Deck 1 - The Pirate & Captain Cranium combo with a Triskan Fighter crew

Hello again! It was a while since I last wrote about Exode, but now we have exciting days with Alpha 2, scanning, and many new players, so I thought it is about time that we go back and visit some builds that have served us well in EVAC. I will start with some strong decks - beyond a starter - that can serve to highlight some interesting game mechanics.

Origin: Repentant Pirate

The idea behind this deck is to max out on the synergies provided by two legendary cards - The repentant pirate origin and the Captain Cranium. Any criminal card you add to this deck will get +2 QL from the respective synergy. In addition the Repentant Pirate has some awesome bonuses on its own, the major discipline and minor warfare inspirations will make it very rare that any crew is offline in EVAC and give major bonuses to fighting and shield defense. In addition you also get an extra officer, a very strong package in total!

The ship

It is possible to select many ships here. At the moment several of the ship abilities are not working yet in the playable demo, so ship choice comes down to how much hit points it has, how much crew, cargo and passengers in can load. I am however basing my choice of the Quantum class Supreme on what I assume will be a very fast ship (it is possible ship speed is already considered in the scanning demo, but I am not sure). The high QL number will also make it resistant to damage and it currently has 58 HP in the EVAC sequence. The Myrmidon would also be an excellent choice (if not better) with 9 crew and 100 hit points (instead of 5 and 58), although I believe once all cards are fixed, then the Quantum will help a lot with the synergy bonus to the people with a spaceship trait (Tyron and Valro gets stronger) plus a speed bonus to arrive fast at the planet.

The officers

The deck is very strong for combat, with Captain Cranium and the Triskans. In addition we choose Stug for additional synergy on violence. Admiral Valro is a little bit a filler, and can be replaced with other cards, but it works quite good with an extra person for shield defense. Norah is very good for evacuating passengers, and I happen to have an elite card! With QL 10 she appease citizens and escort them very fast. When equipped with a power or spartan suit, almost nothing can hurt her in the station halls!

The crew

With a crew of 5, you need one person as pilot, one mechanic, and the remaining 3 should be the Triskans. As pilot I choose Tyron (for a possible space ship bonus) but can also be Oksana. Other good choice can be an elite civilian pilot (QL5). In general Tyron has the advantage of having a discipline trait, which makes him much stronger for shield defense, while Oksana has additional traits good for loading cargo. I also suspect Oksana will be much better once landed on the planet. An elite civilian pilot will have a little less piloting skill in general, since QL5 rolls lower than QL7, and in addition miss out on supplementary skills for shield defense or cargo loading.
The criminal mechanic is the Syndicate hacker, with its major trait in cybernetics (this skill is used both for repairing the hyper drive and refueling). In addition it gets the synergy bonuses from the origin and Cranium, so effective QL is 7. Sarah and the 2 triskan fighers all get +3 synergy effect, so their effective QL is 11 and 7. In addition to having shooting (chance to hit), cover (chance to avoid hit), toughness (hitpoints) and violence(frequency of attacking) -which makes them superb fighters - they also has a major trait in planetary, which helps with scanning and again when landed on the planet.
If instead we go with the Myrmidon, we have a chance to add another 4 triskan fighters!

The escorts

The role of the escorts is to buy time for the evacuation. You launch them from the cockpit, under the star fleet button. I have a relatively strong deck here, with 2 Sabre regiments, 2 cruisers of which 1 is elite, and 1 elite starship garrison. I have not really analyzed the best ratio of fighters and cruisers, but normally try to play with 2-3 cruisers.
When you have escort ships, it is possible to let your shield defender spend time on other tasks before you have to move him/her to the cockpit. In general I start shield defense when intercept chance is either 94% or 91%. The longer you can wait, the better, since the stress meter will last longer.

The equipment

The suits

In general I always follow the rule that the pilot and the mechanic gets a fixer suit (for a bonus to mechanics). this makes them a bit slower, but in general I always keep them at all times in the interior of the ship. The pilot does 1-2 refueling cycles before moving to the cockpit and provide shield defense.

