Counters Corner #3: Empok Nor Decks
By Captain Barclay
The Counters Corner series will be a series of strategy
articles telling you how to get by many types of popular tournament decks.
For those of us who've gone to a tournament and sat through five games
of opponent's Empok Nors, without any defenses, you will have to look at
these ways to counter this deck.
Empok Nor decks come in many shapes and sizes. Some
are in it just for the Ops downloads. Others want equipment, and lots of
it. Still others want every single site out to not need an Outpost for
the rest of the game. Others are even more innovative. There are quite
a few counters to this, however.
Empok Nor Dilemmas. Friendly Fire,
Sleeper Trap, and Garak Has Some Issues are all Empok Nor Dilemmas you
can seed under the uncontrolled station to slow down/stop your opponent.
If anything, these dilemmas will kill their personal, hopefully their computer
skill, and make it difficult to comandeer the station for a while. Friendly
Fire plainly kills a personal, and doesn't let them comandeer for 2 turns,
Sleeper Trap, well, if you saw 4 Cardassians running at you with a Disruptor
you'd be pretty scared, too, wouldn't you? And when Garak Has Some Issues
it can be exactly as if he were 4 Cardassians. Without their computer skill
personal present, they won't be comandeering, which will slow down their
deck.
Mission Speacialists, and Spacedoor. You
see it happen everytime. A seeded Assign Mission Specialists brings out
the computer skill, and spacedoor downloads their ship. But, you can do
exactly the same. Download Narik and a Mission Specialist of your affiliation.
Playing Bajoran or Cardassian? Just throw on another non aligned personal.
Download a ship on your first turn (no staffing requirements, you want
to be able to dock anywhere) and go comandeering. Doubtful that this will
work because your opponent will beat you to the Nor? Just throw in Sleeper
Trap as your Empok Nor dilemma. Unless they're playing Cardassian (and
I doubt it, as they have Terok Nor) they won't be able to downlad the personal
if you get there first, but if they win, you'll be able to show their mission
specialists who can control the station.
Computer Crash. This Event makes it's
second Counters Corner appearance. Although this event is susptable to
Quarks Isoliniar Rods (A counter you might see featured in another article)
you can, however, get an unprepared Empok Nor deck with Computer Crash.
When your opponent goes to download their sites/equipment, reveal Computer
Crash on them to prevent it. Also, you may consider stocking another Computer
Crash, or waiting with your exisitng one, for an Ops download. Holding
off one such download for a turn doesn't seem crucial, but later on when
they could've gotton another personal, but didn't because they were one
behind on downloading skills, you might be writting into La Forge maneuvers.
Q-Net. This strategy requires having
the first turn, or stopping your opponent somehow before they board Empok
Nor (Computer Crash a Spacedoor download, Docking Procedures, and Rouge
Borg Mercinaries all work well for this prupose.), but if you do you may
be able to stop their Empok Nor strategy for quite a while. Find a point
between the Outpost and Empok Nor (as they can't have 2 facilites at one
location you'll be able to find somewhere to put the 'net) and put
the Q Net down there. It's unlikly they'll have 2 Diplomacy (only exception
is Riva, who could pass the Net) so they'll have a tough time taking the
Nor itself, and maybe even you can grab it.
As the intended purpose of this article is to provide
meaningful counters, let's look briefly at a list of your Tent cards as
described in this article.
-
Q Net
-
Mission Specialists (Narik and one other)
-
A Ship with no staffing requirements
In The draw deck...
-
Any of the above mentioned cards, to save Tent space
Seeded Cards...
-
Assign Mission Specialists
-
Spacedoor
-
Computer Crash
-
Empok Nor Dilemmas
This ends Counter's Corner #3- Empok Nor, using this
information may you control an abandoned Nor.