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Dal'rok Dakol Deck
by Mark Chupp I like Cardassians. I don't know why. Maybe it's the intrigue? The complexity? The neck bones? I'm not sure. I've been on a Cardassian kick for the last few months, but haven't taken them to tournament until now. Here's how I did. Cardassians have a truckload of cards that play for free. When I looked at all the unique Guls that can report for free and then the universal Guls and Legates, I decided to base my deck around them. Hunt for DNA can be attempted by Cardassians when DNA Clues is in play, so I started there as the universal Parn has Archaeology and reports for free. I've been hit with Dal'rok at my outpost more times than I care to remember. It is so infuriatingly effective that I decided to build my secondary strategy around it. The Orb Fragment allows Dal'rok to be played as an event, HQ: Return Orb To Bajor allows orb icon personnel to recover orb artifacts, and Borad has an orb icon and can be downloaded with a Nor. So I had my basic deck premise and started off with these missions: Hunt for DNA In order to attempt Explore Black Cluster and Wormhole Negotiations, I seeded a Plans of The Obsidian Order and put two Espionage cards in my deck: one Federation, one Klingon. Next were the Guls. Gul Danar, Dukat, Lemec were no-brainers for me. Other Guls I used were Toran and Jasad. I put in a triplet of Legate Parn's to solve Hunt for DNA. I filled in with several other Guls. All of them report free to Central Command. Gilora Rejal made it for the dual-classification, Kovat for his Law. Dejar for Obsidian Order and Ore Processing; and Elim Garak, just because I like him. With all the Archaeology available, I threw in Ajur for her seed-card killing and SECURITY classification. Next was my secondary strategy of obtaining the Orb Fragment. I put in Borad, a Science Lab site, and a pair of HQ: Return Orb to BajorDal'rok in my Q's Tent and included 3 Tents in my draw deck. To ensure picking up the orb without any trouble, I decided to seed a Sarjenka after my Orb. I managed to obtain the orb in every single game. Nor or Terok Nor? That is the question. With my strategy of using Return Orb to Bajor, I decided to play with Terok Nor. The only vulnerability would be to Bajoran decks, so I decided to use Garak's Tailor Shop, which would allow me to report any Cardassian to DS9. I also threw a Baseball into my Tent, and seeded a Sisko 197 Subroutine for protection. My final six sites ended up being Ore Processing Unit, Ops, Promenade Shops, Garak's Tailor Shop, Science Lab, and Docking Ports. To take advantage of the Promenade Shops, I threw in Aamin Marritza who I thought would be good for a quick 5 points if I needed to kill somebody. I filled out the gaps in my personnel to ensure I had 3 SECURITY for Berserk Changeling, and 3 SCIENCE for Scientific Method. It turned out I should've put 4 of each in my deck, and I highly recommend it for beginners. I've discovered that running a deck with a lot of free card plays drains your hand rather quickly. I decided to play with The Traveler: Transcendence. I put in 3 of them to insure drawing one early in the game. When I drew the duplicates, I planned to use them as fodder for Process Ore. I debated whether to protect against Reactor Overload or not. In the end I decided to protect against big card drawers and Armadas and so included the seed cards It's Only a Game and Emergency Evacuation. This forced me to add a Scorched Hand and Escape Pod in my Q tent. By now my deck was pushing 40 cards and I wanted to put in a couple Atmospheric Ionizations, as I have found them to be very effective in slowing down mega-away teams. But in the end they only made it harder to draw the HQ:RotB card that I really needed to make my strategy work, so I abandoned them. After practicing a few times on my playing buddy, it was off to Kalamazoo for the tournament! First round found me up against a Romulan player. He started playing the old Kivas Fajo: Collector every turn that Sela's Consort made so popular. He soon had a sizeable away team on his planet due to free card plays at Romulan HQ, downloaded the Apnex with Hidden Fighter, and started flying around.
Next game found me up against a Borg opponent. I knew it as soon as he seeded two dual-icon missions. I knew that getting Dal'rok at his outpost was going to be impossible, so I decided to concentrate on mission theft. Fortunately, this fellow hadn't seeded a Fair Play. The dilemmas were seeded and we were off and running. He staffed a Borg Cube and flew to the alpha quadrant. By that time I had a sizeable crew at Central Command and Borad had retrieved the Orb. The Borg scouted a space mission on the far end of the spaceline from me and probed successfully. I quickly checked my crew and discovered that I had the skills to solve the cleared space mission. Whoosh, a pair of Wormholes whisked my crew the other end of the spaceline. My Obsidian Order friends did their espionage business and solved the mission. I could tell my opponent was slightly annoyed by this, but non-plussed, he continued on to his first dual-icon mission. He scouted the space portion, and was stopped by my Dead End. Again, I checked my personnel and discovered I could solve the mission, so I swooped in for the kill. But as I announced my mission attempt, my opponent pointed out the Dead End, hidden beneath his objective and Transwarp Gateway. Shoot. I only had 30 points, what was I going to do? Eureka! I returned the Orb to Bajor and scored 10 points, then I tented for the Phoenix. Now all I needed was a bad probe. Sure enough, my opponent's probe was unsuccessful, what a stroke of good-luck for me! I plopped down the Phoenix into orbit at Central Command, which scored me another 10 points. Now I could pass the Dead End and scooped up his 40 point mission. The score now stood at 90-50, my favor. My opponent had wisely seeded a Mission Debriefing, so my two Guls on the planet where about to be assimilated. Guess what? Another bad probe saved them! Whew. I was so relieved that I flew off with my ship and attempted another mission. I got stopped and it wasn't until then that I realized I had gone off and left my two guys on the planet. Drats. Needless to say, the third time was the charm and they got assimilated. I went ahead to solve the mission on my next turn and win the game 100-75. My next game was up against a very good player by the name of Martin. I know he's good, not just because he was wearing a Dukat shirt, but because I play him occasionally for casual games. Martin was trying out a Klingon deck, and he could've mopped the floor with me if he hadn't made one fatal mistake. He stocked his ship up with Jadzia Dax, Kor, Koloth and company and attempted his mission where he had self seeded a Barclay's Disease. Oops! No MEDICAL! This took him a while to recover from, but I helped him by making my own mistakes. I managed to plunk down my Dal'rok at his outpost, but then allowed it to kill one of my people. I forgot the Orb Fragment would prevent Dal'rok from killing. We struggled back and forth, and after 58 minutes the score was 38-40. I delved into my deck to bring out the Phoenix just before time was called for a timed win of 39-50. The last round found me facing a younger player who was playing a treaty-deck with no seeded treaty. When I saw him seed a Nor, The Great Hall, and a Romulan Outpost, and no treaty, I knew I would have only myself to blame if I didn't win. Unfortunately my opening hand was horrid, and I didn't draw my HQ:ROTB until too late. He downloaded Dejar and Aamin to his Nor and began Ore Processing and Shopping for card draws. He downloaded Worf to his ship and attacked one of my ships, dealing it some default damage. This slowed me down just long enough to change ships, but while I was doing that, he flew over to my Hunt for DNA and began attempting it. Oh no, I thought, I'm going to lose it! But he made a fatal mistake. He sent down two females to pass Matriarchal Society and forgot that he had seeded Alien Parasites after it. I got control of his ship, scored the mission, and retrieved a Kurlan Naiskos. I played it on my Xepolite Freighter for a RANGE of 27! By this time I had my own mega Away Team and there wasn't much I couldn't solve. I didn't feel like I had played my best as I made several stupid mistakes, and the Dal'rok strategy was way too slow to be effective, but lo and behold I came in second place. First place went to a Ferengi deck, which I never faced. My friend faced it his first round and said the guy downloaded like 10 cards on the first turn. They're gonna have to fix that. (Does Tim read this magazine?) Mark 'Jadon' Chupp |
Meanwhile, my strategy was going along fine. I amassed several Guls at Central Command, but was missing the needed SECURITY. My opponent loaded up his Apnex and finally scanned one mission to discover a Dead End there. This flustered him, and so he spent the next several turns just flying up and down the spaceline. After he Palor Toff'd his Kivas Fajo: Collector a couple times, it suddenly dawned on me that with his Traveler, he was drawing 5 cards a turn. I flipped over my "It's Only A Game" and scorched his hand. That slowed him down just a bit. But by the time I finally drew a HQ:RotB, he had a massive crew so I knew that it was useless to try to play a Dal'rok on his outpost. He very easily could get the attributes>150. So the race was on for mission solving. I attempted a mission and ran into a Berserk Changeling. Just my luck, one of my only 3 SECURITY was selected. That error alone cost me that game. I ended up losing 100-30.