Playing The Borg No.15:
Mot's Tournament-winning Borg Deck

by Evan Lorentz (evanl@earthlink.net)

This is a Swarm Deck (as I described in Review #14). I'd give you something a little more in line with the advice I've given throughout these articles, but this is the deck (no changes) that won me my first tournament using the Borg (accept no substitutes). I hope it will serve as a blueprint to help illustrate some of the things I've been talking about, and lead you to your own successful Borg designs.

I. Using the Deck

This entire deck is expendable. When playing, you should throw away yourBorg in scouting attempts with reckless abandon. There are only a couple oftypes of Borg in the deck, so you should always have what you need. There is no outpost, since it uses only Scout Vessels, and they may report with crew directly to the Alpha Quadrant.

To start the game, you should have a Borg Scout Vessel with a Quantum Drone (Six of Eleven) in hand. Report them to the end of the spaceline (downloading a Transwarp Network Gateway from your deck) and immediately reveal Establish Gateway. Target your opponent's mission closest to that end of the spaceline, where you have seeded the Scout Encounter/Radioactive Garbage Scow combo. The Scout Encounter can be passed with no difficulty (maybe a hiccup or two if your opponent is playing Borg or Romulan), and the Scow is meaningless to the Borg. You'll be off and probing by turn two. Even if your opponent wants to complete the mission later, they'll still have to tow the Scow.

Probing should be a snap. Out of the 49 cards in the draw deck, only 8 do not have the blue Communications icon or green Navigation icon. It's built in probe rigging -- no extra manipulation required. Consequently, you should stick with the Establish Gateway objectives exclusively. The Assimilate Planets are in there in case a Q's Planet forces you to drive to 140 points, but otherwise don't go for them unless it's a truly unique situation. Trying to probe for the blue icon alone (there are no red Defense icons in the draw deck) will take much longer.

There are tons of ships and Borg to spare, so accept that when you turn toyour own missions (and your opponent's dilemmas), you will lose cards. It doesn't matter. Use Adapts to get around everything that doesn't kill you (the Countermeasure Drone can download them). Just report relentlessly, clear out missions quickly, probe, and repeat. Move as quickly as you can, before your opponent can build up a fleet to spread out across the spaceline.

The remaining combos are designed to place a "wall" dilemma in front of a killer or set of killers, forcing your opponent to commit a fair number of people to a mission attempt, then letting you kill them all. Pay attention to what your opponent is reporting as the game progresses. This deck uses Yuta quite a bit and you'll want to be able to pick the right number at the right time. Each Yuta has a Shot in the Back or a Strict Dress Code in front of it. Since both dilemmas can cause a death by opponent's choice (and neither stops the crew or Away Team), you should be able to double check your math by going through your opponent's Team and looking for the right people to kill. For example, they hit Shot in the Back, find they have no android, so hand their Team over. You look through and find they have say only 2 SCIENCE present. Kill one now, noting the Yuta number for the other. Call that number next, and then the Barclay's will take care of them all.The other combos work very much the same way. The dilemmas are set up to cover four space locations and two planets (which I find to be the most common mix right now). Occasionally, the sets will have to be broken up to cover some other mix.

II. A few words about some of the other cards in the deck and Tent

Regenerate. They're there in case going once through your deck isn't enough. Regenerate your dead Borg and start again. Better safe than sorry.

Mission Debriefing. Slows down your opponent. The Ready Room Door in the Tent lets you download and protect it.

Alternate Universe Door. For Temporal Rifts and Q-Nets. Remember the Quantum Drone can download it.

Anti-Time Anomaly. To stop rapid report strategies, Q-bypass being high on the list. Tent for this and play it just after Benjamin Maxwell, Norah Satie, and Sirna Kolrami (or two of the three) have hit the table...

Retask. You aren't meant to get this card as part of the strategy. It's here in case that Borg Ship dilemma you seeded should come up at the right place and time, and also to really set back an opponent who is also playing Borg by distrupting *their* Retask strategy. The Assault Drone and Borg Cube in the Tent are there exclusively so that you can legally use the Retask.

Deactivation. Mostly for stopping Red Alert (but also for popping Static Warp Bubbles). When Tenting for this, I usually grab the Ready Room Door, and use that to download Deactivation. (Then you can use the Door again to download the Mission Debriefing.)

Engage Shuttle Operations and Launch Portal. There to stop Patrol Neutral Zone decks, since landing in the Neutral Zone is a form of permanent opposition. Iconia Investigation is one of this deck's missions, just in case the PNZ opponent wasn't so kind as to play a NZ planet.

Intermix Ratio. To discourage people from coming after your Scouts for the point bonuses. If they start to do this, alternate reporting on one side of the spaceline and the other. If your opponent zigzags back and forth chasing you, they'll never complete any missions, and this Event will keep them from scoring any points.

Intruder Force Field. Rogue Borg strategies can really hurt the Borg, since the battle prevents them from probing for a turn. The Force Field protects you from both this and the occasional Telepathic Alien Kidnapper (in case you hadn't notice, the draw deck is rather predicatable).

Ready Room Door. For downloading and protecting the Mission Debriefing from the deck. If you have a Tent to spare in hand, do this to remove that unsuccessful probe card from the deck.

The Traveler: Transcendence. Generally speaking, you'll Tent for this first. Let your opponent play Mirror Image if they want -- this swarm deck can play only if you have a steady stream of ships and crew coming into your hand, and The Traveller thus essentially doubles its speed. It should benefit you more than your opponent (which is also why there's a seeded Mirror Image, so you can ride on your opponent's Traveler long enough to get out one of your own if needed).

There you have it. With this deck, I scored 10 (+300) in a 5-round tournament, proving that the Borg are indeed a viable tournament affilation.

That basically brings this series to a close. I've shared everything I've learned about the Borg so far. Of course, they've only been around for a very, very short time, so there's still a great deal to learn and discover. Hopefully, these articles have given you a jumping off point for your own Borg decks so that someday soon, you can share with me the great tactics you've discovered for the game's newest affiliation.

- Mot the Barber