The main role of the triskans is to do cargo loading and shooting. Here a mech suit is quite good (for bonus dexterity used in loading cargo), but I have only 1, so also use spartan suits and power suits (I have 3 resp 2). I also like to give a suit to Norah as previously mentioned.

The weapons

As weapons I give heavy weapons to Stug, Sarah and the Triskans. I also try to give a pistol to Norah and Valro, just to have the option to shoot back. I am quite good here with several elite weapons available (2 elite judgement day that someone sold in the marketplace for USD 1 each).

Crew investigation phase.

This build has very little investigation points, and the last round I played I have tried to focus on providing skills used in the scanning phase. Currently I spend bonus skill points on stealth and awareness for the pilot and signals and radar for any of the triskans that happen to roll good in that skill. The build is actually good enough to load full cargo, fill all passengers, repair hyperdrive and fill the fuel without loosing any crew - all this without increasing any skills for EVAC!
Another good suggestion is to rename your non named officers and crew. For example I always rename the Hacker as "Fuel Loader" and the two triskan fighters as "alpha 1" and "alpha 2", to easily remember during EVAC on who is doing what.

How to play EVAC

1. Start with seeing if anyone is away. If online, send command to come back. They are very fast on this, since all crew and officers has discipline bonus from origin.
2. If anyone is offline, send a crew to get them. Stug is very fast at this, and so is Norah. In general officers has a bonus to this task. Another consideration is who is closest. If you already have an officer or crew in station hall or cargo room, then send these first.
3. Set the fuel loader to repair the hyper drive. Once finished, then switch task to refuel repeatedly until tank is full at 300k
4. Send Norah to station hall and start appeasing and escorting passengers. If any hostiles, then send 1 more to defend (can be any of the combat trained, with advantage, wait for one off the crew to come back from being away of offline)
5. Send Tyron to do 1-2 cycles of refueling. The rule here is to wait for the alarm when the aliens arrive, then wait until that cycle finishes and then start walking to the cockpit. The escorts will be sufficiently strong in the meantime
6. Send the remaining crew to load cargo. if any hostiles in cargo area, then leave 1 without orders, so he shoots at the hostiles. Do not forget to active the weapons. If you have 3-5 hostiles, then leave only 1-2 with loading (see who is fastest, it varies with the rolls from game to game), and the rest is shooting back. If you kill any hostiles, you can let more load again. With the ships proposed above, loading is quite easy with 8 cargo as max.
7. Once cargo loading is ready, send the crew to either station hall or the refueling. If any crew gets injured in the cargo area, then send them to refueling before they get killed
8. Once Tyron starts with shield defense, start to move Valro to the cockpit. If he arrives once Tyron is at half stress level, then he can switch as the shield defender.
9. If Norah is alone in station hall, the appease 1 citizen and escort once ready. If several crew is available (after cargo loading is finished), then let Norah appease everyone, and once one is successful, then let one of the triskan fighters escort.

Summary

This is a build that allow you to refuel Max, Fill all cargo from 0 and fill all passengers from 0, without loosing a single officer or crew and take 0 damage to ship during EVAC.

For the scanning phase you will have a good pilot available, where you added some bonus skill points to Stealth or Awareness. At least one crew (Sarah or Triskan), where you used bonus skill points to increase Signals and Radar, should be able to scan down a landing site, while the others have reasonable skills in succeeding with scan for research, profit or habitat with their planetary trait.

Once landed on the planet we can only speculate what skills are useful, but we will have one superb administrator and Leader (Norah) who should be able to setup production and the colony. Sarah and the Triskans should have good survival skills and be reasonably good in exploring the planet. Focus will be on exploration and production, while science will suffer somewhat. Also there may be a lot of inter person conflicts in a criminal deck (many have violent and anti social traits), but hopefully Norah can mediate this somewhat.

What comes next

I will try to add more deck reviews in the coming days if I find the time to write up some more. What I have in mind is first a Criminal / Corporate combination that is quite good for highlighting how the corporate access card can be added to the origin for some additional options. I can also contrast this build with the one described in this article.
Afterwards we can move to more starter builds, but feel free to leave your comments here on what you would like to see and discuss!

/cpt Eyebroo over and out!