[MidnightLich]

Hi guys,

The stuff isn't great, for a few different reasons. I'm interested in collecting opinions on what does work from these decks, and what is lacking. Do you have decks that you've played recently that you are willing to share? If you tried to build one, but failed, what stopped you?

-crp

[Armus]

Hi guys,

The stuff isn't great, for a few different reasons. I'm interested in collecting opinions on what does work from these decks, and what is lacking. Do you have decks that you've played recently that you are willing to share? If you tried to build one, but failed, what stopped you?

-crp

Give me a way to build that doesn't auto-lose to Quantum Incursions and maybe a way to draw a card or two mid turn, and I bet they get competitive real quick.

More generally, give me a reason to not play Temporal Benefactor stuff, because right now I'm having a tough time finding a reason to build anything else.

[adf8]

A personnel with a special skill to allow your personnel to report 'here' if on your Nor and then another new ability that allows you a once each turn card draw if you report a personnel to a site whose text allows them to report their (potentially with a restriction of 4 or fewer or something)

Helps to overcome limited number of sites seeding, but for a cost, still incentivizes strategic choice of sites to fuel draws

[BCSWowbagger]

has so much draw already across the board, I don't think adding more would help them. (New Frontiers, Cross-Quadrant Expansion, Morn, Celestial Temple, Process Ore, Study Divergent History at Bajor or Cardassia, Guest Quarters, Promenade Shops, A Better Alternative -- although this last suffers from being hard to get on the table without ruining your deck ratio -- Mutual Distrust, Renewal Scroll, New Arrivals -- which is huge for Cardassians running Dominion War Efforts -- Reward from the Founders, Bajoran Resistance Cell... and that's just the decent ones! There are also usually-bad options like Bajor for Bajorans, Determined to Stay, Cargo Bay, Forced-Labor Camp, and Articles of Jurisprudence. And this doesn't touch on the more generic engines like Duck Blind and Kivas and War Council and Fajo's Gallery.)

Obviously does have something wrong with them, or they'd be played more, but I don't think draw is it. They've got more draw than anybody.

A chunk of it I think has to be chalked up to Nors being fundamentally unattractive to a lot of players. I like them, because I like complex fiddly things, but even I want to overhaul the compatibility, beaming, and walking rules, because they are a headache. I might go so far as to make "Nor rules overhaul" the #1 thing needs, and that applies to most of the factions to one degree or another.

The inability to pass QI, which Armus mentions, is another huge factor. Depending on which faction you're looking at, has only extremely limited and extremely expensive access to Empathy and/or . I have definitely given up on DS9 decks in frustration because my only option to pass QI's Empathy requirement is to stock 2 copies of Soto and an Altovar. (Lwaxana Troi helps HBI decks, but HBI has no free-play options for , so they've got their own problems.)

Each individual faction has its own friction points. I'll try and go through what I perceive as the biggest needs, starting with the most viable DS9 faction (Here By Invitation Federation) and going down toward the least.

- It's been a while since I ran this, and I've been meaning to get back to it for literally years now. But my memory of it is that the biggest weakness of this deck is its dependence on the Defiant, and specifically sending the Defiant out into the field. If it gets blown up and you have to replace it with the Sao Paolo or whatever, it's really very bad -- much worse than losing the Enterprise in a Finest Crew deck. It's more like losing Gowron in a Legitimate Leader deck, but it's a lot easier to keep Gowron safe, IMHO. That treaty is also terrifyingly vulnerable to Kevin [EDIT: sorry, obvs meant The Devil], which made all my HBI decks skew heavily toward in case I lose the treaty. Honestly, though, I think HBI Fed is in a pretty good place and doesn't really need a lot more juice. I tend to chalk up its lack of play to the first two factors.

