Dilemmas - why bother? | openCards

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Dilemmas - why bother?

    Long-Small-BannerimageWritten as part of the coverage for the Big-Event "EC 2007".

    This Strategy-Note article was written by Stefan Slaby and was published first on "openCards".

    When Jaglom asked me to write an article about the Austrian metagame, I had a really hard time, settling on which topic to cover. On the one hand, while I’m one of Austria’s top players, I didn’t simply want to write an article about my successful decks (which would have been a eulogy to the Borg, probably), but I wanted to find some strong pattern to the decks that fare best on Austrian tournaments. On the other hand I didn’t really see some speciality to our most successful decks.

    But after reminiscing a few years of tournaments, I found one pattern that has been evolving since Necessary Evil, and has been essential to many otherwise totally different tournament-winning decks in Austria. I don’t really think it’s something special about the Austrian metagame, but it is my best shot. I will call it DILEMMA AVOIDANCE.

    There have been (at least) the following, quite successful decks that at least partially match this paradigm (including the 2006 and 2007 TOC winners):

    • a Goval deck, right after Necessary Evil came out. I shouldn’t actually mention it, since its best result was second place, but it was the first Austrian deck that was designed to totally ignore dilemmas, using Nog to learn the top four dilemmas of your opponent’s dilemma pile and, afterwards, solve two missions with 2-3 personnel each.
    • several strong Federation decks making heavy use of Fractured Time (and, lately, Genesis) Kirk to prevent one dilemma per mission attempt.
    • several 3-personnel mission solvers using Androids, Bajorans or Ex-Borg, Running a Tight Ship, Tampering With Time and the like to prevent the opponent from drawing dilemmas altogether. Yes, I know, that was mainstream. The 2006 TOC runner-up was such an android deck.
    • a Ferengi deck making heavy use of Dabo, and solving its two missions using 2-4 personnel including Goval, again never letting the opponent draw dilemmas.
    • my personal favourite: Borg. There were two particularly strong decks, the first one did rely heavily on assimilation, at the end of the game using the 10th anniversary queen and Unyielding to walk through stoppers unaffected, and Knowledge and Experience to nullify everything else. That’s what won me the TOC 2006. And a second one, much more focused on mission solving, usually obtaining just 1-2 ‘guests’, and making use of both Knowledge and Experience and Adapt where applicable to prevent dilemmas.
    • last but not least the infamous Voyager, using Chakotay (with a large core consisting of cost 0/1 events) to walk through unconditional walls like Distress Call almost unaffected (thats how i won the TOC 2007, mainly).

    Thinking about it, we can further distinguish between two basic strategies:

    • preventing your opponent from choosing any harmful dilemmas for you to face

    This includes keeping the amount of personnel required to solve your missions low (usually 4 at most), reducing the number of dilemmas your opponent may draw either through cards like RatS, or through obtaining overcome dilemmas from cards like Dabo and Field Studies, and messing with the top cards of your opponent’s dilemma pile. Of course such strategies are useless without some kind of event nullifier to keep the opponent’s dilemma manipulation at bay.

    This kind of deck is incredibly strong, but, like any highly specialized deck, also easy to beat. there is Skeleton Crew. there are cards like Machinations and Destiny Reset that enable you to get dilemmas when you can’t draw or use them. Optimism and Not Easily Avoided both shuffle your dilemma pile that has been messed with. And, if you take out some of its key cards, this kind of deck usually can’t win. There are many ways to mess with an opponent’s deck, and usually one or two will suffice to utterly destroy a single-minded deck built around this idea. Event destruction, removal of cards from the opponent’s deck, removal of key personnel through assasination, secret identity and the likes.

    • preventing dilemmas that you are facing / about to face and preventing the effects of totally non-conditional dilemmas that you are facing

    These two are less powerful than the former, since, usually, you are left with some dilemmas to face. On the other hand, they don’t require the total devotion of your deck that the former does, so, if your opponent cancels your ability to do that, you usually still can win.

    Playing against such a deck isn’t easy, since it usually resembles a balancing act between keeping it at bay and being faster. If you devote all your resources to taking out those key cards, this deck might still have won by the time you have played enough stuff to attempt your missions. If you ignore it, it will render your strongest dilemmas useless and outrun you. your best shot usually is to devote some resources to making its life harder, for example destroying a few key events, keeping that Amanda ready for his Knowledge and Experience, targeting his Kirk or Chakotay with Secret Identity. It won’t hurt you much, and by the time he reaches his third mission you will have reduced him to a not-so-good solver.

    I don’t know if I will play some kind of dilemma avoider at the EC. I don’t want to bet on anybody doing so. There are other strategies that might prove superior. Still, i would advise any player to bring along some way to mess with your opponent’s deck (some event/interrupt destruction at the very least). Perhaps secret identity and the new Dukat to target that one key personnel. It doesn’t cost a lot of resources, but it comes in handy against a huge number of specialized decks including dilemma avoiders.

    See you in July.
    Stefan Slaby
    Winner of Borg