Tacking Tuesday #4: Once More Unto the Breach, Once More

by Keith Morris, Assistant Designer

19th July 2011

One of the first things I thought about when Brad told me that Tacking Into the Wind (then known just as Project Rizzi) was all about ships was that this could be a great opportunity to give Cloaking Device some love. Preferably, some love that didn’t require Engage Cloak.

I’m a big fan of Once More Unto the Breach and the way that it gave Cloaking Device ships a little bit of interesting game play, but anytime I’ve ever tried to play it, I never draw it when my ship is at an opponent’s mission. And parking my Cloaking Device ship at my opponent’s space mission kinda telegraphed the plan anyway, so my opponent would just go off and do a different mission. It always bothered me that my secret Cloaking Device tech was not so secret.

With that in mind, I set out to create a card to solve that little problem, and it led to the creation of Cloak and Dagger. Now, as long as you have one of your Cloaking Device ships staffed at one of your opponent’s missions, your opponent can never be sure when the ship is going to mess with his mission attempt.

Here's a fun, and an easily overlooked combo: it just got a bit easier to make sure your Romulan ship is at an opponent’s space mission so you can score 10 points with The Tides of Fortune.

The most obvious combo is to combine it with Once More Unto the Breach to get a stop and a kill no matter what space mission your opponent decides to attempt. Ah, but what ship should enter the breach? Here’s a few suggestions:

• I.K.S. T'Ong – Get a free Klingon into play as a bonus.
• Devoras – Get a free Romulan into play as a bonus.
• Rovaran – Remove a card in your opponent’s hand from the game.
• Maquis Defiant – Since you're spending a lot of time at your opponent’s missions anyway...
• I.K.S. Ning'tao – If you have 5 points, you can hit the opponent's ship with a Damager marker, too. Then finish them off next turn...

In addition to these battle-oriented ships, there are a few others that might be worth combining with Cloak and Dagger without necessarily using Once More Unto the Breach:

• I.K.S. Qam-Chee - Your opponent won’t be able to avoid the attribute denial.
• Naprem – Put a few personnel on each of your opponent’s planet missions, and have some Infiltrator fun no matter where he goes.
• Tenak'talar (Weyoun’s Warship) – Score an easy 10 points every time the opponent fails a mission.

What? That last ship doesn't have a Cloaking Device? Well then, I guess you’ll just have to steal one...