Mini-Article: A disgustingly powerful combo, and how to beat it... ... Halcyon ... [3/13/99 04:21]

Here's a combo that I took to a tournament a while back, and have been playing since. It has been so powerful that I've had opponents concede that game after it. It's become so popular that other players in the area use it... or specificaly stock ways to get around it. It is:

Qualor II + Magic Carpet Ride OCD.

The secret is to make sure you seed Lack of Preparations first. If someone hits that while red-shirting, they lose 10 points. Since they then have to risk thier mission-solvers, they tend to send down a ton of people with them. That's when they hit The Higher... The Fewer. Usualy, that's all I will seed there. Maybe one or two missions will also have Edo Probe, Blended + Shaka... When The Walls Fell for an additional 10 point loss, but that's a heft combo. The whole point is you let them take the mission, gain thier points... then you (the owner of the OCD) sends them packing to Qualor II... where all thier personnel will be put into stasis.

It was an easy combo to overcome; simply Assign Mission Specialists for Amarie and solve Qualor II by seeding no dilemmas under it. That is, until Fair Play came along.

So, how do you beat it? There are at least 5 ways around it:

1) Gamma Quadrent. Magic Carpet Ride only relocates on the same Spaceline, and Qualor II is in the Alpha Quadrent.

2) Memory Wipe. Hit your own crew with a Memory Wipe, making them all NA. They are then free of Qualor II's red tape, and are free to leave.

3) Only solve space missions. Of course, you might hit a Borg Cube or a Cytharians...

4) The Chadybris + No Archeology. If you can't aquire the OCD, it can't trigger. Of course, if you play this combo, you don't get to use The Picard...

5) Seed your own Qualor II. By sacrificing one of your own missions in favor of Qualor II, you can override the text of Fair Game.

6) Not have a ship in orbit when you solve the mission. If there's no ship, there's nothing for the OCD to relocate. Of course, by doing that, you'll lose 10 points to Edo Probe + Crisis...

These, of course, are the easy ways. You can always go for a more destructive means. Anti-Time Anomoly + Regenerate will get your people back.. until thier next encounter with Steppenwolf. Or you can aquire a Tox Utath and blow up Qualor II (then Regenerate), ending the combo forever.

In any case, it is a fearful "fate-worse-than-death" combo that can turn the tides of a game. But, why am I dissecting my most prized stradegy? {shrug} I got bored of it. Last tournament I entered, I got stomped by a number of decks designed specificaly to take out mine by using the Qualor II stradegy AND using ways around it. =)

So, on a closing note, I'll leave you with this combo as food for thought:

Qualor II + Issue Secret Orders. Have a nice day.