What cards enables the minor factions?

Hello again, here comes a follow up on my previous article - @eyebroo/eyebroo-exode-builds-1-the-legendary-pirates

Today I will look at some possible ways a starter deck can be expanded, and also how the pirate deck I discussed in my previous article can be modified. The key here is to look for cards that adds minor factions to the origin.

The article got a bit long, but I have divided it into sections for each faction, so skip any part you find less relevant.

Equip extra cards to your origin

There are 3 cards that can be equipped to your origin card during deck construction which will allow the addition of minor factions:

1. Syndicate Chip grants the Syndicate faction and allow syndicate cards to be used
2. The Rebellion Secrets grants the addition of 1-4 Rebels depending on the upgrades to the card. In addition it inspires Stealth and Anti Federation with your crew and officers which can give a skill bonus
3. Corporate License (S+) grants the Corporate Faction and allow corporate cards to be used

Syndicate Faction

There are 15 cards from the syndicate faction and it allows for some interesting choices:

1. Ship - Black Lotus: A ship with QL 7, space for 6 crew, 3 equipment sets, 6 cargo and 4 passengers, ,combat equipped and with a cloak! I personally do not have this card, but the cloak feels like a very important feature for arriving unharmed at the planet. We still need to see exactly how this will be implemented in the game (not sure if scanning is possible while cloaked for example).
2. Three Officers: Syndicate Squad Leader, Ayumi, and Battle trained socialite (BTS). All three are excellent in fighting. The squad leader is a rare, and works very good with the Repentant Pirate + cpt Cranium combo, since they also have the criminal faction. Ayumi is considered one of the best cargo loaders in EVAC with a very high speed and awareness. BTS is a little less effective than Ayumi in EVAC, but a bit more flexible, since it can also be used in a civilian or military deck.
3. Four Crew: Syndicate Hacker, Transactor, Trooper and Camouflaged Sniper. The hacker I have played a lot and works great as a "mechanic" to repair the hyperdrive and fill fuel. The transactor is a bit weak for Evac, but its been promised that robots will have some interesting options later. The Syndicate Trooper is similar to other QL4 fighter cards; It misses some combat traits but gets stealth instead. The sniper is a good fighter card with QL 6, and comes with a bound sniper rifle. I suspect this card will shine in colonization play with the extreme shooting range and possibility to hide.
4. The Kumicho - Legendary passenger: This card is a key reason to play a syndicate deck. Although a passenger and not available in EVAC and Scanning, it is a strong QL 10 card for colonization. It also provides a +1 synergy to all syndicate cards, and +1 synergy to all cards with Narcophile. Currently only Ayumi has the Narcophile trait, but it will be possible to activate this trait with the Narco-Warfare card.
5. Equipment set - Narcotics Genefactory: Not much details for this card beside it will be used to produce narcotics in the colony.
6. Five items: Syndicate chip, Holidays, N-Prime, Syndicate Autoblaster and Narco-Warfare. The syndicate chip can both be used for the origin (to enable syndicate cards to be added) and to crew and officers (adding the syndicate faction to a crew member triggers the syndicate synergy if "The Kumicho" passenger is included in the deck). Holidays and N-Prime are drugs, currently not functioning, but should allow some interesting game play once active. Holidays will add temporary happiness and drug addiction, while N-Prime adds temporary combat skills and drug addiction. The auto blaster is a weapon (not much different from the Rekatron weapons in my opinion). The Narco-Warfare is an interesting card that gives permanent Combat traits (also the drug addition trait). This can be used to trigger the Kumicho synergy on Narcophile and also give shooting and cover traits to non-combat personnel.

When to add syndicate?

• Adding more combat crew and officer to a science or civilian deck
  This is an interesting approach, since syndicate cards are relatively cheap. The syndicate hacker can be used as a mechanics with much higher QL than the maintenance staff. Prices are up a bit compared to December, but you can still find Syndicate Hackers and Troopers for around USD 0.3 - 0.4 in the marketplace.
• The Black Lotus is an excellent QL7 ship. I suspect the cloak will make it much easier to land on the planet, and turbo speed will allow a very fast approach. Cloak aside - the ship is quite similar to the military starter ship, the "Archeon Class Military Frigate".
  I think this ship can be in interesting alternative to Science and Civilian decks that want to make it undetected to the colonization planet.
  It is one of four ships with space for 3 equipment sets.
  Cheap price - Although up from USD 1 to USD 6, they are still cheaper than other ships in the market (beside the starter ships).
• The Kumicho adds synergy to your other syndicate cards. In addition, you can use the Narco-Warfare card (the card has to be fixed first) to trigger the second synergy as well. I can see some interesting choices here, for example a bunch of drug addicted, combat capable scientists with very high QL, racing to build a drug lab!

