Trouble with Tribbles Card Review #39 - Treaty: Romulan/Bajoran (#21, C)

Greetings once again!  I'm well aware that it's been many moons since I've written one of these.  Just when I thought my course load was lightening, the screws were tightened once more and I was barraged with projects and exams.  Now, it's the middle of finals week and all of my more challenging finals are done, so I found some time to crank out one of these, the last of the Trouble with Tribbles events:

Treaty: Romulan/Bajoran (#21, C)
Event
Icons: Trouble with Tribbles
After the Romulan Star Empire's entry into the Dominion war in 2374, Senator Cretak established a Romulan military presence on Deep Space 9 -- and a fragile trust with Colonel Kira Nerys.
Plays on table (for free if you have Colonel Kira or Senator Vreenak in play).  Your Romulan and Bajoran affiliations recognize this treaty.  They can now mix and cooperate.

This treaty was actually one of the ones I was anticipating most during the Blaze of Glory/Rules of Acquisition era, although I don't think I've ever used it.

The thing I was looking forward to was the ease of dodging armadas.  Back during Blaze, Klingon Empok Nor armadas were all the rage, as the lack of jumpstart cards during that time meant that 4th-5th turn armadas could beat most speed decks, while Empok Nor provided the mechanism to churn out a ship and matching commander each turn by Ore Processing to recycle a Ready Room Door.  Before Rules came out, there was no Reactor Overload, so you could even draw an extra card... and Examine Singularity provided the free fodder for the processing.

So, I always tried to make some effort to stop battle decks.  Usually I went with either a general ship-deprivation deck like PNZ or I just joined the party and played my own armada deck.  I was eagerly awaiting a Romulan/Bajoran treaty for an easy out: Rules of Acquisition provided the Apnex, a phaseable ship.  And Romulans had plenty of ships with an ordinary cloaking device.  Stick one on an Engage Cloak, and you'd be all set. Problem: you couldn't report personnel to cloaked ships.  The Second Anthology gave us Koval, who let you report Tal Shiar, but that was still fairly limited.  The ideal solution?  Use The Emissary together with Koval, letting you report your Tal Shiar and all your Bajorans to the cloaked ship.   Voila.  Problem solved.  Heck, Tribbles even closed the loop by providing Scan Cycle Check so you never had to be decloaked on your opponent's turn.

Of course, Tribbles provided a whole host of other anti-armada cards and some strong Empok Nor dilemmas, which meant that I always didn't need the Treaty to get around armada decks.

But I still think that this Treaty has a definite place in a number of decks.  Q the Referee/The Big Picture is used surprisingly little, although many of the top players stock TBP in their decks.  Bajorans are great at solving planet missions, loaded with Geology, Exobiology, and other planet-based skills, not to mention they've got very easy Bajor region missions that are adjacent.  Romulans, on the other hand, have an easy time at space missions, between the insane ease of first turn Senior Staff Meetings with plenty of Astrophysics and Stellar Cartography for solving the high-point space missions.  Temporal Micro-Wormhole even lets you get a free Dr. Telek R'Mor... you don't even have to discard it if you're playing Romulan.

// Editor's note: Funny, EVERYONE uses QtR/TBP here

Also, one of the things Romulans lack is a solid drawing engine.  Most Romulan players resort to good ol' Kivases.  Not that there's anything wrong with that (I can't remember the last time I didn't pack 4+ Kivases in my decks outside of very specific instances).  Bajorans, on the other hand, have a very easy time drawing and manipulating your deck at Deep Space 9. They're even safe from attack if they put it at Bajor thanks to Defend Homeworld (although a self-seed there might be a good idea against a Cardassian opponent to stop Sheliak tripping).

The trouble is that these two seem pretty independent of each other. There's your Romulans over in the Neutral Zone solving Investigate "Shattered Space," while your Bajorans are all back in the Bajor region drawing you cards.  You'd probably end up splitting your card plays between the two, and the opportunities for mixing might seem rather low.   Deciding how to use the jumpstart cards might be a problem.  ASP for Tomalak, TMW for R'Mor, and AMS for MEDICAL and SECURITY seem obvious for the Romulans to do the first turn Senior Staff Meeting, but then you've only got Defend Homeworld left for the Bajorans.  The best choice would probably be to grab Kira Nerys and play Return Orb to Bajor for free using the Chamber.  Kira will let you grab an Orb of Wisdom or Orb of Prophecy and Change for free plays or draw deck control, plus an extra card at the Shrine once you get a clergy and congregation there.  I suppose if you really felt moved to do so you could use Writ to download Brunt to the Guest Quarters, but that might be a little over the top.  About the only contribution Romulans could make on the station would be a little muscle to keep opponents off and V.I.P.s for Guest Quarters, the latter of which really isn't that bad... Going to the Top will fetch you many a decent Romulan V.I.P.

Romulans are also excellent at some quick battle with an easy way to get a 17-18 ATTACK D'deridex (or Decius with 4-card battle bridge for one-shot destruction) on the first turn, or with Launch Portals to grab some Obelisk-immune ships to do some swarming.  Containment Field and Obelisk have weakened the Bajoran armada deck significantly.

Jason Drake used this treaty in a stasis deck once, using the Romulans for battling and Bajorans for card advantage at Deep Space Nine.  Nobody scored a mission on him in six rounds of play.

The final verdict: In short, it usually takes a great deal of effort to usefully integrate the two.  Their strengths complement each other well, but they tend to work fairly independently of each other.  Romulans don't have much to do on DS9 except get V.I.P.s for Guest Quarters, and Bajorans tend to spend most of their time in the Bajor region.  It's not too tough to design a deck with more interplay between the two, but I'd imagine it'd seem unnatural for a while, until you got used to the different feel of the combination.

Next (done with Events!): Deep Space Station K-7

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles