Well Major Rakal started
her Romulan Reviews a few years back and then Evan
took up the Borg as a new affiliation and has now mastered them [along
with
every other affiliation] so I thought since I took my good old Cardassian
Friends to a second place finish at my regional and since I enjoy playing
the
affiliation so much, and it really appalled me that not another soul
at my
regional used them, I’ll start up some reviews on them. Now I
haven’t decided
to do certain cards or rather strategy as a whole, but I did decide
that for
my first review I will not review the station strategy [since Evan
is doing an
article in Scrye concerning that] but I will rather talking about how
to play
with Terok Nor without any fear of your opponent running all over you
with
their seeded Deep Space 9. So without further adu.
When playing with Terok Nor,
you’ll obviously need to be seeding a bajorian
region location, but more on track, first off you need to play with
plenty of
Obsidian Order personal. This should be no problem, seeing how
you have
Garak, Entek, Korinas and Enabran Tain as having that all important
skill.
Now you may ask why I need these personal. The simple fact is
that if you
play with Terok Nor, you opponent, if playing Bajorian, will most likely
seed
a DS9 and since it’s unique they will seed it in the dilemma phase
before you.
If the Bajorians control the station you’ll need some way to get your
personal
onto the station. The best way to seed Garak’s Tailor Shop.
It doesn’t
matter if you have either Garak in your deck, it is just added plus
since it
is a free card play. The text on the tailor shop lets all Obsidian
Order
personall report there regardless of who is currently controling the
station.
And then you will be in a even better position since you will have
Obsidian
Order unopposed and you aren’t controling the station all your Cardassian
personall and equipment cards can report there. If your opponent
decides to
oppose you, that is if they move a personall to the tailor shop, then
you
immediately lose the ability to report personall there but your Cardassians
can’t be afraid of weak Bajorians, so attach them at will. Never
be afraid to
battle, you will most likely need to do it later if you want to gain
complete
control of the station.
Now what do I do next after
I report my Obsidian Order personall there. Well
that all depends on the situation of the game. First remember
that you will
need a personall with Computer Skill to commandeer the station.
So simply
look at what personall your opponent currently has in Ops. Most
likely it
will be a Officer with strength around 6 to 7, with the rare exception
of Kira
Nerys with strength against the Cardassians of 11, but the average
Cardassian
leader will have a strength of 7 to 8. Just take your time, as
long as you
are unopposed in Garak’s Tailor Shop you will be able to keep reporting
personall there. [Just remember that they must be Cardassian
affiliation and
cannot be non-aligned]
Another site you should
seed, to help with your commandeering of the station
is Guest Quarters. This site lets any player report a non-Borg
VIP to the
site, assuming it is unopposed. Now this site is best if you
are going first,
because then you will get the first stab at using it to report your
VIP to the
station. Now lets seed what good VIP’s the Cardassians have.
Without says or
looking, the first card that comes to mind is Enabran Tain. He
is like Dr.
Telak R’Mor to a Romulan space deck. Except for the fact that
he should be in
every Cardassian deck. He has 4 skills and security, but I’ll
review his card
as a whole in a last review. Other VIP’s are: Makbar, good in
Extradition
decks; Kotran Pa’Dar, Command ability with diplomacy, leadership and
Geology;
and any Soong-Type Android. And another great VIP, which happens
to be a
common is Parn, Command ability with treachery, archeology and diplomacy.
And
guest quarters also has a great built in function to manipulate with
your
deck. You get the option of drawing 2 cards any time you can
draw a card and
then you place one to the bottom of your deck and one to your hand.
So say to
play a Kivas, you get to draw three, but instead, you can draw a total
of 6
cards keeping three. [You just have to do it two at a time]
Which leads me to my next
suggestion for playing with a Terok Nor.
Regardless of weather your opponent is playing Bajorian or with Deep
Space 9
or not, you must also seed some sort of a second outpost. I usually
use a
Cardassian Outpost, since it can be seeded anywhere a Cardassian mission
is
and has shields of 32, but a Neutral Outpost or Husnock Outpost will
do, if
you like it better. The reason for this is because you are only
allowed 6
sites, 1 is going to be the Tailor shop, another is Ops and another
has to be
some sort of docking site [pylons or ports]. So your other 3
sites will be a
toss up of many sites. I’d always recommend and use Guest Quarters,
so that
leaves me with two sites to use. So you can get other classifications
of
personall to the station who aren’t VIP, Officer or have obsidian order.
You
have the choice of the Infirmary for Medical, Science Lab for Science,
Security Officer for Security, Ore Processing Unit for Engineers and
Promenade
Shops for Civilians. So in theory you could get anyone on the
station, but
Decipher balanced the station by only allowing you to seed 6 sites.
[Now your
opponent can also seed 6 sites too. In fact in a game I have
played with 11
sites, Evan walked over and looked stunned at the playing board.
Our Terok
Nor/DS9 was about 3 feet long.] So you will need another outpost
to report
those other personall into the game. This is why I also suggest
placing your
Terok Nor and Cardassian outpost as close together as possible, which
shouldn’t be hard if you add a few bajor region locations that the
Cardassians
can attempt.
So with all this information,
hopefully Cardassian playing players won’t be
afraid to seed and play with Terok Nor. You can always add a
back up
Universal Nor, but keep in mind that Garak’s Tailor Shop cannot be
seeded
there and it can’t be seeded at a Bajorian Region Location.
My next review will show
you the importance of the station to the Cardassian
affiliation and how you can use it to gain an advantage on your opponent.
-Taris
Bobo101rc@aol.com