On the surface, Armus - Sticky Situation may not seem like that powerful a card. After all, it only kills a single personnel, you don't get to choose who dies, and it could very well simply stop that person, as a Diplomat with Cunning > 7 isn’t that tough to find. However, in combination, this card breathes new life into a rarely used dilemma: El-Adrel Creature. Seed the Armus - Sticky Situation so that it will be encountered first, and then follow it with the El-Adrel Creature. This will mean that the highest strength on the away team will either be killed or stopped, at which point the rest of the away team will hit the El-Adrel Creature, and probably lose another high strength member. Finally, conclude with the common Malfunctioning Door, and watch as your opponent scrambles to find the necessary strength.

As Soong-Type Androids become more and more common, Armus - Sticky Situation is an excellent way to pick them off, as their Strength tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Especially if you have the room to seed a set-up dilemma to pick off their Diplomat (Zaldan is the obvious choice, although Yuta is a safer bet), you have a very good chance of eliminating the Android, angering your opponent (no one likes losing an Android), and circumventing the problem of Soong-Type Androids passing right by the Malfunctioning Door.

Decks based around Assign Mission Specialist in great number will also have a tough time coping with this combination. More than likely, unless the deck is based around Diplomacy, they will lose their strongest personnel to Armus - Sticky Situation, then their second strongest to El-Adrel Creature, and finally be confounded by the Malfunctioning Door, as all the Strength 6 personnel in the universe won’t get you past it (much less strength 5 or 4).

Finally, this is the ultimate dilemma for thwarting your opponent’s attempts to send down only one personnel to clear out the dilemmas (commonly called “red-shirting”), as it is only discarded when someone remains. If you opponent sends down only one personnel, they will hit Armus - Sticky Situation, that personnel will die, but the dilemma will wait patiently for the next victim. When used properly, Armus - Sticky Situation can be an effective way of picking off dangerous personnel.

No ship in the STCCG universe has as much flexibility as the Darmok, one of the twenty black border cards found in the Star Trek Official Tournament Sealed Deck. When reporting for duty, you get to choose one of three special equipment functions - a Tractor Beam, Holodeck or Particle Scattering Device.

What this means for sealed deck play is now you can match a ship's function to the cards you get in your sealed deck booster packs. Got a lot of holograms? Now you have at least one ship with holodeck capabilities so you can use them. Need to tow a Radioactive Garbage Scow? No problem, give your ship the tractor beam, and you can move it away. Or if you happen to get a Particle Scattering Field Event card, the Darmok can cause your opponent lots of beaming headaches. Or just give the ship the Particle Scattering Device to make your opponent afraid to beam anywhere, just as a bluff! But remember, once you pick the special function at reporting, that's what the ship will have for the rest of the game, so choose wisely.

In standard Star Trek Swiss tournaments, and in casual play, several copies of the Darmok can make a really nasty Particle Scattering Field deck. In addition, as a stand-alone card, this ship is easy to staff and has respectable RANGE, WEAPONS and SHIELDS numbers.

Combos:

Darmok + Particle Scattering Field

Darmok + Hologram characters

Darmok with Plasmadyne Relay

So what's a Q-Continuum card doing in the Star Trek Official Tournament Sealed Deck? Quite a bit, actually. What you are seeing is the second dual-type card. This Q-Dilemma/Event gives you a lot of flexibility in a sealed-deck environment and breathes new life into the Q Continuum side deck of your regular tournament deck.

In a sealed-deck environment, you'll probably be taking advantage of the dilemma half of this card, since it can be seeded like a regular dilemma. Very simply, it gives you the ability to stop some or all of your opponent's Away Team members, limiting her chance of successfully completing that mission this turn.

Outside the Sealed Deck tournament, this card also becomes a valuable weapon in the war on Q "bypass" strategies. The first option you have is to place this card on the table as a Hidden Agenda event. Although this takes up a seed slot, you have the flexibility to use it at any time.

