(3) • Sela, Supervising OperativeRomulan Personnel of Human / Romulan species. Will there be any physical evidence of what you are going to do to him?" Characteristics: affiliation, download, download - Capture (cards), download - Punishment (cards), download - specific cards, Commander, personnel who has a cost of 3 or more, Human species, Romulan species. Card logging info: First edited by Telak at Jul 24th, 2011. One quality log by eberlems at Jul 26th, 2011. Please support openCards and validate game text of this card a second time! | (6) • Goraxus, Lying in WaitRomulan Ship (D'deridex Class / Cloaking Device ) "How will we be certain your procedure has been successful?" Characteristics: engagement, affiliation, discard a specific card from hand, D'deridex-class, Cloaking Device, ship with four or more staffing icons. Card logging info: First edited by Telak at Jul 24th, 2011. One quality log by eberlems at Jul 28th, 2011. Please support openCards and validate game text of this card a second time! |
This Card-Review article was written by openCards user KaiserK and was published first on "The Continuing Committee (trekcc.org)" at Jul 22nd, 2011.
Yesterday's card, Sela (Supervising Operative), allows you to download two Capture cards when you play her. While this is a nice effect, it may not be enough to convince players to use this version of Tasha Yar's daughter over previous incarnations. Two downloads are not too shabby, but what really useful cards are there to grab from your deck? To help you make that decision, let us have a look at Sela's ride.
The Goraxus has the regular attributes of a D'deridex-class warbird, meaning it is decently equipped to deal with smaller vessels without resorting to cards that pump its Weapons or Shields higher than the printed value of nine. The Range of seven, though, is not on par with other classes, as it lacks the crucial ability to move back and forth between Romulus and a two-span planet mission without helper cards (Special Modifications, Astrometrics Lab, or even The Reman Mines can help easily).
However, this matters little if you look at the ship's gametext. You get to capture a random personnel aboard the losing ship – in addition to any effects the Maneuver card used to begin that engagement provides (if any; the order on the Goraxus also gives you the option of beginning an engagement by simply discarding a Capture card from hand)! So this brings us right back to Sela and the question about what capture cards to download.
Here is a deck suggestion that uses Sela to download The Enterprise Incident, a seldom-played card from Call to Arms. With a cost of four counters, the event is rather expensive to play, but it not only allows you to capture a personnel with a specific skill (Leadership), it also allows other ships to join that engagement! Throw in a cheap Bird-of-Prey with an Intelligence personnel aboard, and you should be ready to successfully battle even the big guns like Borg Cubes and the U.S.S. Defiant.
So we have a ship and an Engagement card that can net us two captives (one Leadership, one random personnel) with every victorious shootout in space. Not bad, but let us find some more synergy here. Since The Enterprise Incident is expensive, why waste four counters playing it? We will take Standing Your Ground to keep the costs down – we have Sela as the corresponding commander of the Goraxus in the deck anyway, and by using three copies each of Standing Your Ground and The Enterprise Incident, we have fuel for six engagements that could potentially result in twelve captives over the course of the game.
But why stop there? Since we are targeting Leadership personnel anyway, we might as well build a dilemma pile around Dignitaries and Witnesses, which requires three Leadership to overcome, and try to lock out our opponent on that skill. Tal'Aura, Impatient Senator can go in our deck, too, to assassinate Leadership personnel hiding on planets; Far-Seeing Eyes can remove anything from the deck that gives our strategy headaches (like Rescue Captives, Admirals or Generals, skill cheating interrupts, etc.); and if we use Keras, Creature of Duty, piloting the Gal Gath'thong, Pride of the Praetor as our wingman, we can add Insult to injury by forcing the opponent to ditch even more cards any time we move that ship.
Of course, this is only a rough draft. Sela and the Goraxus really open up the door to some combolicious fun – try and see what you can do with a joint Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order fleet!