With just a little more than a week until the release of The Borg, it seems that this is an appropriate card to review, especially since I think it will be getting a lot more use then:

Resistance is Futile (Rare [TT], #30)
Incident
Icons: Borg Only, Trouble with Tribbles
Plays on your completed Establish Gateway, Assimilate Planet, or Salvage Starship objective.  Increase objective's points by 10 while your [Def] Borg is at that location. OR Plays on opponent's Q's Planet.  The 40 additional points it requires are irrelevant to your Borg while your [Com] Borg is at that location.  OR Seeds or plays on table. Your [Nav] Borg may report directly to your Borg spheres.

This card has always been popular in Borg decks; but I'm going to go out on a limb right now and say that it may very well be the next Borg Queen, in the sense that it will be rapidly traded for, and that it won't be uncommon to see dozens of them in a Borg deck.  Why?  It is a *perfect* fit in a Harness Particle 010 two-objective win deck.

First and foremost (at least with Omega in mind), this card is a good probe for Harness Particle 010.  Always a good thing.  Better yet: it has all three subcommand icons on it, meaning it's also a good probe for any other Borg objective you might try... such as the second one you need to win after achieving perfection.

The first use is what makes the two-objective win possible (without resorting to things like Assimilate Homeworld, which is tougher to set up and forces you to leave the Delta Quadrant).  Thirty points from Harness Particle, sixty from Salvage Starship, and a Resistance is Futile is an even 100 points.  If you don't want to tip off your opponent that you're playing Borg by using Salvage Operation (although this in itself doesn't spell Borg, using a couple of other no-icon space missions very well may), there's nothing stopping you from a quick Eliminate Starship: with all the Delta Quadrant traffic, it shouldn't be tough to find a target to blow up.  I'd also find a way to get to the Alpha Quadrant, both for Eliminate Starship and for another use of Resistance is Futile: Q's Planet.  Q's Planet can screw up the two-objective win, but again, you can use another copy of RiF to negate that -- but only if you can get into the Alpha Quadrant.

Now, one complaint with Omega decks is the difficulty of finishing scouting in two turns and then probing successfully.  Probing successfully can be tricky, but including lots of Resistance is Futile improves your odds.  You can improve your odds even further with Handshake, which to me has always been an underrated Borg card.  Handshake is an Incident (and thus another good probe for Harness Particle) which is good for rigging your probes (I don't know how much Juggler use we'll be seeing post-Borg, but with twelve affiliations going around I doubt it will increase much), and downloading drones with the old Queen by either ditching your hand (which likely has lots of extra copies of cards the Borg want early, like Queens or Resistance is Futile) to draw seven new cards... I mean, download seven drones, Adapts, or whatever else.  Only occasionally do I see an Obelisk in a draw deck.

Completing scouting in time is the other side of the coin, and you'll almost certainly benefit from having multiple ships to scout with, in case one of them is "stopped" or hits Cytherians or Dead End.  Spheres seem a natural choice: they can report directly to your Cubes and be carried aboard, so you can be more mobile on a Cube with higher RANGE that's also a lot tougher to blow up, then launch your Spheres for redshirting space missions, since Interlink still lets you share skills.  Well, Resistance is Futile does enhance Spheres, but only slightly.  Since you need a Cube for Omega anyway, you can already report drones to your Cube.  However, it may be more useful if a Sphere hits Cytherians and you want to get it back quickly: you can Awaken Astrogation Drones directly to it.

Now, I've been focusing a lot on Omega, but there are a good number of other uses for this card, too.  First, it's the best Q's Planet counter when playing Borg.  Q's Planet used to give Borg players all sorts of fits, often forcing a Borg player to do five or six objectives to win.  Resistance is Futile is a fairly easy counter to this, although it will force a Borg player into the Alpha Quadrant.  It's best to do this after you have 100 points, since RiF renders Q's Planet irrelevant only while you have a [Com] Borg there.  Since Borg can't create an Away Team unless a card allows it, you'd be forced to leave a ship behind.

Raising the points of an objective by ten is quite good, too.  If you're playing a Borg battle deck, three Salvage Starships and RiF gives you a win.   It will free you from having to do a Salvage Starship after doing Stop First Contact/Population 9 Billion for a two-objective win; with RiF, Establish Gateway and Assimilate Planet work just as well.  Of course, it won't really help Borg decks aiming on winning by doing four traditional objectives unless you plan on playing three copies of RiF, but you do have to leave a [Def] Borg at the location.  At space missions, this means leaving a ship behind; on planets, it will be easy for your opponent to battle your lone Borg and negate the 10 bonus points unless you leave a larger force behind, which can be annoying.  IMO most of the uses of RiF are best used when you'll get the win that same turn, since the first two uses can be interfered with by an opponent battling.

The Sphere enhancer is so-so; very rarely are Spheres used alone without a supporting Cube.  As I've said earlier, the only reason to use RiF to boost Spheres when you've got Cubes in play is if they get separated during a scouting attempt.

The final verdict: Fairly strong in most Borg decks, this card is downright awesome in a Harness Particle Deck.  If I were you, and if you have even the slightest desire to play an Omega deck, I'd start trading for these.

Next, Waddle's weapon of choice: Tribble Bomb

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles