Here's the second installment in my reviews of Trouble with Tribbles (TwT) cards, presented in the order released on Decipher's website. These reviews are meant to be more in-depth, and I am trying to create higher-quality reviews, even at the expense of punctuality. (These were originally posted to the mailing list several days apart)

The format I'll be using is one of analyzing each aspect of the card, providing comments on each of its various facets.

First, let's take a look at the ship's attributes, since these are obviously one of the key factors in determining the strength of a ship. Naturally, other factors may make the ship stronger or weaker, such as special equipment, staffing requirements, quadrant restrictions, etc., but the attributes are the easiest and least subjective qualities to analyze. Three words sum up this ship's attributes: oh, so whoa! Sheer power, with the highest non-Borg total attributes (33, beating the Future Enterprise by one). 10 RANGE, although becoming more and more common among ships, is still extremely fast. Such a ship would almost be broken in a Romulan PNZ battle deck, as the ships could cross two PNZs each turn to intercept the opponent, whereas the opponent's ships would likely bog down in the high-range Neutral Zone, with the Enterprise moving just as quickly as a Husnock Ship. Of course, it's a Dominion ship, so that can't be used, but it's good for several other things: in conjunction with the ship's high WEAPONS and SHIELDS, it's easy to battle the opponent's ships... but I'll get to that later. For Invasive Beam-Ins, it's also easy to catch up to the opponent, which is also a definite plus. There's another less obvious thing about this card which makes it strong for Invasive Beam-In Smackdown decks, but again, I'll get to that later. Eleven WEAPONS is also quite a bit to reckon with. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the highest non-Borg WEAPONS in the game. Unenhanced, this ship can hit a Future Enterprise or Defiant, while remaining safe from the return fire in either case. Twelve SHIELDS are nothing to laugh at either. The number twelve is significant for one main reason (well, it won't be as powerful following the release of Q the Referee, but it's still a major threshold) -- Borg Ship dilemmas. This ship is the Dominion equivalent of the Thunderchild -- a ship that can rip through space dilemmas very well: high RANGE for Cytherians and the ability to survive a Borg Ship hit eliminate the two big unstoppable space nasties. A well-skilled crew on this ship should have little trouble in solving Construct Depots, perhaps one of the best applications for this ship: mission-solving at Construct Depots.

However, while the attributes by themselves are impressive, the staffing requirements mitigate these quite a bit. Four personnel required to staff it is a lot. Those on the stccg-discussion e-mail list may remember my rant against this card soon after it came out. I'll summarize it here: in short, the ship's staffing is what keeps it from being an "always-use" card for the Dominion. The staffing requirement is so high, in fact, that it renders many of the above uses (particularly the battle ones) inferior to those of other Dominion ships. To get this thing staffed takes at least four turns, barring things like Devidian Door (Dr. Farek from AMS, the only Command AMS-able personnel for the Dominion is there from the start; three turns for the personnel, one for the ship). Using The Great Link won't help too much, because you can't Spacedoor the ship there, and if you use the two in conjunction, you'll need to expend a card play on another ship to shuttle them around. The best option for beating this limitation, though, is Jem'Hadar Birthing Chamber -- seedable at the Primary Supply Depot -- and a good number of Young and universal Jemmies. To keep this engine going, however, requires a steady supply of cards, many methods of which take up at least one card play to set into motion; however, this cost is offset by the fact that it can be established after the ship is off and moving, because the Young Jemmies can be swapped for more useful personnel regardless of location. However, I'd recommend against expending a lot of cards into getting this ship out early -- the benefit, although strong, is by no means gamebreaking, especially considering that a 9-9-9 Warship can be produced two turns earlier. Are the few extra attribute points worthwhile? Perhaps, but it's not an automatic choice. Personally, I'd take the two turn advantage over a few attribute points, especially this early in the game, but in certain decks the latter may be more important. Of course, you may say that four turns are not that significant. Firstly, for the battle uses one should count on five turns, because for all affiliations except Dominion (in which case one will have to Tent for Omet'iklan) require either Wormholes (drawing enough of which early isn't too reliable without using a lot of deck slots) or the Bajoran Wormhole which "stops" ships as they pass through (again, Wormhole Navigation Schematic isn't really worth it, but if you're lucky enough to draw Umat'Adan in those turns, it might be a benefit). By turn five, many decks have either won or are very close to doing so, including PNZ, Ooby Dooby, Cargo Run, AMS, and free-reporting decks (e.g., Android/Cybernetics, multiple HQ/Treaty, STP-drop, Devidian Door of many varieties), which likely have a sizeable mission-solving crew assembled or, in the case of PNZ, probably have cleared out a mission and are close to doing two, especially with no resistance in the Neutral Zone for the early turns. Armadas, whether of the Romulan, Klingon, Bajoran, or Cardassian variety, by this point in the game already have enough weapons to take out facilities. As a result, IMHO the ship battle ability is greatly canceled by the speed loss.

