Introduction

Last article in this series we chose 4 team characters as the basis of our deck. Now we're going to need missions to go along with their skills and glyphs to go along with their abilities. Before we dive into choosing missions, though, lets look at each mission type separately.

Culture

Glyphs: Orion [X], Triangulum [>], and Gemini []

You can find a listing of each mission on Kit's site, but let's discuss a few general items with the Culture missions. Culture seems to be a passive aggressive skill. For example, Contact the Asgard will not destroy an adversary, but disallow revival. Time Loop is a 3 point mission that won't stop or kill characters, but disallow you from going any further. Culture is Daniel Jackson's field of expertise, so you'll find Pursue the Harcesis, an auto-include if Daniel is in your team. There is also Seek Assistance to use when playing Thor or Freyr. These are a few key missions to take notice.

Science

Glyphs: Scorpius [S], Orion [X], and Libra [C]

Science, of course, focuses on progress. There are a couple of missions that involve grabbing a gear, from your deck or your discard pile, for example. If you're playing with Samantha Carter, Loop of Kon Garat is probably an auto-include. Conduct Repairs will help you, especially if you use a Makepeace deck, or if you just destroyed Naquadah Reactor to help you complete that mission. Offworld Research is a good choice if you have some Science Support Characters. Research Advanced Races wouldn't hurt, especially if you don't have other mission selecting opportunities.

Combat

Glyphs: Scorpius [S], Gemini [], and Pisces [/\]

Repel Cronus can be helpful if you have Teal'c in your deck. Combat seems to focus on destruction and power. Destroy Minor Goa'uld gives you a chance to rid yourself of an Adversary. There are a couple of missions that make you stop Support Characters, or don't allow you to play them at all. A couple missions either reward you with power, or make your opponent lose power.

Ingenuity

Glyphs: Pisces [/\], Triangulum [>], and Libra [C]

Ingenuity is an interesting mission type that always seems to have neat abilities. Wormhole Xtreme makes obstacles cost power +1. There are a couple of missions that make either you or your opponent lose power, depending on the glyphs on assigned characters. Remember Establish Communication if you play Jack O'Neill.

My Example

If you remember from last article, I had settled on Daniel Jackson (Adventurer), Janet Fraiser (Field Medic), Harold Maybourne (Ally of Opportunity) and Sventlana Markov (Brilliant Scientist) for skills (8/8/0/8) and experience of 16. Obviously I don't intend on completing any Combat missions, so we won't worry about those 'till last. Let's look at our Culture missions, for Daniel, the star of this team.

Pursue the Harcesis is the first mission to include. This should be easily beatable if you can manage Daniel Jackson to stay in the game. It has the Triangulum [>] glyph, so we'll generally be planning on putting that on Daniel Jackson, as I explained in the last article, though Janet or Svetlana are both viable alternatives. Contact the Asgard lowers the difficulty by 1, but the experience by 2, but I'll still include it as part of my Adversary protection (hopefully this will dissuade my opponent from playing Frank Simmons 'till it's too late, or make Fifth not able to be revived. Finally, I want to include a mission from a different glyph, one we can place on Svetlana if we come across it. Cultural Exchange seems to fit the bill. Not only will the Triangulum [>] increase Svetlana's Ingenuity, but I can also ready a support character if I get this for my 2nd or 3rd mission in a turn.

Next let's take a look at Science. Two of these I want to be Scorpius [S] missions, to take advantage of Harold Maybourne's ability. And one I want to be an Orion [X] mission, to place on Svetlana to boost her Culture. I'll include Conduct Repairs, since I plan on including a few gears later. Loop of Kon Garat is good, even though I don't have Samantha, because it will give me 4 experience and a Scorpius glyph. Finally, I'll choose Offworld Research. Not only goes this give me good experience and a support character boost, it gives Svetlana an Orion glyph.

My 3rd skill of choice was Ingenuity. Let's see what our options are. I'll want at least one Libra [C] to boost Svetlana's Science. Wormhole Xtreme fits the bill, and is one of my favorite. It gets a Libra glyph, and has 4 experience. Finally, it makes obstacles +1, so unless they have Harsh Conditions, this can make it very hard for your opponent to stop you. Seek and Capture gives decent experience, plus another Adversary stopper. Finally, Relocate Advanced Civilization gives us 3 experience for only 4 difficulty and, often, your opponent will not be able to use the game text to his advantage.

I've been choosing 5 and 4 difficulty missions because:

• I have relatively high stats in my three chosen skills
• I'm paying attention to experience; that's usually how I win
• The game text is usually good for me.

I made sure not to have all 5 difficulty missions, partly because of choosing my glyphs, but I'd also like to give myself a break once and a while.

I have absolutely no chance of winning a Combat mission, so I'm not even going to include Support Characters with Combat. So the goal of my mission choice here is to avoid bad mission text. Choose only missions with game text that is good for you: "Success: You gain two power", "Each Character assigned that has a glyph gets Combat +1", are a couple of examples. Other than that, it doesn't matter what I choose, because I'm not even going to try to complete them.

Now that we have our missions chosen, we have a solid base. Now we need to build some support for our heroes before going on to choose the other side. I'll cover that in the next article.