Mot's Useless Card Review #78: Treaty: Federation/Romulan/Klingon

First off, I think no one is disputing the value of this card in the sealed deck environment. Bottom line is, no treaties in a sealed deck game, and you are basically sunk. This treaty comes to the rescue. Where the cry of "uselessness" comes in is with the penalties exacted for using this in a regular game - no side decks, no attempting opponent's missions.

Playing without a Q’s Tent??? Who would dream of it? Well, people played this game for nearly two years before Q's Tent came along. A deck is certainly playable without one, especially now that there's downloading. If you build a deck the right way, using downloading to your advantage, half your deck can become a "Q's Tent", so you scarcely have need of another. The Mission Specialist deck is one particularly good example of this. When you can keep playing new copies of Assign Mission Specialists to download exactly the two people you want, do you really need a Tent? And consider the benefits. You can now mix the Specialists from three different affiliations, giving you access to new skills, and different personnel that reinforce skills you already had (meaning you have more opportunities to download the same skill more than once).

But not attempting opponent's missions??? You can get by without that, too. The main reason people mis-seed (or lightly seed) opposing locations is fear of the opponent moving too quickly. You want to get your 100 points as quickly as possible, to make sure your opponent doesn't. But there are other ways to make sure your opponent doesn't get to 100, mainly blowing them out of the stars. :-)

The Federation is really a killer battle affiliation. For personnel battles, they have Data (Prem) and Worf (Prem) with double-digit STRENGTH, Phaser Rifles, more holograms than anyone else (including the only hologram that qualifies as a leader), and enough MEDICAL personnel that a Genetronic Replicator could be used to patch together any casualities without missing a beat. In space, they have the easy-to-staff Nebula and Bozeman, some big guns (the Enterprises, particularly the E), and the speedsters (the Pasteur and Future Enterprise). The only thing stopping them from mopping up the spaceline in this silly little thing they have against combat. ;-)

Enter the three-way Treaty. You can use it even if you never intend to play all three affiliations, or even two of the three. Play it in a Federation only deck as an excuse to go out battling your opponent. Assign Mission Specialists gives you access to more than enough leaders to command an armada. You can also use matching commanders and a protected Captain’s Log to really drive home your point, or Prepare Assault Teams or Lightner and Tasha Yar-Alternate if you're planning a ground war, to get your STRENGTH bulked up quickly through downloaded weapons. The fact that you'll only be able to attempt your own missions after the battling isn't that important - you've got all the time in the world to complete missions once you've slaughtered all the personnel in your opponent's deck, or destroyed their outpost.

A little strange, really... usually treaties are about peace and harmony. :-)