Mot's Useless Card Review #19: Dopppelganger

First, a little explanation of this card, because it seems that not everyone totally understands it. The Doppelganger simply means this: Player A has a Jean-Luc Picard (Prem) in play. Player B also has a Jean-Luc Picard in play. Player B plays a Doppelganger, then his Jean-Luc boards a ship, and moves to the spaceline location that Player A's Jean-Luc is currently at. Player A's Jean-Luc dies. It works both ways. Next turn, Player A reports another Jean-Luc, and moves it to where Player B's Jean-Luc is located. Now, Player B's Jean-Luc dies. (The "original" is not the one there first - it's the one doing the moving.)

So now that you're clear on how Doppelganger works, you'll probably start thinking what a lot of people think: that it's fairly useless. How can you be sure what affiliation your opponent is playing? And even if you do, how will you know what personnel they are using?

Well, that's actually the easy part. To the first question: no, you don't know what affiliation your opponent will play (unless you happen to be up against an opponent you are familiar with, known for a certain affiliation choice - i.e., Major Rakal, Sela's Consort, etc. ;-) ). Solution: play ALL the affiliations. It only takes the loss of one or two critical personnel to really cripple most players. Also, most players rely heavily on Non-Aligned personnel, which can be found in nearly ALL decks.

So, the second question: what personnel will they play? Well, players are as a whole fairly predictable in this department, myself included I admit. Just to test my own guesses, I did last week's survey, asking everyone to list the three personnel of each affiliation included in every deck they build (using that affiliation). I threw out the universal personnel (immune to Doppelganger), and was left with a list of personnel you'll see in nearly 90% of all decks playing the affiliation in question. There weren't really any surprises:

NON-ALIGNED

• Roga Danar (only ONE player doesn't use him!)
• Galen
• Dathon

FEDERATION

• Data (Prem)
• Beverly Crusher (Prem)
• Jean-Luc Picard

KLINGON

• Governor Worf
• Mogh
• Kitrik

ROMULAN

• Major Rakal
• Sirol
• Taris

Take those twelve cards, add a Doppelganger, and you've got yourself the perfect Q’s Tent side deck! Use your Tents to grab personnel as your opponent plays them. (If they aren't playing a given affiliation, it's no loss to you - just don't Tent for those cards.) You can really slow down your opponent by killing off their linchpin cards with the Doppelganger.

Other Non-Aligned personnel that pop up frequently (people you might play in your draw deck) include Dr. Reyga, Nick Locarno, Madam Guinan and Marouk. Then, depending on which affiliation you actually want to play yourself, you can include these other popular folks from the three major affiliations: Geordi LaForge, Rachel Garrett, Spock, Gowron, Kurn, Kahlest, Sela, Telak, Mirok. Another good strategy is to pick all the unique MEDICAL or SECURITY personnel and stock your seed deck with dilemmas requiring the same classification. Just don't be the first to play a personnel; wait for your opponent to play it first.

No need to fear the Clone Machine, yet. And you'll note that Katherine Pulaski isn't on the above list. Not one of the people responding to the survey listed her, in fact. So all you need to guard against is Kevin Uxbridge. Q2s or Rishon Uxbridges will do that - take your pick. Voila! One sneaky strategy, ready for play.