Vidiian Basics (Part 2 of 2): Harvesting Abroad

by Andreas Rheinländer, Special Delta Quadrant Correspondent

6th July 2018

Life's not only about staying close to home.  Sometimes you get the urge to travel, and Vidiians want to explore all of their opportunities to harvest organs.

Multi-Quadrant Decks

If a player wants to go for interaction, the best way is a multi-quadrant deck. However, unlike the Kazon, Vidiians do not have a ship able of serving as a mobile base. Therefore, the Vidiians have to rely on one single ship which has to be armed to the teeth in order to be mostly untouchable. The ship in question is the Vidiian Cruiser.

Any Vidiian deck built for definitive interaction in any quadrant should include one Wormhole II mission per quadrant (as well as a download for Bajoran Wormhole), so that the cruiser can jump to any quadrant without being stopped, ready to attack immediately. A seeded copy of Make It So will unstop the ship, so it can attack again. In order to achieve that, one needs the cruisers matching commander, Drenol or Nadirum. Both are universal, but there is no easy way to download them. As a result, the only way to get them is to stack enough copies of them into the deck AND use multiple copies of Ready Room Door (allowing one of them to be downloaded), the latter being necessary anyways.

Ready Room Door can download all cards necessary to enhance the ship's attributes: Captain's Log, Defiant Dedication Plaque, Tactical Console and Divert Power, as well as Sleeper Ship. An additional way to enhance the ship's weapons is to use Quark's Isolinear Rods to download 10 and 01 in order to get a copy of Bynars Weapon Enhancement. Additionally, if (!) the Defend Homeworld download is not used for anything else, it can be used to download Lamat'Ukan directly onto the ship (using Temporal Micro-Wormhole). That makes the cruiser a 11 – 22 – 10 ship. Divert Power can be used to make the ship 11 – 26 – 14 until start of the next turn, when needed.

Some readers may ask: how do I report my Vidiians aboard the cruiser in any quadrant? That is easy: the ship must be seeded at Caretaker's Array, where there is also a Vidiian Outpost seeded. A copy of The Vidiian Sodality must be seeded (!), not downloaded by the outpost. During the seed phase or during turn 1, the player then uses the special download on Vidiian Outpost to download The Vidiian Sodality onto the cruiser, which allows the Vidiians (and their equipment) to report aboard the ship.

Such a deck is flexible enough to work in any quadrant. I strictly recommend to seed at least two (better three) copies of Make It So. One for the first 'unstop' and another to download at least Captain's Log. The use of Captain's Order cards (and Ready Room Door) is strongly recommended in such a deck. Here is my recommendation for a prudent use of Captain's Order cards. As long as the ship is still in the Delta Quadrant, I suggest downloading Tactical Console. As long as the cruiser is docked at the outpost and if one of the matching commanders is already aboard, a copy of Make It So can be used to download it.

Since a Vidiian Cruiser reports only one personnel per turn for free, one card is a wonderful addition: Sleeper Ship. It can even be seeded, so in case of a two-attack turn (which can only happen once per game due to the restriction of Make It So), it means an extra two personnel reported directly from hand. Since those are not free reports, they do not discard New Arrivals. They can be either Vidiian or Non-Aligned.

Although not an addition to the fleet in terms of combat, Hidden Fighter can be used to download Non-Aligned shuttles without staffing requirements and those ships can be carried aboard the cruiser using Blue Alert. Once a Non-Aligned ship has been downloaded, a player can use the Vic Fontaine download to get Equipment Replicator, which does not play on a Delta Quadrant ship, but can be played on Yridian Shuttle. Once done, it can be used to download Plasmadyne Relay, boosting the cruiser even further.

If a player plans to use Artifacts, an old school way to increase a ship's attributes is Kurlan Naiskos and Data's Head. Kurlan Naiskos is rather sensitive to nullification, however. Data's Head can be nullified using Disruptor Overload, but on a ship full of equipment, chances are it will not be hit soon. I would recommend seeding Data's Heading using Cryosatellite, pershaps in the Delta Quadrant. Possible candidates for personnel also seeded there are Lakanta (for easy travel), Khan (to annoy Federation players), Madam Guinan (dilemmas), N'Rana (punishment), Rishon (to protect event cards), The Foragers (see below) and Samuel Clemens (see below) or any other personnel with high STRENGTH (like Ruk).

Possible Additions

One way to boost the number of cards played in a Vidiian deck is Devidian Door. If that is the case, especially when playing a multi-quadrant deck, as mentioned, it can be a nice additon to use The Foragers and Samuel Clemens. The Foragers allow three personnel (Ophidian Cane) to be played at a planet and Samuel Clemens gives the player 10 points for the cost of a copy of Devidian Door. Especially those three personnel, when using Ophidian Cane, can report to an opponent's planet and wreak havoc there.

Final Thoughts

This article was trying to give an overview regarding the Vidiians. It is important to point out that it is not conclusive or complete. There is a lot more to say, but I was trying to give an overview showing the basic aspects of this affiliation. Just like with the Dominion article series, most of the bullet points here could easily become an independent article with a lot more information, but for the moment, I hope I could encourage new and old players to play the Vidiians.

Do not hesitate to contact me, if questions arise, but most of all, have fun!

A Last Serious Note

When I was writing the articles about the Vidiians, I wanted to use a small snippet of text that uses some jovial language about being an organ donor. I deleted it all.  Instead, I decided to address this important issue in a serious manner.

There are many people on this planet in dire need of a new organ. All the countries in this world have different rules and regulations regarding organ donation. Therefore, I implore you all to think about registering and/or declaring yourself an organ donor.  If you are not familiar with the topic at all, I recommend starting with this English language article on organ donation.  It contains information about organ donation in a variety of countries.

If you have any questions regarding the medical, ethical or technical details, do not hesitate to contact me personally. I will try to answer any or your questions to the best of my abilities. My medical background allows me to answer questions regarding the topic.

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