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Strategy Articles
Watch your future's end
by Sean O'Reilly, Staff Writer
20th December 2019
“Sensors show chronometric particles emanating from the sphere.”
The Borg arrived with a force in 1997. The affiliation played like no other in First Edition. Personnel did not attempt missions. Instead they scouted using Objectives and probed to see if they completed their task.
The Borg affiliation made you feel you really were part of the collective. As for successfully winning tournaments? Not so much, at least at first.
Much of the problem had to deal with probing itself. First, you had to wait a turn to probe. Second, while you could build a deck to improve your odds of a successful probe, there was always the chance you would reveal a bad probe and have to wait another turn to complete your objective.
“They're creating a temporal vortex.”
Enter Enhanced First Contact in 1999. Decipher’s designers tried to alleviate some of the problems with the Borg affiliation in the 12-card set.
We Are The Borg let you download two Defense drones; or, gave one free report a turn or an additional end-of-turn card draw.
“Captain, ...Earth.”
“The atmosphere contains high concentrations of methane, carbon monoxide and fluorine.”
Add Distinctiveness gave you bonus points for assimilating personnel and let you open a First Contact booster pack if you were behind by 40 or more points. This would almost always prevent a 100-0 loss.
Service the Collective let you probe on the same turn you completed scouting if your objective targeted a homeworld or mission with the same affiliation icon as your counterpart there.
Population 9 Billion – All Borg enhanced once of my personal favorite First Edition Borg decks: Stop First Contact. The incident allows you to download a Borg Outpost to Earth upcoming completing the objective. It also lets you play Borg cards there and doubles the point value of your objectives targeting Alpha Quadrant missions.
“Life signs?”
“Population ...approximately nine billion. ...All Borg!”
In Second Edition, Stop First Contact is a mission. But it isn’t an easy one to complete. You normally need two specific personnel (Borg Queen and Locutus) which your opponent can target with their dilemmas.
What to do?
Take a page from First Edition and enhance the mission using the 2E version of Population 9 Billion – All Borg. This one will make solving Earth much easier for the Borg.
The event cost is 5 because it is a powerful card. But it is also that expensive because the Borg have ways to download cards that cost 5 or more.
Population 9 Billion – All Borg plays on your Unicomplex. This was done on purpose for two reasons. First, had it played in your core it would have been easier for your opponent to destroy. Second, a Starfleet player could not use the event to increase the cost of their opponent’s non-unique personnel.
“They must have done it in the past. They went back and assimilated Earth... changed history.”
The first function of P9BAB (as the card is commonly called) protects you from losing command of your Borg Queen and Locutus at any Alpha Quadrant mission worth 40 points or more, including Earth. Losing command includes being stopped, assimilated, discarded, returned to hand or placed out-of-play. It’s a pretty powerful function.
The second function is similar in effect to the First Edition version. After completely Stop First Contact, you get a bonus from Population 9 Billion that reflects the power of the original objective.
Stop First Contact could singlehandedly cripple a Federation player in First Edition. The designers of Inheritance took that power and put it on P9BAB. If you solve Earth, your opponent’s non-unique non-Borg personnel will each cost +2. This is a direct stab at increasing the risk of playing with so-called “weenie decks” that use lots of low-cost non-unique personnel.
"We will add your distinctiveness to our own."
Of course, to gain the greatest benefit of Population 9 Billion – All Borg, you will need to protect the event from being destroyed and solve Earth, first giving your opponent a chance to kill two of your drones using a card like Necessary Execution.
If you want to try out Population 9 Billion – All Borg, here’s a sample deck using it:
Discuss this article in this thread.
This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:
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