Have you been looking for a new reason to incorporate a Q-Continuum side deck? Throw a couple of copies of this card in your Continuum to back up the one you seeded as a Hidden Agenda. This way during a game, you can use the seeded copy to stop your opponent's first attempt at Q bypass. That copy of Hide and Seek will be discarded, but that's where the backups in your side deck come in! By the time your opponent attempts Q bypass at a different mission, chances are another copy of Hide and Seek will have come up from your Continuum. If the extras come up more often than you need them, or if your opponent isn't playing a Q bypass strategy, you can always choose to have the extra Combos: copies function as dilemmas.

Combos:

Hide And Seek + Sealed Deck Environment: An effective dilemma to slow down your opponent.

Hide And Seek + Q Flash: Flexibility in accessing either text of the card. Pull out those Q Flashes!

Hide And Seek + Hidden Agenda option: Use it as a safety net in case your opponent tries to bypass the dilemmas via Q.

Hippocratic Oath is a very powerful dilemma from the OTSD. Not only can it be a wall if your opponent is lacking MEDICAL personnel when attempting, but if your opponent does have the MEDICAL required, the MEDICAL with the most CUNNING will actually abandon your opponent's crew/Away Team to help somebody else in need...for awhile. This isn't bad, MEDICAL is needed for many instances and if you can set it up properly, you can have alot fun.

For example, seed Hippocratic Oath so it is encountered before a Tarellian Plague Ship. Chances are, you will take out your opponent's only MEDICAL and then the rest of the crew will be wiped out from the Tarellian Plague Ship. Either that, or another MEDICAL hits the road. You can even be more nasty, sending the MEDICAL by Hippocratic Oath to Qualor II Rendezvous if you can. His/her trip looks like it may last awhile longer, if affiliated... And if this wasn't enough, seed Alien Parasites at the other mission adjacent to Qualor II, then you can send the lonely doc some visitors. ;)

Combos:

Hippocratic Oath + Tarellian Plague Ship: "Julian! You sure picked a good time to help the Jem'Hadar!! If we find out you are playing darts..."

Hippocratic Oath + Qualor II Rendezvous: "I'm a doctor, not a couch potato! Well, actually I guess I'm both..."

In a single moment of rage, Kevin Uxbridge eradicated the entire Husnock race. Left behind were the powerful Husnock ships, as well as a few surprises. One of those surprises, thanks to the craftsmanship of Decipher's award-winning art department, is the Husnock Outpost.

In a sealed-deck environment, the Husnock Outpost provides you a nice starting outpost capable of hosting whichever affiliation you decide to use. Much like a Neutral Outpost, this Non-Aligned outpost can be used by any one affiliation at a time (or more under a treaty). Don't worry over the fact that it seeds only at Non-Aligned locations, because you'll get just such a mission in your 20-card premium pack (and more are available in DS9 and later expansions).

In regular play, the Husnock Outpost can provide you with a variety of strategies. Allowing you to seed a Husnock Ship face up during your seed phase means you'll have a ship ready to go right at the beginning of the game. Its shields of 40 provide extra protection from roaming Klingon attack armadas. When protecting ships, it only extends 25% of its shields, but 10 added to shields of your ships is never a bad thing. And finally, this outpost does *not* say "seed one," so you can seed as many of them as you like -- just keep in mind that you can't build them later in the game.

A "pain-in-the-neck" card to be sure, this card targets what may be, arguably, the most powerful personnel type in the game. Let's see; Geordi, Scotty, Roga Danar, Lore, Zephram Cochrane, Data, Rachel Garett, and Miles O'Brien. Yep, sounds pretty powerful to me.

Here's where the fun kicks in. Seed the following combo in this order:

Make Us Go + Birth of "Junior" + Cytherians: What happens is this. You first encounter Make Us Go and it swipes one of your most cunning ENGINEER (most likely having ENGINEER x2. Doing this allows you to continue...

And run smack into the Birth of "Junior" which, in most normal cases, will gleefully attach itself to your ship but this doesn't stop you either. So of course you hit...

The Cytherians which sends you (with "Junior" in tow) to the far end of the spaceline. The fun part, you ask? Well, first off, you will NOT be back in time to save your ENGINEER from getting booted out of play. If that's not enough to ruin your trip, if "Junior" is attached...

Well, don't count on seeing those 15 bonus points any time soon.

By Landon Manning (lcmsmu@juno.com)

Basic Combo:
Make Us Go + Cytherians: Basically, this guarantees that the ENGINEER will be placed out of play since it requires one to get past, then the Cytherians "encourage" the ship to move away, removing the CUNNING>24 from the scene. (Bye bye, ENGINEER.)

Better combo:
Make Us Go + Birth of "Junior" + Cytherians: Get rid of an ENGINEER, send the ship off, and, more than likely, destroy it as well. To overcome this, the ship would have to have 4 ENGINEER on separate people, so no super ENGINEERs, unless the super ENGINNER is stupid (not likely to happen). Data would put a kink in this, but who wouldn't mind getting him out of play? Substituting Theta Radiation Poisoning for the Birth of "Junior" would work the same except you don't get to destroy the ship.

Sure, you can't stock it in a deck or side deck. Sure you have to discard a card to re-open it. But isn't what it can do worth it? For people playing a lot of Test Propulsion Systems missions, it can help you get out enough universal ships to make a run to two or three at a time. Being able to return a ship to your hand is even better, getting rid of "Junior", Tsiolkovsky Infection, and Static Warp Bubble.

The best use of the Door is for a Borg deck. If you don't want to stock too many Cubes, just download one then close the door behind it. Even better, when the door is closed, you can use your opponent's Red Alert, so if you have an opponent who is Red Alert-happy, you can get a Cube staffed in no time, without using too many Activate Subcommands in the process.

Combos:
Spacedoor + Test Propulsion Systems deck: Constant universal ships, as long as you have enough cards to throw out.

Spacedoor + Borg deck: Cube on the first turn, tent and Retask free!

This doorway, like the Alternate Universe Door, meets your basic need for a way to play AU-icon cards. In sealed-deck play, this helps you make the best use of your Alternate Universe booster pack and ensures that all of your AU dilemmas are seedable. (And if you pull a heavy hitter like Major Rakal or Jack Crusher, so much the better!) Although the Space-Time Portal allows you to play only one AU-icon card per turn, in a typical sealed-deck environment this doesn't usually hinder you at all.

In regular play, the ability to move an entire ship with crew from your hand to the spaceline, and vice versa, can be very powerful -- especially since you can do it during your opponent's turn and at any spaceline (or timeline) location. Save up enough crew in hand to staff a scary AU ship like the Decius, then wait for your opponent to stray from his outpost and pay him an unexpected visit.

Which doorway to choose? Well, if you plan on playing more than one AU card per turn (perhaps you have lots of AU interrupts, or AU personnel with Red Alert!), go with the Alternate Universe Door. But if you don't mind the one-per-turn limitation, choose the Space-Time Portal and enjoy the extra benefits and protections it gives you. Or better still, seed *both* doorways at the beginning of the game; your Space-Time Portal will be ready for immediate discarding whenever you need it, and your AU Door will still be there to let your AU-icon cards enter play.

Combos:

Space-Time Portal + downloaded Alternate Universe Door:  Ah, I see you have a PNZ deck. How about if I nullify your Temporal Rift on *your* turn?

Space-Time Portal + Devidian Foragers:   Get a hefty boost to the STRENGTH of one of your AU personnel just before you initiate a personnel battle.

Space-Time Portal + ship in trouble:   Cytherians about to run you into the black hole? Or stuck behind a Q-Net? Just return that ship to hand and report it again!

Space-Time Portal + Future Enterprise + all-AU crew:   Report your future dream crew for duty anywhere -- at interrupt speed!