck and gives you access to a very useful interrupt prevention ability. Well, there are cards for all the other DS9 crew that infiltrates the classic Enterprise - they have useful abilities as well. Remember though: you need a ship before playing them, since they do not actually have a icon themselves.
Coordinated Counterattack
- Like Deep Space Nine decks, Original Series decks have access to some great cards that help control what your opponent is doing. In addition to Benjamin Sisko's interrupt prevention, Coordinated Counterattack can prevent your opponent from gaining skills.
General Use Cards
- Some cards can just go in any deck - and often do because they're so useful. You have plenty of ways to get extra resources in your deck, but an extra counter per turn from Surprise Party wouldn't go amiss. And once you've played a few games, you'll see how the reboot from Unexpected Difficulties can be game-changing. Alvera Tree Ritual is subtler - you basically play it for free, and not only does it protect you from any dilemma pile manipulation, but it can also be used offensively. If you keep track of which dilemmas you don't use, you can proactively use the Ritual to shuffle your dilemma pile at opportune times.
Discuss this article in this thread.
This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:
Decklist
Back to Archive index