Ultimatum
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| Ultimatum |
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Well it has been a while my friends and the House of Koloth has been strangely silent. Ah but the stories of honorable warriors once again fills the hall. In the wake of Rules of Acquisitions and one of the hottest topics on the board I though I should review one of my favorite cards from Blaze of Glory. Although I must admit that it was the Ferengi that spurred me on to its use. Let’s take a look at Ultimatum.
This card has recently stirred up controversy in the STCCG play environment as players debate the Trek since of one of its side effects but I will save that for last for in my humble opinion it is the side effect of this card that makes it such a good card for non-dominion affiliations. Let’s take a look at the cards uses one at a time.
First of all this card was primarily intended for the use of the Dominion. After all why else would the card sport the cute face of a Jem’Hadar warrior. Once per game this card allows a Dominion Engineer to download a Remote Supply Depot to a Dominion icon mission of yours with two equipment cards. This is perfect for those who like to use the Jem’Hadar to conquer the Alpha Quadrant. You need an Outpost to reset Ketracel White anyway and you get to select two equipment cards to boot. Maybe you want a spare White supply or maybe a weapon of some kind and Echo Papa 601 Killer drone. Ouch I hate to even think about Jem’Hadar with one or two of those babies. Really useful if you are employing an Invasive Transporter strategy. Probably not as useful otherwise but two equipment cards can be really handy.
Next is the ability to use this card to score bonus points by blowing up ships. Again this is a Dominion only use. At least one ship involved in the attack must be Dominion. You then get to take your opponents just destroyed ship and place it in your point pile. This will get you on average 7 or 8 points and it prevents them from retrieving that ship and using it again later. If they have only 3 or 4 ships in their deck they may be in trouble fast. You must also discard Ultimatum but this isn’t all bad. At least it goes to your discard pile. Use a Palor Toff to retrieve it and your back in business to score more points from another ship. You could conceivably score quite a few points with the reuse of one or two Ultimatums. With the Dominion limited on ways they can score bonus points this card will be the ticket to fill in the holes on points to get you to the magic 100 points for a victory. However I wouldn’t recommend a battle strategy with the Klingons though. Pound for pound they still have the strongest fleet. But everyone else should be pretty easy pickings and Klingons can to if you catch them off guard. After all I have heard of peaceful Klingon decks.
This brings us to the remaining use for Ultimatum which is actually listed first but as I said earlier I wanted to save the best use for last. If you seed it you can immediately download a Bajoran Wormhole which in turns downloads the other end into the Gamma Quadrant. This gives the Dominion quick access to the Alpha Quadrant all citizens of the Alpha Quadrant quick access to the big point missions in the Gamma Quadrant. Seems safe enough. However its greatest power in use is that it creates a Bajoran Region Location of span 1. If you look at the text on Deep Space 9/Terok Nor the cards reads seeds at a Bajoran Region Location and not a Bajoran Region Mission. Since the Wormhole is indeed a location it is a valid location for seeding Deep Space 9/Terok Nor. I have it on good authority that Mot has ruled that all of this is true. So let’s look at how you can seed it and what are the advantages of having the station at the wormholes.
First off the best use is to seed Ultimatum as you first seed during the dilemma phase. You get to immediately download into play Bajoran Wormhole. If there is no other Bajoran Region location in play you get full control over where your station is placed. Place right next to that mission you plan on completing first. Or place it to optimize a Cargo Run by deciding where another facility of your will be and placing several short span missions in between it and DS9. You can be in complete control of your facility positioning with it. Having facilities ideally positioned can speed your game up by a turn or two which can make all the difference in a close game.
Ultimatum also allows you to use DS9 even if you do not want to waste a mission on a Bajoran Region Location. The reason I came up with it is that I was building a Ferengi deck and really didn’t want to use Acquire Illicit Explosives as I wanted to use bigger point space missions than 25 and none of the Bajoran Region Planets cannot be attempted by the Ferengi without Bribery. The solution use the Bajoran Wormhole for DS9 and use the missions I wanted for scoring points. This gives all affiliations with a less costly way to use DS9. Your Federation or Romulans want to play Dabo? No problem and you don’t even have to use a mission that you can’t attempt.
Using the Wormhole as your DS9 location will protect your station from nasty dilemmas like The Sheliak and Dalrok. Both are favorites at Bajoran Region Missions as your odds are good at getting the site of DS9. Since your opponent can’t seed dilemmas at the Wormholes you are safe from unscrupulous players who will trigger one or both of these dilemmas at your stations location.
What if you want to your Bajorans to make Cargo runs? If you place the Wormhole at the end of the Region and make sure you use Relocate Settlers, you can have a long run which you can complete quickly. This can greatly speed up card draws and equipment downloading.
My assessment is that the Ferengi will be able to take the greatest advantage from using Ultimatum to get DS9 into play followed by the Cardassians and Bajorans. Don’t rule out the other affiliations though since you can only play Dabo at Quark’s Bars and there are already plenty of reasons to use a Nor anyway. So maybe the Federation can issue an Ultimatum after all. Play Dabo or else!
Until next time.
Qapla'!
Koloth
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Koloth. This page last updated on January 27, 2000. |
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