Enter the Demilitarized Zone

by Niall Matthew, Staff Writer

13th August 2013

As many of you may have guessed, Homefront IV is not only packed with missions for many different deck types, but the powers that be have decided to represent a whopping eight regions in this set (three of which will be familiar to First Edition players)

Let's look at the latest spoiler, a conversion of a popular Second Edition mission; Investigate Maquis Activity.

This latest addition increases the amount of missions in the Demilitarized Zone region to four, three of which will be playable in block.

The conversion process has altered the card in multiple ways. Firstly, it's another mission which is attemptable by the Dominion, as well as the Federation, Bajorans, and Cardassians.

The skill requirements of Diplomacy and Leadership x 2 have remained the same while the attribute requirements have changed from INTEGRITY > 27 to STRENGTH > 37, not too shabby considering the potential point bonuses which can be gained. And just remember to make sure you have no Maquis in your away team. Although you can attempt the mission with Maquis, it wouldn't be very responsible of you.

So who can help complete the skill requirements for this mission?

Here's a wee list of all who can provide Diplomacy and Leadership x 2 single handedly...

Federation: Strangely enough, it's two versions of William T. Riker (Admiral Riker and First Contact Riker) and two versions of Kirk (James T. Kirk, who has a neat special skill and TMP Admiral Kirk), though 'Trek sense' dictates that Kirk should be able to dropkick and/or karate chop his way through the STRENGTH requirement.

Bajoran: Two Kais can help; Kai Winn and Kai Opaka, but please remember to bring extra phasers, they'll need all the power they can get.

Cardassian: Gul Dukat is the only Cardassian with sufficient skills, alone.

Dominion: zilch, none, zero, ils n'ont pas de personnel.

Other: Navaar can be a good support for any of the above affiliations, While Preator Neral could play some 'espionage' on the mission.

 

Now, how do we suck as much points out of this mission as humanly possible?

Let's lay out all the Mission Specialists...

Leadership: Benjamin Maxwell, Norah Satie, Sirna Kolrami

Diplomacy: Riva

So the Feds can get an extra 15 points out of the mission using this method, if their specialists survive the attempt that is. But there is a bonus for all who complete; another part which has survived the conversion process. If you manage to complete this mission first you get an extra 5 points (which for the Feds, can boost it up to a potential 50 points).

However, with great bonuses comes great risk. As this mission is very susceptable to Dead End, forcing you to complete another mission and lose out on those 5 points. Feds can always come back to it later to collect 45 points with those notorious Specialists...

You can try to draw the Dead End away by playing some classic 'Dead End bait' missions like Insurrection or Raid Ancient Burial Site. It'll be interesting to see where players will put the Dead End in cases such as this.

But then again, your opponent could be very nasty and deny you any bonus points whatsoever...

So there we have an outline of the latest card to be spoiled to us. This will be a very popular mission that will see plenty of play.

Not long till release day guys and gals, don't forget you can donate some latinum in the promenade to ensure the release of fantastic sets like this one.

As usual, I'll no doubt see you all on Lackey.

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