Romulan Capture Deck - CT States
by Chris Brennan
This is my second place CT state championship deck. Rather than try to explain how I designed it (which is difficult to explain since I threw it together at 8:00 in the morning before the tournament ;-) ) let me just say a little about why particular cards are in here.
The deck was designed as a Romulan capture deck. I intended to use Ambushes and Outgunned to help with ship battles and Brainwash to get a few extra personel. It turned out to be a pretty good mission stealer.
I'll start with the draw deck:
7 personnel who are free at the Continuing Committee: Major Rakal, Lovok, Vakis, Telak, Parthok, Koval, Senator Vreenak
2 AMS personel: Tallus and Tarus.
3 Going to the Top personnel (in addition to Senator Vreenak): Senator Letant, Senator Creetak, Alidar Jarok
Other Personel: Lore, Sisters of Duras, Tallera. Any good capture deck has Fajo Gallery, might as well use the Fajo personel to get the card draws.
3 Chief O'Brien to download Brainwash They also make great Redshirts at space missions.
10 and 01, Altovar, Suna, Sevek
2 Soong Type Androids.
For a little more speed playing cards, I used 4 Devidian Door and 3 Going to the Top. Devidian Door also let me invade opponent's ships and deactivate holograms. And of course, you can report personel to the Gamma Quad with DD, too.
4 ships: 2 D'Deridex Advanced, 1 Husnock Ship, and the Goraxus. The Husnock was in there because I didn't own another Advanced, but it ended up being useful for the extra Holodeck.
4 Calamarain. Combined with the BBSD, this helped my dilemmas. Also, Calamarain helps Romulan Ambush and Outgunned, particularly against other Romulans.
6 Q Tents
2 Kevin Uxbridge
I had a few more of those cards in there originally, but I dropped them for 3 Palor Toff. That gave me flexibility, since I could reclaim the cards I needed, instead of drawing an extra Tent when I'd rather have an extra Uxbridge.
These capture related cards all recycle with Prepare the Prisoner:
4 Dixon Hill's Business Card
4 Brainwash
4 Secure Homeworld. Go ahead and recycle this away very early in the game. If you are afraid you won't draw one when you're ready to attempt a mission, recycle it to your discard pile and you can get it back with Palor Toff.
2 Reflection Therapy
2 Outgunned
6 Romulan Ambush.
This is why the deck looks big, there's a lot of those cards. However, I only needed to play one or 2 or 3 of these each game, so the others just recycled into something else immediately. The Brainwashes always recycled and downloaded.
5 Examine Singularity cards: 3 Bajoran Wormhole, 2 Deactivation. Again, if you think the deck looks big, remember they download out of it pretty quickly.
So it's a little large. But with the downloading and recycling, it plays about as efficiently as a 45 card deck.
The seed deck:
Missions:
Cloaked Mission for the HQ.
Study Cometary Cloud for the Husnock Outpost.
Explore Interstellar Matter for Calamarain. And Tarus beats this himself with AMS points.
And I went with the easy Romulan gamma quad missions. This kept the alpha quad spaceline really short, so I didn't have to chase the opponent all over the place to interact with them with my battles / Ambushes / Calamarain.
Investigate Rumors
Aid Fugitives. I didn't intend for it to work this way, but I found that this mission makes people paranoid of anti-MEDICAL dilemmas. That was a good bluff since they found out too late that they should have been getting OFFICERs in play instead.
Access Relay Station
Dilemmas (15)
These have an anti-OFFICER theme. That made it easy to pass them myself if I stole missions. Yes, I have enough Officers in the deck, just be sure to get Alidar Jarok with the first GTTT you draw.
2 Punishment Box - Crisis combos
2 Maglock
2 Hazardous Duty
That's 2 or more OFFICERs required for each mission. Yes, it's easy for Borg to adapt or use a Queen / Counterpart. but a) I didn't see a Borg deck in the tournament. b) Calamarain can really hurt Borg Cubes. Unless they have Guard Drones, 2 damage markers from a Calamarain at knocks their SHIELDS down to 22 or less. That lets my D'Deridex Advanced and Husnock Ship with Bynars Weapons Enhancement damage the cube again.
Other dilemmas:
2 Conundrum. They are great for luring people into an Ambush or Outgunned. Don't return fire with enough weapons for a direct hit, just damage the ship and then capture it.
3 Cardassian Trap. There's not much Empathy in the deck, seed them under the missions you're less likely to steal. I only needed to Reflection Therapy Empathy once all day to pass my own Trap.
Friendly Fire in case of Empok Nor.
Dead End
Battle Bridge Side Deck with 8 Plasma Torpedo and 8 Strafing Run to kill OFFICERs with the Calamarain.
Continuing Committee
Husnock Outpost and a Husnock Ship. That makes sure there's always a target for Conundrum. (PNZ decks tend to trip that first turn.) And it lets me start threatening the opponent with battle right away. The low range is not a problem with the shorter spaceline.
Spacedoor
Assign Mission Specialists gives me 2 of the 3 staffing for the Husnock.
Space/Time Portal. Go ahead and use it for the other functions, too. It can be Palor Toffed.
other seeds:
Scanner Interference forces people to put personnel on ships where they can be hit by Calamarain. If the Calamarain works then it won't matter if they scan the mission, they won't have the personnel to beat the dilemmas anyway.
Fajo Gallery
Quark's Isolinear Rods. Get 10 and 01 as soon as possible. (unless they're in your hand, then get Letant.) That gives you even more WEAPONS for Outgunned and to keep opponent's afraid of battle. It also makes it real easy to get a second ship staffed.
Prepare the Prisoner
Examine Singularity to get the Bajoran Wormhole, and you can use those cards to reopen the Spacedoor.
Mirror Image because I see lots of Travelers around here. I also see Masaka Transformation, which is fun to mirror when combined with Examine Singularity.
HQ: Defensive Measures because I expected a lot of opposing Romulan decks.
You can change those last 2 cards based on what you expect to play against, but the other seed cards are all important to the deck.
2 Docking Pylons, just in case.
In the Q's Tent:
Devidian Door, just in case.
Bynars Weapons Enhancement
Dr. Telek R'Mor
Traveler Transcendence, if I'm getting a very bad draw.
Palor Toff, to reuse anything that might be important.
Devil
Distortion of the Space/Time Continuum
Patahk, another OFFICER and another source of Physics. When I added the Going to the Top, that let me get Cretak for Physics, so I think I should have changed this to a different OFFICER, perhaps Taris for extra MEDICAL.
Kevin Uxbridge
Spacedock. Helps against opposing battle deck. And it can quickly repair ships that you had to damage before you Outgunned them.
Selok. Download her with AMS if you need to steal Earth.
Calamarain. Besides Selok, this was the only Tent card I never used, and at least Selok would have been useful if I had played against the VCM deck that was in the tournament. I think I can drop this card for an AU Door, which would have really helped against Temporal Rift. Or Wake of the Borg would have helped too.
Regenerate. Just in case. After I perfect the deck a little more, I may drop this. The deck should be good enough to play without it.
So that's it. It ended up stealing a LOT of missions. The only improvement I'm thinking about making right now is to add Rogue Borg or Loss of Orbital Stability or Docking Procedures or something to force ships to hang around long enough to get attacked / Ambushed / hit by Calamarain. It was annoying to see some opposing ships moving between landed and cloaked every turn.
Chris "Rom" Brennan
crbrennan@yahoo.com
Read the tournament report featuring this deck