Mot's Useless Card Review #52: Klingon Right of Vengeance

I mean, yikes!!!

Take a look at the new personnel battle rules from First Contact, which supercede the old "Away Team battle" rules. Adversaries are paired off individually in combat. When my team attacks yours, I shuffle all my personnel, you do the same for yours, and then we play "war", pairing off our people one at a time. Whoever has a higher STRENGTH wins, stunning their adversary if their STRENGTH is greater, and mortally wounding them if their STRENGTH is twice as high. After the pairings are finished, we also total up the STRENGTH of the un-stunned, un-wounded personnel remaining and randomly select a person to die as per the original Away Team battle rules.

This opens up the possibility to attack a force larger than yours, but still inflict serious damage. How about a hypothetical situation where you send down 4 of your toughest Klingons (STRENGTHs 8 and 9) to attack an Away Team of 7 of your opponent's personnel stopped on a planet. Even if your Klingons stun a few of your adversaries, odds are still good their total STRENGTH will beat yours at the end of the combat, and you'll lose a personnel to random selection. You can then play your Right of Vengeance, and the 3 surviving Klingons can then reattack and quite likely mortally wound (or at the very least, stun) as many as three adveraries. The surviving 4 adversaries (average 7 STRENGTH each) won't be able to beat your 3 doubled Klingons (average 16 each!), so you'll kill another personnel in the final random selection. The net result is sacrificing one personnel to kill 4 of your opponent's.

Or get even more cruel... make use of the newly unveiled Prepare Assault Teams objective. With the objective in play, you may separate your Away Team into two different "assault teams." The attacker chooses which one will actually go into battle; the other team does not participate and is not stopped. So send down every Klingon at your disposal, and separate them into two Teams: one Team is made up of a sacrificial Klingon (or Klingons), and the other Team consists of everybody else. You as the attacker get to choose which Team advances into battle. It is a face-down blind choice, but it's easy enough to tell which is the smaller, sacrificial pile. ;-) When one of those Klingons from the small, weak group is killed by the enemy, the second Team (which is still present), may use Klingon Right of Vengeance to join their companions and immediately attack with double STRENGTH.

It quickly becomes clear why a player might choose not to retaliate against an attacker. But then, if you send in a strong, powerful Klingon force, your opponent will then be in a lose/lose position. Bring along a few Targs or Klingon Disruptors - remember that Prepare Assault Teams let's you download a weapon when you play it. Your opponent must either allow you to decimate their ranks, or retaliate.... and allow you to decimate their ranks.

I mean, yikes!!!