Hirogen Basics (Part 3 of 3): The Extraordinary Hunt

by Andreas Rheinländer, Special Delta Quadrant Correspondent

18th August 2018

Hirogen work well with a variety of other play engines in the Alpha and Mirror Quadrants.

Hirogen/Son’a

The combination of Son'a and Hirogen is one of my favorite deck types amongst the rather untypical decks, because they work well together for a variety of reasons. A deck of this type should seed Insurrection, 4 copies of Analyze Radiation and one additional planet mission, most preferably Save Stranded Crew. Place your region missions in the following way: Insurrection in the middle, two copies of Analyze Radiation to the left and two to the right. Save Stranded Crew should be as near as possible. This way, Insurrection is somewhat "safe", because an opponent needs to pass at least 14 RANGE to get to Insurrection from either direction. You could think about placing Insurrection at the most outer place, but that way, your opponent will most likely put the most evil dilemmas directly under the mission next to Insurrection and so on. By having two to the left and two to the right, there cannot be any real preference.

Place Son'a Observatory at Insurrection. I recommend seeding Equipment Replicator at your outpost to download any equipment, especially (!) Plasmadyne Relay to massively increase your ship's RANGE.

The deck should include Ru'afo, Gallatin, the four Ba'ku and your Hirogen personnel, as well as Li'seria and at least one copy of Son'a Battleship. All of these cards report for free. Download Ru'afo (using Son'a Observatory) JUST before attempting the mission to get Injector Assembly One and Collect Metaphasic Particles. Seed Taking Charge to get Hunting Group to attempt and solve any of the Analyze Radiation missions.

There are two ways to play this deck:

1. Before attempting Insurrection, attempt any of the space missions. Use your Hirogen and have a Non-Aligned ship at the same mission. Download Fontaine before attempting the mission. Go in there, let him get stopped and use his special download to download Admiral Kirk (Life from Lifelessness) to the Son'a ship. Bring Admiral Kirk to Insurrection, download The Genesis Effect and name Dead End. Alternatively, get it from your Q's Tent or put several copies in your deck.  Attempt Insurrection, solve it, take an extra turn and have a good time.

2. The other way to play this deck is to fly around, kill and capture personnel to get points. Meanwhile, use a skeleton crew to get rid of dilemmas at your missions. If this is your plan, think about using Q's Tent instead of Q's Tent: Civil War so that you can go into space mission attempts with one personnel. I do not recommend solving two copies of Analyze Radiation before attempting Insurrection if Dead End had been revealed there. If Injector Assembly One is hanging there and gets destroyed, the deck's main goal cannot be achieved anymore, at least not that easy - unless you use cards to retrieve cards from your discard pile. Either way, seed Duck Blind at Insurrection.  Anthropology will, in any case, be an abundant skill. Including Son'a ships means faster travelling as well, since they use less span as described on Analyze Radiation.

Hirogen/Alpha Borg
This is another of my favorite deck types. The concept is somewhat identical to the Son'a deck, with Foster New Collective being the base of operations. The same principles working for any Hirogen deck in the Alpha Quadrant, regarding reporting, apply.  Seed Continuing Mission (it gets discarded later, but isn't needed for anything else) to download Followers of the One. Seed Husnock Outpost at Varria III.

In the case of those Non-aligned Borg, it is not important if there is a "buffer" zone around the mission. Those Borg have high printed STRENGTH and their ship, Assimilator, has high printed attributes. The latter also allows beaming through SHIELDS, in addition to Hirogen Hunt. It also has a special download for Transwarp Conduit to give it RANGE 14.  Keep in mind that Followers of the One only prevents non-aligned Borg from battling more than once during a turn, but not your Hirogen. Additionally, remember that the special download is downloaded at the location, not specifically the ship! When you have Assimilator there as well as a Venatic Hunter, you can download the Interrupt on Venatic Hunter to give it RANGE 18.

I advise including Cybernetics Expertise in a deck with such high-attribute personnel, so that you have three free plays per turn. All three combined will provide excellent manpower to slaughter your enemy on their ships as well as on planets. Using Lower Decks is recommended. Having Cybernetics present can be achieved by downloading Suna to replace an Alpha Hirogen's skill with Cybernetics. Since such an Alpha Hirogen is supposed to be kept safe and not risked on mission attempts, he can stay at the outpost to allow androids to report there.

Delta Quadrant non-aligned Borg cannot report for free, but they can report on the planet. I recommend including some of them, as they are valuable personnel. Orum is especially important, since he has Cybernetics (in case the Alpha Hirogen gets killed or captured), which is why I recommend including more than one copy of him in the deck. Duck Blind should be seeded here as well.

Hirogen/Non-Aligned Maquis + Non-Aligned Mirror Personnel

The same principles of a base of operations using free plays in addition to Hirogen applies to a deck consisting of Hirogen plus non-aligned Maquis plus non-aligned Mirror personnel.

How does it work?

1. Seed Search for Rebels and Terran Rebellion HQ
2. Seed They Call Themselves the Maquis
3. Seed Break Prisoner and Husnock Outpost with Spacedoor there

Now you can report your Non-Aligned Terran icon cards at Terran Rebellion HQ, any unique non-aligned Maquis directly at Break Prisoner and your Hirogen aboard your ships as usual. All of those reports are for free and all are in one place. Your Terran cards can beam directly to the planet, the outpost or your Hirogen ship there using Multidimensional Transport Device. As with the other decks, you might or might not want to include Cybernetics Expertise. You can decide whether you like to create a Badlands Region buffer zone around Break Prisoner or not. It depends on the deck type.

Using Duck Blind is recommended and since you can create a region of your liking, consider using Process Ore: Mining at a nearby planet and/or seed Empok Nor at a nearby mission of your liking to get access to masses of equipment and the ability to scan a mission's top dilemma (using Science Lab). If you want to combine the ability to scan the mission, have a mission worth 35 points (using mission specialists); think about seeding Evade Patrolling Squadron adjacent to Break Prisoner to download Navigate Plasma Storms. When using the latter, your entire deck must be adjusted to that so that your ships and your facility are not in danger. If you have enough Navigation in your deck and Navigate Plasma Storms on table, it will make any opponent's attempt to enter the region all the more dangerous for him or her. It is somewhat similar to the Son'a Briar Patch region.

Final Thoughts

These deliberations will hopefully give you an insight in how to play Hirogen. As with the Dominion, there is a lot more to say about the Hirogen, but these articles where meant to cover the basics. Have fun playing Hirogen!

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