Explorers (Or: The Four-Mission Win)

Tournament Record:

• Constructed - Trek Masters (2018-09-23): 4th place (Tournament Report)

The following cards in this deck have received errata since it was last played in a tournament:

• Containment Field (2022-08-01) - May not leave play. No longer a hidden agenda. No longer has Going To The Top restriction. Cannot be used anymore to one-sidedly tax opponent's downloads by discarding with Q the Referee and retrieving with Tribunal of Q.
• Cross-Quadrant Expansion (2018-11-04) - Works with any player's facility, to prevent being locked out.
• Defend Homeworld (2022-08-01) - Nerf. Removed [Referee] icon. Added "voluntarily" to prevent combo with Chula: The Way Home & The Issue Is Patriotism.
• Orb Experience (2024-02-05) - Nerf. Peeking function limited to once per game per Orb.
• Space-Time Portal (2023-08-14) - Added a built-in limit to the report function.
• Space-Time Portal (2021-07-05) - Reworded for clarity. The "once per turn" restriction no longer applies to seed-phase "turns."

Decklist

This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:

• Federation/Bajoran Treaty Player
• DS9 Player
• Metamorphosis Release

Draw Deck Strategy

This is a four-mission-win deck. You want to solve all three Gamma missions (105 points) plus a 35- or 40-pointer in the Alpha (140ish points and the win). You have more skills, more draws, more maneuverability, and more safety in the Gamma. (Versus a Gamma player, that's less true, so adjust accordingly.)

Cross-Quadrant Expansion plays on the built-in Federation outpost. That's the only reason that mission is in the deck; its way too low points to help you win in most circumstances (unless you're real lucky with Gold!).

Pass your opponent Gold! at the start of your first turn. Keep passing it back as long as it's viable. You don't realllly need the points but making Barclay Transporter Phobia and Horta (and other cards) opponent's choice instead of random selection is incredible.

Basic outline:

Turn 1: We Need You Here --> Defiant. You want the Defiant out IMMEDIATELY because it is your way to get around the site restrictions on DS9: you can just report eligible personnel directly to the ship. Without the Defiant, you have a lot of personnel who can't free-play anywhere on the station. (The sites are mainly there for various card-play peeps.)

Once the Defiant is out, play a DS9 personnel for free from hand there. Try to get Celestial Temple running for draws, if at all possible. You want to ramp up from 2 draws per turn to 5 as quickly as possible -- remembering that one of the 5 converts to a Group Therapy person for the first half of the game.

Turn 2: We Need You Here --> Karen Lowes. Personnel from hand. End of turn convert to download a genetically enhanced person.

Turns 3-6: Free play to Defiant / card play from hand. Convert a draw (presumably end-of-turn) with Group Therapy.

Rest of Game: HBI free play + card play either to the outpost (relocating with XQX) OR HBI free play + We Need You Here download to DS9 OR HBI free play + plain ol' boring card play.

Usually starts attempting as soon as it has staffing, around Turn 4 or 5. Even to do that, you may need to forego a Group Therapy download and use your card play to fetch a Command Star instead -- this deck simply doesn't have enough of them, and Commander's Office is SUPPOSED to let you fetch Condition Red, but it's way too clunky.

Yes, that's a very late to mission solving, especially in a FOUR MISSION WIN deck! But your opponent is having trouble moving / undocking / beaming / passing dilemmas, because you have him snowed in with interference interrupts.

Don't underestimate the power of a 15-person mega-skill crew flying into the maw of a bunch of busted combos that you ruined by seeding six space missions. Heck, these guys rock against even strong combos. Clearing out two previously unattempted missions in a single turn is extremely doable -- especially if you draw into Renewed Spirit.

Anyway. Once you're in the Gamma Quadrant, as long as you don't cloak, you're getting draws from XQX, so it is acceptable to pull an Orb personnel out of the Celestial Temple if you need that personnel for Defiant staffing. Also, XQX makes reporting even easier in the Gamma Quadrant than in the Alpha: your Here By Invitation free play goes to the Defiant, then you card play any compatible personnel (i.e. anyone at all) to your Outpost and... relocate to the Defiant. This breaks if you cloak, but hopefully nobody follows you to the GQ so you have no need to.