My last deck with this faction (yes, it's super dee duper old): https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=10171

- Greater Glory of Cardassia was a fantastic card and really patched the gaping holes in Cardassian decks. Cardassia's trouble is that you really want to stack I Miss This Office with Central Command, just like Bajorans stack Here By Invitation with Chamber of Ministers and TNG Feds stack Finest Crew with Holodeck Door or Cybernetics Expertise or Office of the President (and so on for every other TNG affiliation). But, unlike all those other groups, the Cardassians are locked into using two fixed locations (Bajor and Cardassia) and have no way of guaranteeing that they are anywhere close to each other on the spaceline. This leads Cardassian players into a cul-de-sac, with the dominant DS9 Cardassian builds being either HQ-only decks or Nor-only decks (often with a Bajoran treaty to engage Free Report Salad) rather than a blend like everybody else. While there's a certain story-based sense to the idea that Cardassians work best by exploiting Bajor rather than working with their own homeworld, finding a way to make transit between Terok Nor and Cardassia Prime simple would go a long way. Also: I think Awaiting Trial is a sleeper broken card, and I've been meaning to get back to them, in part so I can show this. So could Cardassians use some help? Yes. Are they in a really bad way? No. It's possible to win a tournament with them, if not particularly easy.

My last public deck with this faction [unusual Nor-only build]: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=12157

Jason Tang's last public deck with this faction [archetypical HQ-only build]: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=16758

- Honestly, I think they could just use some more personnel. And maybe some treaty protection. They're okay. The facts that the free report doesn't have to be to Orias, and that Orias isn't necessarily stealable, are tremendous... though I find in practice it can sometimes lead players to just do DS9-Romulan builds that totally ignore Orias or perhaps don't even seed it. But that's not really a bad thing, IMO.

My last public deck with this faction: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15554

- There are a lot of ways to approach this. They don't have enough personnel, and the balance that they have isn't quite great. Thanks to They Call Themselves The Maquis, it is very very easy to stack Maquis with a different main play engine (often MQ decks), but, thanks to the restrictions on Not So Demilitarized, it is basically impossible to stack Maquis as a main play engine with anything else. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think they need to stack better, given their very limited personnel selection. The straightforwardest thing to do would be to give them a facility that either (a) is , so they can stack with War Council, (b) allows Resistance personnel to report for free once per turn, so they can kinda stack with BRC in a story-relevant way, (c) allows Alliance for Global Unity to report to it, or (d) all of the above?? Learning Curve is super cool, and I'm not sure the Maquis would need an extra way to get it out early if their other problems were patched.

I've never built a public deck with this faction, but I have tried several times.

- De-errata Sucking Up To The Boss. Make it 33rd Rule of Acquisition, give it a icon, let it work while facing a dilemma as it did originally. (Or just make a new card called 33rd Rule that is strictly better than Sucking Up, whatever works.) The Ferengi have a lot of strengths (and some gigantic weaknesses), but none of them can make up for their enormous skill holes except this card, which was not a problem at the time it was gutted because (unlike, say, Wisdom of Surak or pre-errata Security Drills) Ferengi aren't using skill cheaters to wheedle past tough walls; they're using skill cheaters to fill basic holes in their skill matrix like OFFICER. I really miss this card, because I saw it used before its nerf in a couple of really fun DS9 decks and I was excited to see how good those decks would become once Ferengi got their own card. Instead, Ferengi came out of The Gamma Quadrant even less playable than they had been the day before -- and I really do chalk it up to that single decision. Reducing the cost of transiting the wormhole would also be a huge help -- Ferengi have to go back and forth a lot more than anybody else, which is too bad, because both Wormhole Navigation Schematic and Operate Wormhole Relays are extremely difficult for them to use.

My last deck with this faction: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=12435

- A broader non-HQ play engine.

Finest Crew gives you access to 53 personnel. Legitimate Leader, 56 personnel. Here By Invitation, 36 personnel. I Miss This Office, 40 personnel (hedged somewhat but not tremendously by the peculiar Site requirements) (and that's without Comfort Women). Joint Operation, 19 personnel, which seems to be at the lower boundary of viability. All of these engines can be readily supplemented with an HQ free report.

