About one year ago, I found this thread on the Second Edition gameplay board. Steve Hartmann (chompers) shares his experience of running a deck completely without the Science skill, and doing really well with it. Apparently, Science is largely a non-issue for dilemma busting (notable exceptions are Infinite Diversity, which requires skill-tracking to be reliable, and Sylvia, which needs draw deck support and has a Cunning-based out to circumnavigate the Science side), and there has indeed been little incentive to go out of your way to cram more of that skill into your deck.
With Chained Environment and The Nth Degree, Return to Grace now introduces a pair of interesting dilemmas that might motivate players to fill that gap in their skill matrix. At a cost of four, the dilemmas are expensive, and the requirements do not seem overly difficult for an average crew or away team. However, when the dilemmas hit, they work as a wall, stopping everybody, and they do not go under the mission. Instead, they are placed on the mission and now add the extra skill requirement of Science.
In order to increase the chances of the new dilemmas hitting, cards from the first set can help: Picking Up the Pieces and Blended can be used to filter out Diplomacy and Geology personnel on a planet, while Personal Duty makes it harder to have the 2 Leadership in space. If your opponent is playing with low-cost personnel, Pitching In should be cheap enough to used as a filter for The Nth Degree, too. Combos like Adopted Authority + Polywater Intoxication + Chained Environment/The Nth Degree against a team of seven people might well stop the current attempt, leave no dilemmas overcome, and make the next attempt harder with the added requirement.
The fact that the dilemmas are not dual and will take up a significant amount of the available dilemma counters will probably make them unattractive to many players, but there's certainly nothing wrong with putting some more emphasis on "Science" in a game that is all about celebrating one of the greatest science-fiction universes.
Combos:
• Chained Enforcement/The Nth Degree + Urgency: Force your opponent to have skills spread over multiple personnel.
• Unscientific Method + Chained Enforcement/The Nth Degree : Take out those scientiests one by one before locking the final mission.
Here's an idea for a casual deck that goes for Science lockout:
• Use Undercover Resource to generate extra card counters.
• Have Kieran MacDuff camp at an opponent's planet mission (the one you want to lock.)
• Use Flaw in the Plan / Unscientific Method / He Wasn't Nice / Secret Identity to take out opponent's Science when they are played or during the first mission attempts.
• Use MacDuff's ability to generate extra stops from bounce dilemmas like Healing Hand and Polywater Intoxication to help set up Chained Enforcement.
• When your opponent has the Science to complete, stop him with Founder Trap.
• Snipe Science personnel on the planet with Yuta.
Keep in mind that this is only a very coarse design and likely not very competitive as it is.
Discuss this article in this thread.
This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements: