Borg Queen

Many Star Trek fans have debated whether they prefer Alice Krige or Susanna Thompson in the role of the Borg Queen (FC). Now Star Trek CCG fans can debate which actress got the better card.

As with the First Contact version, this Queen has a selectable skill, which can save you an Adapt: Negate Obstruction (and turn!) when facing dilemmas. Typically, OFFICER, Diplomacy, Empathy, or Treachery are the best choices here, as these skills aren't easy to find on other Borg personnel - no drone has them. (If you're playing in a Voyager-only format, your two most likely considerations in choosing a skill for the Queen are Hazardous Duty and Implication.)

From there, this incarnation of Her Royal Borgness takes on a different tone. In place of a normal card play, she may download any Borg Only event or Borg Only interrupt. There are a few cards this won't actually work with; this download is in the place of a card play, so you can't use it, for example, to put an Adapt card in your hand for later use. However, there's so much it can get, that small shortcoming hardly matters. Need to build up drones for a mission attempt? Get Activate Subcommands. Want some extra resource manipulation? Get Alas, Poor Drone. A Borg Ship dilemma just came into play? Get Retask. And don't overlook We Are The Borg.

In Constructed Warp Speed play, a Borg player almost certainly wants the Borg Queen as their one seeded personnel – everything else can cascade from her. In other formats where seeding is not an option, stocking extra copies of the Queen works too. Since she has all three subcommand icons, she'll be a successful probe for all the core Borg objectives. She also has the enigma icon you're looking for on Harness Particle 010. The extra speed of drawing her in your opening hand and being able to use her from turn one more than offsets the possibility of having a few extras piled up in your hand by game's end - and there are always things like Handshake or Mutation that you might add in moderation for taking care of that situation.

Combos:

• Borg Queen + Unicomplex: Nothing beats playing the best card in your deck for free.
• Borg Queen (Borg) + Borg Queen (FC): Want the best of both worlds? (Pun most definitely intended!) The new Queen is arguably more efficient for preparing your group of scouts in the early game, while the original is arguably more efficient at replacing any drones you happen to lose once you begin scouting. That's the perfect recipe for persona replacement. Get what you need out of one Queen, then switch to the other at the start of your turn when the situation changes.