Seed deck:

Salvage Operation
Seal Rift
Reinitialize Warp Reaction
Acquire Technology
Stop Bombardment
Liberation

Q’s Tent
BBD
Q-Flash
TMW

Hirogen Outpost
Vidiian Outpost
AMS
Mission Debriefing
Horga’hn
DQSS
Caretaker’s Array
Q the referee
Q the referee
Beware of Q

New Essentialists
Friendly Fire
Talosian Cage

Scout Encounter
Dead End
Hanonian Land Eel

Ferengi Infestation
Scout Encounter
FLI & Scow

Ferengi Infestation
Scout Encounter
FLI & Scow

Scout Encounter
FLI & Scow

Scout Encounter
FLI & Scow

Q’s Tent:
Q-Flash
Dead End
Organ Theft
Hirogen Disruptor Rifle
Rituals of the Hunt
Lower Decks
Losarus
Maleth
Telari
Dilanum
Drenol
Nadirum
Sorum

BBD:
Breen Disruptor Burst x4
Quanum Torpedo x3

Q-Flash:
Fightin’ Words
Rhetorical Question
Hide and Seek
Mandarin Bailiff
Penalty Box
The Issue is Patriotism x3

Draw Deck:
Decaren x3
Karon x2
Karr x2
Hajur x2
Iden x2
Motura x3
Dereth x2
Sulan x2
Danara Pel
Telari
Nadirum
Drenol
Chakotay x4
Penk x3
The Artificial Intelligence x2
Sullin x2
The Pendari Champion x2
Kurros
Dr. Telek R’Mor
Leonardo da Vinci
Equinox Doctor
Vic Fontaine
Ayala
Narik
Palor Toff – Alien Trader x10
Beyond the Subatomic x8
Data, Keep Dealing x5
Mutation x5
The Power x4
All Threes x3
Smooth as an Android’s Bottom? x2
Scan x2
Full Planet Scan x2
Rogue Borg Mercenaries
Kevin Uxbridge
Oof!
War Council x12
The Vidiian Sodality
Hirogen Hunt
Feedback Surge
Obelisk of Masaka
Reactor Overload
Panel Overload
In the Zone
Scanner Interference x2
Olarra
Venatic Hunter
Hunting Vessel
Vidiian Scout Vessel x4
Distortion Field x2
Atmospheric Ionization x2
Masaka Transformations
Isomagnetic Disintegrator
Intermix Ratio
Fair Play
AU Door
Holodeck Door x9
Science Padd
Starfleet Type II Phaser
Vidiian Harvester
Defend Homeworld
Operate Wormhole Relays

This is the I deck used at this year’s European Continental Championship, finishing 5-1 with 8 points (2 timed wins). It’s a pretty standard Hirogen/Vidiian mission solver with Olav’s exellent Hexany. As a dilemma strategy I used my Scout encounter stuff and some walls with a bit Scanner Interference lockdown.

The seed deck:
Missions: the usual, with some astro missions for Ayala to score points with. Just a normal 3 mission 100 points.

Dilemmas: I ran 4 times Scout Encounter – Female Love Interest & Garbage Scow, 2 of which have an extra dilemma to make them a bit stronger on a planet in case an opponent uses 3 or 4 planet missions. I chose for Ferengi Infestations because they are pretty hard to pass with an Atmospheric Ionization on the mission, limiting the to beam down only 3 personnel each turn. On a space mission the scout combos work like this: first SE downloads a scout, Nadirum (for Organ Theft) and Sorum (for Lower Decks) and it battles the opponent and hopefully damages their ship, at the very least they’re stopped. If it’s damaged and you’re not, you can easily finish the ship off during your turn. Next turn if they attempt the mission again, they’ll encounter FLI, which gets swapped by Beware of Q for a Flash. In the flash there’s a The Issue is Patriotism, so they will have to attack the scout and are stopped again (or damaged). Your turn you can attack them again. And finally they have to do another attempt and are stopped by Mission Debriefing + Garbage Scow. Not bad for a two card dilemma combo! Edo Probe would aslo be nice if you’re not using SI.

Other seeds: Mission Debriefing, Battle Bridge Door, Q-Flash, and Beware of Q are there to make the dilemmas work, the others are the usual stuff. The Horga’hn can be changed into something you like to use, and looking back on the tournament, I think I should have used a third Q the Referee.

Draw deck:
Well, there are some personnel with lots of science and diplomacy, because of all the Cyrus and diplomacy elimination decks out there. Hexany helps me get to a personnel for DQSS and gives me a good chance to get a turn one Holodeck Door. The Holodeck Door should be played to get the Equinox Doctor and Defend Homeworld to get Penk, both have Treachery x2 so that’s a total of 4 treachery for War Council. I’m also using scans because they are simply too good. The reason I’m using 4 Chakotays is that the deck was using Ancestral Vision until the morning of the tournament, but I kicked it out for the Horga’hn, and I didn’t have time to replace him and still keep all the skills in the deck. Maybe an extra Motura and an extra of each of the Hirogen Alphas I’m using would be nice to replace him. Other things I would change now are: adding 2 Scans and 2 Full Planet Scans, adding some more Hexany, I’m not really sure on how many, and another Olarra, but I simply don’t own a second one.

Matchups:
Vic Fontaine with Barzan Wormhole: SI should at least slow his start and can sometimes even keep him from acquiring his Horga’hn from Q’s Planet. The great thing about the scout Encounter dilemmas is that they don’t stop personnel directly. Sure they get stopped by the first attack, by the attack from The Issue is Patriotism and by Mission Debriefing, but not by the dilemmas (Edo Probes are even better than Ferengi Infestation if you expect a lot of Vic decks. Scout Encounters do alot of damage to Vic decks, as they usually use ships with more range and less weapons/shields.

DQ decks: The combos are nice for duplicated missions, because they normally can’t download any scouts. Those missions should give you an edge here, and it’s usually a good idea to seed a Horga’hn at such a mission and use the two Distortion Fields there so only you can beam down there (flip the once that’s face up first, beam down, and when you’re done, flip the one that was face down).

Anti-Diplo: That’s the easy one, you have LOTS of Diplomacy in the deck and with Rituals of the Hunt you’ll have even more ?. This game shouldn’t take more than 3 turns, one to setup, one to solve 2 missions and another one to solve two more mission, don’t mind In The Zone, you can easily solve the missions after losing 8 Diplomacy personnel.

Any kind of Armada: This is your worst nightmare when playing this deck. There is almost no chance of getting a full win here. Only thing you can do here is solve one or if you’re lucky two missions and hope to get a timed win. My one loss was to an Armada deck after I hit a Dead End and a Whale Probe. The extra Scans I suggested are to make this a slightly better matchup.

That’s it, hope you enjoyed the article and good luck if you’re ever going to use this deck in a tournament.

Björn Neervoort
Aka Son of Seto

PS. The title of the deck refers to the fact that I played a very similar deck at last year’s continental, with the only difference that I used Federation instead of Hirogen and not all of the hexany cards.