Silaran Prin: Don't you feel guilty? Don't you feel ashamed of what you did?
Major Kira: None of you belonged on Bajor. It wasn't your world. For fifty years you raped our planet, and you killed our people. You lived on our land, and you took the food out of our mouths, and I don't care whether you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living. You were all guilty, and you were all legitimate targets!
-“The Darkness and the Light”
On Saturday, Ben Liebich will be giving us an in-depth look at how Bajoran integrity builds work, so I thought that it would be a good time to focus in on how combat works with Bajoran Resistance personnel.
Missions
This deck is designed to get a two-mission win by using combat to get those ‘round the corner points. Most of the missions in this deck stay within Region: Bajor. The one exception in Off-World Raid, which is the mission designed for Bajoran Resistance personnel. It’s tough to say whether or not this is a mission you want to do first. On the one hand, it will retrieve Assault events and Hand Weapons from the discard pile, which isn’t very useful if it’s the second mission you do. On the other hand, hitting a Necessary Execution if you haven’t finished a space mission yet can be devastating. Depending on which personnel you get out, your space missions are flexible. Acquire Illicit Explosives and Deliver Evidence are each equally doable, though the former may be a little easier as Tahna Los has all the skills himself. Jeraddo, Relocate Settlers rounds out the Bajor region missions to let you get the Ancient Civilizations achievement. Finally, I’m using the classic headquarters, Bajor, Gift of the Prophets rather than the Blessed version so I could put personnel in the deck if I feel they need it. I’m not running any artifacts so figured the original Bajor was the better bet for this deck.
Draw Deck
Combat is fairly straightforward in Second Edition. You need to have a card that allows you to begin combat with opponent's personnel present. Compare your personnel's total strength to your opponent's personnel. Whoever has the highest strength wins. This deck features three different events that allow Bajoran Resistance personnel to begin combat. The first is Just Like Old Times, which Lupaza can download. I would argue that this is the most powerful of all of the Assault events in the game, as it allows you to score 15 points from a single combat. That means you only have to fight twice to score bonus points equivalent to a completed mission. If you’d rather kill off your opponent’s personnel, you could check out Militia Patrol of No Love for the Spoonheads to do that. The latter also lets you destroy an event.
There are some great personnel to support combat in this deck as well. Shakaar Edon, Resistance Leader is probably the most important. He makes all of your personnel Strength +2 in combat, which will bring their strength up to Klingon or Jam’Hadar level in combat. He also has 2 Leadership for Bridge Officer’s Test. Day Kannu, Field Colonel isn’t a Bajoran Resistance personnel, but he does score an 5 points when you win combat. If you’re counting up points, you will find that you will have enough extra ones to use with Krim, Thoughtful Tactition. Paenol, Resistance Soldier is also another great way to spend those extra points. Interrupt prevention is becoming more and more important to the game, and he can do that for you. A number of the other Bajoran Resistance personnel from the Extreme Measures set have similar “Lose 5 points” abilities.
If you don’t want to pay 5 points to use some of those great abilities, you can make use of the text on the Te’nari, Resistance Flagship. This ship says that you may pay the cost of a “Lose 5 points” ability by destroying a Hand Weapon they are equipped with or an Assault event that costs 1 or more. This ship’s ability does make it somewhat more tempting to attempt Off-World Raid first, since you know you’ll be able to do things like boost your personnel’s attributes with Orta, Resistance Leader again.
Dilemma Pile
This pile is built around the theme of Chula dilemmas. The foundation of the pile is Chula: the Game, which plays on your mission and stops a personnel whenever another Chula dilemma is revealed. Some of the other important Chula dilemmas included are Chula: the Chandra and Chula: the Dice. The Chandra is a nice filter dilemma that punishes you for having high cost personnel. If you stop someone with a high cost first, it’s more likely that you’ll stop a high number of the other personnel. The Dice is a pretty nasty wall which requires you to have different personnel with high Integrity, Cunning and Strength. Most of the time an affiliation will natively have one or two of those, but not all three. The rest of the dilemmas in the pile are a combination of dilemmas that require skills and those that don’t, as well as some that stop and some that kill. All of them a dilemmas, so they can be played anywhere.
In Conclusion
This Resistance deck is designed to show off the bare bones of combat, but there are some more sophisticated and deadly versions out there. Check out Ed Pigman’s version which uses Blessed Bajor and Artifacts, along with a Tragic Turn kill pile, to up his opponent’s body count.
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This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements: