DECIPHER.com > Star Trek > Expansions > Necessary Evil

Be Prepared

by Kathy McCracken (Major Rakal)
Web Writer and Tal Shiar Agent

One of the Necessary Evil dilemmas caught my eye because it has the same name (and a similar image) as a staple in First Edition seed decks (at least post-First Contact) – Lack of Preparation. Interesting, I thought; like its predecessor, this Lack of Prep also keys off being able to meet mission requirements. But the original Lack of Prep was the quintessential anti-redshirting dilemma (my exact words in a long-ago "card extra"), and redshirting per se doesn't work in 2E. A single personnel can never solve a 2E mission, so he'll be stopped when he fails without any effect on future dilemma encounters (your opponent simply won't place any dilemmas for him to face).

So how does this Lack of Preparation work? Well, rather than being anti-redshirting in the classic sense, this one keeps you from attacking a mission with dilemma-busting skills alone, with an eye to overcoming enough dilemmas so your opponent can't field any more against a later team of mission-solvers. If you don't have all the skills needed to solve the mission (attribute totals don't count here) at the moment you face Lack of Preparation, it goes back to its owner dilemma pile... along with any remaining dilemmas you haven't already faced. With no more dilemmas to face, your personnel fail to solve the mission and are stopped. A new team will of course face another batch of dilemmas as usual, so you really haven't gained anything.

OK, so you'll just be prepared – start the mission attempt with all the skills needed for the mission – and you'll be safe from Lack of Preparation, right? Wrong. Unlike the 1E Lack of Prep, which said you just had to have had the mission requirements when you began the mission attempt, attrition is very much an issue with this new version, which says you have to have all those skills now, when you encounter it. Now your opponent can set up combos to filter out mission-required skills before the Lack of Prep. For example, if a planet mission requires Leadership or Security, they can place Kolaran Raiders first and it'll take out someone with one of those skills, making it more likely that the follow-up Lack of Preparation will hit.

Of course, that approach means having to have dilemmas to take out quite an assortment of skills, and you may well not draw one you can use for the mission at hand. In the Way solves that problem pretty neatly; if the randomly selected personnel has any of the mission skill requirements, he's stopped. So unless you've got oodles of skil redundancy, there's a very good chance you just became a little less prepared than you needed to be.

January 23, 2004