Bajorans have two options for play engines: Alliance for Global Unity and Bajoran Resistance Cell. BRC gives you access to 13 personnel, which is savage for a primary play engine. But the actual card, Alliance for Global Unity, gives you access to a grand total of 8 personnel (!!!), which makes it more like Scientific Diplomacy than a real play engine... and then it has the nerve to make its main draw boost (Bajor for Bajorans) restrict you to , which makes it even more difficult to supplement with others. Worse, there's a good deal of overlap between Alliance for Global Unity and Chamber of Ministers, so your Bajoran decks end up with VIP x1000 and MEDICAL x2. Colonel Kira (Warp Pack) may help with draws, but the skill matrix for Bajorans is so fundamentally broken by its underpowered free report engines that nobody's tried her out yet.

In short, I think Bajorans need a totally new card -- one that provides ready access to 30-40 Bajoran free reports representing a broad cross-section of the affiliation.

My last public deck with this faction:: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15553

- I have never played with Reward From The Founders nor built a deck around it nor played against anyone who was running it, so I honestly have no idea how these guys are. They're on my backlog, have been since they came out, but for all I know they're Tier-1 already and just waiting to be discovered. Or they're garbage. Or anywhere in between. Point is, I have no clue.

[edgeofhearing]

- Greater Glory of Cardassia was a fantastic card and really patched the gaping holes in Cardassian decks. Cardassia's trouble is that you really want to stack I Miss This Office with Central Command, just like Bajorans stack Here By Invitation with Chamber of Ministers and TNG Feds stack Finest Crew with Holodeck Door or Cybernetics Expertise or Office of the President (and so on for every other TNG affiliation). But, unlike all those other groups, the Cardassians are locked into using two fixed locations (Bajor and Cardassia) and have no way of guaranteeing that they are anywhere close to each other on the spaceline. This leads Cardassian players into a cul-de-sac, with the dominant DS9 Cardassian builds being either HQ-only decks or Nor-only decks (often with a Bajoran treaty to engage Free Report Salad) rather than a blend like everybody else. While there's a certain story-based sense to the idea that Cardassians work best by exploiting Bajor rather than working with their own homeworld, finding a way to make transit between Terok Nor and Cardassia Prime simple would go a long way. Also: I think Awaiting Trial is a sleeper broken card, and I've been meaning to get back to them, in part so I can show this. So could Cardassians use some help? Yes. Are they in a really bad way? No. It's possible to win a tournament with them, if not particularly easy.

My only forrays outside of TNG decks in 1e have been DS9-Cardassian and Joint Operation decks, so I have some thoughts here.
-I Miss This Office is vastly inferior to Joint Operation, even in a pure Cardassian deck. (A) JO reports can go straight to Central Command, (B) the personnel quality is a bit higher, and (C) you know in the deckbuilding-phase whether or not the engine will work as advertised.
-The biggest issues I ran into were difficulties in setting up a flexible two mission win (few point gain options), and Cardassian missions are awkward in general. The 35 point ones have huge span numbers, so you're only limping across the spaceline, and tend to have decent size attribute requirements because of the eras in which they were made.
-It just adds up to: you can play a lot of people, and you can do it just about as easily as other decks can, but getting them to do stuff is just harder.

[edgeofhearing]

Oh, also, on my 1E DS9 wishlist is some sort of nor-based NA smuggler/thief/freighter captain play engine. There are all those cool NA cards from the original DS9 set that are kinda homeless now, and I'd love to play some sort of den of thieves deck using them.

[Armus]

I'll add a few thoughts on a couple of areas James didn't cover:

: Aside from the aforementioned QI issues, both cards for this faction are playable. The Intendant's Quarters,Process Ore, and Study Divergent History provide plenty of card draws for Center of Authority builds and Historic Coming Together makes good things happen with The Regent's Flagship builds. This faction is very competitive.

: I haven't played this faction, but when I was building my Regional deck last year I went with with a few key for support (Ezri, Smiley, and most importantly, Banya - EMPATHY!!!).

I've toyed around with a An Important Victory deck but it's not there yet.

