Playing The Borg No. 9:
Choosing Missions

One of the differences of the Borg affiliation that is most apparent is their treatment of missions. A Borg player's perspective needs to be very different indeed when it comes to selecting them.

Missions are irrelevant. As Borg, you will not be attempting them. To the Borg, missions are merely (in Q's words) "something they can consume." You must select them with your objectives in mind. By now, you've probably got a very clear idea what the strategy of your deck is going to be. Your mission selection will come directly from that.

Planets The main thing the Borg need to look for in a planet is a point box showing 35 points or more. (Undefined values such as the "X" on Reunion do not count.) Choose nothing you cannot target for assimilation. Be wary; your opponent may try to complete the mission before you arrive to assimilate it. While this will make your scouting efforts easier, it will also give your opponent at least 35 points. Try to pick missions with difficult requirements. (Diplomatic Conference would be a good example, though beware the Romulan Sisters/Major deck ready to take this away from you!) The harder a mission is to complete, the less likely your opponent can gather those skills in time. Once you have assimilated that planet, of course, the mission cannot be attempted.

Space Establish Gateway requires only a point box with a number (any number). Generally, you will want to choose the lowest numbers possible. Don't give your opponents more points that you have to. (Samaritan Snare is a good one.) Remember, though, after you have completed an objective at a space location, a non-Borg opponent may still complete the mission there, so don't make it easy for them. Difficult mission requirements should again be your rule of thumb. (Compromised Mission is a good example of this -- a Federation player isn't all that likely to have Treachery x2.)

Secret Salvage This specific mission may be targeted by the Salvage Starship objective, so you'll see it in a lot of Borg decks. You can also use Salvage Starship at any space location where a battle has taken place, so many Borg players not doing a homeworld-based strategies will favor space missions over planets (and use Hails or some such trick to force opponents to stop at space locations). You could also use copies of the universal Space mission. You get two locations for the price of one. They cannot be targeted by Establish Gateway, but work just fine for Salvage Starship.

Homeworlds The three homeworlds currently in the game are Earth (Espionage Mission), Qo'noS (Expose Covert Supply), and Romulus (Cloaked Mission). None of these planets may be targets of Assimilate Planet (as per the text on that card), so don't use them unless you are using a Homeworld strategy. With Locutus of Borg in your deck, it is possible to use only Espionage Mission and leave the other two homeworlds out. Most homeworld decks will feature all three though, since you don't know for sure what affiliation your opponent will play, and assimilating their homeworld is the best way to shut them down. (Enjoy homeworld decks while you can! With Balancing Act around, homeworld assimilation is gonna become a guessing game once new affiliations arrive on the scene.)

In general, you'll want to vary the affiliations on your missions, choosing a mix of Federation, Romulan, and Klingon missions. If your opponent begins stealing missions from you, there will be a limit to the number of places they can do this. (Although one reason you might choose not to do this is if you want to try to fool your opponent into believing you are not playing Borg throughout the dilemma segment of the seed phase.) It may also be wise to select missions that can normally be attempted by one affiliation only, avoiding missions that can be attempted by all three.

Also keep an eye on the span of your missions when selecting them. If you are using Scout Vessels and Spheres extensively in your deck, you will want to select missions with low spans, to make it easier for you to get around. Even when playing the Cubes, this may be a wise consideration. Only if you know you will have the Queen's Borg Cube or several Astrogation Drones might you consider opting for the higher span missions (in an effort to slow down your opponent's movement).

One very special mission will find its way into almost every Borg deck:

Tarchannen Study has everything I've talked about. Low span (2), rather difficult requirements (ENGINEER x 2 + IP Scanner + Holodeck), is Federation only, and has a 40-point box for the Assimilate Planet objective. Even better, it qualifies as a planet and a space location. Notice the wording on the objectives Establish Gateway and Assimilate Planet. While Establish Gateway specifies it must target a "location not yet scouted", Assimilate Planet is under no such restriction. In other words, you can target Tarchannen III first as a space location, then as a planet location, turning into a 50-point Borg mission. Note that it has been ruled that planet-only dilemmas (or artifacts that cannot play in space) that are encountered when scouting Tarchannen Study in space are placed back under the mission (not discarded as mis-seeds). You may probe for your space objective once all other seed cards have been cleared. If you later Assimilate Planet there, you will have to face those cards you ignored previously. Borg players should hope for more dual-icon missions in future expansion sets to help them along.

That wraps it up for missions. The seed part of your deck is not quite finished yet, though...

NEXT TIME: Borg Dilemma Strategy