Mot's Useless Card Review #17: U.S.S. Oberth

The Oberth, the ship of choice? Indeed, this choice deserves a bit of scrutiny. What does the Oberth have that the other Fed ships don't?

Compare it to the Enterprise. (Not much comparison, yes, but do it anyway. ;-) ) The Enterprise, and any other Galaxy Class ship, requires a minimum of three personnel to fly. This makes the Oberth a whole lot easier to fly that the big boys... any Klingon player will tell you what an advantage small, fast, easily-staffed ships can be in a game. (Gotta love those K'Vorts!)

But then, Runabouts and Type VI Shuttlecraft are also easy to fly - the person on board doesn't even need to have a staff icon. (Even ol' Mot himself can figure out the controls of a shuttle! ;-) ) What does the Oberth have that these two guys don't? A tractor beam.

So, what are you supposed to do with a easy-to-fly ship with a tractor beam? Well, two great decks can be built around this strategy:

1. You can give your opponent a bad case of "radiation burns." Stock your own deck with Geordi La Forge (Prem), Montgomery Scott, Dr. Leah Brahms, and any other ENGINEERs you can get your hands on. (Leah Brahms, of the holo variety too, if you stick in Holoprojectors!) You can attempt missions all up and down the spaceline where you seeded Radioactive Garbage Scow, and tow those Scows for a visit at your opponent's outpost(s). Destroy Radioactive Garbage Scow will soon throw a real monkey wrench in their plans. Every few turns, wipe out their personnel again with another Scow... with no personnel, they will NEVER get anywhere, and soon even the high point missions Pegasus Search will be worth few, if any, points. (To really put on the hurt, Temporal Rift any ships your opponent manages to put into play - empty, before they can get their personnel aboard!)
2. Borg Ship destruction deck. How? Stock the same rack of ENGINEERs, plus a Major Rakal for two outposts. Your Fed outpost goes at Repair Mission, and Neutral at Explore Dyson Sphere. Seed a Borg Ship, a Cryosatellite, and a Tox Uthat under both. Don't worry about getting ships out - attempt missions from the outpost. You'll find that very, VERY few dilemmas actually affect a crew at a space outpost - most of them affect the ships. The few "killer" dilemmas like Barclay’s Protomorphosis Disease aren't important - you have so many ENGINEERs, they're expendable and replaceable. Two dilemmas you might need to worry about would be Ancient Computer (but again, you've got PLENTY of ENGINEERs), and Garbage Scow, which you can tow out of the way if you have to by playing the Oberth! Once you've popped the Borg Ships you seeded at each of those two missions, make mince meat out of them with a Supernova. Board an Oberth, fly to the other outpost and repeat - until you've scored 100. (Stock a Dathon in the Tent in case of Shaka.)

Note that if you are real fan of Shakespeare, you could choose the U.S.S. Miranda for these same purposes instead of the Oberth. I do love Shakespeare, but I'll take the Oberth's higher shields over literary homage.