[Armus]

Seriously though - and I really am not trying to derail this thread, but I think this is important - what reason is there to NOT play Temporal Benefactor stuff? It's not just MACO speed solver cheese - that can be dealt with - but no matter what deck I go to try to build, I have a hard time coming up with anything that isn't worse than ; at best it's a 50/50 solver race.

, , , even , if I'm not going all in I'm at least splashing , which means I'm not playing Property Logo decks. The advantages provided by stuff and no real downside to playing it (aside from missing out on Property Logo-specific achievements) means that whatever deck I'm building (with the exception of some niche deck like Jem'Hadar slice and dice) can be made better with and/or have an advantage over any deck without it. It's really shifted the meta.

When looking to improve an underplayed deck type/sector, ask why other decks/sectors are seeing more play. That's just as important as what is this sector missing.

[adf8]

TNG was ban hammered too much, I wish some of the errata was un erratad, I'd love to see a classic TNG Ferengi deck (post Gozar errata but pre FMO/CM errata) crush a 22nd century one...

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

First, a little background about how I choose decks to build. I usually don't start with the faction, I start with some strategic angle I want to explore, then figure out what faction can best support that. I wanted easy access to disruptors, so I ended up Cross-Property Cardassian. I wanted a Lonzak-based capture deck, so I ended up TNG Romulan. I wanted to try a two-planet win with The Genesis Device, so I ended up Dominion. My other Genesis Device gimmick deck was best supported by BRC. I wanted to use the power of Make It So, so I ended up TNG Feds. I didn't sit down with the intention of building a Cardassian deck, or TNG deck or whatever.

So part of it was that DS9 didn't give many new things to do that other deck types couldn't do better. I did have a few ideas, and I don't completely remember why I abandoned them. Now HBI definitely has some angles I want to explore, and I have some ideas for approaching Bajorans and Cardassians, so maybe someday soon....

My aforementioned Dominion deck used Reward from the Founders. It worked okay, and it had enough draw. The problems I had were probably more due to the affiliation than DS9 mechanics, as dilemmas caused me more trouble than usual. Some of it might just be me playing out of my comfort zone. Dominion has so many ways to mix and match that I wouldn't infer too much from a mediocre performance with this (gimmicky) deck.

I also once tried a Joint Operation deck, and didn't have time to figure out draw engines so I just went with the easy standby New Arrivals. The deck was based on a Nor at Mining Survey. It worked pretty well but was awkward. It needed Process Ore in order to draw a card at the start of the turn so I could download the site I needed to play the personnel I wanted to play. I would have loved to ditch New Arrivals and add Ekoor for more plays, but I didn't know how to make up the draws. Study Divergent History would have been nice, but that would have blocked me from reporting my Intelligence V.I.P.s to Guest Quarters. Granted, recently I've become a lot more willing to go, "screw it, I'll just use KFC," but I have no idea how well that would work if I'm hoping to take advantage of Ops downloads.

Actually, to fix the awkwardness of the sites, my next idea was to ditch Mining Survey and just seed my Nor at the Orias System. Then turn 1 download a ship and just report everyone there thanks to Joint Operation. But I haven't spent too much time going down that route, because my Nor build was weaker to battle than my Central Command deck that Heaney likes to post, and I haven't been able to offset this with some other strength.

So here's my pitch to help DS9 decks: Make a site, maybe named Crew Quarters, that lets compatible personnel report there. And that's it. If that's too broad, then limit it to OFFICER, MEDICAL, ENGINEER, SCIENCE, and SECURITY. But something like this would make it possible to play a Nor deck with just two sites and without constant site downloading.

[Iron Prime]

First, a little background about how I choose decks to build. I usually don't start with the faction, I start with some strategic angle I want to explore, then figure out what faction can best support that. I wanted easy access to disruptors, so I ended up Cross-Property Cardassian. I wanted a Lonzak-based capture deck, so I ended up TNG Romulan. I wanted to try a two-planet win with The Genesis Device, so I ended up Dominion. My other Genesis Device gimmick deck was best supported by BRC. I wanted to use the power of Make It So, so I ended up TNG Feds. I didn't sit down with the intention of building a Cardassian deck, or TNG deck or whatever.

