Now, as I have just taken the top seat in the sealed deck rankings I feel it is my duty to say a couple of words on the subject.  Helge Blohmer, who held the title previous to me wrote an excellent piece on sealed deck STCCG--I suggest you read it before your next tourney (sealed or otherwise)  Helge has unique insight into the workings of the game, and his article certainly helped me improve my game. His theories of Trek are primarily concerned with mission solving skills and with OTSD tournaments.  In this article I would first like to expand on his analysis to both ODSD sealed and other sealed formats.

// Editor's note: for Helge's views on sealed deck, see the WNOHGB Tournament Guide.
 

In Helge's piece, he approaches deck construction and mission selection with an aim to make sure your deck can solve all your missions, and provides a formula for selecting which missions you should chose. This is called "mission side deck theory," and is most effective when the pool of useful people is less than the pool of useful missions (such as in non-draft OTSD). The basic premise is that you will have six missions from the OTSD-20, plus (on average) five other common missions from the packs you open. The number of personnel in premiere who are good for anything is quite low-- hence it is generally best to analyze the skill balance in the personnel you have available to you, and then chose the six missions that best suit your people. This approach is also quite useful in DS9-only non-draft-sealed, as you will usually have a surplus of missions, and a limited supply of gimpy spoonheads.

However, in cases where the supply of useable personnel overpowers the mission supply (such as in most draft formats, in Voyager sealed and Warp Speed), or in formats where the dilemmas are more of a concern than they are in OTSD, a different approach is required, an approach that I call "dilemma side theory."

With dilemma side theory, the primary goal of your deck will be to quickly overpower the dilemmas that you are going to face; as such priority must be given to the skills and attributes that are called for on the commonest of dilemmas. For example, in a Warp Speed tournament, Mortimer Harren, (who has high cunning, engineer and astrophysics, and helps get you by Spatial Rift) is a far better personnel than Chakotay (whose anthropology is needed for Aggressive Behavior). As such, when approaching a sealed format, it is first important to know what packs will be used in the tournament--then to find out the prevalence of each skill and classification on the available personnel (weighted for commonality), then to figure out the usefulness quotient of each skill and attribute in terms of the dilemmas (again, weighted for commonality). Bear in mind that you will also have to think in terms of how many packs of any particular expansion will be available to people, these calculations get more complicated the wider the variety of packs that are available. This analysis will provide you the most important information for deck construction.

When drafting personnel I generally have a set priority number where that number is the starting priority-- which drops by one for every copy of that skill that I have drafted already.

As an example, I will examine a DS9 draft format which includes the 20 OTSD premiums. When looking at DS9, there are 15  common dilemmas to consider. That is about a sixth of the common cards-- one or two per pack. You can expect to face on average six of the following dilemmas each game-- over four rounds, you will see each of these dilemmas.  Therefore the first dilemmas to look at are the common ones:

Aphasia Device
Assassin's Blade
Brief Romance
Clan People
Common Thief
Garanian Bolites
Isolinear Puzzle
Kidnappers
Lockbox
Misguided Activist
None Shall Pass
Skullduggery
Vantika's Neural Pathways
Vendetta
Vole Infestation

Of these, there is one mass killer (Aphasia Device) and three walls (Assasin's Blade, None Shall Pass and Clan People. The skills listed on these dilemmas should be of the highest priority when selecting personnel-- in every four round tournament, you will end up playing against each of these dilemmas at least once.

Now a quick note on Clan People--"To get past, must have Opaka present OR CUNNING > 38 from up to five Away Team members." This dilemma is possibly the one that has won me the most DS9 tourneys. It is surprisingly hard to get by in a sealed format.  Combined with it's commonality, this makes it a formidable card. It is a wall to start with-- always a good thing. You can pretty much discount your opponent having Opaka, so one is left with the second clause; having five people whose cunning is on average eight or more.  There are only four such common personnel in the set-- if you intend to get by this one, you need a Padd. I rate this dilemma as the best common dilemma, and your first PADD is more important than any single personnel.

Uncommon dilemmas are not the overriding concern that the common ones are, though I still try to be prepared for all of them.

There are fifteen uncommon dilemmas in Deep Space Nine:

"Subspace Seaweed"
Altonian Brain Teaser
Angry Mob
Arms Deal
Dal'Rok
Duonetic Field Generator
Extradition
Flaxian Assassin
Framed for Murder
Hate Crime
Lethean Telepathic Attack
Odo's "Cousin"
Punishment Box
Untrustworthy Associate

Again the ones to watch for are the skill based walls; Flaxian Assassin and  Odo's Cousin. I do try to draft security, biology, exobiology and geology for these dilemmas.  Security and biology are less of a concern due to the "discard dilemma if no valid targets" rule.

The other dilemma requirements of the uncommons should also be drafted for, but never to the same degree.