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Strategy Articles
Beginner Deck: Khan
by Lucas Thompson
22nd July 2022
"Stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring." Marooned on a desolate planet at the start of the game, Khan and his super-human followers face a very different challenge than most other decks. Like Voyager decks, Khan decks also do not have a headquarters mission. At the start of your first turn, to even start playing your personnel, you need to use Ceti Alpha V's text to download To Rule in Hell, which is what gives you permission to play your personnel...
... but not ships! Before you can get a ship in play, you have to complete your initial mission, and flip it to its other side (which will print out when you print the deck even though it doesn't appear in the card list). Until then, you're trapped on Ceti Alpha V. Curse you Kirk!
Another uniqueness to this deck is that it relies heavily on a single personnel: Khan. When he's in play, a number of your personnel have gametext that makes them cheaper. And, when you play him, you can download the specific ship you want (for later) and place it in your discard pile, along with any personnel of your choice. I recommend picking either Ling (who has excellent mission skills for your first mission and can prevent Khan's untimely demise) or Silik, Chameleon (who is your only source of the intelligence skill for the ubiquitous Rogue Borg Ambush).
This deck also has two unique routes to victory. To Rule in Hell spells one option out: you can win by completing four planet missions (without facing any space-only dilemmas). Since that will generate extra points, you can spend some on They're Still Coming Through in order to complete those missions more quickly. Alternately, you can go for just three planet missions if they include Regula, Exact Vengeance and Genesis Planet. Once you complete Genesis Planet, execute its order and boom, you now command a completed space mission (also without facing any space dilemmas).
Once you're comfortable with this deck, you might want to personalize it. It is very loosely based on Stefan Slaby's 2019 Austrian Regional-winning deck (with an emphasis on new cards from The Menagerie). You may take inspiration from that deck list, or consider these cards:
Bring More Friends
- This deck includes a personnel (Chekhov) that requires you to specifically have Khan in play in order to play him. There are more cards like that, once you're ready to keep track of them. Udar, "Smike" allows you to play a non-genetically enhanced human, Arik Soong, Father of Many - that's a lot of hoops to jump through, but he has great skills and a great ability for the deck. You can also use Augmentation to add even more personnel options in your deck building.
Things to Do During Lock-down
- A frequent difficulty Khan decks face is that, when it takes a while to get through your first mission, you're stuck either discarding a bunch of cards or risking deadlier dilemmas by attempting with more than nine personnel. Cards like Marla McGivers (another card you need to have Khan around to play) and Vendetta give you something to do with those personnel before you have a ship around to stick them on.
Aggressive Recruitment
- There are a couple powerful dilemmas that reference genetically enhanced personnel that appear in this deck: Space Seed and Peremptory Plea. Go right ahead and use more copies of those dilemmas to mind-control your opponent's personnel and make other expensive dilemmas cheaper.
General Use Cards
- Some cards can just go in any deck - and often do because they're so useful. An extra counter per turn from Surprise Party wouldn't go amiss. And once you've played a few games, you'll see how the reboot from Unexpected Difficulties can be game-changing. Alvera Tree Ritual is subtler - you basically play it for free, and not only does it protect you from any dilemma pile manipulation, but it can also be used offensively. If you keep track of which dilemmas you don't use, you can proactively use the Ritual to shuffle your dilemma pile at opportune times.
Discuss this article in this thread.
This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:
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