These days, Star Trek CCG dilemmas require you to have a wide variety of skills on hand, but on the other hand, some dilemmas will penalize you for throwing too many personnel at a mission at once. For this week's contest, you'll assemble the most compact, versatile, all-purpose Away Team possible, with minimum redundancy. Here's how it works:

• All personnel must be compatible without any additional cards – you're limited to Non-Aligned plus one other affiliation. (Select an affiliation for dual-affiliation personnel.) A "does not work with" restriction means incompatible.
• Ignore [AU] icons, quadrants, and [Holo] icons.
• You may have only one version of each persona in your Away Team.
• The Away Team must have at least one of each of the seven personnel types listed below, as either a classification or a skill. Multiples are acceptable.
• The Away Team must have exactly one personnel with each of the 24 skills listed below. It's OK for one personnel to have a double or triple of the skill, but only one personnel can have each skill. Example: you could use Pardek (Diplomacy x2 + Treachery), but not Alidar Jarok (Navigation + Leadership) with Tomalak (Diplomacy + Leadership),
• Assume no other personnel in play. If you want Ves Alkar to have Diplomacy x2, you'll need a female Empath in the Away Team.
• No skills may be added, subtracted, or altered by non-personnel cards. Any "selectable" skills must be self-contained. For example, your Soong-type Android could select CIVILIAN (or any other) classification, but your Lal cannot have skills selected from outside the Away Team.

The Away Team with the smallest number of personnel (not cards) will be the winner. In the event of a tie for number of personnel, the most unusual or original Away Team among the tied entries will be the winner. (For example, a non-Federation Away Team, or one that also included additional unlisted skills, such as Guramba, would get the edge.) In the event of a lack of originality, one winner will be selected randomly from the tied entries. Contest judge's decision is final.

The Winner and His Solution

For this contest we received only 47 complete entries. Lots of people came up with viable 8-personnel combos for their "Swiss Army" (some of them non-Federation!), but only one entry pared the list down to 7: Mark Westley, of Orchard Park, New York. (Two other entries claiming 7 personnel turned out to have problems – one had 7 personnel cards but 8 personnel with one dual, and the other had overlooked Honor.) Congratulations, Mark, on your unique solution, listed below. The table of skills indicates which personnel, by number, provides each skill.

P.S. I'd be interested to see if there are any other 7-personnel solutions to this exercise, especially using other affiliations. The first three people to send me another unique valid solution before the end of February 2002 will each get a complimentary pack of Holodeck Adventures. Send it by email, in the same format as this card list, to majorrakal@decipher.com, with SWISS ARMY in the subject line. Include your full name and mailing address.