Kell Perim from 20th Anniversary Collection

When I first saw Kell Perim, it was pretty obvious what deck she should go into: Enterprise-E deck with Son’a and Baku help and focused in the Briar Patch Region. This is a deck that I saw a lot, before Continuing Mission was released, and is still one of the most powerful.

This deck idea uses four copies of Analyze Radiation and then one Insurrection plus one other planet mission (or if you don’t think you are in any danger of encountering a Balancing Act; five Analyze Radiation and one Insurrection). There is a pretty substantial benefit of running multiple copies of the same mission in that you won’t need a very wide array of mission skills and can focus on dilemma busting.

The Enterprise-E (or EE) Feds have a lot going for them, which makes them a powerful faction. The big one being Geordi La Forge, who downloads Ocular Implants and is one of the few ways that players can still peak at seed cards in OTF. Beverly Crusher, Paul Porter, Lightner, and Alyssa Ogawa all have special downloads which can fetch equipment during a mission attempt and allow a player to completely bust a dilemma combo. Jean-Luc Picard and Deanna Troi both have the ability to unstop your personnel, thereby allowing them to attempt a mission twice in the same turn. Data is just as good as any other Data, but plays for free with the main play engine, just like everybody else.

But they do have some limitations. The main free play engine for EE Feds, Federation Flagship: Relaunched, requires that a player use no other Federation personnel. This limits the pool to those from the First Contact Expansion and the five different virtual personnel who have been produced since. Given, those personnel do have a pretty wide array of skills (to which Kell Perim doesn’t add much), but only one free play person per turn is quite the disadvantage for a solver deck.

Luckily, they can pair well with a number of different non-Federation free play engines. The best of which is the Son’a/Baku, using Insurrection and the Son'a Observatory, and the Bajorans, using Bajoran Resistance Cell. Both the Son’a Observatory and Bajoran Resistance Cell net the player one more free play personnel per turn for a total of three free per turn, and then the Baku just play for free at whatever speed you happen to draw them. The Son’a, in particular, manage to bring the skills that EE personnel lack.

So how do you draw them? Well, there are a few built in options, which is always a benefit. Bajoran Resistance Cell can net a player two extra draws per turn by simply cluttering up the deck with some Espionage cards. But that doesn’t help us much in a Briar Patch deck, as all of the Briar Patch missions have a Federation attempting icon only.  But there is also Duck Blind (seeded on Insurrection) and Federation Flagship: Renewed. Both of these leave a player vulnerable to interaction. But that is far less of an issue when you are flanked by multiple range 5 missions on both sides.

Which is where Kell Perim comes in: this type of deck very specifically shoots to win the game before the opponent can. Collecting all of your missions and huddling them into one region means that they are never too far away to attempt/solve. That plus the reduced range on Analyze Radiation, the huge range on Son’a ships (which play for free to the Son'a Observatory) and the Enterprise-E (which is acquired during the seed phase with Federation Flagship: Relaunched), and Kell Perim’s special ability should make it very easy to traverse the Briar Patch region.

All of this extra range, and numerous ships, might come in very handy considering that Analyze Radiation can be stolen. On the plus side, it’s only worth 25 points. But on the downside, it’s a bit hard to protect since it only has a single affiliation attempting icon and therefore cannot be protected by HQ: Defensive Measures. This means that you, as a player, have to mount your own defensive measures. My recommendation is a seeded Mission Debriefing + a fleet of Son’a ships. That way, any offending ships can be eliminated. Another option would be to make Save Stranded Crew the other planet mission in the deck and use All-Consuming Evil to download dilemma protection to whatever mission the opponent chooses to attempt to steal – and then fly over and eliminate the ship when they fail to have brought sufficient numbers of personnel. A third option would be to simply self-seed a dilemma under all four of these space missions. While this is an expensive means of protection, it is the most likely to deter theft and could result in an easier win, if they happen to be point dilemmas. Finally, the best defense is a good offense, so ultimately you can afford to give your opponent an easy 25 points if you still win before they get to 100.

What might help you get there are three chances to unstop your personnel; Deanna Troi’s special ability, Picard’s download of Make It So, and the bonus for completing Insurrection with Collect Metaphasic Particles. Plus: the extra turn supplied by Collect Metaphasic Particles. And of course the extra range allotted by Kell Perim to help you make best use of those few turns (an extra turns) that occur between the start of the game and you winning.