A common complaint I've seen in Stargate Online TCG, or any TCG and CCG probably, is that you need rare cards to compete and that this prevents beginners from entering the game at an even standing. I would like to disagree and this article is to show how you can compete even with little to no rare cards. Following are a few strategies for the beginning players.

Boosting Skills

You can boost the skills of your characters in several ways. One way is simply to have multiple character cards of the same name in your deck. For example, you can have Samantha Carter assigned to a mission and one or two Samantha Carters in your hand. Each time you discard a Samantha Carter from your hand, the Samantha Carter in your team gets +1 skills for that mission. This can be a quick surprise for your enemy when it comes to needing just that one more skill to complete the mission.

Note: You can have up to three cards of any name in your deck, regardless of subtitle. So you can have 1 Samantha Carter team member and 2 in your deck. And you can use the Common Samantha Carter to boost the Rare Samantha Carter, or vice versa.

Another way to boost the skills of your characters is the character text. Harold Maybourne - Foil (Ally of Opportunity), comes in the Jack O'Neill starter deck. Once you get his glyph on him you can use his card text to stop him (if he is ready or assigned) to give the rest of your team characters +1 skills for the rest of the mission. This is especially helpful if the mission is a Combat mission, since Maybourne has 0 Combat anyways, but this skill makes it as if he has 3!

Another character that's easy to use and easy to find is Balinsky (Insightful Archaeologist). He comes in the Daniel Jackson or Samantha Carter starter deck. His game text reads: "While Balinsky has more glyphs than the number of obstacles at the current mission, he gets skills +1." This is especially helpful after he's completed 2 or 3 missions, since then it will start to get hard for your opponent to take his boost away because he has to play more obstacles to do it. But wait, Balinsky's boosting skills don't stop there. This brings us to a third way to boost skills: Events.

An event called Seasoned Travelers reads: "Choose a character to get skills +1 until the end of the current mission for each glyph he has." Remember how we were going to pile glyphs on Balinsky to make best use of his card text? Now, later in the game, we have maybe 3 glyphs on Balinsky. Not only does he get +1 skills from his card text, but we can play Seasoned Travelers to give him +1 for each glyph, that's +3 skills in our example! Both starter decks that come with Balinsky also come with 3 Seasoned Travelers cards, so you can pile this boost in one turn, if you have all the cards, or use it to get those last 3 hard missions.

Villain Side

Now let's take a look at the villain side for a little bit. The Jack O'Neill and Teal'c starter decks each come with Anubis (Banished Lord). This adversary has a relatively high cost for his benefits: 4 power cost for only +2 Culture difficulty and +2 Science difficulty, but that's because of his game text. This reads: "When you play Anubis, destroy a support character. Each time you revive Anubis, your opponent destroys a support character." Anubis is a quick way to rid your opponent of their pesky support characters. This means, when you play Anubis on a Culture or a Science mission, your opponent could lose two support characters that turn: 1 of your choice when you play Anubis, and 1 of their choice when you revive him. Or you can play Anubis when a Combat or Ingenuity mission is out, just so you can rid your opponent of their needed support character.

The Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter starter decks come with Apophis (Threat to Earth). His game text reads: "Each time you assign Apophis, your opponent may stop two characters. If he doesn't, you may stop a character." This is a great boost in addition to his +2 Combat and Ingenuity difficulty. If your opponent is highly boosted for one character (maybe he's relying on Balinsky (Insightful Archaeologist), for example), he'll likely choose to stop two characters, which will either cost him the mission or not allow him to continue to a second mission. And I've been surprised more than once, choosing not to stop two of my hero characters, only for my opponent to stop the one character I really needed.

Finally, don't forget low cost, high difficulty obstacles, which can be quite common and can really slow your opponent down. Language Barrier and Harsh Conditions give you +3 difficulty in their respective fields for only a cost of 1 power. Serpent Guards and Lack of Experience can possibly dish out +2 difficulty for 0 power. Cards like Mind Probe or Parasitic Insects are more versatile, with both Combat and Science, which either gives you +1 difficulty for 1 power or +2 difficulty for only 1 power. Low cost obstacles will allow you to deal out a lot of hurt to your opponent in a turn, and allows you to slow them down from turn one.