DECIPHER.com > Star Trek > Expansions > Reflections 2.0

Guidance of the Council

by Michael van Breemen

Most card games don't have fixed outcomes; there's an element of randomness that can run afoul even the best of deck design intentions. So naturally, when cards come along that may help reduce that amount of randomness, we have to give them some consideration.

Case in point, we have the zero-cost event Guidance of the Council. It reads, "When you play a Diplomacy personnel, you may download a Chancellor or High Council Member." Excluding Kell, who is a Romulan-affiliation personnel, all personnel with either of these titles/keywords are Klingon, both in species and affiliation. Many of them are worth considering if you're planning to use Guidance of the Council.

K'Tal, one of those personnel, works great with this kind of emphasis because of his ability to download an event of your choice whenever a High Council Member or Chancellor is played at his location. Also worth considering is K'mpec. While his ability is not triggered by High Council Members or Chancellors specifically, it is keyed off the skill of Honor, which many of them have. The result is that he allows you to draw a card by cycling a card underneath your deck (once per turn, when he is at the mission the honor Klingon reports to). Another option for Guidance of the Council is Gowron, Leader of the High Council. His ability allows you to download a Klingon of your choice, so long as he/she has honor. Also, let us not forget the new Alexander Rozhenko, who can give us a pair of event downloads, each playable at a cost reduction of three. Since the majority of the Chancellors and High Council Members have Diplomacy, why not take advantage of it? Plus, since Guidance keys off Diplomacy personnel, you could continually download and report personnel however you'd wish with each report of a Diplomacy-skilled Klingon.

The ability to pick and choose whom you need out of your deck, even if limited to only Chancellors and High Council members, shouldn't be ignored, even if it means that you're just downloading them to hand for a Riker-discarding/The Promise-skill-and-attribute-grabbing sandwich. This is especially true if you're making a deck around the Diplomacy Klingons and Alexander Rozhenko.

December 10, 2004