Playing The Borg: Retask

by Evan Lorentz, aka "Mot the Barber"

Last time I talked about one of the greatest advantages a Borg player has -- downloading. I did leave out the grand-daddy of downloading, however. So this time out, I bring you: Mot's Advice on the Borg #3: Retask Retask is an Event that plays to replace a Borg Ship dilemma with a universal Borg Cube and seven of your drones. It's a favored method of many Borg players for jump-starting into action.

First of all, you have to have a Borg Ship dilemma in play on the spaceline. If you're goint to wait for your opponent to place it there, then you may as well staff a Cube and move it into the Alpha Quadrant by conventional means. For greatest speed, you must go out and trigger it.

Most people seed Establish Gateway as an objective, and report a Borg Scout Vessel on the end of the spaceline as soon as possible. They use that Scout Vessel to begin scouting a location, triggering the Borg Ship dilemma. They lose the Scout in the ensuing battle, but on their next turn, they can play Retask to take command with the Cube and be off and running. With the right card draws and deck building, this could happen as early as turn two of the game. Not bad, huh?

MOT'S ADVICE: I don't find Retask to be worth the time or the risk. In fact, I'd almost classify it worthy of examination in my other review series! :-)

(Actually, the rest of this comes under the heading of "Mot's Advice," so prepare yourself.) ;-)

Using conventional means, I can have a Borg Cube staffed and into the Alpha Quadrant by the fourth turn of a game.

Here's the order of play: Turn one, play Activate Subcommands. Download a Transwarp Drone among the others. Turn two, play a Borg Cube. In place of the card draw, download a Gateway using the Transwarp Drone (if one isn't already in hand). Turn three, another Activate Subcommands. Turn four, report a Borg personnel normally. That makes seven drones. Use the Gateway to slip into the Alpha Quadrant and get to work.

So, unless you can play the Retask strategy successfully in turn two or three, you didn't really save yourself any time. In order to do this, you're going to have to have both a Retask and a Borg Scout Vessel in your hand somehow. Now, while it is reasonable to think you could load a draw deck with enough Scout Vessels to guarantee one in the opening draw, the same cannot be said of Retask, being a rare card. Odds are very high you'll have to use Q's Tent to get a hold of your Retask.

It is my opinion that unless you are in some sort of emergency situation, if you Tent for anything other than the Borg Queen using your first Tent, you made a bad choice. With unlimited deck sizes, Wrong Door has become more popular than ever -- and it was a good card before. I have played games where I've been kept out of my Tent all game not by Revolving Doors (which would be easily dealt with), but by Wrong Doors. So whenever you are able to get a Q's Tent off successfully, you'd better be sure you're getting the right thing.

I believe the Queen will help you more than any seven drones ever could. She can download more drones for you, great for staffing ships, or expendable scouts. She can download A Change of Plans, to keep an objective (the right objective) on the table at all times. And she can switch out her skills, the easiest, card-free way the Borg can get around dilemmas like Shaka When the Walls Fell, Cardassian Trap, or Maglock.

Well then, what about Retask as a means of getting a second Cube in play?

I can only offer my experiences, gathered in several dozen Borg games: I've only needed a second Cube once.

The biggest problem with running two Cubes is you need 14 Borg personnel to do it. That is a lot of Borg. So many, in fact, that by the time you've depleted your draw deck of that many cards, probing can be very difficult. I mentioned in my last article how downloading too much can hurt your probing. Downloading 8 cards all at once is a dramatic illustration of this problem.

What about using Retask as a Q's Tent card, to stop an opponent also playing Borg? This, I agree, has merit. Being an Event, Retask must play before orders are executed (according to the sequence of turns), and so a player triggering a Borg Ship dilemma has to wait a turn before Retasking. If you swoop in and Retask it yourself, your opponent will be in a very hard place. But I'd caution you to do this only in the early turns of the game. Any point after that, and you've probably already reported plenty of Borg personnel. To report any more through Retask will likely deplete you too much.

Above all, the greatest risk in the Retask strategy is Kevin Uxbridge. Retask is an Event with no special immunities, and thus vulnerable to being nullified. And rest assured if your opponent has a way to nullify your Retask, they will. You can seed The Line Must Be Drawn Here. For that matter, you could seed a half dozen of them. Odds are your opponent will be willing to take that point loss. I heard someone say at a tournament that they would suffer a point loss of any amount to nullify a Borg Retask. I have to say that unless I'm also playing Borg, I'd do the same.

So there it is, my take on Retask. I did say in the first article of this series that there are other ways to play Borg, and one of my first pieces of advice was to ignore my advice if you found something else that worked for you. :-) I have seen one player get a Retask to work admirably, on the second turn of the game, just as advertised. But when I play Borg, I don't use it.

So what do I do to get my Borg personnel out quickly? Well, that's a subject for...

NEXT TIME: Reporting Personnel Quickly

(I always welcome questions, comments, and suggestions -- but especially on this series, so let me know what's on your mind.)