Vedeks, Vortas, Guls, and Oo-Mox:
Aiding Affiliations in Holodeck Adventures

by Sean O'Reilly

The Voyager expansion introduced the Kazon and Vidiian affiliations as well as giving the Federation and Non-Aligned affiliations a great playable presence in the Delta Quadrant. The Borg expansion then expanded that quadrant even further by adding the Hirogen and boosting up the drones in black with new personnel, objectives, and incidents.

With all the excitement out by the Caretaker's Array, some players were wondering what might become of the affiliations that were mainly portrayed in Deep Space Nine. Simple... they're ready to be enhanced by great cards found in Holodeck Adventures!

Let's go in alphabetical order and begin by discussing the Bajorans. The City of B'Hala was thought to be a Bajoran legend until the Emissary found it with the help of a painting. This use-as-equipment artifact can really mess up an opponent's carefully thought out dilemma order, because it allows you to encounter seed cards in the reverse order at a [Baj] mission where it's present. Imagine the possibilities... in space, you could score 10 points from Crystalline Entity before getting your Music and Youth personnel "stopped" by Ooby Dooby. Or how about on a planet... where the Denevan Neural Parasites are overcome before the Common Thief steals your phaser.

But that's not all our favorite earring-wearing affliation gets. Similar to the "Plans" objectives for the Cardassians and Romulans, the Bajoran Resistance Cell is a nice way to report your Resistance personnel for free. It's also the centerpiece of Bajoran espionage deck since the objective allows you to download any Bajoran Espionage card to one of your missions. Now it becomes quite simple to throw off an opponent by disguising your Bajoran deck to resemble a different affiliation deck instead.

Moving on to the Cardassians, the spoonheads can make good use of The City of B'Hala, too. Alter Records, the Bajoran homeworld mission, has a Cardassian icon allowing the Cardies an easy way to acquire the artifact. To get maximum use out of B'Hala you'd want to go attempt Cardassia Prime with HQ: Secure Homeworld or the other two Bajor region missions that have a Cardassian and Bajoran icon on them.

Playing with Guls and sick of Bajorans? Team up with the Dominion War Efforts! This event card is immune to Kevin Uxbridge and prevents your Assign Support Personnel card from being discarded when you download a Cardassian or Dominion "support personnel." You could download two Cardy Holograms found in Holodeck Adventures, or take a look through your binder where you'll find eight Cardassian personnel with exactly two regular skills. Probably the most useful ones you can download through the War Effort are Telle (universal SECURITY with MEDICAL and Computer Skill), Daro (ENGINEER with Astrophyics and Transporter Skill), and Aramax (MEDICAL with SCIENCE and Greed). Imagine -- report a Gul for free to Central Command, using your card play to report a personnel, and then downloading a support personnel all on the same turn!

Finally, you could build a Cardassian "Resistance" theme deck. Rusot allows your [Car] personnel with resistance in their lore to report where he's present. Both the useful Kira and Legate Damar are part of the Cardassian resistance movement as are four other Cardassian personnel in Holodeck Adventures - including Garak's favorite lady, Mila, who has the same special download as Bariel. With Legate Damar's download of For Cardassia! and all these new "resistance" personnel, I think it could be lots of fun to portray his retaking of Cardassia Prime through the card game.

Next up comes the Dominion. It's pretty safe to assume Dominion War Efforts might be useful for the Dominion, too! Both Dominion personnel in Holodeck Adventures are holograms -- but each can be downloaded with the War Effort. Looking through your Dominion binder you'll find nine more "support personnel" downloadable via Assign Support Personnel. In my opinion, the best are Varat'idan (SECURITY with Astrophyics, Geology and CUNNING of 8), and Temo'zuma (SECURITY with ENGINEER and Transporter Skill). If you use the War Effort in combination with Deyos and a Jem'Hadar Birthing Chamber, you'll have a nice personnel reporting/card drawing mechanism going.

Two incident cards found in Holodeck Adventures can also aid the Dominion. First is the Clone Machine. Yes, the card mentioned way back in 1994 in the premiere rule booklet is finally here. You can seed or play it on any [Dom] facility. One of its uses allows you to suspend play if your Vorta just died to download to that location any version of that persona. So if Weyoun happens to die in glorious battle (or at the hands of Worf again), simply fetch another Weyoun and you won't have to worry about not having any Vorta around to ration Ketracel-White for your Jemmies.