Rebel Faction

There are only 3 rebel cards at the moment, which is quite limited.

1. One Crew: Cornered Rebel Agent
   A rare card, quite similar to other QL4 fighter cards with Shooting, Cover, but also with Stealth, Courage and Heroism. Currently not much use but it will probably change later on, as stealth seems to be an important ability
2. One Passenger: Rebel General
   A legendary passenger with QL9. Currently not much use, but has the ability to generate rebel quests, which I suspect will give in game rewards for the rebel faction. Keep an eye on this card in the future when colonization and rebel quests are activated!
3. One item: The Rebellion Secrets
   As previously mentioned, allows the use of rebels and may give extra stealth to your officers and crew

When to use rebels?

• At the moment I only see one real use case for rebels, and it is to use the rebellion secrets card to try to get a stealth bonus to your ship captain. This can be useful while approaching the planet without getting detected by the aliens.
• A minor use case can be to use the rebellion secrets when you have many non combat crew in EVAC. Stealth should lower the chance you get targeted by the hostiles, but I have not been able to test how much of a difference this does.
• I expect stealth to be a valuable trait in colonization play and the strong stealth profile of the rebel faction should make it a strong inclusion to any deck, once we can play colonization.

A final thought on the Rebels: I would hold on to any rebel cards for now, I expect this to be a very interesting play option once the cards are activated in colonization. You will probably need to start with a rebellion secret and the Rebel General, so if you have them, keep them!

Corporate Faction

There are 7 corporate cards, and it has been hinted at more corporate cards in the beta card collection

1. Ship - Kormen Cargo
   A very strong cargo ship that also have an extended fuel tank with the possibility to bring 600k fuel instead of the 300k for other ships. In addition has the largest cargo with 12 points (24 crates). Main weakness is the limited size of the crew and that it lacks any combat abilities. This can be somewhat mitigated by pre loading the cargo before EVAC.
2. Officer - Nash, The Expert
   A very good card that I often play. It is always good to have 1-2 crew or officers with investigation, and his major trait in awareness makes him a good cargo loader beside his combat abilities
3. Crew - Special Infiltration Agent
   This is actually not a specific corporate card (she has 5 origins), but it can be good to know that it has the corporate trait, in case you want the synergy bonus
4. Passengers - Mysterious Corporate Boss and Corporate Bodyguard
   The corporate boss is a major reason for playing a corporate deck. With his synergy bonus to administration and corporate, he will be a multiplier to any deck trying to build up a productive colony. In addition it seems that corporate has good defensive combat skills (the body guards has good awareness and cover). The boss also comes with 2 extra body guards, so you get 3 for 1 with that card.
5. Items - Corporate License S+ and Corporate License
   The license S+ adds the corporate faction to the origin, while the normal license adds the corporate faction to any other crew or officer. The lesser card will primarily be used to trigger the corporate boss synergy bonus for other origins in your deck, which is quite powerful, especially if the card already has administration (such as for a civilian deck).

When to play corporate?

I am personally very positive to the corporate faction, and see several corporate hybrid decks I want to play.

• The Kormen is a ship to build a strong colony that requires lots of energy and infrastructure. the challenge will be a small crew and to survive EVAC and the landing. If you already have many colonization cards, I would take a look at the Kormen as a good platform for starting your colony. One idea I have here is also to use many autonomous vehicles that can be loaded into cargo, such as little buddy, security drones, friendly eyes and explorators.
• Hybrid decks raises the question of whether you want to specialize in your strengths, or mitigate your weaknesses. As things stands now, corporate is focused on administration (the boss) and defensive combat (the body guards can be used for guard duty only). I think this is quite complementary to a science build (mitigate their weaknesses) or allow further specialization for the civilian builds (make their administrators stronger). Military builds may not have so much need for the body guards (unless they go for a lot of signal or engineering crew), but a good administrator as a passenger may strengthen their colony.
• The criminal and corporate hybrid (+syndicate) is something I have thought about, but in order to enable corporate we have to remove captain cranium, thus loosing the +1 criminal synergy and a really strong card. In return we can trigger the corporate synergy with the rare license cards, and replace Cranium with Nash or one of the other Versatile epic officers. Nash brings the advantage of having investigation which the criminal deck is lacking. With Cranium removed it is also possible to look for further synergies, such as playing with both the Kumicho and the corporate boss in parallel. In addition we can also change the ship to either the Kormen or the Black Lotus.

