Into the Final Frontier, Part 2 - Getting Oriented in the Galaxy (4 of 5)

by Chris Heard; Updated by Darren Lacoste, Editor in Chief

17th February 2009

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Eager to score some points, Jane announces that the same seven personnel who attempted Geological Survey last turn will attempt that mission again now. Remember that on Jane's last turn, two cards from Bill's dilemma pile were stacked face up underneath Geological Survey. The number of dilemmas already overcome at a mission (in this case, two) is subtracted from the number of personnel attempting the mission to determine the opponent's dilemma budget. Jane has seven personnel attempting the mission, but there are two dilemmas overcome underneath, so Bill must subtract the number of overcome dilemmas from the number of personnel to determine his dilemma budget. Seven minus two is five, so Bill gets to draw five dilemmas and spend five in total cost on dilemmas.

Poor Bill draws a bunch of space dilemmas and only one dual dilemma, Pinned Down. He places Pinned Down face down as his dilemma stack. He turns over Pinned Down, Jane reads its instructions, fans out her personnel cards (face down), and Bill randomly selects Lian T'su to be stopped. Pinned Down is then placed face up, overcome, beneath Geological Survey. You'll recall that Pran Tainer has all the skills needed to complete this mission, but last turn, Jane's personnel fell short on Cunning. This time, only one personnel was stopped (rather than two, as last turn), so Jane's total Cunning here is 35. She completes the mission, and scores 30 points for the mission plus 5 additional points for having 2 Geology (Pran Tainer) among the personnel completing the mission. She slides Geological Survey half a card length towards her to remind her and Bill that her personnel have completed that mission.

So far, Jane hasn't moved her ship this turn. Jane beams up all her personnel--except for the stopped Lian T'su--to the Nebula, and moves it back to Earth. Jane now has 35 points. In order to win the game, Jane must be the first player to reach 100 points while completing at least one space mission and at least one planet mission in the process. Jane now wants to complete a space mission, but she can't quite reach any of them with the four Range that her Nebula has left this turn. Therefore, she decides to wait until next turn to order her personnel to attempt a space mission.

Now it's Bill's turn. He plays two cards (Calibration Drone and Invasive Drone), and draws three. Once again, he uses the Borg Queen's order: he discards the top card of his deck to give all of his Borg Exobiology. Since seven of Bill's personnel are attempting the mission and there are two dilemmas overcome beneath Assault on Species 8472, Jane draws five dilemmas and can spend five on dilemmas.

Jane draws her five dilemmas, and finds that one of them is Ornaran Threat. Ornaran Threat is expensive--it costs four, and would be the only dilemma Jane could use during this mission attempt--but it unconditionally stops a personnel, and if the remaining personnel don't have Diplomacy and Medical or 2 Security, that personnel is killed instead, all the remaining personnel are stopped, and Ornaran Threat goes back to its owner's dilemma pile instead of being overcome beneath the mission!

Jane puts the other four dilemmas face up on the bottom of her dilemma pile, and lays down Ornaran Threat as her dilemma stack. When she turns it over, Bill reads it and he realizes he's in trouble. First, he fans out his personnel cards and lets Jane pick one at random. Jane is hoping for the Borg Queen, but she gets the Cartography Drone instead.

Now, with the Cartography Drone stopped, Bill checks to see if he can meet the requirements that will keep the Cartography Drone alive. He knows that none of his Borg have Diplomacy, so he can't use Diplomacy and Medical to overcome the dilemma. What about 2 Security? Actually, none of his Borg on the Borg Sphere have Security printed on their cards beside a red skill dot, but Seven of Nine (Representative of the Hive) has a special ability that reads, "While this personnel is facing a dilemma, she is Strength +2 and gains Security."

Unfortunately, Bill needs 2 Security, not just one level of the skill, so he fails to overcome the dilemma. Following the instructions on the dilemma, Bill kills the Cartography Drone (places him in his discard pile) and Jane places Ornaran Threat face up beneath her dilemma pile.

Now all of Bill's personnel on the ship are stopped, and his turn is almost over. However, Bill now has eight cards in his hand. This means that he must discard one card from hand in order to end his turn with no more than seven cards in hand. He has two more Borg Sphere cards in his hand, so he decides to discard one of those.

Let's speed through Jane's next turn quickly. In her play and draw cards segment, she draws three cards and doesn't really want to use any of them (they duplicate cards she has in play), so she spends two counters to play another D'Arsay Archive. She shuffles the other six cards in her hand, places them face down at the bottom of her draw deck, and draws six new cards. One of those is Robin Lefler (Mission Specialist). Jane plays Robin Lefler for two counters.

Having expended seven counters, Jane moves on to the execute orders segment of her turn. She moves to Host Metaphasic Shielding Test and orders the nine personnel aboard her ship to attempt this mission. There aren't any dilemmas overcome beneath this mission yet, so Bill should draw nine dilemmas. However, after drawing eight dilemmas, Bill reaches a face up dilemma that he had placed beneath his dilemma pile during one of Jane's personnel's earlier mission attempts. Bill sets aside the eight dilemmas he had previously drawn, shuffles all the face up dilemmas in his dilemma pile, replaces them face down to form a new dilemma pile, and draws the top card to make a total of nine dilemmas drawn.

Bill really wants to make sure that Jane doesn't score another 35 points this turn, so he uses three dilemmas, each of which is certain to stop at least one personnel. Bill gets lucky and his dilemmas stop Jean-Luc Picard (Explorer), Robin Lefler (Mission Specialist), and William T. Riker (Number One). This leaves Jane with only six personnel, none of whom have Diplomacy, which the mission requires. Since Jane's remaining personnel fail to complete the mission, they also are stopped, and Jane's turn ends.

Now Bill is really excited, because Jane's Nebula is at a space mission with several key personnel aboard. Bill spends his seven counters to play an Acclimation Drone (two counters) and a Borg Cutting Beam (five counters).

According to its game text, this event "Plays in your core." Your "core" is an area of the table where you place cards -- mostly event cards -- that come into play and stay around, having a lasting effect or waiting for you to activate their text. When Bill plays the Borg Cutting Beam, then, he places the card face up near his dilemma pile.

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