So part of it was that DS9 didn't give many new things to do that other deck types couldn't do better. I did have a few ideas, and I don't completely remember why I abandoned them. Now HBI definitely has some angles I want to explore, and I have some ideas for approaching Bajorans and Cardassians, so maybe someday soon....

My aforementioned Dominion deck used Reward from the Founders. It worked okay, and it had enough draw. The problems I had were probably more due to the affiliation than DS9 mechanics, as dilemmas caused me more trouble than usual. Some of it might just be me playing out of my comfort zone. Dominion has so many ways to mix and match that I wouldn't infer too much from a mediocre performance with this (gimmicky) deck.

I also once tried a Joint Operation deck, and didn't have time to figure out draw engines so I just went with the easy standby New Arrivals. The deck was based on a Nor at Mining Survey. It worked pretty well but was awkward. It needed Process Ore in order to draw a card at the start of the turn so I could download the site I needed to play the personnel I wanted to play. I would have loved to ditch New Arrivals and add Ekoor for more plays, but I didn't know how to make up the draws. Study Divergent History would have been nice, but that would have blocked me from reporting my Intelligence V.I.P.s to Guest Quarters. Granted, recently I've become a lot more willing to go, "screw it, I'll just use KFC," but I have no idea how well that would work if I'm hoping to take advantage of Ops downloads.

Actually, to fix the awkwardness of the sites, my next idea was to ditch Mining Survey and just seed my Nor at the Orias System. Then turn 1 download a ship and just report everyone there thanks to Joint Operation. But I haven't spent too much time going down that route, because my Nor build was weaker to battle than my Central Command deck that Heaney likes to post, and I haven't been able to offset this with some other strength.

So here's my pitch to help DS9 decks: Make a site, maybe named Crew Quarters, that lets compatible personnel report there. And that's it. If that's too broad, then limit it to OFFICER, MEDICAL, ENGINEER, SCIENCE, and SECURITY. But something like this would make it possible to play a Nor deck with just two sites and without constant site downloading.

I like this. I've been trying to come up with a suggestion for Nors but couldn't ever find something that was better than just plain overhauling the rules. This is a really good start IMHO.

[HoodieDM]

Get rid of the stupid limitation on Nor movement.

DS9 need a draw engine that doesnt require certain personnel in play and to be stuck at a site.

Outside of that, I think DS9 are some of the best faction based affiliation in 1E.

~D

[Hoss-Drone]

While the nor can be given a holosuite, your ship's pretty much don't have them. So emergent life form wrecks you and you don't have access to fun/ good holoprograms where the peeps that run them can be along for the mission attempt.

...and yes, the nor rules suck.

[LORE]

Give me a way to build that doesn't auto-lose to Quantum Incursions and maybe a way to draw a card or two mid turn, and I bet they get competitive real quick.

Huh? Yes, Quantum Incursions is a road block, but factions have easy access to one of the best draw engines in the game - Study Divergent History. What more do you want?

More generally, give me a reason to not play Temporal Benefactor stuff, because right now I'm having a tough time finding a reason to build anything else.

This is a fair statement - the block feels like the perfect storm of powerful cards, with built-in defense against Quantum Incursions and a way to nullify pesky AU dilemmas like Whale Probe, V'Ger, etc. I don't want to say these factions scream power creep, I just think they are strong in today's meta. Once we have another wave of dilemmas, they could get pushed back out the door like the TNG factions did.

[Hoss-Drone]

More generally, give me a reason to not play Temporal Benefactor stuff, because right now I'm having a tough time finding a reason to build anything else.

This is a fair statement - the block feels like the perfect storm of powerful cards, with built-in defense against Quantum Incursions and a way to nullify pesky AU dilemmas like Whale Probe, V'Ger, etc. I don't want to say these factions scream power creep, I just think they are strong in today's meta. Once we have another wave of dilemmas, they could get pushed back out the door like the TNG factions did.

Here's to hoping "x effect unless you have lots of peeps in which case double it" dilemmas show up in the next block.