
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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