Historical Research

I am always happy to go first in the games I play. Whenever that coin flip or dice roll falls in my favor, I do not complain. Granted, I try not to complain when it doesn't fall in my favor either, but I know that if I'm paired against a similar deck, I'll be relying heavily on my dilemmas to buy me the extra turn needed for the win.

Now that the April Fool's version of Historical Research is just a fading memory, you can take comfort in what the real version can do; when you go second in a match, you can still have an advantage. "At the start of your turn, if this is your first turn and any opponent has had a turn, you may download a personnel." What an advantage, right?! The playing field certainly seems more level now. The only question remaining is, "How can you maximize this advantage?"

First off, because the mission requires Archaeology and Anthropology you cannot use it with Jean-Luc Picard, Vintner or Alexander Rozhenko, K'mtar for downloading madness. So what personnel might you want to download in any given game? Well, let's look at those personnel that let you download something, my favorite being Opaka, Kai of Bajor, who lets you download another Bajoran-affiliation personnel. We also have Kathryn Janeway, Wry Admiral who lets you download How Would You Like a Trip to Romulus?, allowing you to turn your personnel download into a ship-Commander pair. In addition, you have any number of personnel from each affiliation that allow you to download a ship when you play them. Also, there are a number of personnel, Uhura, Skilled Technician, Fourth, Neonatal Drone, Noonien Soong, Often-Wrong, and Kira Nerys, The Intendant, who all download a variety of cards.

It will be up to you to determine if replacing one of your missions with this one will help your deck. Do you have a key personnel that would really speed-up your deck if you could play him or her on the first turn? Is one personnel a focal point of your draw deck? Maybe a personnel is key to your mission attempts. Whatever the reason, I expect to see this mission showing up in more and more deck lists.

Live long, prosper, and go second.