Part 13 - "Necessary Cards"

After a short hiatus, and with a few suggestions from contributors, I decided to take a look at a few other aspects of the game.

The Shadow Wars expansion is out by now.  I'm still going over it, but there's certainly enough material for at least a couple of new columns down the road a bit.

So what to take a look at this issue?  How about cards that you should always, always have in your deck?

The Babylon 5 CCG presents a huge variety of cards which serve all kinds of functions.  Some cards you have to have - Ambassadors and Assistants come to mind, as do Agendas.  Some cards are only useful under very limited circumstances.  But there are a few, non-race  specific cards that should be in practically every deck, regardless of race or strategy.

The first card may seem an obvious one, but shouldn't be overlooked or underestimated.  It is Level the Playing Field.  There are three in every starter deck, and with good reason.  Using it, you can have your Diplomats support Military Conflicts, and your Psi characters support Intrigue.  It doesn't matter if the Humans and the Centauri are better Intriguers: Level the Playing Field can at least let you your Minbari Diplomats use Diplomacy to substitute for Intrigue as need be.

The second card is a Common Event, Meditations.  Although it may not seem readily usable, that's because...well, it isn't. There's no specific strategy it benefits.  Rather, it benefits _any_ strategy.

To see why, we need only do a little cost comparing.  Meditations lets you spend one Influence to draw two cards.  That's quite a deal, all things considered.  The way to buy cards is typically to spend three Influence for each card you wish to draw at the end of your turn.

So instead of spending 3-for-1, you're spending 1-for-2.  If you played three Meditations and spent the same three Influence you'd otherwise spend at the end of the turn, you get six cards instead of one!

Having cards is power in most card games, and Babylon 5 is no exception (except for a few new Shadow cards such as Bureaucracy).  The more cards you have, the more you can respond to a variety of situations, put your strategies into play faster, etc.
 
The next card on the list is an Uncommon but also an Event: Hour of the Wolf.  If you haven't seen this, look at a Minbari deck and see what Shal Mayan does.  Hour of the Wolf does the same thing.

By spending three Influence, you can ready a rotated Inner Circle character who has already participated in a conflict, and have them do anything else. Sponsor a character, enhancement, location, whatever.  Or participate in a _different_ conflict.  This gives a powerful character double firepower. Combine with Level the Playing Field to participate in two different types of conflicts.  Luis Santiago, with a 12 Diplomacy, can not only support your Diplomat conflict, but use LtPF and then oppose Londo's Intrigue conflict with 12 as well.

Now we come to three Rare Events, which are harder to get.  They're well worth the effort to do so.

The first is Not Meant To Be.  This lets you stop _any_ Event, if you can afford the price.  Whether your opponent is playing his third Trade Windfall to win the game, or using Too Predictable (from The Shadows) to prevent you from gaining Influence, NMTB will stop it.

The second Rare Event is Secret Strike.  I don't see it used very often, and this surprises me.  This is the perfect "sneak attack" card.  Hold on to a favorite conflict that your opponents won't let you win.  Wait until a turn when other players have stirred up a conflict or two.  Hold back your resources, and keep your characters ready rather than rotated.  Then, when the other races have rotated their characters, use Secret Strike, reveal your conflict, and march to victory.  You now have the perfect opportunity to play some Win Aftermaths as well.

An extremely useful Shadows card to use with Secret Strike is Build Infrastructure.  This Agenda means you do not have to rotate characters to sponsor and promote new characters.  So you can bring out or promote a character or two, and still have unrotated characters to support your Secret Strike conflict.

This is a good reason to use Hour of the Wolf.  If an opponent tries this on you, readying a character to participate in a second conflict can mean the difference between defeat and victory.

The last Rare Event serves to increase the power of the Events mentioned above.  It is Carpe Diem.  For five Influence, you can take an Event in your discard pile, show it to your opponents, and use it again, immediately or later.

So if you've drawn six cards with three Meditations at a cost of three Influence, use three Carpe Diems, grab those Meditations back, and buy six more cards.  Yes, you'll spend 21 Influence (3 + 5x3 + 3 more).  But you'll have 12 additional cards.  If you'd spent the 21 Influence to buy cards at the end of your turn, you'd only have seven cards, so you're still ahead.

Are you using Trade Pacts and Windfalls to win?  Recycle those Trade Pacts and play them again.

The list of uses for Carpe Diem is as long as the list of Events in the game.  Carpe Diem essentially lets you bypass the three-of-each-card
limitation.

Overall, these six cards are valuable additions to any deck.  There are certainly other Events that prove useful under a wide variety of circumstances.  However, you'll always find a use for these "Big Six" cards.

Next issue: unrest.  It doesn't seem to do much in the Premiere Edition, does it?  But the Shadows have arrived, and they thrive on unrest.  We'll take a look and see what you can do with it.