Lineup (#6, C)
Planet/Space Dilemma
Icons: Trouble with Tribbles
After a bar fight with Klingons on Station K-7, Captain Kirk ordered a lineup.  No crewman claimed responsibility for starting the brawl, but none pointed the finger at Mr. Scott, either.
To get past requires four personnel present (random selection) to "form a lineup."  All four are "stopped" unless one has INTEGRITY<5 OR INTEGRITY>8.

Here we go again: Chula: the Drink with INTEGRITY instead of CUNNING, right?   Well, not exactly.  There are some important differences.

One is in which decks can overcome it easily.  Romulans and Dominion will be virtually unaffected by it (yet another dilemma the Dominion is virtually immune to), and the Ferengi shouldn't have much trouble either.  Note that it is nearly impossible for the Borg to overcome this dilemma (unless Locutus of Borg or Dukat of Borg is chosen) but its effect doesn't really concern them.  On a planet, it'll simply allow the Borg player to accumulate as many scouts on the planet as he wants; in space, stopping four personnel on a Cube really doesn't do too much.  They still share skills through an Interlink Drone (even a stopped one), and there's almost always at least three other personnel on board the cube, and three of each skill is still enough for almost anything.  (Note: Gravimetric Distortion is the notable exception to this rule, but if there's a Tachyon Drone being used, his Astrophysics will get you through it, as will Dukat of Borg's double-Navigation.)

Another difference is that it's pretty harsh on the Feds (appropriate, given the episode).  While Chula: the Drink could be overcome by selecting Data, Bashir, Dr. Soong, a Soong-type Android, or either Spock. INTEGRITY of 9 or higher is rare even for the Federation -- Picard and Guinan, and maybe the mission specialists Benjamin Maxwell or Norah Satie, and as for the low INTEGRITY, with the exception of Sloan they'll need some Non-Aligned support from the likes of Vekor or Suna, or less commonly Ajur or Boratus.

Of course, both of them are very good personnel commonly seen, so there's a good chance your opponent will overcome the dilemma.

How reliably will it hit?  Compared to Chula: the Drink, not as often (appropriate, given the rarity disparity).  Take a look through the personnel in an average deck of yours.  It's more likely that you'll have odd INTEGRITY (often from the good low-INTEGRITY non-aligneds) than odd CUNNING, with the possible exceptions of Android, Borg, or Klingon decks.

However, there are a few more things you can combine it with.  One notable possibility is Firestorm + Lineup.  The vast majority of decks will pass Lineup with low INTEGRITY, so why not eliminate it?  Problems: Kukalaka. While usually preventing the low INTEGRITY solution, it makes the high-INTEGRITY one that much more likely, plus making very few Firestorm targets available.  Another problem: what do you follow the Lineup with? You've filtered four personnel... so what now?

Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem that Chula: the Drink does: there's no focus to the filter.  Unlike Ooby Dooby or Blended, where you *know* exactly what's going to be stopped, in this case it's all up to luck of the draw.  Meaning you can't reliably follow it up with anything, as you don't know how the personnel will be filtered.  You can go for dilemmas that simply require *lots* of personnel as opposed to specific ones (such as Ferengi Ingenuity or Dal'Rok), which is probably the only real strategy here.  Ferengi Ingenuity's not very good, as it's only liable to stop your opponent with a sizable crew for a turn.  At least Chula: the Chandra/Friendly Fire holds your opponent off for longer.  Even though Chandra's also a luck-of-the-draw filter, it has the potential to "stop" a lot more people, which compensates for its lack of direction -- quantity over quality in this case.

The final verdict: The Firestorm combo is so-so; in actuality it's no more powerful than any other Firestorm/dilemma requiring low INTEGRITY combo. I've said this about several of the dilemmas in this set, and I'll say it again: the thing that kills this dilemma is that (a) you can't predict what will be filtered, and (b) it doesn't have the capability to stop a lot of personnel to compensate for the lack of predictability.  I realize this review isn't as long as some of the others, but I've already said most of what I want to say about this card in earlier reviews.  Hopefully Decipher learns from this error for the next expansion.

Next, new Empok Nor dilemma #2: Oops!

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles