Posted: 22 September 2007 at 7:02am | IP Logged

Per RobPro's request I'm moving this deck to a seperate thread. I'll post my ideas and strategies a bit later today. Though I will say that I'm planning on dropping the hazards and adding ability cards.

Here is the J'Xar deck I'm playing against Lobo. The key to this deck is card cycling I'm looking for cards with 'comes into play' abilities. I'm concentrating on offensive abilities. The cycling ships are too small to bother to defend - their defense is getting gated back to the hand.

Lobo is really good at attacking my terrain so I have some cards to defend against that. I also refuse to play with 8 Time Skips and 8 Time warps - though I'd be more competitive that way. I just hate the way those cards dominate deck lists.

I'm also looking for the standard GE advantages: increased card draw, increased card plays, and lots of command points.

• Bases
  • B1 Planetary Shield
  • R/B2 Planetary Shield
  • B3 Heavy Planetary Shield x3
• Crew
  • R/C1 Science Officer
  • C2 Helmsman (like a 1-shot Transgate)
  • C3 Suark Breed (needs to be replaced)
  • C4 Cyber Mage (card play & draw)
  • C5 Quartermaster (card draw)
  • R/C6 Time Assault Team x3 (comes into play dmg!)
  • C7 Tactical Officer (allows card cycling)
  • C8 Groupie (buffs and protects the Cyber Mage)
  • R/C9 Temporal Engineer x2 (card draws I can cycle)
  • C9 Noble Sovereign x2 (an awesome card!)
  • C10 Primordial Warrior
• Equipment (gating them cycles their phasers)
  • R/E1 Terrain Attack Shuttle
  • R/E2 Transport Shuttle
  • R/E3 Phaser Fighter
  • R/E4 Heavy Shuttlecraft
  • R/E5 J'Xar Fighter
• Hazards
  • H1 The Old Switcheroo
  • R/H2Warp Funnel Cakes
  • H3 Space Time Rift
  • H4 Temporal Repetition
  • H5 Hyperspace Vortex
  • H6 Large Minefield
  • R/H7 Interstellar Plasma
  • H8 Anti Time Mine Field
• Luck
  • R/L1 Lucky Crew Action
  • R/L2 Time Hiccup
  • L3 Lucky Targeting
  • R/L4 Miscommunications
  • L5 Weapons Security
  • L6 Artifact Scepter of Time
  • L7 Artifact - Star Gate x3
• Occurrences
  • R/O1 Time Skip
  • O2 Future Transmission
  • O3 Tight Manuevers
  • O4 Mutiny Ship
  • O5 Time Expansion
  • O6 Technological Breakthrough
  • O7 Surprise Attack x3
  • O8 Repeat Fire
  • O9 Catastrophic Repetition
• Ships
  • S1 J'Xar Armed Jumpship
  • S2 J'Xar Minesweeper x2
  • S2 J'Xar Troopship x4
  • S3 J'Xar Heavy Jumpship
  • S4 J'Xar Scout
  • S5 J'Xar Assault Cruiser
  • S6 J'Xar Command Cruiser x2
  • S7 J'Xar Battlecruiser x3
  • S8 J'Xar Dreadnaught x2
  • S9 J'Xar Battleship x2
  • S10 J'Xar Flagship
• Terrain
  • T1 Planetary Storm
  • T/H2 Plasma Field x2
  • T3 Asteroid Belt
  • T4 White Dwarf x2
  • T5 Custom Planet 'Patrice'
  • T5 Moon System
  • T6 Gorgochok System
  • T7 Custom Planet 'Jozef'
  • T7 Water World
  • T7 Free Trade Zone
  • T8 Custom Planet 'Chronos' x2
  • T8 The Scandig System
  • T9 J'Xar Transgalactic Gate x2
  • T9 Custom System 'Vinciennes'
  • T10 Super Massive Star

Posted: 22 September 2007 at 10:57am | IP Logged

I'm not sure I have any tricks with this deck that aren't obvious but here are a few of them.

The transgates all need a card play during my turn in order to cycle the small ships. Therefore I need to generate extra card plays. In the last game versus Lobo I had some turns with 7 card plays on my turn.

• The deck has a Cyber Mage which generates a card play.
• 3x L7 Artifact Stargate each of which generate a card play.
• The C3 Suark Breed allows an extra card play (in phase A?).
• I have several occurrences (O7 Surprise Attack, O6 Technological Breakthrough) that allow me to play cards which don't count as card plays these help me to preserve the 3 basic card plays for use with the Transgates. 
• If I have an S2 Troopship in play I can play 1 crew to it that doesn't count as a card play.

Anything that needs its abilities reset are good candidates for being played to the small J'Xar ships. Currently, I try to cycle crew and equipment:

• R/C6 Time Assault Team
• C9 Temporal Engineer
• All of the one shot weapon equipment cards (fighters, etc)
• The weapon upgrade cards might be good on the samll ships because they pump my damage and can be preserved by returning them to the hand for play to another ship on the next turn.

Don't forget that ships which are gated into play arrive fully engaged. This means that their heavy weapons are armed and their transgates are fully powered. I believe this only applies to the ship gated in not the equipment subsequently played to it - correct me if I'm wrong.

Cards which can be moved by a shuttlecraft/fighter (mostly crew, and some equipment) can benefit from the transgates as well. A crew that gets a negative card played to it can be transferred (via shuttlecraft) to the J'Xar small ships and then gated back to the hand - thus shedding the negative card.

I'm planning to add some ability cards to my deck with the thought that the gate mechanic can allow me to move a previously played ability card to a new crew by returning a crew who currently has the ability card played to it.

Some ability card ideas:

• R/A2 Ascension Doubles a crew's strength for 2 turns. That allows me to pump a crews strength as a reaction and give me two turns to gate the crew back into my hand and thus preserve the ability card.
• All of the ability changing cards A5 Battlesuit, A6 Promotion  etc... can be played on the first card available and then moved to a more valuable card once it appears.

When the end of turn comes around you want some of the small J'Xar ships in play and some powered Transgates ready for action. Then during your opponent's turn you can play reaction cards to the small ship and if it goes south you can gate the entire stack back to your hand.

If, after your opponents weapon fire phase, you have unused Transgates you can consider beefing up your fleet for a large strike on your turn. Before your opponent's turn ends gate in as many small ships as possible. They'll be available for allocation and you're fleet will be ready for an alpha strike in your turn.

In general, playing during your opponent's turn is very powerful and the J'Xar provide a permanent based reaction mechanic that is relatively hard to kill. I think they are amongst the more powerful fleets.

Let me know what your ideas are...

J--

Posted: 22 September 2007 at 11:29am | IP Logged

use for more card draws- L9 discard equivalency, O9 alliance treaty, a A6 promotion and a C8 spiritual leader on a cyber mage, O10 time portal, R/O5 stolen tech, and some of my combos are put a E7 clone on a R/C9 temp eng- send the clone to the bottom of the discard pile to retrieve the bottom card like the L9 discard equiv. Or play the temp eng get 2 cards then use your C7 tac off to put it back into hand.

more command point use the admiral and the senior admiral, A6 promotion and various other cards.

more fire- use the future ship to double phasers. heres one for ya. Use the S7 drone heavy bombardier ( allied mechad ) use in any deck. add a heavy weopons refit like the E6 adds 2 heavy and put a C6 earl on it, has 5 heavy multiplied by 2 to all terrain, ten to all terrain.

use E10 targeting systems to avoid shields or emf

use the T10 intergalatic void to bring in ships like a suprise attack.

to be more offensive you need a little more deffense in your luck cards.

Posted: 22 September 2007 at 4:12pm | IP Logged

bignea wrote: <snip> more fire- use the future ship to double phasers. heres one for ya. Use the S7 drone heavy bombardier ( allied mechad ) use in any deck. add a heavy weopons refit like the E6 adds 2 heavy and put a C6 earl on it, has 5 heavy multiplied by 2 to all terrain, ten to all terrain. <snip>

Correct me if I'm wrong but in order to get both the Drone Bombadier and the Noble Earl into the same deck one of them has to be the main race... since they are both minor races. Yes...? No...?

The intergalactic void is a good idea and the clone fo the Temproal Engineer is good too...

Thanks for the advice.

J--

Posted: 22 September 2007 at 4:15pm | IP Logged

RobPro wrote: Off the top of my head, 2 of your Crew need to be in play on a base to function, and all your bases are kind of flimsy. I'd suggest adding 2x T/B9's or 3x T/B7's (if you can get/proxy them) Check out the T7 Fantasy System, lets you play ships, etc. on your turn without wasting cardplays. And as for C3, check out the Media Personality. The only printing I have of her is in New Empires. Might want to use 2x R/M9 Luck Demons as your exceptions.

The fantasy system is a good addition. I hadn't really optimized the terrain yet but I will now.

The Media Personality is like a cheap version of the Primordial Warrior.

Thanks...

J--

Posted: 23 September 2007 at 8:04am | IP Logged

Hmmm... I checked the rules and you're right. You can use multiple minor races in a deck. I'd always read the rule to say only 1 minor race but I was wrong.

You could do the whole Catastrophic Repetition thing alongside the Drone + Heavy Refit + Earl trick and do... either 25 heavy points to all terrain or 50 to all terrain depending on how the mulitiplication rules work out.

That'll flush most terrain stacks from the game.

:)

J--

Posted: 23 September 2007 at 9:38am | IP Logged

http://home.inreach.com/skeeve/ge/