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Focus On Missions
by Spot One thing you continue to hear over and over again about STCCG is that you need to focus – focus your missions, focus your dilemmas, focus your Q-Continuum, focus your Battle Bridge side deck. And even combine the focus of a couple of those facets of the game to make your deck even more effective, such as focusing your Battle Bridge and your dilemmas to kill off all your opponent's SCIENCE personnel, or all their MEDICAL personnel, or some such unfortunate thing. While browsing the Deck Design board at Decipher, I see many, many decks which have no focus whatsoever in their missions, dilemmas and what not. It's time to do something about that. ;-) So, in this issue I begin my series of articles on focusing in certain aspects of the game. To start with we'll talk about missions. What are some things to consider when choosing your missions? Are there some skills that are prevalent enough to focus decks on? What about affiliation-specific focus? Hopefully this article will be able to help answer those questions and help you build better decks in the future. What Is Mission Focus? Focusing your missions means to choose missions that all require the same skill(s) and/or personnel to complete. There are many benefits to this.
Earlier I mentioned you could focus on skills or personnel. How do you focus your missions on personnel? Well, there are certain missions that can be completed with just a single personnel. Take the Bajorans, for instance. Kira Nerys, Tahna Los, General Krim and/or The Emissary, among others of that affiliation, can solve Bajoran-specific missions all by themselves. In this instance, you don't need to focus on skills, but instead, on personnel. Affiliation-Specific Mission Focus Now lets take a look at all 9 affiliations (including Non-Aligned, but not including Neutral) and see what kind of mission focus we can come up with for each of them. Some will be pretty obvious, others won't be. Federation: With our blue-bordered friends, there's one skill that seems to stick out above all the rest – Diplomacy. After all, the Federation is a diplomatic alliance and values attempting diplomacy first, before resorting to unscrupulous dealings with other affiliations. What missions would work well in a Federation Diplomacy deck? Try these:
Diplomacy fills most of the mission requirements for these missions, which will keep your personnel selection tight and your draw deck small. Some other skills that are excellent for the Federation to focus on are MEDICAL-related skills (Biology, Exobiology, etc.) and ENGINEER. There's also the famous DipHoLe deck, which combines Diplomacy, Honor and Leadership as the mission focus. Romulan: Need you ask what to focus Romulan decks on? ;-) Treachery! You can create excellent mission-solvers and capture decks using the missions which focus on Treachery, including Earth (Espionage Mission). Even using HQ: Secure Homeworld on Romulus (Cloaked Mission), gives you a revised mission requirement of Treachery. So, what missions could be used in a Romulan deck focusing on Treachery?
*Quash Conspiracy requires the skill of Tal Shiar, which is usually coupled with Treachery on personnel, so you won't have to add any extra personnel to cover that requirement. Besides, if you use the Continuing Committee on Romulus, your Tal Shiar personnel report for free. You can't beat that with a barber's pole. ;-) A couple other skills that work well to focus your Romulans on are Exobiology and/or Archaeology. Klingon: If the Federation focuses on Diplomacy and the Romulans focus on Treachery, it's only logical that the Klingons would focus on Honor. Here, one of the stand-out missions that focus on Honor is Bat'leth Tournament. This universal mission you can use in multiples. Here's a possible choice for the six missions in a Klingon Honor deck:
This presents an unbalanced spaceline, but gives you a great deal of universal mission-solving ability with all the missions focusing on Honor. If you so choose, you can add in the Klingon homeworld, as well. As with both the Romulans (and their Treachery) and the Federation (with their Diplomacy), Honor is a requirement on HQ: Secure Homeworld. A couple other skills to focus on could be SCIENCE-related skills and Exobiology. Borg: Here we're faced with the only affiliation who does not (and can not) attempt missions. Instead, they scout missions and complete objectives targeting those missions. However, we can still focus our mission selection. If we focus on one (maybe two) objectives, we'll have a fairly simple time scoring our points. We'll keep it simple here and go with these missions:
With these missions, we can mainly focus on the Establish Gateway objective, which can target all six of these missions. Once Establish Gateway has been completed on the three dual-icon missions, you can easily return to them and scout using Assimilate Planet. Editor's note: But since the new CR changed things so that you can't complete more than one objective at a dual-icon mission, you may have to change your plans somewhat. A couple other Objectives the Borg can focus on is homeworld assimilation (focusing on all the homeworlds, usually just of the affiliations which have pre-made counterparts) and Stop First Contact (focusing on disrupting the timeline at Earth). Bajoran: We're gonna take a different approach in looking at the focus of Bajoran missions. Instead of focusing on a particular skill or skills, we'll focus on personnel, as was mentioned earlier. This is probably the most efficient way to focus a Bajoran deck's missions. Let's use these missions:
Four of those missions – Investigate Coup, Orb Negotiations, Relocate Settlers and Acquire Illicit Explosives – can all be completed by one personnel each. Alter Records is your homeworld, where you'll obviously want to seed or play HQ: Secure Homeworld. The skills on the first half of Refuse Immigration's requirements can all be filled by a single personnel, then just bring in a few more to gain the CUNNING that you need. All in all, you need very few personnel to fill the mission requirements on these Bajoran missions. Cardassian: The Cardassians sure are Treacherous, but their best mission focus probably isn't Treachery. In this case, I believe the best skill(s)/classification(s) to focus on are SECURITY and OFFICER.
