And the Children Shall Lead

by Richard New, Design Manager (Assistant Designer on Realm of Fear)

23rd April 2025

“I am prepared, my lady.”

“I doubt that. A Klingon woman would find it difficult to gain my favor. For an alien, it will most likely be impossible.”

“I like a challenge.”

-- Jadzia Dax and Sirella, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 “You are Cordially Invited”

Things that garner a lot of attention from other players often pique less of my attention and things that they dismiss often excite me. I like experimenting with the stuff that is deemed too difficult by others. I like the road not travelled.

Yet… I had never tried out Paranoia. Admittedly, it occupied a place on a To Do list somewhere; I just hadn't gotten around to it. Then, this project came up. I leaned on Nathan's expertise. I listened to his thoughts. I accepted his appraisal. (I've come to trust Nathan, so that wasn't hard.) But, at some point in the process of designing this expansion, it became clear that I needed to get some firsthand experience. I played this deck in a local tournament, testing to see if I could build a deck without the TOS side of things.

And you know what? It was fun.

Playing the Federation as a Strength-based affiliation feels different. And balancing drawbacks as deckbuilding restrictions and deciding how and in what order I wanted to demonstrate my Paranoia was a challenge. And I like a challenge.

But the exercise demanded more. I wanted to know what the deck needed. I wanted to know what the game needed. And when I was done, I looked back at the file… and there was every missing piece. Nathan was right.

Rapid Deployment gave another Paranoia card that slotted in nicely to the narrow skill set of the ES9 personnel and could easily support the need by some of the personnel for fuel for their abilities, while continuing to restrict deckbuilding as I had come to expect. Donahue and Holmes both filled out and shored up some of the skills while still holding the proportions of the Admirals to their underlings.

As you can see from my deck, Intelligence was a feature. It appeared on about a third of the personnel in the deck. And since Intelligence operations exist as a theme of this expansion, it makes perfect sense that the Paranoia contingent would get their version.

If you had wondered about the link between Intelligence and Cadets before (as hinted at by the new U.S.S. Lakota and enhanced by Red Squad Mobilization), now you can see the full link with a new persona of an old Cadet: Riley Shepard. Much like Nicholas Locarno, he broadcasts his upgrades to the rest of his classmates. Now, every Cadet can feel like an adult, doing spy stuff in their big, adult pants.

So, what kind of deck can you build with this tech? You could staff the Lakota with Cadets and go around completing Intelligence missions without adult supervision (well, one adult for Riley to key off). You could also combine Boothby, Locarno, and Elim Garak to make a bunch of Cadet supermen (and women) of which even Khan would be proud. And, of course, you could combine just a few specific Cadets with the adults to supplement those abilities. Just make sure to have plenty of Paranoia to go around. Of course, losing Riley could weaken the deck, but there are dedicated ways to keep him kicking. (I hear Oq'nab plays favorites with his students and would count as one of the couple of Treachery Admirals I would probably keep around to activate Riley.)

Regardless of how you decide to balance your deck, focusing on Intelligence creates a fun, new set of missions from which to pull. I used Klingon Borderland (Maintain Operational Secrecy) as part of my theme of missions, which begged for the Enterprise-C and the DS9 Infiltrators, but it could easily form the backbone of a set of Intelligence missions that the personnel from “The Siege of AR-558” could support. (There really is a Sisko for every occasion.)

I encourage you all to try Paranoia, perhaps like me for the first time. I haven't even mentioned how the new Bashir and others can enhance these decks as well, but I hope that this faction finally has a day in the sun.

I'll see you across the table.

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