The Jem'Hadar Shrouding incident represents the cloaking ability of the Jem'Hadar that allows them to make a sneak attack against your opponent's personnel. After seeding or playing it on the table, you'll be able to place Jem'Hadar from your hand underneath the incident. Then at a later time, when an opponent has an Away Team on any planet other than a homeworld, you can play another Shrouding for free to play an equal number of Jem'Hadar from underneath the incident on the table directly to that Away Team. I can think of two great combos that come from this incident. After an opponent solves a mission, "stop" their Away Team with Mission Debriefing, and then on your turn go in for the kill. Play the Shrouding incident for free and then play Prepare Assault Teams to download to your Away Team one hand weapon (Jem'Hadar Disruptor Rifle comes to mind). The other combo prevents your opponent from getting away: use Scanner Interference to download Atmospheric Ionization and Distortion Field... then reveal your own White Deprivation so your Jem'Hadar will continue to attack your opponent's personnel at the start of each of your turns until everyone is dead.

And finally we come to the Ferengi. Though no lobed personnel will debut in Holodeck Adventures, there are plenty of other "orange" cards to satisfy you. First are two interesting event cards. Ferengi Financial Data Net allows you to discard your hand to draw a card for each unique [Fer] Greed personnel you have in play. Since sixteen such personnel exist (not counting duplicate personas) you easily could draw up a large number of cards. With Ishka allowing you to report Gold-Pressed Latinum for free and the Tower of Commerce allowing you to report one V.I.P., CIVILIAN, or Hupyrian for free you can get lots of personnel and latinum into play quickly with the card-drawing ability of the Data Net.

Every male Ferengi loves to receive Oo-Mox. So why shouldn't you benefit, too? When you play the event it "stops" all male Ferengi in play (including your opponent's). Until the countdown expires, all male Ferengi are attributes +2 and have their regular skills doubled. If you are able to "unstop" your crew or Away Team, you can benefit from Oo-Mox right away... either way, the doubling of skills should aid your Ferengi in overcoming dilemmas.

After Oo-Mox... what else do male Ferengi like to do? Play Tongo! When you "play" this game you declare a "move". Then both players make a bet from their hand (a personnel card -- yours must be Ferengi). Then the the player with the highest total attributes on the bet is the winner. You look at the "move" list on the Tongo card (similar to a probe list) to see what results from the Tongo game you just played. There are benefits for winning a bet. Acquire allows you to draw two cards after discarding the bet. Confront lets you report the bet. Evade allows you to place the bet underneath the draw deck while the opponent must discard their bet. Use Meditation or Reclamation with "Evade" and you can get back your personnel in no time.

Need to get a bartender at Quark's Bar quickly? Download one using I'm a Doctor, Not a Bartender by discarding a MEDICAL personnel. And talking about Quark's... remember what's on the second level of his bar? The Holosuite. This universal site must play next to Quark's Bar or another Holosuite. If you seed Treaty: Federation/Bajoran, any Federation, Bajoran, or Non-Aligned [Holo] personnel and any [Holo] equipment can report there. With over 30 such cards in the game following the release of Holodeck Adventures, you'll be on your way to a good Ferengi/Hologram deck. The key element for such a deck is Gegis since he allows your [Holo] and [Fer] personnel to mix at his location. Plus, the D'Kora-class transport Gegis commands, the Trullux, even has a holodeck. Another of the Holosuite's functions allows you to transfer the holographic personnel and equipment from the suite to your ship (when it's docked at the station). Once the holograms are aboard the Trullux, travel to a planet mission where you played a Holo-Projectors, beam everyone but Gegis down, and attempt the mission with no fear of a hologram dying. If one deactivates, you can just reactivate him next turn.

Regardless of what affiliation you play, there is something in Holodeck Adventures for you. From cool Original Series stuff to Delta Quadrant missions to bombing planets... it's in here. So uncork your Dom Perignon, raise your glass and toast a great set!

December 3, 2001