Protection Racket
Incident [HA][4]
Seeds or plays on table. Once each turn, your Ferengi who has Treachery (or your non-Ferengi who has Treachery x2) may "threaten" (place incident on) any non-Borg personnel at this location. Make any request of opponent. Incident nullified if opponent complies. Threatened personnel loses first-listed skill and opponent must probe each turn: [Door][Skill] Assassin strikes. Threatened personnel killed.

Decipher gave us a fun card to play with here, and it's fairly easy to use with all affiliations, as well. But how can it be used effectively? What do I request of my opponent? How many should I use? Should I seed them or stock them in my draw deck? All these questions and more will be taken into consideration in this article.

Of course, the Ferengi can use Protection Racket (PR) most effectively, since PR only requires Ferengi personnel to have Treachery (as opposed to Treachery x2). Brunt, Gaila, Goss, Gral, Leck, Letek and Quark can all be used here to threaten your opponent with PR. As an added bonus, Gral can special download PR and play it on one of your opponent's personnel immediately. This being the case, it would be efficient to stock at least one in your draw deck or Q's Tent. However, more fun can be yours if you seed one or two, as well. They seed as hidden agendas, therefore your opponent has no idea they're coming. For the other affiliations, there's a list of personnel that can be used to play PR, as well: Dominion - Deyos, Founder Leader and Keevan; Cardassian - Elim; Bajoran - Jarro Essa; Non-Aligned - Lore and Hagath. For affiliations who don't have a personnel with Treachery x2, like the Federation, Hagath can be easily download via Cargo Bay on an Empok Nor. The same goes for Klingon and Romulan, except they can use Lore in addition to our favorite arms dealer.

When you target a personnel with PR, keep in mind that, if you target a weak, insignificant personnel (like Christopher Hobson or Frool), it's unlikely that your opponent will comply with the request you make. It would be of advantage to you to find one of your opponent's best personnel and target them, such as Quark, Captain Kirk or Vedek Dax. If you do that, your opponent would be less likely to want that personnel killed and more likely to obey your every command. ;-)

Ok, so you seed PR and you find your opponent's Captain Kirk to threaten. What do you request of them? There's two different kinds of requests you can make, and one type of request you can not make. Let's give you the bad news first: You can not make any requests of your opponent which alters the tournament rules or guidelines. That means you can't alter you or your opponent's decks, change past or present games, victory points, differentials, etc. That having been said, let's move on to the fun stuff - what you can request.

The first thing to consider when making a request of your opponent is to find something that will give you a decisive (or at least a small) advantage in the current game. The more of an advantage the request will give you, the less likely it is that your opponent will comply with your request. However, you never really know what your opponent will do. Some requests that might work are:

Note: "Your" and "you" here refers to your opponent, as if you were talking to them.

• Allow me to unstop my personnel at will for the rest of the game.
• Allow me unlimited range for the rest of the game.
• Remove all of your dilemmas from under [any mission] or all missions.
• Seed lots of Unscientific Method/Scientific Method combos, target a SCIENCE personnel with PR and request that they commit suicide. (Go ahead and add a BBSD full of Full Phaser Spreads (or Spiral Wave Disrupters) and either an armada (Cardassians with Elim or Klingons with Ja'rod work the best) or Calamarians with Explore Interstellar Matter and Gamma missions (create a small space line and make a 15 span absolute terror zone…anyone who enters loses 2 SCIENCE, making it that much harder to pass Scientific Methods, especially if Q-Nets or RBMs slow them down once they're inside.)
• All of your mission requirements will be doubled for the rest of the game.
• Reveal all your hidden agendas.
• Let me earn a Tox Uthat just by encountering it (Okay, so they might not grant this, but watch how paranoid they get!)
• Let me download one card. (YET's Bajoran deck is disturbingly fast when it gets HQ:Return Orbs to Bajor, but it loses when it doesn't. Jaro Essa will solve that. J)
• Let me change one word on each of the dilemmas I encounter. (Change "unless" or "past" to "lucky" and most dilemmas do little or nothing. Shot in the Back isn't too bad when it kills one ANIMAL of opponent's choice. J Sheliaks are harmless when they stop "destroying" and start "shining" Outposts. Besides, who doesn't like seeing Scientific Method reading, "To get lucky requires 3 SCIENCE and MEDICAL"?)
• Change the next numeral "1" I read to a "2." (Intermix Ratio now only works when you have more than a 2:1 bonus to regular point ratio, much easier to pass.)
• Let me change one icon on any one of your personnel each turn. (Silarin Prin, the Blood Oath bunch, Albino, Lore, FC Data, all start killing off anyone with command icons. ;-) Most people will forget about Nemesis, and will lose all their command icon personnel.)

Now, onto the fun part. *evil laugh* If you don't care about game advantages and are just looking to have some fun, make outrageous requests of your opponent. You'd be surprised what your opponent will do to save that Captain Kirk. ;-)

• Have them buy you lunch.
• Have them eat things that wouldn't normally be considered food.
• Drop and give me 50!
• Fetch me my royal scepter!
• Have them stand up on the table and sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" for everyone's listening pleasure.
• Make them buy you some cards. :-)
• Gimme your car keys and point towards Vegas. (Make sure they have a full tank of gas before revealing the PR.)
• Give me the moon on a cotton candy stick. (Make sure it's a real cotton candy stick and not just a used paper towel roll.)

I'd like to compile a list of game-related and "fun" requests that you've actually gotten your opponent to comply with using PR. So, if you've used this card in games (whether casual or in tournaments), please e-mail me at Spot@wnohgb.com and let me know what's worked for you. If you haven't used PR yet, you're missing out on a lot of fun that can be had by using it with any affiliation in the game.

Chad 'Spot' Awkerman and Danny 'Yoda's Evil Twin' Lindquist
Spot@wnohgb.com