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Strategy Articles
Breaking Down the Logic of Awesome 2E Regional Decks - Issue Two
by Mike Harrington, Guest Writer
16th May 2014
Good morning ladies and gentlehobbits! Time to take a look at a regional winner that no one could have predicted (except maybe the winner themself). ‘Themself’ in this context, despite auto-correct constantly trying to change it, is increasingly used and accepted when referring to a singular form of ‘they’ or ‘them’. If you don’t like it, you may file a grievance by PMing Maelwys.
Deck: Lenara KAHN!!!
Player: Gerhard Hallgren
I admit I’ve never heard of this player, and therefore I quite like him. I like his name as well, and I like the fact that he won a regional, a tough regional, even more. Especially using one of the least used HQs!
Field: Intimate
Sometimes small fields are the toughest to win, because while there are less opponents vying for the title, there is oftentimes a smaller margin for error (as in one loss and you’re likely finished). This one was quite petite, drawing only 5 players. Two of them, Tyler and John, are established players who have won countless tournaments and have each come very close to winning Worlds.
So how did Gerhard beat both of them on the way to victory? Let’s dig in!
HQ and Size: DS9 Earth, small-medium
Here’s something to consider: Affiliations have deck-size tendencies that oftentimes reflect their optimal size. Looking at decklists (especially the successful ones), and determining that optimal size range can really help you get a feel for that affiliation quickly. Now of course some HQs have multiple factions and strategies that allow for quite disparate deck size, but I find that DS9 (MoW or DS9 Earth) often operates on a nice 45-55 band frequency. So here Gerhard seems to have found that range.
What I find pretty fascinating about Gerhard’s build is its draw deck/dilemma pile interaction, as well as its considerable versatility against both skill-based and kill-based piles. And all of this in a 50 card deck!
You’ll notice, if you look closely, the draw deck only has three different costs of personnel: 2, 3, and 4, and near-equal numbers of each. So if those made up the only non-ship cards having a cost, you might find yourself at a considerable disadvantage because it’d be difficult finding combinations of cards to play using your 7 counters. In short, you’d be getting peeps out at a pretty slow clip.
But here’s where that nice dilemma pile/draw deck synergy comes into play in the form of events, and also one nice personnel.
Jaresh Inyo, after you solve a mission, will give you the opportunity to pour a few skill-heavy DS9 beasts into play, which can be huge. So try and hold onto him until you have points. The deck needs to solve three missions and will generally have at the very least 10 bonus points to spend. 5 of them should pretty much always be used for Inyo to boost your late game solving capacity by getting out these guys for free.
The other key element allowing your draw/play sequence to remain fluid is the boatload of events in the deck, 10 of which cost 0 or 1. These little guys really give you nice ratios, and let you draw into smaller cards to play that turn.
The events also provide dilemma-busting prowess as well as dilemma-pile support. The kill pile can be particularly effective if the 8-cost ones go off, and having all these events (17 in 50 cards) should really help make those usable. The dilemma-busting has a nice combo with Security Drills and Confessions in the Pale Moonlight, which is an old but strong card. With interrupt prevention and hand depletion at high levels, having a cheater verb in the form of an event on the table instead of an interrupt waiting in your hand may be a small stroke of genius! The subtle fact that two of the personnel (Sisko and Bashir) can decide whether they want Treachery for the Confessions or not is very nice against the widely-used dilemma An Issue of Trust.
Holding Cell remains a very versatile way of holding your opponents interrupts at bay as well as picking off a key personnel of theirs. Just make sure you keep tabs on where they are, and make sure your pile didn’t already transfer them to the discard pile!
Meta-awareness:
Somehow this player knew or guessed its toughest opponent’s dilemma tendencies, and provided brilliant counters to them. DS9 is strong in general against kill and this deck takes advantage with Escape and Med Teams. Against John’s (pretty cool) Wall of Orange pile (that demands you have Acquisition), Gerhard had an answer with Confessions, Nog, and Melora.
Cool Personnel: Lenara Kahn
Well, the deck is titled after her, and for good reason: With the saturation of events, her ability can quickly get you in a cozy, events-on-table, happy place, which is where you want to be!
Possible Adds:
Unfair Terms – Kills weenies, which is a deck that may outgun and outrun your kill.
Slightly Overbooked – Can weed out the littles and leave the bigs so that they DIE! Muahahaha
Well-Prepared Defenses – Can help ensure an 8-cost killer to go off.
Tolian Soran – 0-cost 7-cunning peep in cunning deck. Lots of good skills to boot!
Key Element:
N/A CUNNING! DS9 often runs into attribute issues, and so here a nice sprinkling of cunning-rich non-aligneders really helps make the missions accessible. Five peeps, at least 7 cunning on each. Another thing to keep in mind if you plan on attempting missions with your N/A peeps is to have enough of them to make Caretaker’s Guests not as effective because you have a good chance of having one in your discard pile. Having at least 10% (here 5 in a 50 card deck), is about the minimum I’d go with for this very reason.
Taking Advantage of Your HQ:
With MoW, DS9 having a span of 1 you better have good reason to use Earth instead of it when playing DS9. Gerhard takes advantage with Jaresh-Inyo, the 4-cost Excelsior ship, Lenara Kahn, and Astro Lab.
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There’s a lot more to explore in this deck (dilemma pile, missions, ships) but I’m going to leave that to the able reader to further draw into!
It’s already been a great start to regional season, and I can’t wait for it to pick up even more steam heading into Continentals and the glorious return to Worlds at GenCon!
Discuss this article in this thread.
Tournament Record:
- Constructed - Regional (2014-04-19): 1st place
This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:
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