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Advanced Strategy: Choose Your Mission

This strategy is labeled advanced because it takes mostly rare cards to pull off completely, but also because it involves a little finagle. So, you want to choose which mission you'll play, do you?

Team Characters

There are at least two team characters you can include that allow you to choose which missions you will or will not play: Jack O'Neill (Team Leader) and Daniel Jackson (Linguistics Expert). Of these two, I prefer Daniel Jackson. Jack O'Neill only allows you to choose to place the top two missions on the top or bottom of the mission pile each time he earns a different glyph. Daniel Jackson, as long as you have the right glyphs, you can use each turn. Jack O'Neill might be a better choice if you are arranging your strategy around trying to complete 2 or 3 missions a turn. Of course, with Daniel Jackson you have to be able to attain the right glyphs, so when building your deck make sure to choose more of those glyphs in your missions, but also we need to include some backup for good ol' Daniel.

Support Character

A good character to have by your side when using this strategy is Walter Harriman (Technician). His game text reads: "At the start of your power phase, you may look at the top two cards of your mission pile. If you do, place one of these cards on the top of that pile and one on the bottom." To be able to choose a mission from the top two is powerful in itself. Plus, at only 3 cost you can play him from turn one. Now, couple Walter Harriman with Daniel Jackson (Linguistics Expert) and you have a powerful team working in concert to allow you to choose your mission in both the early and late game. An early Walter Harriman will allow you to use his ability to more quickly bring up the two glyphs Daniel Jackson needs. Remember, though, that you shuffle the mission deck after you use Daniel Jackson's ability, when he has his glyphs, rendering Walter in effective. This was a mistake I made in my understanding early on when trying this strategy.

Gear

Finally we come to some gear to help us grab our missions. A Dialing Computer is Common and you can use it to replay a mission if you'd like. Still need to get Daniel Jackson his last glyph to use his power? The Dialing Computer will allow you to replay a mission for as many turns as you want. Eventually, hopefully, you will drain your opponent of obstacles for that type of mission and easily complete that mission.

The DHD is helpful as well, but unfortunately it costs 4 power to use. So not only do you have to remember to save your power if you want to use it, you also have to remember to use it before you end your turn. However, it's also versatile. You can use it before you complete your first mission if things are going well, and dig to select your next mission. Or you can use it at the end of your turn to select your first mission next turn, hopefully to get Daniel his glyphs to allow him to use an ability with no power cost.

If you get Walter Harriman (Technician) right away, though, or you easily get Daniel Jackson's glyphs, are these gears useless? Not so! Include Makepeace (NID Mole) in your team and this extra gear still serve a purpose. Pile the other glyphs on Makepeace and you can destroy these gears to boost his skills. This is also a great endgame strategy, after the gear has already served its purpose of getting Daniel his glyphs. Plus, this gear is cheap to play, making it cheap to use Makepeace's boosting skill.