Mot's Useless Card Review #49: Royale Casino: Craps

In a big tournament with high caliber players like the World Championship, it is a foregone conclusion that you're gonna take a loss now and then. Even David Bowling took two losses on his road to capturing the World Championship (one of them by a full 100 margin). It is extremely important that if you are going to lose, you should do everything possible to minimize that loss. Never let yourself be shutout. I was lucky in that regard - I scored points in all 13 games I played at the Championships.

One technique I've used (and had used on my in the Kansas City Open) to guarantee points are the Royale Casino side games, the surest way to quick points there is. Both Casinos and Sarjenka team up to make a handy little 17 point combo for seeding somewhere convenient (Q’s Planet being a prime target!) - and remember your opponent also loses 5 points in the deal for a net 22 points score difference.

Early on in your game, make a dash for your points. Since you know the games are coming, you can prepare your hand to have as close to 21 total CUNNING as possible, including a personnel with a CUNNING of 7 or 11. Or you can put Mickey D. in your deck and take care of the games even more easily. (And there may yet be more Royal Casino side games - Mickey D. only grows more useful everytime one is printed.) By seeding Sarjenka after the Casino games, you are safe from "red-shirting" even if there are more dilemmas seeded at the mission. Just play your games, then stop to help Sarjenka to not only stop your crew, but get 5 points in the process. If you don't want to sacrifice another seed slot for the Sarjenka, you could instead consider Emergency Transporter Armbands to escape from the mission attempt in between dilemmas.

It is possible to try a deck entirely based off the Royale Casino strategy. While it is very unlikely you will manage a 100-0 win, you can stock a deck full of Rogue Borg Mercenaries (with the new Lore card, too) to make sure your opponent isn't going anywhere but their outpost. Meanwhile, you can zip up the line playing games. 17 points per 6 missions is a 102 point victory. Best case scenario would be if your opponent is playing all planet - you can do their missions by including one personnel of each affiliation to accompany Mickey D on a grand tour of every location on the spaceline, not having to worry about how conspicuous it looks to seed all your dilemmas under your own missions. Meanwhile, your Rogue Borg will keep the opponent from actually completing any of the missions you've left empty. And by the end of it all, your opponent will have lost 30 points to the 6 Blackjacks, so perhaps you really could manage a shutout.

Bring on the poker and slots! :-)