Harry Kim (Diligent Ensign)

by Charlie Plaine, Balance of Terror Lead Designer

9th September 2014

One of the most popular requests of the design team is for new versions of Voyager main characters. We've made several attempts to make entire teams of the main cast of Voyager, but only a few of them have made it to print. Balance of Terror brings one more to the same with a new version of the ship's perpetual ensign: Harry Kim (Diligent Ensign). We chose to make a new Harry simply because he was one of the characters that showed the most diversity, and because he was a common request.

Compared to his original version, Eager to Please, Diligent Ensign costs one counter less and has three fewer skills. His attributes are the same, but his ability is the most interesting and most useful aspect of the character. Eager to Please offered a dilemma-length attribute boost to a subset of your personnel. Diligent Ensign's Order allows you to move the ship he's aboard to any of your space missions, as long as you have four space missions in play.

Here's the real advantage of the new Mr. Kim: he can get your U.S.S. Voyager off of a Where No One Has Gone Before and back onto the spaceline, saving you an entire turn (not to mention the potential for a lost turn of counters if it's your Voyager). Or, he can get you to an extra mission after you've exhausted the Range on your ship, giving you an extra mission attempt in a turn. Or, he can move your ship if your personnel have been a victim of an unfortunate mission attempt. The options for this card are diverse, and he will give Voyager players a new tool in their toolbox... provided you can commit to four space missions.

I'm a long time fan of the four-space mission strategy using The Long Journey Home. I think this strategy will be a key component of Voyager's future in Phase II, so I'm happy to see Harry Kim (Diligent Ensign) continue the theme. Many players disregard this deck type as an option because it requires four mission solves instead of three, but don't consider the diminishing value of the opponent's dilemma pile.

Below you'll find a deck designed around The Long Journey Home, hoping to maximize the utility of Mr. Kim. It's a solver deck meant to get through your four space missions as soon as possible - a speed deck - with some tricks to make that a little easier. Ohhhh! Nothing Happened and the suite of Temporal events can pull out some key dilemmas - Moral Choice, or any space dilemma that is popular in your area. Inversion Mystery will let you neuter a dilemma for the remainder of the game; I suggest a dual dilemma. Finally, Field Studies will let you stack dilemmas under a mission attempt and make a solve even easier.

I paired the deck with one of my favorite dilemmas piles based around Chula: The Game. The deck includes Heightened Perception because a) it is a Temporal event and b) it can make the dilemma pile incredibly effective, allowing you to reduce the number of dilemmas you throw based on how effective they are. The Manheim Effect allows you to pull Chula: The Game back for later missions attempts. Of course, all of these events can simply be sacrificed to Chakotay to prevent stops and power through dilemmas instead.

Try the deck, and feel free to customize it to your meta or your liking. The four-space strategy can be a lot of fun. By playing the deck now, and giving notes and feedback via decklists, tournament reports, and forum posts, you'll be giving design valuable feedback for when we have the need and/or desire to make more cards as part of Phase II. Thanks for reading!

Discuss this article in this thread.

This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:

• Voyager Player
• How About a New Mission, Admiral? I
• Crew Quarters: Voyager
• Chula: Not a Game
• Alone in the Uncharted

Decklist

Hide Deck Stats

Dilemma Deck Total Dilemmas 35 Space 6 (17%) Cost 1 2 Cost 2 3 Cost 3 1 Planet 5 (14%) Cost 1 2 Cost 2 1 Cost 5 2 Dual 24 (69%) Cost 0 4 Cost 1 3 Cost 2 6 Cost 3 6 Cost 4 4 Cost 5 1 Total Dilemma Deck cost 79

Draw Deck Total Draw Deck 46 Event 15 (33%) Cost 0 2 Cost 1 6 Cost 2 2 Cost 4 2 Interrupt 2 (4%) Personnel 25 (54%) Cost 0 1 Cost 1 2 Cost 2 10 Cost 3 8 Cost 4 4 Ship 4 (9%) Cost 4 1 Cost 6 3 Total Draw Deck cost 102

Skills Count Skill # Missions # Personnel 1x 2x 3x Total Acquisition 0 1 1 Anthropology 0 8 8 Archaeology 0 3 3 Astrometrics 2 10 10 Biology 1 5 2 7 Diplomacy 3 5 5 Engineer 3 9 1 10 Exobiology 1 3 3 Geology 0 2 2 Honor 0 8 8 Intelligence 0 0 Law 0 2 2 Leadership 0 3 3 Medical 0 4 1 5 Navigation 0 3 1 4 Officer 0 6 6 Physics 2 6 1 7 Programming 0 7 1 8 Science 1 12 1 13 Security 0 5 5 Telepathy 0 1 1 Transporters 0 3 3 Treachery 1 4 1 5 Icons Count Icon # Personnel % Personnel Staffing Icons Command Star 8 32.00 % Staff Star 11 44.00 % Faction Icons Voyager 21 84.00 % Temporal Icons Future 5 20.00 % Past 2 8.00 % Keyword Count Keyword # Cards Admiral 1 Commander: Delta Flyer 1 Consume: 1 1 Nebula 1 Persistent 1 Q 5 Species 8472 2 Temporal 11