We now have our team, the Pacifists, and we chose missions to suit them. Next step in my deck building process is your hero cards. I'll leave the villain cards for the last article in this series, as they are sort of a separate entity onto themselves. For the hero pile you need at least 20 cards, chosen from among three types: Characters, Gear, and Events.

Characters

Your support characters are a very important selection for your deck. Even with a great team, the more missions you complete, the more glyphs you earn, and the more power your opponent will have on later turns to stop you. That means you'll need more skills. Maybe you could just play events and gear to try to boost your skills, but events are a one-time use. Characters tend to stick around.

When choosing your support characters, keep close in mind who your team characters are. You'll need to choose characters that compliment their skills, or supply skills in areas where your team is slightly deficient.

Also, try to take advantage of traits, where possible. If you're playing with Harold Maybourne (Ally of Opportunity) or Makepeace (NID Mole), some NID support characters might be well chosen. If you're playing with Svetlana Markov (Brilliant Scientist) or Zukhov (Russian Colonel), if you have Chekov (Russian Envoy) you might consider using him. Jacob Carter (Man of Two Worlds) does well with Tok'ra support characters. Characters such as Satterfield (Academy Graduate) take advantage of the SGC trait.

When wondering how many support characters to include, take a hint from the Starter Decks. They range anywhere from 6 Support Characters (Jack O'Neill Deck) to 12 Support Characters (Teal'c Deck). Personally, I think 6 support is too low, especially since in the Jack Deck it's 3 each of 2 Characters. I usually aim for 9 to 12, when playing in a 20 Hero / 30 Villain card deck. Most of these I try to be different characters, so when I get them in my hand I can have as many different characters on the table as possible, but double or triple up on characters with abilities that are especially vital to your deck.

Gear

Gear can be an important part of your deck. Use them carefully. Generally we want fewer gear than Support Characters in your deck. When choosing gear, continue to keep in mind your team characters and the overall strategy you'll use.

Dialing Computer is a common gear, especially if you have no other mission choosing strategy and/or if you're playing a "Skip a Skill" deck, like we are. If you have extra power at the end of your turn, sometimes it can be beneficial to cycle through as many missions as you can, so you can choose which missions you'll play on your next turn. Beware of obstacles your opponent can use to punish you, if you use this strategy, though.

Naquadah Reactor does well as both a power generator and a last resort to get rid of obstacles. Galaran Memory Device is helpful if your strategy hinges on certain Hero cards that you may have lost by reviving Adversaries. Hazard Suits and Zat Gun can be useful if you are skipping Science or Combat missions, or help you complete Combat missions with the Zat Gun. The benefits of Atoniek Armband are obvious, especially if you are playing "Skip a Skill" deck, but it's a rare and not everyone has one.

Events

There are a lot of Events that look good. Sometimes you wish you could include them all, but doing so will lead to an unbalanced deck. Choose the Events carefully to complement your deck.

There are four events, such as Quick Study, to boost a certain skill. You get an added +1 skill from those events if the Character has a certain trait (such as SGC for Quick Study). I usually include one or two of the event to match a Character or two on my team. If I'm playing with a Jaffa Team Character, for example, I might include a couple Nice Shots.

There are also four events that do something special with a characters skill. For example, one of which is Tabloid Research, which allow you to stop a character and peak at the top mission equal to that character's Culture. Depending on your team, and the strategy you have in mind, you might want to consider including one or two of these events that match your characters. For example, Daniel Jackson would do well with Tabloid Research, since he has 3 Culture.

R and R is an auto-include when skipping a skill in your Team Characters. Seasoned Travelers is especially helpful when you have chosen a strategy to pile your glyphs on one or maybe two characters. Other Events have their own place. But remember, don't just throw in too many because their ability looks good. Consider your main strategy or strategies.

My Example

In our sample deck we have skills (8/8/0/8). We completely skipped Combat. So when choosing our Support Characters let's remember to do the same. We're going to aim for 9 to 12 Support Characters to give our team a good base. We want the majority of these characters to cost 3 power or less, so they can be played on turn one. We want a few to cost 4 power, so they can be played on turn 2, and probably only 1 or 2 to be 5 power for the end game. If you include more than that… well, just imagine begin stuck with three 5 cost characters on turn one. Nothing for you to do but waste a spot in your hand, or discard them quickly.

We have Maybourne, an NID character, so let's take a look at some of our Support Characters. I like Keffler (Bioengineer) because, assigned with Maybourne, for 3 power you get 3 Science, plus he's a good defense against complications. Let's include 2 Kefflers. Cross (Deep Cover Agent) also looks good. His ingenuity fits our team, plus you can use him to boost Maybourne's skills by 1 and still not have to stop him. Let's include 2 Cross. So we have some Science and Ingenuity support. Let's set our filters to Culture, and cost less than or equal to three. A couple characters stand out. Nicholas Ballard (Outcast Scholar) can give you possibly 3 Culture on a mission for only 2 power. Nyan (Bedrosian Archaeologist) can give you only 2 Culture for 3 power, but he sticks around. Also, look at Nyan's game text. If you complete a mission he's assigned to, your opponent loses 2 power and you gain 1. You can choose which character you'll include, they both have their uses, but I'm going with Nyan because I'd like a strategy where we can complete 2 or 3 missions a turn in the late game. I'm putting in 2 of Nyan.

Now let's turn the filter up to cost less than or equal to 4. From the cards I have I chose Chekov (Russian Envoy), since I have Svetlana Markov (Brilliant Scientist) in my Team. I can really take advantage of his success game text. If I can get him and Nyan assigned to the mission, too, that could possibly make it really easy to complete a second mission. I included Orlin (Outcast Ancient); not only are his skills quite good, you can use him to cheaply get rid of an obstacle. This is always helpful, especially during the end game. If I had Oma Desala (Guide to Ascension), I'd include her as well. Without her, Martin Lloyd (Television Writer) or Joe Spencer (Average Citizen) could be a good ingenuity character. Joe Spencer works well with our strategy, since we're going to want to pile our glyphs on Svetlana or Daniel Jackson.

Those are all Rares (or Uncommons in Joe Spencer's case). For the sake of making this article helpful for everyone, I want to try to include as few rares in my deck as possible. Let's look at some other options. Bill Lee (Engineering Specialist) has two skills that we use, plus his game text will help us complete more than one mission in a turn. Malek (Outpost Commander) is similar, with two skills that we need, and we could use his game text later in the game, if we need to move a glyph to Svetlana, for example, for additional skill. Let's include one of each.

Bauer (NID Patsy) would work well with out NID theme, but we already have a bunch of Science support. Kendra (Child of Jebanna) would give you 3 Culture and 1 Science, and with the ability to destroy complications she could prove very useful, too. Joe Faxon (Aschen Liaison) would give us Culture and work with our more than 1 mission strategy. Joe Spencer (Average Citizen) would be a good support for our ingenuity, and at low cost. These are all Uncommons, though, so you choose one that will fit the cards you have. For the purpose of demonstration, I'll choose Kendra because of her large Culture boost. Her ability is not bad, either.

Finally, let's choose two 5 cost Characters. I will select Richard Woolsey (Washington Bureaucrat) and Paul Davis (Pentagon Liaison). Both give us some needed Culture and Ingenuity, Paul Davis helps us to complete a second mission, if we can manage to keep Daniel Jackson and/or Janet Fraiser ready. Richard Woolsey will help us when we have to skip Combat missions.

Next let's choose a few gear. We have 11 Hero cards so far. I want to choose 4 gear so I can leave room for 5 events. I want a Dialing Computer, another strategy based on my skipping a skill. I also want to include a Transport Rings, to better use Harold Maybourne's ability (I would have included a Sarcophagus instead, but that's a rare I don't have). I also want a Naquadah Reactor, to boost the power even more, even though we already have power Daniel Jackson. This also is a good use of power late in the game to destroy the Reactor and pay 6 power to get rid of an annoying obstacle. If I had an Atoniek Armband, I'd include one of those, too, but instead I'll include a second Naquadah Reactor, to increase my odds of drawing one.

Since I only have 4 gear, mostly different, my first Event I'll include is Ill-Gotten Gains. This increases my chances of getting a gear, and makes me more flexible. For example, if I have Maybourne's glyph, I'll use it to grab a Transport Rings from my deck. If I haven't run into Combat missions for a while, maybe I'll use it to get Dialing Computers, so I can skip by them. With 4 more spots for Events, and since Culture and Science are better represented in my support characters, I'll include 2 Quick Studys to boost my ingenuity. I can use them on either Daniel Jackson or Janet Fraiser for an extra boost. I'm using a pile the glyph on strategy, so I'll include 2 Seasoned Travelers to give me some boosting power.

I'm at 20 cards in my Hero deck, but remember I said R and R was an auto-include in a "Skip a Skill" deck? I'll put 2 R and R's in my deck. Sure I have 22 cards. It's okay to have a little extra once and a while. 20 hero cards out of a 50 card deck is usually a good distribution of hero cards to villain cards. Another good distribution might be 25 hero cards out of a 60 or 65 card deck. Remember, hero cards tend to stick around longer, so you'll usually need more villain cards.

Another event I've liked including in this deck is Yeeeehaaaw! To take advantage of the extra power from Daniel Jackson or our Naquadah Reactors. Coordinated Movements might be useful as well, but we were planning on piling our glyphs on one or two characters, so it might not be worth the power. DHD is another possible gear to include to take advantage of that power and avoid the Combat missions. These were all rares, though, so I made it a point not to use them.