Playing The Borg:
Choosing Personnel
by Evan Lorentz, aka "Mot the
Barber"
So far, I've talked a lot about personnel. How they are important to probing,
how you can use fewer duplicates of personnel in a deck with downloading,
and how to get personnel out quickly. But I haven't given you ideas on
which personnel to use.
Choosing Personnel (Communications)
The Borg currently have 20 different personnel: 6 of each subcommand,
plus Locutus and the Queen. Some drones are more valuable than others.
Some work great in certain strategies, and do very little in others. Above
all, you should stock the drones that best match your choice of objectives
(or vice versa). I've decided to go through them all blow by blow, Borg
by Borg. It would have made for an extremely long installment in this
series, so I've broken it up into three parts, by subcommands. This time
out, focus on Communications.
Bio-Med Drone (Eleven of Nineteen): Great drone. Great, great drone. Has
both Biology and MEDICAL, and an incredible special ability -- he can
reabsorb Borg just killed back into your draw deck. (Beware, this ability
works best in space or battle-based strategies. It won't help you much
in saving lone scouts off on planets.) Most importantly, the Bio-Med has
MEDICAL as its last listed skill. Tsiolkovsky Infection can be a powerful
anti-Borg dilemma. Your only way out is to abandon ship or to have three
Bio-Med Drones. Skill sharing, the Queen, and the Guard Drone won't help
you here.
Countermeasure Drone (Fifteen of Seventeen): Another must have Drone.
How many you use depends on whether or not you have the Queen and/or Locutus
to get you past some Borg stoppers like Maglock, Cardassian Trap, and
Shaka When the Walls Fell. If you don't have the big two, or aren't sure
of getting them into play, you'll definitely be needing the Countermeasure
Drone for the ability to download Adapt cards. (Don't forget about Adapt:
Modulate Shields, either -- very important if your opponent wises up and
battles you when you're weak.) The Countermeasure is also the only drone
with Exobiology, a must to get out of the dreaded Coalescent Organism
(which would wreak havoc on the Borg). And of course, ENGINEER as well,
which gets you through a number of other wall dilemmas.
Cyber Drone (Five of Eleven): You'll probably need one, and only one,
of this drone. His SCIENCE is valuable, though it can be found elsewhere.
Cybernetics, for the moment, will only keep your Borg from being assimilated
by another Borg player through the Borg Servo. Most importantly, the ability
to prevent your Borg from being placed in stasis will get you out of DNA
Metamorphosis and the Scout Encounter/Quantum Singularity Lifeforms double-whammy.
Interlink Drone (Nine of Eleven): You don't need me to tell you this is
the most valuable of the drones. Skill sharing is how your Borg will overcome
dilemmas like Ancient Computer, Birth of "Junior", and Frame of Mind when
scouting space locations. It's how your scouts at planet locations will
live to face more than one dilemma, overcoming Barclay's Protomorphosis
Disease, Crystalline Entity, Phased Matter, and more. Always stock copies
of the Interlink Drone.
Procurement Drone (One of Eleven): ENGINEER. Always good, but also available
on other drones. Stealing equipment isn't bad, but the opportunity to
do this is truly rare. Which leaves the ability to download Borg equipment.
There's currently only one such card, the Assimilation Table. So, in a
nutshell, if you are Assimilating Counterparts, you need at least one
Procurement Drone in your deck. If you aren't, you probably don't need
any at all.
Unity Drone (Two of Seventeen): The skill of Anthropology only helps out
with two dilemmas: Primitive Culture and Worshiper. You won't have a CIVILIAN
unless you assimilate one, so count on getting out of Primitive Culture
some other way. As for Worshiper, it will only stop the scout that encounters
it. You can immediately send down another and continue. Which leaves the
Unity Drone's special skill, to share the entire Hive's CUNNING with a
Communications Drone. This will help you in scouting planets. In space-based
decks, or Counterpart strategies, the Unity Drone won't help you a bit.
One more word about Communications Drones in general. Remember that they
are required for Adaptation, skill sharing (being the only lone scouts
that can receive shared skills), and other special abilities on a number
of Borg cards. They are extremely important. And if your deck is based
around Assimilating Planets, you'll need extra, "expendable" Communications
Drones to sacrifice in your scouting efforts.
NEXT TIME: Choosing Personnel (Navigation)
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