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The Borg: Interlinking the Old and the New

by Sean O'Reilly

We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is Futile.

When the Borg debuted in the First Contact expansion, many players rejoiced – a new affiliation to play with after three years! However, this affiliation played completely differently than the Romulans, Klingons, and Federation. They scouted planets one at a time, waited a turn to see if a good probe would complete their objective, and interlinked their skills together to form a collective. Over time, the designers added other Borg cards like We Are the Borg, a preview of Seven of Nine, and Service the Collective to counter the Borg's perceived disadvantage, compared to other affiliations' abilities to play many more cards for free.

Well, now it's time to end that perceived disadvantage once and for all. Our favorite "Swedish" affiliation will really rock with the new cards and new rules that are in the set. However, your old Borg from First Contact are not to be thrown away – in fact, in many ways the old and new cards work so well together, you'll want to use them side-by-side!

Before we begin discussing the cards themselves, let me bring up the two most important rules changes. First, Borg SHIELDS will now block transporter beams, preventing you from boarding their ship or facility unless you play a card that allows such an action. No more ganging up on them in their outpost in the Delta Quadrant! Second, when you use an objective that allows you to scout a planet mission, you will now be able to beam down a Borg Away Team of any size.

Now for the cards. The Borg have always had a way to skill-share. The Interlink Drone and the new Borg-only equipment card, Borg Vinculum, both allow skill-sharing to be done in the same way – and don't worry about Disruptor Overload, the Vinculum is immune to it. Since there are two different ways to share skills, you can use both to keep your hive sharing when scouting. Many players like to use dilemmas like Common Thief or A Fast Ship Would Be Nice to get rid of an equipment or personnel card of their choice. By using the Interlink Drone and the Vinculum together, you'll be guaranteed to still be sharing skills after encountering one of those dilemmas. While there are many ways to download a drone like the Interlink Drone, multiple ways to download a Vinculum exist too. You can use the special skill of either the Procurement or Connectivity Drone to purge your drones' individuality.

Okay, so what about scoring points? The Borg still use objectives to scout missions and yes, they still have to wait until the end of their next turn to probe to complete those objectives. A few First Contact objectives like Assimilate Planet and Establish Gateway are reprinted with a Voyager logo in the Borg expansion. And in fact those two reprints are enhanced in this set by the Network and Xenology drones, which will allow you to re-probe if you're unsuccessful at first. New objectives have been added too. With the old Assimilation Table and Assault Drone (Eight of Nineteen) you'll be ready to use Assimilate Species to add some new distinctiveness to your collective. Is your Federation opponent using Seven of Nine? With either the new or old Borg Queen you can use Reassimilate Lost Drone and gain 30 points. And of course you'll want to Harness Particle 010. Once perfection has been achieved, an Assimilate Homeworld objective will be worth 80 points!

What about the card downloading which the Borg affiliation is so well-known for? Now you can use either the old cards, the new cards, or both together to get what you need out of your draw deck. To download a drone in the past you could use Awaken, Activate Subcommands, We Are the Borg, or the Borg Queen's special skill. Now you can use the reprinted Awaken or Activate Subcommands, a Maturation Chamber, or the new Queen's special skill of downloading any Borg-only Interrupt or Event to get a card which will download a drone. Need an objective? The old Queen can download A Change of Plans, or play the Cranial Transceiver Implant (downloadable by the old Assimilation Table) on any [Com] drone.

So you're a new player and want to play with some First Contact Borg? Here are some drones you may want to consider using. The Multiplexor Drone lets you target multiple ships during a battle. With the Countermeasure Drone you can download an Adapt card in place of any card draw. The Bio-Med Drone will "reabsorb" a just killed Borg into you draw deck. And the Scout Drone, from the Trouble With Tribbles expansion, allows you to "recycle" a nullified Adapt: Negate Obstruction.

Are you an old Borg player looking for something new to add to your Swedish deck? After completing Harness Particle 010, the Isotope Drone will make all your Borg in play attributes +2. Intruders aboard your ship? First allows you to initiate battle against them. And of course, you want to use Second, who doubles the regular skills of all drones who are present.

So no matter what type of Borg deck you're playing, you will find it useful to include both old and new cards together. However, if you find yourself in a Voyager-only environment where First Contact-logo Borg cards aren't allowed, don't fret, the cards in the Borg expansion will allow you to compete on even ground with the Vidiians, Kazon, and Federation. Finally, I want to make a suggestion: always play with Borg Nanoprobes. They're very useful in an abduction/assimilation deck, but more importantly, the nanoprobes will keep all your drones alive should they encounter Species 8472.

August 15, 2001





 

 

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