Hiram Roth
Federation Personnel Characteristics: affiliation, 22nd Century , President, Human species. Card logging info: First edited by Telak at Sep 8th, 2018. Please support openCards and validate game text of this card! | |
This Card-Review article was written by openCards user MidnightLich and was published first on "The Continuing Committee (trekcc.org)" at Nov 28th, 2017.
As you have seen, most of the cards you'll find in Warp Pack: Holiday 2017 are based around an old school, non-block deck. However, that isn't true of all of the cards. Today's preview card, President ">Hiram Roth, originally served that purpose but he evolved into a solid support personnel with a place in a number of different decks.
Mr. President here originally had the game text of HQ: Executive Orders, although in a much shorter amount of text. He was fetchable with Going To The Top (as he had - and still has - Leadership x2) and, as president, could play for free to Office of the President. Unfortunately, the shorthand gametext he was using to represent the "Executive Orders" ability wouldn't work, so we either had to kill the card or find another solution.
The solution was an easy one: off-loading his card draw ability to another card, HQ: Executive Orders, was a win on two fronts. Not only did that free up space on President Roth, but it allowed us to give the Executive Orders ability any headquarters. It's always nice when a card can flavorfully be made generic. Mr. President was given a special download of the new incident, ensuring it could be reliably grabbed early in the game, and a new, flavorful ability to fill out the template. And that's how you go from an engine to a support card!
A Little Achievement Hunting
For a deck using Hiram Roth, it made sense to stay in the movie-era space. I'd put together a few gimmicky decks, so I wanted to build a different kind of deck today. I thought it might be fun to go after some achievements - did you know there was one based around the story of Star Trek IV? Here's what it says:
The Voyage Home
Play in a sanctioned First Edition tournament with a deck that contains: Cetacean Institute, George and Gracie, Dr. Gillian Taylor, any Kirk like Admiral Kirk, H.M.S. Bounty, Espionage Mission, I Hate You, Now Would Be A Good Time, and The Whale Probe.
Even though Hiram Roth and HQ: Executive Orders aren't on that list, they are from Star Trek IV, so this seemed like a fun concept to make into a deck. I was browsing achievements and I also found there was one for all your dilemmas having a movie property logo. Best of all, these are somewhat hidden gems, with only nine (9) players having the former and fourteen (14) players having the latter achievements. Thus, a deck idea was born: a deck using all of the Star Trek IV cards and all movie-themed dilemmas.
The core of the deck is the same as other decks, using Camp Khitomer and Protect the Timeline as the primary engines. However, there are quite a few personnel that report for free to either Office of the President or The Great Hall, so those facilities are included as well. Remember, you can report personnel for free outside of the time location if they are native to the time location. This means Hiram Roth and Chancellor Gorkon are good to play for free, but avoid cards like Gowron or T'Lara - they won't.
Reunite Legends not only gives you a downloaded ship on your first turn, but will provide a pretty easy bonus 10 points in this deck. I've also included Ambassador Sarek for his download of Facilitate Peace Talks, which will get you the treaty and a nice way to solve Khitomer itself. If you don't draw Sarek in your opening hand, you should use Reunite Legends grab you the U.S.S. Enterprise-A, who can then download Sarek.
One caveat about the movie dilemma achievement: it seems to be broken on some of the more recent dilemmas and AIs; in particular, the STIV alternate image of Medical Crisis is not recognized at the time of this writing. It's my hope it'll be fixed, but please keep it in mind if you aren't getting the achievements you think you should be.
So that's my movie achievement deck; let me know what you think of it and the ideas here. If you use this as an inspiration for your own deck, please post it! We can't wait to see what you guys do with these cards, and if you like these little jumping off points, so let us know! And come back tomorrow for another preview card; bring your gear, because we'll be going hunting.
by Charlie Plaine, Having Nightmares About 1E Decks