Playing The Borg No.13:
Borg Support Cards
by Evan Lorentz (evanl@earthlink.net)
Last time, I talked about cards you can use to combat an
opponent's anti-Borg strategy. This time, cards to promote
your own. There are a lot of ideas below on cards to use to
support your plans as a Borg player and keep your opponent
at bay.
It's time once more for that all important reminder: as a
Borg player, probing is your livelihood. If you cannot probe
successfully, you cannot win. Probing on the first try will
save you far more time than any other method of speeding up
your Borg deck. So, while I recommend the cards below, I do
not recommend using all of them. Do not clutter up your
Borg deck with too many support cards without Borg subcommand
icons. It's the surest way to sabotage yourself -- far more
than you'll sabotage your opponent. That dispensed with, on
with the show.
Anti-Time Anomaly. This is a great Borg support card.
So much of a Borg deck is expendable already -- you'll be
sacrificing drones in scouting planets, sacrificing Scout
Vessels in space, and throwing cards and caution to the wind.
So you might consider cleaning out your opponent of personnel
every now and then. This is a great way for the Borg to counteract
an opponent abusing Red Alert, or Assign Mission Specialists,
or any other abusive "rapid report" strategy (especially the
Q-bypassers). Wait for a turn or two for your opponent to
get a somewhat large crew on the table, then play the Anomaly
to wipe them all out and "reset the game." Of course, if you
know you'll be playing an Anomaly, you can plan ahead and
not be playing your own personnel until after the fact.
Destroy Radioactive Garbage Scow. Since the Borg
completely ignore the Radioactive Garbage Scow dilemma (it
affects mission attempts, not scouting), you may want to stock
a few of these in your own deck. And as long as you're doing
that, how about these interrupts to match? You can lower the
value of the missions your opponent will try to steal once
you've completed scouting. Or do something even nastier...
more on that later...
Hail. Stalls your opponent long enough for you to
get Eliminate Starship into play. Also lets you control
where battles will take place -- very important if you want
to be Salvaging Starships.
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. You might try this interrupt
in an aggressive Talon Drone or counterpart strategy. With
a Youth-ful Borg Queen in your hive, you'll have a +4 bonus
to your STRENGTH for each Borg on the
attack.
Launch Portal. Combined with Engage Shuttle Operations,
you can land your Scout Vessels on planet surfaces. This is
the best way to shut down a Patrol Neutral Zone deck. There's
nothing your opponent can do to stop a landed ship, and it
will become a permanent opposition in the Neutral Zone if
you land at Covert Installation or Iconia Investigation. Launch
Portal also provides a little extra firepower to deal with
ambitious attacks (or an escape route when your back's against
the wall), by its ability to download a ship.
Lower Decks. It shouldn't take much convincing that
this card, which gives a +2 bonus to all attributes of all
of your drones, belongs in most any Borg deck. Ready Room
Door protects it from nullification as well.
Mission Debriefing. This will stall a non-Borg opponent
while not harming you in any way. Your opponent will have
to stop after every mission attempt. The Borg, of course,
do not attempt missions, so this card won't touch you. Best
of all, this can be seeded if you like, so it won't tamper
with your probe outcomes. Combine this with Eliminate Starship
to destroy a ship when the Away Team is stopped from last
turn on a planet surface, and you've really got your opponent
in a bind. Even more cruel, since all your Cubes have Tractor
Beams you could tow a Garbage Scow to a stopped Away Team
and use the Destroy Radioactive Garbage Scow I mentioned earlier
to kill them all off.
Rogue Borg Mercenaries. This does rather fly in the
face of my suggestion to keep your probing optimized. Nevertheless,
a very effective Borg deck can be constructed by using the
Rogues for support. Single Rogue Borg attacks on each of your
opponent's turns will keep them in check until you can get
to the Alpha Quadrant yourself. En masse attacks aided by
a Crosis will finish off anyone trying a quick, "all-eggs-in-one-basket"
approach (like Q bypass). For a particularly off the wall
use for the Rogue Borg Mercenaries, report one of your Navigation
or Communications drones to an otherwise empty Cube. Play
three Rogue Borg on your own ship -- they'll defeat the STRENGTH
5 drone. Then grab a Lore Returns to take command with your
Borg commandos. You can "staff" your Cube by playing only
5 cards instead of 7, and attack your opponent at will, with
no objective, and keep scouting and probing with your regular
Borg at the same time.
Shipwreck. A very powerful card. You can play it at
the start of a battle, making a very nasty surprise for your
opponent. It nullifies all ship attribute enhancements to
all ships. Without enhancements, your Cubes can beat anything
else, every time.
There are of course many other cards that are good for slowing
your opponent down that are good even if you aren't playing
Borg: Abandon Mission, Incoming Messages, Klim Dokachin, Telepathic
Alien Kidnappers, and Temporal Rift, among others. But these
ideas should get you started on ways to level the playing
field between you and your non-Borg opponent.
Well, I've now written 13 articles covering everything I
know about conventional Borg strategy. Perhaps a word or two
is in order about other strategies.
NEXT TIME: Unconventional Strategies