Orb Negotiations is the Cardassian homeworld, and, as with a few other affiliations, the mission focus here is one of the requirements for HQ: Secure Homeworld. Something else you could focus your Cardassian deck around is MEDICAL-related skills. Also, another note, having a Cardassian deck focus on SECURITY is a great way to start out a capturing deck. If you want to venture into the Gamma Quadrant, you can even add missions such as Intelligence Operation. Dominion: This is a bit more difficult to find a focus on, because there really isn't a set skill that dominates lots of Dominion missions. Since that's the case, let's look to a completely separate card – Subjugate Planet. In most scenarios, the Dominion start off in the Gamma Quadrant, yet, surprisingly, there aren't many Dominion-attemptable Gamma Quadrant missions. Therefore, we have to make our own with Subjugate Planet. This gives us a skill focus of Treachery (which the Dominion are in no short supply of), but it also focuses on Vorta and Jem'Hadar as "species" requirements for that Objective. Seed or play Subjugate Planet on several missions in the Gamma Quadrant (and HQ: Secure Homeworld on Intelligence Operation, along with The Great Link), and you can stay in the Gamma Quadrant and out of your opponent's hair. On the other hand, you may want to invade the Alpha Quadrant and wreak havoc on your opponent with a smackdown deck. This being the case, Subjugate Planet works just as well on the other side of the galaxy. Ferengi: One of the Ferengi's defining personality traits is their quest for riches. And, as such wonderfully enteurpenurial beings, the Ferengi are excellent when focusing on Greed and Acquisition. Let's go this route:
There we're plainly focused on Green and Acquisition. Other choices for the Ferengi are given by two separate cards, similar to the Dominion – Establish Trade Route and Bribery. The Ferengi have so many options available to them for focusing on missions that you're sure to find something you like doing; and remember Rule of Acquisition #9: "Opportunity plus instinct equals profit." Non-Aligned: Here we have a bit of a different situation, as well. This is the newest of the nine affiliations we'll be discussing in this article, yes, as an affiliation, they don't really have many missions to attempt. And, out of those, their focus is almost non-existent. The missions attemptable with only the Non-Aligned affiliation are:
Now, out of those missions, what can we focus on? We could focus on Acquisition, Smuggling and Greed, like the Ferengi, and go with four Market Research, Qualor II Rendezvous and Deliver Supplies. This would be the most likely focus that I'd use in a Non-Aligned deck. Another option would be to include personnel such as Garak and Tallera and include Romulan, Cardassian and Federation missions, as well. Then, when needed, switch their affiliation to be able to attempt the missions. There are many viable missions focuses for Non-Aligned, you just have to find the one that works the best for you. So, now we've covered affiliation-specific mission focus, and all that should give you a good idea what to do with decks of those affiliations. Of course, you can always come up with your own combinations of skills to focus on for each affiliation, depending on your strategy, play-style and the metagame in your area. Next issue we'll tackle the nuances of focusing your dilemmas to pick off personnel with certain skills and/or classifications, of a certain gender or of a certain species or affiliation. Until then, have fun. :-) Chad 'Spot' Awkerman
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