Welcome to my second theorycrafting post about the new Exode Planetary Challenges!

Due to lack of time, I’m going to keep this one short and to the point. Let me know if you prefer this approach, or my original one @veryanprime/exode-theorycrafting-bosnarrene-challenge

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Mystery

• Relevant Skills: Secret Agenda, Programming
• Time Limit: 3 Rounds

Requirements

• Required Faction: 2 Military
• Banned Combinations: Military / Rebel, Administration / Awareness
  These combinations make a surprisingly large amount of sense from a story perspective. When working on a secret agenda, you definitely don’t want some observant bureaucrat to catch on to your plans!

Risks

Environmental Risk - Freezing (All)

• Any QL3 item on a team guarantees survival

Social Risk (Colony)

Relevant Skills: Charisma, Popularity, Loyalty
Target Number: 2+ each round

Security Risk (Away Team)

• Relevant Skills: Stealth, Speed
• Target Number: 3+ each round

Advantages

• +6 Quality on Navy Lieutenant (Origin): Only useful in that it's a Military card.
• +4 Quality on CM-30 Nymans Cargo Magnet: Not useful in this challenge.

Ambition

This section didn’t generate quite right so I’m not entirely sure what the bonus is. My current understanding of it is that having Dexterity gives you a 20 point bonus and that a single character knowledgeable in Planetary Warfare gives a 10 point bonus. As it's currently unclear I’m going to ignore it for this article.

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Promising Cards

While scouring the Deck Expert Tool I found that Enorcaicine had a much smaller pool of useful cards compared to Bosnarrene.

There really are only two good choices to meet the Military requirement:

• Battle-Trained Socialite: Meets the Military requirement and can help with either team’s risk.
• Special Infiltration Agent: Meets the Military requirement, has a secret agenda, and heavily contributes to the social risk.

There are a decent number of choices for the mystery, but some units stand out far more than others.

Secret Agenda

• Special Infiltration Agent: Hands down this should be your first choice.
• Rebel General: A strong contributor to the Mystery and can help with either team risk.
• Mysterious AI: QL10 who helps with both mystery requirements.
• Crypto-Eater: QL10 who also helps with social risk.

Programming

• Mysterious AI: Killing two birds with one stone.
• Sh4rken: QL10 Programming is more helpful than a QL5 or lower card who helps with programming and a risk.

I’ve already listed a lot of cards which will help with the various risks such as Battle-Trained Socialite, Special Infiltration Agent, Rebel General. Here are a few other promising candidates.

Freezing

• Arena Powersuit: Give this to your away team and not only are you safe, but you get QL10 towards your security risk as well.
• Any other suit with QL3 Atmospheric Shielding, though I personally like to use the Eisen suits.
• If you are desperate for Military, you can double up on the two different Military Suit Class A cards on one of your teams. Combined they give you QL4.

Social

• Norah: QL7 with two of the three skills, so she’s worth QL14 towards the risk.
• Flesh Cult Leader: QL6 with two of the skills, giving you QL12 towards the risk.

Security

• Just use some of the cards previously mentioned, or you could throw in a Spartan Elite Suit for QL7

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Recommended Solution

This solution to this challenge seemed pretty clear to me, with characters who strongly stood out in multiple categories. That being said, there was a lot of room for the final slots on each team. Ultimately I decided solving the mystery soon was better the way to go, and chose based on that. Aside from that, the biggest obstacle was the fact these cards are also very useful for other challenges!

Colony Team

1. Special Infiltration Agent: Military, Secret Agenda QL5, Social QL10
2. Norah: Social QL14
3. Racer Mech-Suit: Freezing +1, Possible Dexterity Bonus Points
4. Crypto-Eater: Programming QL10, Social QL10

Away Team

1. Rebel General: Secret Agenda QL9, Security QL9
2. Battle-Trained Socialite: Military, Security QL6
3. Arena Power Suit: Freezing +2, Security QL10
4. Mysterious AI: Programming QL10, Secret Agenda QL10

This gives you the following pools:

• Mystery - Secret Agenda: QL24 / 8 dice
• Mystery - Programming: QL20 / 6 dice
• Risk - Colony Freezing: +1 to all rolls (auto pass)
• Risk - Away Team Freezing: +2 to all rolls (auto pass)
• Risk - Social: QL34 / 11 dice on a 2+ target
• Risk - Security: QL25 / 8 dice on a 3+ target

All respectable pools for some pretty easy targets. I would prefer to have a larger pool for Security as opposed to Social risk, but it wasn’t in the heart of the cards.

My Sub-Optimal Solution

As mentioned, I needed a lot of these cards for other challenges, so this is the less optimal approach I used. Still, with the low target numbers I have high hopes for success, even if I don’t top the leaderboard.

Colony Team

1. Norah: Social QL14
2. Mandated President: Social QL8
3. Eisen Suit: Freezing +1
4. Mysterious AI: Programming QL10, Secret Agenda QL10

Away Team

1. Battle-Trained Socialite: Military, Security QL6
2. Rebel General: Secret Agenda QL9, Security QL9
3. Spartan Elite Suit: Freezing +2, Security QL7
4. Military Suit Class C: Military

This gives you the following pools:

• Mystery - Secret Agenda: QL19 / 6 dice
• Mystery - Programming: QL10 / 3 dice
• Risk - Colony Freezing: +1 to all rolls (auto pass)
• Risk - Away Team Freezing: +2 to all rolls (auto pass)
• Risk - Social: QL22 / 7 dice
• Risk - Security: QL22 / 7 dice

Unfortunately there aren’t any Military programmers so I had to take a large hit on that dice pool. I worry I’ll need all three rounds to get enough successes. My risk dice pools are large enough that I’m not worried about an early demise.

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Share your thoughts! Share your teams!
I look forward to seeing the results.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you prefer this format, the previous one, or something completely different.