Editor's Note: After this card review was written, several other cards were revealed which makes it easy to staff this ship on the first turn, increasing the usability. Having a 10/11/12 roving outpost with invasive transporters in the alpha quad on turn 1 every game is just scary ;-)

In an armada or ship battle deck, speed is the key, especially when facing another armada. There's no way this thing can compete with Klingon Empok decks earning a ship and matching commander every turn, Bajoran decks possibly downloading multiple Interceptors and Rinnaks most turns with Hidden Fighters, Ready Room Door, and Bajoran Civil War, Cardassian decks similar to Klingon Empok (but these have more problems in drawn-out battles unless playing free Freighters), and, of course Romulan ones, some of which have been known to amass the requisite 30+ WEAPONS to damage facilities on turn one. By the time you get the Dominion Battleship into the Alpha Quadrant, it'll be a sitting duck that can be destroyed via direct hit by an armada which can lay in wait at the Bajoran Wormhole, knowing your ship will be "stopped" and has no Cloaking Device with which to defend itself and a QtR ready to download Temporal Vortex if you try to Distortion out of it. Even if your ship can take one or two of the opponent's down with it, a key element of really good armadas is the ability to keep pumping out ships, essentially making its defense the ability to report even more ships to replace those that are lost. Klingon Empok is particularly strong in this category. If you're looking for a Dominion armada, the way to go is Jem'Hadar Attack Ships (perhaps boosted by seeding Plasmadyne Relays at the outpost) and free Founders. Even this is not particularly strong compared to the others (ship battle isn't the forte of the Dominion), but at least its speed is somewhat comparable. With this method, it's often possible to have the four Attack Ships needed to damage a Federation outpost by turn five or six. To get the equivalent WEAPONS from the Jem'Hadar Battleship would require nearly twelve (!) turns, and that's a low estimate, assuming you can draw a constant stream of personnel and assuming one free report every four turns.

Editor's Note: Again, this was before seeing the new cards that allow the download of Deyos and a 2-skilled Jemmie on turn 1 :-)

What about personnel battle? Unfortunately, the regular Jem'Hadar Warship outclasses it here. The two-turn advantage in entering the Alpha Quadrant is even more prominent here. When playing Smackdown, especially, the key is to drop a couple high-STRENGTH personnel onto a facility ASAP to establish a temporary lock. Doing this on the third turn instead of the fifth is a huge advantage. I feel that the Ketracel requirements on this ship also make it more of a limitation to Smackdown decks, because IMHO the stronger ones use Founders and AMS personnel to staff the ship early, seeding Latinum to swap for Disruptor Rifles instead of White, which has the benefits of both making the Founders and non-aligned personnel perhaps even stronger than Jemmies and avoids the hassle of maintaining White.

Of course, as many players pointed out, the Ketracel-White staffing also allows you to report Jemmies directly to this ship using Crew Reassignment. However, for the above reasons, this does not enhance the ship's battling capability as much as it does its mission-solving ability. Although Jem'Hadar Birthing Chamber always allowed this function in one form or another, it limited you to universal Jem'Hadar. This ability is IMHO stronger for mission-solving than for battle. In a battle deck (assuming you're playing Jemmie Smackdown), quantity is better than quality; as a result, it's better to report universal Jemmies for free with a Birthing Chamber, whereas in mission-solving it's often better to have more unique personnel with more useful skills than simply cannon fodder for dilemmas (unless redshirting, but this ship doesn't lend itself to redshirting as much as mega-teaming). Of course, many universal personnel are useful, but in general the uniques are still more powerful at solving missions and dilemmas. The other argument is that with this ship, you can utilize the benefits of both free universal Jemmies and unique ones as your card play, which I don't deny; I just tend to shy away from Jemmies if doing personnel combat, and this ship isn't the ship of choice for ship battle either. However, for mission-solving this ship is excellent because it provides both targets for dilemmas (extra skills and attributes in case of filters like Chula: The Chandra, universals for Hide and Seek, "shields" for your regular personnel for random-kills, extra redundancy, etc.) and strong dilemma busters and mission solvers.

It's got a Tractor Beam, just as any other major ship does, and useful for the same things: Radioactive Garbage Scow being the really useful one; the only other one I'd even think of using is Establish Tractor Lock. The Holodeck is really pointless here, because it's only usable when Treaty-ing with another affiliation, which has Holodecks of its own. It's useful in a Treaty deck with Holograms, but the only ones I see realistically being successful are Romulan/Dominion Chief O'Brien ones, but then there's no point in using the Dominion. The Invasive Transporters? Same as with every other Dominion ship save the Karemman Vessel.

So, now that I've pointed out a lot of things that are bad about this card, is it a worthless piece of junk?

On the contrary. It is quite useful, just not as powerful as many people think (myself included) from first impressions, showing the danger of writing premature reviews. What is this behemoth good for? For one, it's the most flexible option for battle. It's not as strong as Attack Ships in ship combat or Warships in personnel battle, but it's a good compromise between the two, which unfortunately comes at a high price in speed. It's useful for "opportunity" ship battle as opposed to a dedicated armada strategy; likewise, it's good for "opportunity" Invasive Beam-Ins as opposed to a deck devoted purely to those. At mission-solving, this ship is the Dominion ship to use for solving Alpha Quadrant missions. For example, you can start moving early and report in the Jemmie troops as you draw them for Betazed Invasion. The primary reason for its megateaming focus, however, is that (a) redshirting in the Alpha Quadrant is less advisable because of the delay in getting additional personnel, and (b) a ship that requires four personnel to staff is not a very good redshirt ship. As mentioned above, though, it's a nearly unstoppable juggernaut at space missions if well-staffed. It can be slowed down by some dilemmas, but that's about it. As a bonus, it provides excellent abilities to battle *as a side strategy* to mission-solving, which to me makes it one of the greatest cards to fulfill the aim of mission-solving as the primary focus in this game, with battle being more of a tool than the point of a deck. If only all the cards in the game were like this...

The final verdict: Good, but not broken; a powerful ship for mission-solving that also is powerful for using battle to gain turn advantage by slowing the opponent. For me, it strikes the ideal balance between mission-solving as the main goal and battle as a side strategy. It's pretty subtle, and I was impressed by Decipher's ability to weave the two together in just the right balance... there's a type of beauty in this once you realize it. Ironic that a battleship is one of the cards better suited to mission-solving, isn't it?

Next: The Centurion

Steve 'Sergei Rachmaninoff' Boyles