Asteroid Sanctuary is preferable to The Needs of the Many is preferable to Emergency Evacuation, but beggars can't be choosers. If the worst happens, and the Defiant blows up, you can download a backup Defiant. If you reallllly need another ship for some reason (e.g. you play Preparation and see a Cytherians you don't have the resources to deal with; your Defiant explodes, everyone's in an Escape Pod, and you can't staff the replacement Defiant to go get them), you can go get the Bajoran Freighter. It's a free play to Docking Ports or card play with We Need You Here.

Something I learned during gameplay: if your Borg opponent is about to do Stop First Contact, get back to the wormhole and relocate everyone you can (it's almost but not quite everyone) to the Celestial Temple. It is a time location and will protect your Federation and Human personnel from timeline disruption. Won't save the Defiant, but at least you can continue playing the game.

(The time location also makes Quantum Leap much less painful. Remember you have a time location! I once had a game where a Treachery personnel got sent there by a QL player, and he couldn't leave because of his Treachery... so I played Orb Experience on him and left him there to draw cards for the rest of the game while I swanned off.)

Brief word on interference:

Know your timing rules! You'll run into all kinds of weird situations with these cards, and it will make everyone happy if you know how to resolve them and can explain your reasoning. (What happens when a ship hit with Docking Procedures gets unstopped by Make It So? Can new personnel walk aboard? This happened in a game. I'll leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.)

Ships dock and undock quite rarely, so, if you have Docking Procedures in hand and your opponent docks/undocks and has RANGE, you should USUALLY use it. Not always but... usually. It can't hurt and is often going to be a dead card for a long time if you don't use it.

Loss of Orbital Stability cannot be played in response to ship movement anymore, so you have to be smart about anticipating your opponent's move and playing LOOS *before* he takes the action. The card technically stays on the ship for two turns but only drains RANGE for the first turn. You CAN play a second copy on the second turn to drain RANGE again; the cumulative rule doesn't kick in because the second copy is having a different effect from the first.

Brain Drain depends on you MEMORIZING your dilemma combos and where you put them and anticipating your opponent's actions -- like LOOS but much harder. But also way more flexible and targeted.

Barclay Transporter Phobia is good. Barclay Transporter Phobia while your opponent has Gold! is amazing.

Kevin and Amanda are here because my meta is light on Oof! and Civil War tents generally. You may want to avoid using them otherwise -- although it can be worth it. I got a huge advantage in one game by turn-one nuking Finally Ready To Swim (which can't be replayed) with Kevin, and *nearly* stopped the Borg in another game by hitting A Change of Plans with Amanda followed shortly thereafter by Fire Sculptor. I got Oofed! for it in both games but made it back with Dabo points. Very worth it.

Scorched Hand is this deck's kryptonite. By midgame, you have maybe 15 random situational interrupts in your hand that you're saving for the right moment, plus personnel to play soon. You get scorched, you lose a lot of options. You can rebuild real fast -- this deck's maximum draw, if you focus, is 7 per turn plus conducting services, although average is more like 4.5 -- but you've still lost those options. All the more reason to use interrupts as soon as possible -- get 'em out of your hand.

If I did it again, I'd cut the Ref stuff. I thought Containment Field would be great and it really wasn't -- plus it nullifies my own Telepathic Alien Kidnappers. The Defend Homeworld download was nice but clunky (since most of my draws are end-of-turn), and really not necessary against everything else I had coming into play. I'd rather have had another dilemma to finish that weak Quantum Leap / Friendly Fire combo -- or some even more horrible interference tech.

Might cut Regenerate, too. It's a last last last resort if Escape Pods and all else fail, and, if you need to use it, you've probably already lost, because your rebuilding is sooooo slow. But, hey, with 5 draws per turn, it's not really in the way that much.

That's all I got.

Dilemma Pile Strategy

P1 Lack of Prep / Denevan Neural Parasites / Rules of Obedience
P2 Volcanic Eruption / Murasaki Effect / Jol'Yichu
P3 Horta / Murasaki Effect / Faux Pas
E1 Quantum Leap / Friendly Fire
E2 Garak Has Some Issues / Spatial Rift / Nanobiogenic Fugitives
S1 The Arsenal: Divided / V'Ger / Quantum Incursions

Icons
Faction
		2
Special
		3
		10
		1
		4
		4
		4
Staffing
		7
		16