Wesley's STCCG card of the day #203

Hi, folks,

The guy with the most subissions (especially the most late submissions) has also made it. And not by number or by mercy but really by virtue of that card.

Star Trek: Collectible Card Game
The Internet Expansion

Rank # 7, 655 points, Author: Matt Kerrigan (kerrigj@meol.mass.edu).

NEGOTIATIONS

Event, uncommon
Play on table. Allows personnel to serve on a ship of a different affiliation if one Diplomacy each present from both affiliations.
"When a ship is transporting alien races they can often agree in diplomatic conferences."
An interesting variant on treaties with an advantage and a few limitations. At first glance this is a three-way treaty card that requires some Diplomacy to use. But this is only half of the truth. It is true that you can use it to transport whatever diplomat from whatever affiliation on any ship. As long as that ship is not non-aligned! Which gets me to the most severe limitation of the card:

It only works on affiliated ships. Not on planets, not on outposts and not on non-aligned ships. Which also means your away teams for solving planet missions have to be single-affiliated. And you need lots of Diplomacy. But there can still be good uses of the card.

1) Place all your outposts at one location or use a neutral outpost. From there, play lots of non-aligned crew and affiliated support personnel with Diplomacy. Now board a ship and solve whatever mission you choose with your non-aligned skill providers and the Diplomats of the right color. Nice way to sneak into opponent's missions.

2) Use the same outpost layout and play a Diplomatic conference somewhere. Saves you a lot of transportation trouble and many VIP's have Diplomacy anyway.

3) Play an all space mission Klingon attack deck with some support by Federation mission specialists like Picard, Data, Wesley and Bev Crusher. Just don't forget enough Diplomacy for both sides and remember that your ships must be Klingon in order to be allowed to attack. Leave the Enterprise at home for that deck!

4) Play a Fed mission deck with attack permission by using Klingon or Romulan ships and at least one appropriate diplomat with Leadership on each vessel. That guy can initiate an attack and your Federation crew just happens to be there in case you come by a mission you want to solve. But a big disadvantage of Negotiations compared to a treaty is that it can be nixed by Kevin Uxbridge (treaty cards can only be nullified by the Devil). And Kev is just that much more commonly played. And you might be in big trouble restructuring your crews if you rely too heavily on ships from a particular affiliation and your Negotiations is destroyed or does not come up in the first place. Keep a non-aligned ship handy if you play any of the mentioned strategies.

For a final rating, I'd rather play a treaty if I want to play two affiliations at similar strength (nearly equal # of personnel), but a Negotiations if I want to experiment with a three-color deck or just want to add a sprinkle of one Affiliation to a mostly one-color deck.

Favorite combo(s):
Ratings for : NEGOTIATIONS 

Wesley's rating:                7.0
Cole's rating:                  7.5
Conner's rating:                5.0
Heather's rating:               7.0
Jack's rating:                  6.0
John's rating:                  7.0
Leto's rating:                  5.0
Q's rating:                     6.5
Ray's rating:                   8.5
Tony's rating:                  6.0
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:                 6.55
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LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

"A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart"