Treaty: The Beginner's Generation
by Tam Elbrun

It seems that with each new expansion, we get a new affiliation, each with their own mix of skills and missions. Also, with the advent of Open Diplomatic Relations and seedable treaties, making a treaty deck has become much easier, eliminating the need for multiple outposts or treaty cards in the deck. Still, most people avoid treaties because of the increased difficulty in making an effective deck. In this article, I intend to explain the strengths and weaknesses of each of the affiliations in a two-affiliation environment.

Federation: The boys in blue have the best personnel in the game with the multi-skilled talents of the TNG bridge crew and the DS9 ops crew. They also have more mission specialists than any other affiliation. If that wasn't enough, Starfleet ships have the highest range in the galaxy with the FE and U.S.S. Pasteur, and are heavily shielded to boot. They aren't perfect though. Those mission specialists don't have many missions to focus their talents, and the few existing 40+ pt. Fed missions have too many requirements to be useful or are too specialized. (Tarchannen Study and Symbiont Diagnosis, anyone?) Also, they have a severe deficiency of good SCIENCE and SECURITY personnel, though the Dominion helped with Michael Eddington and Admiral Leyton.

Klingon: Speaking of good SCIENCE and SECURITY personnel, Worf, Son of Mogh, Kurak, and Kitrik are very useful for any affiliation, but few other Klingons are useful compared to the other affiliations' personnel. Klingons also have some of the easier high point missions... for other affiliations. Though easy for the Bajorans and Romulans, Warped Space and Investigate Alien Probe require more personnel than is reasonable for the Klingons. Because of the small number of good, general utility personnel and the difficulty of quickly doing high point missions, Klingons are mainly a "support affiliation": highly useful as a garnish to another affiliation, but hard to use as the main focus.

Romulan: Romulans have decent, though not great, personnel that are well focused towards completing SCIENCE based space missions. (Remember the Loca-R'Mor deck?) They have no real deficiencies except for a slight lack of qualified MEDICAL personnel, and plenty of mission related strengths. Their missions are high pointed, and easy to complete (Study Lonka Pulsar, Explore Typhone Expanse), and a few can be done with only one personnel. (Covert Installation and Sirol are the most popular examples) Though the Romulans can easily do their own missions, (Gasp!) they can't do much else, so Romulans really aren't suited for a treaty deck.

Bajoran: Due to the smaller number of personnel available, the Bajorans have a very spread out skill set (like the Klingons) and many personnel with 4+ skills (like the Feds or Romulans), focusing mainly on MEDICAL and SCIENCE. Also, the Bajorans have no useful high point missions, but do have many missions that can be accomplished with only one person. (Investigate Coup, Relocate Settlers, etc.) This leads to the Bajorans' inclusion in a "One Shot Wonder" Deck. ("Wow, my Kira Nerys just earned 65 points!") Bajorans, like Klingons, are best used as support staff: Use Mora Pol for Berserk Changeling, Surmak Ren for Aphasia Device, Odo for Founder Secret.

Cardassian: In terms of skill spread and number, a lot like the Bajorans. The differences stem from the fact that the Bajorans focus their skills in the SCIENCE and MEDICAL areas, whereas the Cardassians have more of the OFFICER and SECURITY type skills. Also, Cardassians have a few 40 point missions, but they are difficult, (Intelligence Operation, Bioweapon Ruse), and they have nowhere near as many One Shot Wonder's. Though these (dis?)advantages help out in single affiliation, they make Cardassians very weak in a treaty deck.

Dominion: The Dominion has a distinct disadvantage when compared to other affiliations: It is in the Gamma Quadrant! (Big newsflash, I know ;-)) This can be worked around, (and should, since the Dominion has simply excellent personnel) in two ways: Double Decker Deck. (Say that 5 times fast ;-))

Simply make the Dominion and their Alpha Quadrant buddies work separately, without a treaty. Your Dominion force builds in the Gamma, while your other affiliation gets killed red-shirting, hopefully taking out dilemmas in the process. No more wasted turns without executing orders! You can even overcome the problem in effectively playing two decks with only one card play by using The Great Link and Birthing Chamber to report 3 personnel per turn! Speaking of Birthing Chamber...

This one is more of a long shot, but you can report Ketracel White and Birthing Chamber regardless of quadrant. Then you can report your Jem-Hadar there while getting a Vorta from a Scout Encounter. Add in a Ferengi Trading Post and report all your infiltrating founders there, and you have an efficient Dominion deck, with deficiencies easily covered by your other affiliation.

Other than that, there really is no way to make a Dominion treaty deck as efficient as an Alpha Quad treaty deck.

Well, I hope I have won a few converts over to the side of the Diplomatic Corps! Next Issue (Spock permitting ;-)): Specific Strategies for Each Treaty.

Tam Elbrun
Federation Diplomatic Corps