The next four columns will look at the four "categories" of attributes, and the conflicts that relate to them.  These are Intrigue, Military, Diplomacy, and Psi.

So we come to Intrigue first.  Typically, the Centauri are best at Intrigue.  The Minbari (thanks to Early Warning and Secret Vorlon Aid) are no slouches, and the Humans can usually keep up.  The Narn are not bad, but not quite at a level with the other three.

An overall observation on Intrigue:  relying on it probably won't win you the game.  There is no Conflict card that directly gives you Influence. Attacking Pawns can give you Influence, but you need to succeed by a great deal to do so.

There are two Agendas that give Influence for Intrigue:  Knowledge is Power and Infiltrate & Exploit.  The latter is a bit more flexible and less expensive.  The former is more effective, though, and gives you +2 Intrigue for other Conflicts.

Intrigue is easy to boost.  Exploit Opportunities is an excellent card for this, since it gives you +1 Diplomacy as well.  Learning Experience and Successful Manipulation are also useful here.  Other Intrigue boosters and providers include:  Morden, Covert Allies, Underworld Connections, Extended Contacts, Secret Police, and Influential Lords and Immolan V (Centauri only).  Lack of Subtlety and Seduction are good in the opposite direction, lowering an opposing character's Intrigue.  For Lack of Subtlety, remember to use it "before" they rotate to oppose you.

So what do you do with Intrigue?  Mess up your opponents, basically.  Let's run down the list.

Attacking Pawns:  Good for removing characters, but can only target Supporting characters.  Since you gain double benefits if you succeed by 10, it's likely people will oppose you heavily on this.

Bio-Weapon Discovery:  Good if you are going to use a Military-based strategy.  It requires that you win by at least five, though, and penalizes you if you fail.

Black Market:  Not bad, but currently a bit expensive since you have to rotate lots of characters to get a decent discount.  By the current rules, the character you rotate to actually sponsor the card gives you a 1 point discount as well.

Court the Rebellious:  Useful if you use characters from other races.  Best used with cards that raise another player's unrest.

Dishonor:  You need to play this when you have high total Intrigue.  Use after your target player has offended someone else, so the offended party will help you out.

Forced Impairment:  Perhaps the most powerful Intrigue Conflict.  This erases all rules text from a card.  That Agenda giving you a problem?  Erase it.  Kosh handing out too many Vorlon marks.  Erase that.  Good for stopping a near-winning player, and you'll probably get help in
doing so.

Free The Souls:  Don't bother unless you typically play a lot of opponents using Soul Hunters.

Hate Crime:  Good for an anti-B5 campaign.  Only works on supporting characters.  Expensive if you want to remove characters from play.  See Kidnapping and Attacking Pawns.

Hunter, Prey:  A good early-game Conflict.  However, considering the relatively small payoff (+2 Intrigue), your resources might better be spent elsewhere.

Kidnapping:  Good for taking out any character, supporting or Inner Circle.  Can be difficult to succeed against high-Ability characters, but since it merely removes them, you're more likely to gain support than with Hate Crime or Attacking Pawns, which have secondary effects.

Muddy the Waters:  Good for recycling Conflicts.

Na'Ka'Leen Feeder:  A weaker version of Temptations.  The target player gets to choose which character is demoted/removed.

Precision Strike:  Only usable if you follow a Shadow- based strategy.  Good for getting rid of those end-game winning Agendas.

Psi Interrogation:  See Psi conflicts in Part 12.

Purge the Disloyal:  There are easier ways to reduce your unrest.  Good if you play a lot of games where other players use your characters: otherwise forget it.

Sabotage:  Difficult to succeed at unless you have overwhelming levels of Intrigue.  Good for eliminating small annoyance fleets, particular the Narn's.

Sponsor Rebels:  Amusing to use on Sleeping Z'ha'dum, if nothing else - never knew they had a rebel force, did you?  :)  It's very hard to "kill" a Location in this manner, however, and the price of failure is high...unless you _want_ Doom marks.

Technological Espionage:  Good if you plan on going to war, particularly against your "rival" race (Centauri vs. Narn, Human vs. Minbari).  Can also be useful if you expect your rival to assault you regularly (typically Centauri and Humans being beseiged).

Temptations:  A _very_ useful "removal" card.  You only need to succeed by five no matter how powerful the target character is.  Play on un-promotable characters like Luis Santiago or Emperor Turhan to essentially remove them from play.

Terrorist Bombings:  One of my favorite cards.  It won't win you any friends, but it will probably get two Ambassadors out of your hair next turn.  Use one of your Agenda Intrigue conflicts then, with minimal opposition.

Witness Protection:  Another favorite of this author's.  Remove characters using Temptations or Kidnapping, then bring them back into play on your side.  Beware of players who use measures that stop other players from using their own race's characters.

So how do you employ these Conflicts?  The basic Intrigue-based strategy is to get lots of Intrigue, distract and destroy your opponents, then use one of the Agendas mentioned above to increase Influence.

Since neither of those Agendas give you Power, you'll want to get as close to 20 as you can, and then switch to a different Agenda.  For the Centauri, Rise of the Republic can give you enough of a boost to put you over.

Currently the only way for another player to deal with those Agendas is Forced Impairment.  Since you'll probably have the best Intrigue in the game, and Forced Impairment is an Intrigue conflict, they'll have a hard time stopping you.

The first weakness of Intrigue is that it doesn't give you Influence except through Agendas.  Military conflicts are one way to bypass this, but doing so requires you to split your attention between Intrigue and Military.

Another weakness is most of the Intrigue conflicts are blatantly hostile, meaning you won't win many friends.  In a four-player game, it's likely you'll have to target all the players at one time or another (unlike Military, where you can often keep pounding a single other player).  You can overcome this by targeting Player A just after he's done something unpleasant against Player B.  Convince B that you're doing him a favor, rather than helping yourself.  If removing A's Luis Santiago means you also benefit, don't draw too much attention to that fact.

Overall, Intrigue are certainly the most intricate, and most interesting, of the Conflicts.  There's enough variety that you can do pretty much whatever you want with them, and have fun in the process.  You have to be both sneaky and diplomatic to succeed, just like on the show.

Next week:  Conflicts - Military

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Steve Crow