DECIPHER.com > Star Trek > Expansions > Reflections 2.0

Borg Dial-A-Skill v95

by Michael R. Keller
"36 of 38"

Missions (5)
Unimatrix, Root of the Hive Mind
Evacuate Colony
Investigate Alien Probe
Kressari Rendezvous
Rescue Prisoners

Dilemma Pile (23)
3 Disruptor Accident
3 Full Security Alert
2 Kolaran Raiders
2 Magnetic Field Disruptions
2 Misguided Activist
3 Personal Duty
3 Picking Up the Pieces
3 Tragic Turn
2 Unexpected

Drawdeck (53)
3 Borg Queen, Guardian of the Hive
1 Locutus, Voice of the Borg
3 Annexation Drone
1 Five of Twelve, Secondary Adjunct of Trimatrix 942
1 Seven of Nine, Representative of the Hive
2 Computation Drone
2 Information Drone
2 Invasive Drone
3 Opposition Drone
3 Requisitions Drone
1 Allocation Drone
2 Archival Drone
2 Cartography Drone
2 Defragmentation Drone
1 Guidance Drone
2 Preservation Drone
3 Borg Sphere
2 Sphere 634
1 Bat'leth
3 Abduction
3 Distant Exploration
3 Expand the Collective
1 Feast on the Dying
3 Knowledge and Experience
3 Reborn

Drawdeck Strategy
"Captain! Help! Please help!" Well, as I said in my previous article on the Borg, I have charged myself with:

TASK: Review knowledge of newly-assimilated cards. Incorporate.

So incorporate them I shall. This deck adds a couple of new toys, in the form of Annexation Drone and Requisitions Drone. The Annexation Drone melds very nicely with the Alpha Quadrant strategy debuted last time around. By giving us up-front points it allows us to replace the costly The Will of the Collective with the "no-cost" (save for Annexation Drone's five points) interrupt Reborn. This will allow us to set up possibly a whole turn earlier. Requisitions Drone is just great all around. Not only is his cost effectively one since he lets you draw a card, but he lets you choose any one of the top four cards to draw. As anyone who has played Borg knows, you rarely want to draw a second Cartography Drone or Sphere 634 when you haven't even left the Unicomplex. Requisitions Drone lets you tuck that spare Borg Queen safely underneath your deck, waiting to be called up by the inevitable Secret Identity, instead of having to spend a point drawing her. Distant Exploration, another new addition to the deck, lends some redundancy to our bonus points, and on rare occasion, can even turn this into a two-mission deck! Reflections sure went out of its way to encourage an Alpha Quadrant invasion by our beloved Borg.

Dilemma Strategy
Our Tragic Turn dilemma pile itself got a major boost from Reflections, in the form of Full Security Alert. I cannot overemphasize how well these cards work together. The trend is towards multiple security personnel in any away team, and most personnel played today are cost two or less. In beating this dead horse back to life, let's take a look at how well this combo works against public enemy number one, Klingon Riker. This overpowered deck (based on Andrew Ehret's Day 3 winning deck at Worlds 2004) has nine Security personnel, representing one-third of the total. "What percentage of these Security personnel are cost two or less?", you may ask. 100%. That's right, every single one of them costs two or less. You are basically able to stop an entire away team when you combine Full Security Alert with Tragic Turn. Stopping six personnel out of nine for six cost in dilemmas when only putting three underneath and keeping Tragic Turn around for the future sounds pretty good to me! And it's not as if your opponent can afford to just not bring Security personnel along, as two of his three main missions, Rescue Prisoners and Brute Force, require it.

December 6, 2004