Paranoid Jeopardy

by Jonathan Engel, Guest Writer

12th December 2014

“I’d like New Cards for $400, Alex.”

“Odo, Surreptitious Ally.”

*bing*

“What’s the best way to repeatedly take a specific card into hand from discard pile in a Next Gen. or Earthspace-9 deck?”

“Correct!”

As best I can tell, this Odo is the answer to a question no one has asked (namely, the question I posit above). It reminded me of the game show Jeopardy, where contestants are given answers and must come up with the questions.

When thinking about deck-building, Odo’s ability is the reason to use him. The ability matters because without it, Odo is a terrible card for an Earth deck. Compare him to the recently spoiled Undercover “Terrorist”. Sito Jaxa is similar to Odo in having an ability that gets something back from the discard pile. However, Sito is a personnel you just splash into your deck for her skills and attributes; her ability is just a minor bonus you’ll infrequently use. Odo is NOT splash-able – because he’s . As the only personnel of his affiliation to play to Earth, Odo effectively makes Secret Identity and The Caretaker’s “Guests” into cheap kill dilemmas.This vulnerability is the reason that Odo is not worth playing in an -based deck unless you’re going to use his ability. I’m kind of inclined to think of him more as a weird sort of 3-cost event, in terms of his place in the deck.

“What’s the best way to repeatedly take a specific card into hand from discard in a Next Gen. or Earthspace-9 deck?” Odo! (Note that if you want to retrieve large numbers of personnel / ships, you’d be better served by more efficient retrieval cards, such as Tacking Into The Wind or Back To Basics. Odo is made for getting back something very specific.) Odo is good at doing a certain thing. The real question, though, is why would you want to do that thing?

At this point, I tried to imagine what kind of situation it would take for me to want to use Odo to repeatedly retrieve one or two particular cards. To be honest, I couldn’t come up with one. That’s part of why I said this Odo is the answer to a question no one is asking. You would only ever ask “What’s the best way to repeatedly take a specific card into hand from discard in a Next Gen. or Earthspace-9 deck?” if you had some reason you wanted retrieve those cards. Is there some engine available to Earth decks that repeatedly kills or discard your personnel / ships for a benefit? Nope.

(Well, let me digress on two ideas I wasn’t satisfied with. First is Matthew Dougherty, but if you use him repeatedly you’re blowing up enough stuff that mass retrieval is probably more efficient. The other idea I had was playing U.S.S. Prometheus or U.S.S. Valiant cheaply with Smiley, then blowing them up with Extreme Measures, then getting them back with Odo. I find that a more promising deck concept than the Dougherty one; you’ll probably want a small deck to help draw into multiple copies of Extreme Measures, plus max out on copies of Smiley and other Engineer personnel. /end digression)

Hmm. Okey-day, what about personnel who kill themselves for a benefit? That has a little potential. The most obvious option is James T. Kirk (Living Legend). Slightly less obvious and much less useful (but still worthy of considering) is Spock (Trainee Instructor). Both of these personnel kill themselves to do something. I’m not sure their powers combined are enough to justify a deck, but this is a thought experiment, so let’s run with it.

At this point, I have these two self-sacrificing personnel, plus Odo. From there, I just started filling in a deck with cards to give me a chance to use the deck’s core. Naturally, that meant the deck recreates the episode where Odo and Sisko go to Earth, which has been taken over by Bluegills, and help the Bluegills recruit Kirk from the Nexus so they can all go on adventures together. Well, the deck needs Paranoia cards, strength-based missions, etc., etc., etc. personnel get boosted by becoming Bluegills. Sisko boosts all Security personnel. Hollow Hospitality, though less important, still powers up your few dudes. The goal is basically to have crazy levels of skill redundancy and crazy-high attributes. Meanwhile, Kirk eats the occasionally dilemma just to make your opponent’s life harder. The ability to solve your main three missions using only four skills is a truly beautiful anomaly. Meanwhile, the dilemma pile is a fairly boring but hopefully serviceable generic attrition pile.

Now, when Spock sacrifices himself to save the ship, don’t search for the Genesis Planet, just call on miracle-worker Odo! You could even score a flavor win by using Odo to retrieve Sisko! Most likely, though, you’ll just want to use Living Legend every chance you get, and take advantage of Odo to maximize those uses.

The deck isn’t anything amazing, but I believe it’s a passable attempt to make use of Odo with the cards currently available. Keep your eyes open, though. Odo may be the answer to a question no one is currently asking, but you also never know when Design might put out new opportunities this Odo can exploit (or maybe the Dougherty or Extreme Measures routes have more potential than I realize…).   

Discuss this article in this thread.

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

• Next Generation Player
• TNG = Tough
• Unbroken I
• No Crutches I
• No Crutches II

Decklist

Hide Deck Stats

Dilemma Deck Total Dilemmas 25 Space 3 (12%) Cost 2 1 Cost 3 1 Cost 4 1 Planet 6 (24%) Cost 3 5 Cost 5 1 Dual 16 (64%) Cost 0 3 Cost 2 3 Cost 3 2 Cost 4 5 Cost 5 2 Cost 6 1 Total Dilemma Deck cost 77

Draw Deck Total Draw Deck 41 Event 10 (24%) Cost 1 6 Cost 2 1 Cost 3 1 Cost 4 2 Personnel 28 (68%) Cost 1 3 Cost 2 10 Cost 3 10 Cost 4 5 Ship 3 (7%) Cost 4 3 Total Draw Deck cost 104

Skills Count Skill # Missions # Personnel 1x 2x 3x Total Acquisition 0 0 Anthropology 0 1 1 Archaeology 1 2 2 Astrometrics 0 3 3 Biology 0 5 5 Diplomacy 1 5 5 Engineer 0 4 4 Exobiology 1 5 5 Geology 1 1 1 Honor 1 12 3 15 Intelligence 0 2 2 Law 0 4 4 Leadership 4 16 16 Medical 0 0 Navigation 3 10 10 Officer 1 12 12 Physics 0 2 2 Programming 0 3 3 Science 1 2 2 Security 4 13 3 16 Telepathy 0 0 Transporters 0 2 2 Treachery 0 2 1 3 Icons Count Icon # Personnel % Personnel Staffing Icons Command Star 17 60.71 % Staff Star 11 39.29 % Faction Icons Earth 10 35.71 % Next Generation 18 64.29 % Original Series 1 3.57 % Temporal Icons Future 2 7.14 % Past 6 21.43 % Keyword Count Keyword # Cards Admiral 3 Bluegill 2 Commander: U.S.S. Bozeman 1 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise 1 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise-C 1 Commander: U.S.S. Enterprise-D 4 Commander: U.S.S. Lakota 1 Commander: U.S.S. Phoenix 1 Consume: 1 2 Genetically Enhanced 1 Paranoia 7 Region: Badlands 1 Region: Sector 001 1 Shape-shifter 2