The Passenger that enables a faction

The Drachian faction

By adding one or several Drachian Commissars as passengers, you can add cards from the Drachian faction. Each commissar allows the use of 2 cards (or 4 if it is an elite card).

There are currently 5 cards from the Drachian faction.

1. Ship - Drachian Mantis
   A rare ship that is basically an armored cargo transport. In itself not too remarkable, but it has the upgradable trait, and fully upgraded it will be on par or better than the top of the line ships. 13 cards need to be burned for a full upgrade, so make sure you collect these cards. Fully upgraded it will have 8 crew, 4 equipment slots (only ship that can have 4), 8 cargo and 6 passengers. In addition it has turrets (only cargo ship with turrets), tac scan and long range radar.
2. Officer - Drachian Colonel
   A very uncommon card that was given out to early backers of the game. Only 6 in existence, but has the ability to inspire discipline in your crew and officers. Very valuable card, but due to rarity - few players will have the privilege of playing with this card.
3. Crew - Drachian Trooper
   A very good QL4 rare fighter card. Comes equipped with a DR4 auto weapon and a scarab armor, and has a major trait in discipline. Its spaceship trait can also be used to trigger a synergy with the Navy Lieutenant
4. Passenger - Drachian Commissar
   Primarily used to give access to the Drachian faction. He also has a major trait in investigation, which can be useful during the crew investigation phase.
5. Item - Drachian Suit
   Same armor as the Drachian Trooper is wearing. A strong (13 pts reduction), light weight armor that also gives a major trait in cover to its wearer.

When to play Drachian?

• This faction is very focused on discipline and combat. I would consider adding a few commissars to enable either troopers or the armors (the armors can for example make a big difference on survivability for a civilian build) if you play with a large crew with little discipline or survivability in EVAC. A military deck can benefit a lot from the extra discipline of the drachian troopers. In addition these cards are QL4 vs QL3 of a common trooper (and +1 extra with spaceships synergy).
• Try to put some scarab armors on your civilians when loading cargo or escorting passengers. You will notice a large improvement in how many hits they can take.
• If you manage to collect up to 14 cards of the Drachian Mantis, then you have a very strong ship to play. Even if not fully upgraded it can still be an option if you want to establish a big colony (you can then decide if you first focus on large crew, equipment sets, cargo or passengers). This ship may also be a nice option if you play the Stranded Trader origin, since it has the cargo trait.

The other factions

In addition to what I have written about above, there are some additional factions that we currently know little about and thus hard to write about. The main use at the moment is to fly their ships, but I expect more cards will be released in the future that explore these options further.

Genetician

This looks like a very interesting faction, but currently too few cards are released and too little known about their abilities to say what their strength and weaknesses will be.

1. Ship - Coetus Science Vessel
2. Genetician Scientist (only 6 cards in existence)
3. Genetician Console
   This equipment set gives the Genetician faction to the origin and all crew and officers. I currently do not see why this is relevant (beside using the ship without penalty), so we need to get more information around the faction before analyzing further.

Suntek

1. Two ships - The Colombus and Akhen Cannon
   Just looking at the description of these 2 ships makes it clear that this faction is worthwhile to play. the Colombus is the largest passenger ship so far and will allow the establishment of a very large colony to start with. The Akhen cannon has a built in generator, so will probably have an exceptional ability to produce energy for the colony, but this is pure speculation at this point.
2. Crew - Suntek Survivor (only 2 in existence)
   A very interesting card, but with 2 in existence, very few people will have a chance to play with it
3. Loaded Cargo - Suntek Sphere (only 2 in existence)
   A very interesting card that hints at research and energy features that will come during colonization

Nomad Fleet

1. Ship - Taurus Transport
   This is a ship I have played with several times already, and can say it is quite sturdy compared to the other cargo counterparts. It will work best when combined with other Nomad cards though, so currently hard to see how good it can be, given the lack of Nomad cards
2. Crew - Nomad Navigator (only 10 in existence)
   A very good pilot that has a special ability to add extra structure hit points to the ship.

Summary

In this second article in my deck review series, we have looked at the minor factions and how they can be added to your starter or more advanced origins. I hope you managed to find some new ideas on how to build your deck, and maybe an inspiration to find and buy a new card in the marketplace that strengthen your deck! As always, let me know in the comments what you think about the article and if you have further suggestions on what topics to cover.