After returning from a James Bond movie marathon with some friends earlier today, I thought today's card to be strangely appropriate:

Homefront (Uncommon [TT], #24)
Icons: Trouble with Tribbles
Seeds or plays on any homeworld.  In place of a normal card play, a SECURITY personnel matching homeworld's affiliation may download here (owner draws no cards that turn).  No player may attempt mission or use headquarters game text here unless they have 4 SECURITY on planet.  OR Plays on table.  Your personnel who have infiltration icons may report (for free) to homeworlds those icons match.  

This card has a variety of uses, both offensive and defensive.  I've never seen it used for its second function, but there are several reasons for that which I'll get into later.  The first use is quite flexible in that it's useful to put either on your own homeworld or on a homeworld of your opponent's.  First, I'll talk about the uses of putting it on your own homeworld, then I'll talk about your opponent's homeworlds.

Putting it on your own homeworld serves a twofold purpose.  First, you can download SECURITY personnel to the planet, even without a facility there. So, if you want, you can use it in lieu of a Headquarters if you want the Nor-like ability to download a certain type of personnel.  Note that the personnel need not be SECURITY classification, but SECURITY as a skill will work just fine.  For instance, if playing Bajoran with Deep Space 9 and you want to use certain sites for other purposes than downloading a particular classification of personnel (such as Quark's Bar, Cargo Bay, Bajoran Shrine, or multiple Guest Quarters) you can seed Homefront without losing the ability to download SECURITY personnel.

You do have to sacrifice a card play and card draw, but this is no different than downloading with Security Office (with the added bonus that you can also download personnel who have SECURITY as a skill but not as a classification, although you can't download hand weapons).  Therefore, the same strategies as Ops-downloading apply.  If you've already forfeited your end-of-turn draw, such as by playing Q's Tent or Ready Room Door for a matching commander, then it pays to use as many "draw no cards" actions as possible -- such as Homefront downloading.

This is of huge importance in an End Transmission/Friendly Fire deck.  When playing such a deck, I always use a Nor and/or Homefront.  Since you're essentially giving up your end of turn draw each turn, then you get the ability to download a wide variety of personnel at no cost other than your normal card play -- which you probably would have used to report them normally.  Since these decks can time out a lot if you aren't careful, it's important to solve missions as quickly as possible, and Ops-downloading specific personnel to pass walls and dilemmas is a perfect way to do this.

Also, you don't have quadrant restrictions to worry about, since Homefront specifies a destination for the downloads.  You can use this on Earth to get Delta Quadrant personnel like Tuvok or Maxwell Burke to the Alpha Quadrant. Ditto with Seska for Cardassian players.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can't immediately use a Headquarters for free plays (or use The Great Link to reset White) or attempt your homeworld when using Homefront, because Homefront requires 4 SECURITY to do those.  Obviously you can use Homefront and Defend Homeworld to get the SECURITY fairly quickly, but you can't take advantage of the free plays and easy mission in the first few turns of the game.  I've found that this is often counterproductive, so rarely do I use two seed slots on both a HQ and Homefront.  If I wanted to use both, I'd put Homefront in my Q's Tent.  Yes, it will cost a card play, but if I seed it, then I'd have to use more card plays to report personnel that could report for free at the HQ.  The trouble with this is that you can't get a SECURITY personnel until the next turn (barring exceptional circumstances like DQSS or Manheim's Door) because playing Homefront took your card play (it is *not* a HQ card which plays free at a Headquarters).

// Editor's note: of course, in some cases it may be possible to use Homefront and
// your HQ right away; use Homefront to download one double security and
// Defend Homeworld to get another.

You can take advantage of those "restrictions" in certain cases, though. You can delay an opponent from using HQ free plays or from stealing your homeworld, although it appears that your opponent can also use Homefront to download matching SECURITY, since the "draw no cards" clause applies to the "owner" of the downloaded card, not "you."  It will keep people from tripping Dal'Roks or other nasty dilemmas at your homeworld, though, since by the time your opponent gets 4 SECURITY that can attempt the mission you usually have enough personnel to pass the nastier tripped dilemmas.

One last note: valid responses to a SECURITY personnel entering play take effect before the "draw no cards" restriction applies (Current Rulings, "card draw").  So, if you're playing Dominion and have Deyos at the Founder Homeworld, you can download a Jem'Hadar and draw a card before the restriction takes effect.

Of course, you can take advantage of these restrictions by seeding this on your opponent's homeworld.  Of the Seattle players, Keith Watabayashi in particular has been known to use this strategy to slow down opponents.  Of course, when doing this it really pays to be using a homeworld yourself, so in case your opponent isn't using a homeworld (which is becoming more and more the case thanks to the homeworld-less Delta Quadrant) you can still use it for your own benefit.  Otherwise you'd be forced to mis-seed it under an opponent's mission.  Now, when doing this, you also give your opponent the ability to download SECURITY personnel, which in the long run may outweighs the benefits of preventing free HQ plays.  Therefore, you should be playing a fast deck yourself, so you can win (or be close to winning) before your opponent can start taking advantage of the free plays again.

The last function is really only of moderate use.  There's a reason that I've never seen it used for infiltration.  First, it doesn't seed. It gives you a free play or two of your infiltrators, but you end up using that card play for Homefront.  And unless you're using multiple homeworlds in your Dominion deck (which doesn't really make sense, since there's no easy way for the Dominion to attempt them outside of Espionage), then you will rarely get enough free plays to make Homefront useful.  There's no way to ensure that you'll get the Homefront before the Founders, anyway, short of Q's Tent, in which case you forfeit a card draw and a card play for perhaps one or two free card plays.

So, what about using it to infiltrate the opponent?  Well, unless your opponent is only using Homefront, then there is probably a Headquarters sitting on that Homeworld (the only other reason to use it would be for HQ: Secure Homeworld), where you could report the infiltrator normally.  And if there isn't a Headquarters there, then there probably aren't any personnel for you to infiltrate there, either.  Yes, you do get to report them for free, but again you end up paying the cost of a card play when you play Homefront.  Besides, you still have to get the appropriate Founder into your hand, which (short of Tenting again) isn't that easy.

You may have noticed that I'm restricting most of the above discussion to Dominion decks, whereas Homefront makes no such restriction.  Jake Sisko can play to the Founder Homeworld using the same text, as can Boone Impersonator, Arne Darvin, or La Forge Impersonator to Earth.  But here you suffer from a bigger problem.  Unless playing a Treaty deck, you can only get one free play out of the Homefront, meaning you won't have any net benefit from using it.  Dominion players at least have two or more infiltrators against Federation and Bajoran players.

The final verdict: Don't bother with the last use.  Really.  Very rarely will it pay for itself in terms of free plays, and there's little reason to report infiltrators to homeworlds unless there's a Headquarters there.  OK, you can use it to report infiltrators to the Alpha Quadrant, but you can't rely on an opponent using a particular homeworld -- or any at all (I've already mentioned why it doesn't make sense for the Dominion player to use multiple Alpha homeworlds) so you can't rely on using Homefront's text this way.  You can get decent mileage out of the first use, though, either on your own homeworld or on your opponent's.  If you're playing a fast deck with a homeworld, then feel free to use it on your opponent's homeworld for a speed advantage (obviously, do this only if your own deck doesn't need Homefront to download its own SECURITY personnel).  Otherwise, I wouldn't use it as a HQ counter, since Headquarters are being seen less and less.  It can be effective on your own homeworld, though, acting as a mini-Nor and protection for Homeworld stealing/tripping rolled into one.

Next in line, a battler's favorite card: Make It So

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles