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Defeating Dominion Smackdown
by William Springer While armadas have always been the most popular type of battle deck, and the easiest to build effectively, there has been a surge in Dominion attack decks since the release of Rules of Acquisition. Since having all your people killed isn't much more fun than having all your ships and facilities blown up, I thought I'd devote an article to defeating it. The are three main types of Dominion Smackdown decks. The first is Jemmie Smackdown, in which an army of Jem'Hadar, sometimes two or three more each turn with the aid of Jem'Hadar Birthing Chamber and Deyos, grab a few Kar'takans and slaughter everyone. (See Alidar's article in Issue 20 for an excellent description of this deck) The second is similar, but forgoes Jem'Hadar in favor of the no-white founders, reporting for free at The Great Link. As these two play similarly, I shall deal with them together. The easiest way to deal with any deck relying on a certain card, of course, is to get rid of that card. In the case of Smackdowns, the card is Invasive Beam-In - Kevin this every chance you get! Should nullifying the IBI(s) prove impossible, the easiest way to protect your people would be to leave a couple ships at the Bajoran Wormhole. Unless the Dominion player has a Distortion or a Wormhole Navigation Schematics, his ship will be stopped and you can blow it up before he can kill your people. Another way, of course, is to out-weapon him. The Klingons will have the best chance at this, as they may be using multiple weapons for other things anyway (i.e. Bat'leth Tournament). However, this will be difficult for any deck not focusing on battle, as the Dominion deck will generally get out at least 5 weapons quickly. With the amount of equipment being used today, Disrupter Overload could be a wise inclusion in your decks. Against a founder smackdown, it can take out the weapons... against a Jemmie smackdown (unless the Dominion has the Jem'Hadar that protects equipment from it) it can take out the white. Against other decks it still isn't useless, taking out an array of Gold-Pressed Latinum, Medical Tricorders, Plasmadyne Relays, and teddy bears. The third type of Smackdown is the most deadly, but possibly the easiest for the prepared player to deal with, or at least slow down. This deck stocks one of everyone "or NA" weapon and downloads them all to Empok Nor, giving any Away Team with a Non-Aligned personnel a staggering +35 STRENGTH. This deck may not even use the gamma quadrant, retrieving ships with Spacedoor and playing founders with Devidian Door or In The Bag. Generally the Dominion is paired with the Cardassians to make use of Turrel's treaty protection and the seedable [HA] treaty, but an alliance with the Romulans, or even a no-founder deck (using Memory Wipes on the Dominion ships) are possible as well. The weak point, of course, is Empok Nor. If the Nor is never commandeered, the Smackdown player will have a deck cluttered with weapons and no way to download them quickly. For fighting both this deck type and Martok Nors, I recommend using all three of the Empok Nor dilemmas, if possible. Friendly Fire makes it into most decks anyway, and the Garak Has Some Issues and Sleeper Trap dilemmas are very underrated. A GHSI/FF/Sleeper Trap combo is quite likely to keep the Nor uninhabited for some time, especially if your QIR keeps your opponent from crashing the Sleeper Trap. Should your opponent not be using Empok Nor, these dilemmas work well with other combos you will likely be using anyway. Due to having their personnel spread out over many ships, and the fire they can bring to bear on the ship with Invasive Transporters, armada decks would seem to have the best chance of bringing down the Dominion. Next time: Defeating Armada Decks William 'Spock' Springer
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