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A General Overview of the Ferengi
by Chairman Koval The Ferengi have been out for a good couple of months now and yet I've seen very little by way of strategy articles or card reviews for them. The only reason that I could come up for this was that nobody took them seriously, surely not when one of the most recent tournament winning decks was a Ferengi deck. I'll confess that when I found out that Decipher was going to release RoA I was disappointed and frankly a little angry. Being a Borg player I would have preferred Voyager instead (I'm making the assumption that Voyager will contain a least a few more Borg cards, it would be about time). I was also angry that they would bother releasing the Ferengi; latinum-grabbing, greedy little orange dwarfs. Until the spoiler list came out, that is... At first I convinced myself that I was only buying a box because I wanted Continuing Committee and Senator Cretak (I play Romulan too by the way) and that I would only make a Ferengi deck because of all the leftover cards. Well as it was I didn't get Senator Creetak but was still happy with more than enough Ferengi. "Why?" I hear you cry, "Do you think that they're so good?" Well let's have a look... One of the first things I noticed was that there were no Ferengi treaties. Well, this isn't such a great loss, they have a wide variety of skills as it is and I think that it works well with the trading feel of them that they only be able to work with non-aligned. But there's another thing that I noticed, something far more useful; there are no Espionage: * on Ferengi. Automatic immunity to what I consider the most irritating deck archetype out there, the espionage deck. No more thieving Rommies or Cardies. :-) When it comes down to attributes the Ferengi pretty much drew the short straw with generally low integrity and low strength. They're not all as cunning as you'd think as well. So maybe they aren't the strongest or the most honourable, but look at their skills. They have some of the highest point number personnel (Quark, Brunt and Zek - when with Ishka - have more skills than any other person. The only one that evens it is Lore). They also have a nice spread of regular skills and have a considerable amount of the more interesting ones (downloads or even my favourite skill in the game so far "once per game may kill one personnel present" :-) ) Among these regular skills are some which, while we've seen them before, are really only useful (IMHO) to the Ferengi. These skills (primarily Acquisition, Greed and Smuggling) are gold dust for the Ferengi, who take great pleasure in various downloading, drawing and point-scoring mechanisms which involve the use of these skills (especially Acquisition). I've primarily ignored FCA simply because at the moment it is about as useful as Klingon Intelligence or Section 31. As it is, the only real use is for reporting Krozh close to Brunt. But enough of the personnel, what about their ships? A mixed bag here, really; the Marauders are, to my mind, some of the best triple staffing ships out there. Nicely even stats, one can seed at a Ferengi Trading Post and have one of the most powerful tactics made especially for them (Plasma Energy Burst). The Transports can use this tactic too (beats System 5 Disruptors hands-down) and can also seed at a Ferengi Trading Post. The problem with these is their stats. They have mediocre range and pretty weak weapons and shields, especially considering that they need one gold star and a staff. They can hardly stand toe to toe with a Galor, after all. They do have other uses though; they are transports and so play for free at Docking Ports and there are some missions (Dreon 7, if I remember correctly) that require a transport, not to mention the Establish Trade Route objective. So both the Marauders do have their uses, which is more than I can say for the Ferengi shuttles. Pretty weak in my opinion (even taking into account the fact that you can use Small Cloaking Device with them - you're better off with a Flaxian Scout Vessel). The only exception is the truly brilliant Quark's Treasure with two matching commanders, one of which can download the much-tooted Small Cloaking Device, and stats that would be respectable for a ship with at least some staffing requirements. The B'rels, while once again low on stats (compare to the K'vorts of the Klingons) have a great use in Ferengi decks with their cloaks (useful for protecting precious cargo). Well that pretty much wraps it up for the general overview of a much-maligned new affiliation. Soon I'll write some ideas for Ferengi deck archetypes (I've already got about three rolling about in my mind) so it shan't be long until I'm heard from again. Greg "Chairman Koval" Messenger |
