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Major Rakal's Romulan Review #44 Aefvadh! Over the last two reviews, we have looked at how you assimilate first a counterpart, and then a homeworld. You can stop there if you wish, but if you really want to wreak havoc, especially for a Federation opponent, you can go on and dabble in timeline disruption. It's a multi-step process, with a number of ways for your opponent to foil you, and it takes a lot of rare cards, but if you can pull it off, it is highly unlikely that a Federation opponent can make a comeback. Read on for the full story behind those dreaded words... TIMELINE DISRUPTED IN 2063 To disrupt Federation history, you must, as in the movie, stop humans from making first contact with the Vulcans. Failing that, you may attempt to build a beacon to contact the Borg in the Delta Quadrant, who can send help to assimilate Earth despite first contact. But before you may attempt any of this, you must first attempt to assimilate Earth in the present. Before we try to put this together, here is the card text for all the relevant cards that we haven't examined already. STOP FIRST CONTACT Objective, rare [Borg Use Only], [Countdown 3] Suspends your Assimilate Homeworld targeting Earth, if scouting complete. Target Montana Missile Complex (downloading as necessary). If you have a staffed ship orbiting that location, you may probe: [Def]: Phoenix destroyed here. Timeline disrupted in 2063. Discard objective. Suspended objective completed. May download one Objective card. MONTANA MISSILE COMPLEX Time Location, Planet, rare "2063 Earth: Historic time of Earth's first warp flight and contact with extraterrestrials." Plays on table. Seed Phoenix beneath this location from outside the game (any Zefram Cochrane may acquire it later); Borg player may download Stop First Contact. Once Phoenix has taken off or Vulcan Lander has landed here, nullifies Stop First Contact. Native to this timeline: Zefram Cochrane, Lily Sloane, Phoenix, Vulcan Lander, Solkar, Sevek, T'Shonra and Kathleen Tonell. BUILD INTERPLEXING BEACON Objective, rare [Borg Use Only] Suspends your Assimiliate Homeworld targeting Earth, if your Stop First Contact was nullified. Target a ship. Your Borg may scout that target. If your Borg are aboard target orbiting 2063 Earth, you may probe: [Com],[Def]: Transponder rods are now set in place. [Nav]: If transponder rods set, place on ship; Timeline disrupted in 2063 and suspended objective completed. Now let's look at this one step at a time. 1. First, assimilate a Federation counterpart by completing the Assimilate Counterpart objective, or use Locutus of Borg as your designated counterpart. For details, see Romulan Review #42. 2. Next, play Assimilate Homeworld, targeting Earth (Espionage Mission), and scout Earth, encountering and eliminating all dilemmas and Q-Flashes. For details, see Romulan Review #43. At this point, you would normally begin to probe for a [Com] icon. However, if you want to disrupt the timeline, don't try to complete this objective now. Your actual next step depends on which card you have available first, Montana Missile Complex or Stop First Contact, because each can download the other. 3A. Let's assume you have Stop First Contact in hand (or A Change of Plans, which lets you download an objective). After you have completed scouting Earth, play Stop First Contact, which suspends Assimilate Homeworld. This is the only way you can have two Borg objectives in play. You must target the Montana Missile Complex, so if it is not already in play, download it into play and carry out its text. This tells you to seed the Phoenix under MMC, bringing it in from outside the game (the Phoenix could not be in your deck or Q's Tent, because you are playing Borg and can't have non-Borg ships in your deck). 3B. On the other hand, if you have Montana Missile Complex in hand, play the time location, seed the Phoenix under it, and then download Stop First Contact into play as allowed by MMC. Note that you could also have played Montana Missile Complex earlier in the game and downloaded Stop First Contact into your hand at that time. This is riskier because you could be forced by certain cards to discard the objective from your hand, and because your opponent could bring Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloane into play at the Missile Complex and be ready to take off with the Phoenix at any time. 4. Stop First Contact is now your "current objective." No scouting is required, but in order to probe you must have a staffed ship orbiting the Montana Missile Complex location. To travel to a time location, you need either a Temporal Vortex doorway, or a pair of Wormhole interrupts. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method, but here we will assume you use a Temporal Vortex. An open AU doorway is required to play Temporal Vortex, and it has a [Countdown 3] icon, so it will self-nullify at the end of your third turn, counting the current turn. Move your staffed ship(s) from Espionage Mission to Montana Missile Complex, and at the end of your turn, if you haven't battled there, you can begin probing for a [Def] icon.
5. You have three turns, counting the current one, to get a successful
probe before Stop First Contact self-nullifies. Your opponent may battle
you at 2063 Earth to prevent you from probing during this time. There are
two ways for your opponent to nullify the objective, also.
6A. If you are successful in probing and complete the Stop First Contact
objective, the following effects take place: 6B. If Stop First Contact is nullified before you achieve a successful probe, Assimilate Homeworld once again becomes your current objective. You may either probe for its completion, or you may make one last attempt at disrupting the spaceline, by playing Build Interplexing Beacon. Like Stop First Contact, this objective suspends Assimilate Homeworld again, but it may *only* be played if your Stop First Contact was nullified. While Build Interplexing Beacon has no countdown icon and does not self-nullify, it may be nullified by the interrupt Assimilate This!, costing you 10 points. Target a ship, either your opponent's or your own. Scout the target ship, i.e., beam a scout to the opponent's ship, or if you have Borg on your own ship that you targeted, you can consider it scouted at the end of that turn. On your next turn (if you haven't battled there), if you have Borg aboard the target ship orbiting 2063 Earth, you can begin probing for the first of two required probes.
7. The first probe requires either a [Com] or a [Def] icon. When you find
one of those icons on your probe card, "Transponder rods are now set in
place." A [Nav] icon on a subsequent probe, after transponder rods are set,
completes the objective. You must get a [Com] or [Def] probe before you can
make use of a [Nav] probe. Completing the objective yields the following
effects: Successfully disrupting the timeline through either objective has dire consequences for a Federation opponent. Federation history ceases to exist, so all related cards areremoved from play unless they are "protected." Go through *both* players' cards in play, in hand, and in draw decks, side decks, and discard piles, remove all unprotected humans and cards with Federation affiliation icons, and put them out-of-play. "Humans" includes part-humans, assimilated humans, and Borg whose biological distinctiveness is human (not "humanoid"). Cards with Federation affiliation icons include single- and multi-affiliation personnel, ships, and outposts. Cards that are protected (and not placed out-of-play) are those that are not human, not Federation affiliation, those with [AU] icons, cards which are at a time location, and cards which are time-travelling (e.g., in a Temporal Rift or Time Travel Pod). If a protected card is aboard an unprotected outpost or ship, the protected card returns to the owner's hand. While the most drastic effects are felt by the Federation, some cards belonging to (or used by) other affiliations will also be at risk. Romulans will lose Sela (half-human) and Tallera (Federation icon), though not Major Rakal or Stefan DeSeve (they are protected by their AU icons). The Klingons presently have no part-human or multi-affiliation Kli/Fed personnel. Non-aligned non-AU humans include Devinoni Ral, Galen, Ira Graves, Ishara Yar, Jenice Manheim, Kareen Brianon, Nick Locarno, and Paul Manheim. Here's a concise summary of the timeline disruption scenario.
The Major's Combos: This whole strategy is one giant combo. Here are the cards you will need to have in order to disrupt the timeline (in addition to Borg ships, personnel, etc.):
Assimilate Counterpart (U) or Locutus of Borg (limited edition) Major Rakal Tal Shiar By: Kathy McCracken |
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