Aside from the race-specific methods of attaining an Alt Win afforded by the various Towers, there are certain cards which can be utilised by all races to attain the same objective. More importantly, once these cards are in play they can be used simultaneously by everyone – meaning that, like the Tower wins, if you’re not careful then your strategy could be used against you.
Ships cannot activate their commands in this region. At the beginning of your turn, set aside the top card of your market until the end of this game. When you have set aside 10 cards in this way, you win the game.
The idea here is to occupy the Eve Gate outer region and defend it until your tenth turn thereafter. Each time your turn begins and you’re still in control of the region, you set the top card of your deck aside. When your little stack of cards gets ten deep then you’ve won. Pretty straightforward you might think, but as usual there are a few nuances to consider…
If you think about putting one card aside each turn, it’s obvious that you will be unable to use them during normal play. Although you could argue that this would have a practically negligible effect on the odds of drawing a particular card, the cumulative effect is significant: Over the course of a game with a minimum-sized deck, putting ten cards aside means that nearly 20% of your total market will be unavailable to you. The only effective way to counter this is to build a high degree of ‘redundancy’ into your deck, and by this I mean you should have as many copies of any given card as your collection will allow (actually, this is a good idea no matter what your deck archetype!). Decide on a 13 cards that you really want in your deck and then use 4 copies of each, rather than picking 17 cards and only being able to fit in 3 copies. If possible, and if it’s in keeping with the rest of your strategy, try to use different cards with similar effects – for example, there are mechanisms like Direct Damage, Starbase Structure / Location Removal and Anti-News that can be invoked with more than one card. Utilising this fact will add more redundancy to your deck, which in turn will allow you to suffer the loss of your key cards with greater ease, because with the Eve Gate once they’re gone they stay gone.
Looking at the attributes of the Eve Gate region itself, we can see that it generates no income and allows for no deployment of locations. In addition, ships occupying the Eve Gate are prohibited from activating their commands, so trading is impossible. In other words, the only benefit gained from controlling this outer region is the Alt Win itself. This could well limit your scope for income generation, so it would be wise to compensate for this accordingly. Additionally, the inability to ambush or patrol makes defending the Eve Gate more difficult than usual, which could force you out of your comfort zone by making you alter your combat style, or even the type and number of ships in your deck.
This type of win will probably work best with Amarr and Gallente decks which are packing their respective Logistics Cruisers – the Guardian and Oneiros – because these big ships are hard to shift once they get settled. Perhaps ironically, it’s also Amarr and Gallente decks which can hinder an Eve Gate Alt Win by the simplest means, namely the Forsaken Ruins / Endless Re-runs combo. However, no matter what race you favour, expect a huge slugfest over this hotly-contested region if you choose to attain victory by this method.
When Archeological Site comes into play, you may draw a card. At the beginning of your turn, if you control an Archeological Site in four different regions, you win the game.
At first glance the mechanism for this Alt Win seems a bit unlikely – you have to be able to get the four Archaeological Sites out of your deck and into different regions (which means at least three outer regions) and then assume or maintain control of these regions until the start of your next turn. Bit of a tall order, not least of all because of the narrow odds of being able to draw all four sites. This situation can be helped by including several copies of Reflection of Time, but it’s still a tough one because by the time you’ve drawn the Sites it’s likely that any regions in play will have hit their location cap. And then there’s always the danger that if you do get a Site into play, you might be forced to relinquish control of the region that it’s in.
Probability and playability issues aside, once your opponent realises that you’re aiming for this kind of win then there’s a lot they can do to hinder your plans, or wreck them completely – cards such as Exiled from the Empire and Precognition Tower can target the Archaeological Site directly; once you have a Site or two out then your strategy is vulnerable to wreckage from Exposed Plans, Armageddon Project, The Universe Is Too Small and Prophecy of Macaber. Even the use of a Sentinel Hive could have you struggling to capture a fourth outer region because you can’t play your Sites at home.
Fortunately there are plenty of effective location manipulation mechanisms available, and while your opponent can use cards like Sabotaged Beacon and Slave-dog Stowaways to remove your deployed sites from play, there’s nothing to stop you also from using these cards to your advantage: Dam Torsad could be used for turbo-deployment of all your Archaeological Sites, then you recycle them back into your hand with the Beacon, or maybe a Slavedog / Trial of Expedition combo, then you’re free to scatter the Sites across other regions and get your win. SCC Global Market and By the Emperor’s Decree can help get the sites out quickly too, and the aforementioned location-removing cards are also good for negating the cap on any fully-populated regions.
Because this strategy is pretty fragile it might be best to include some mechanisms for resurrecting your dead Sites from the scrapheap. Salvage Drones, Sansha’s Nation, Ginnungagap and Human Containment Facilities should all do the trick.
To be honest though, because of its many drawbacks I can see the Archaeological Site as being the least popular method for an Alt Win – but this could mean that it’s also the least-expected, which could make for a devastating deck if you can get it right!!
(91 ISK): If target starbase is dealt damage this turn, it is destroyed.
Technically, this card does not provide you with an Alternative Victory condition per se; however, what it does is greatly facilitate achieving a normal win by blowing the enemy starbase into bits with a meagre 1 damage. The prohibitive factor is that you’ll need a load of moolah to do it – 91 ISK to be precise – and, as mentioned above, there’s always the danger that your opponent can utilise this tactic against you.
Usually during a game you will consistently empty your wallet over the course of your turn. Any spare change that you have is typically best kept for playing ad-hoc News cards. My point is that it can be extremely difficult to ‘save up’ the requisite 91 ISK, so it’s probably best that your deck has some “Get Rich Quick” teching built in. That way you can accumulate the necessary funds for the SCC Global Market victory in one fell swoop, rather than over the course of several turns (whereby your opponent can see your plans from light-years away and react accordingly).
Currently there’s a number of ways to rake in a load of income at once: You could strip-mine an Arkanor belt with multiple haulers and a Flourishing Trade Route; or, once your fleet is deployed, you slap down a Safety Regulations Revamped with some Subsidized Industries in force; or there’s always the notorious Frailty Tower + Stabbers + Insurance Fraud combo. No matter what method you settle for, it’s worthwhile remembering that the SCC Global Market can also help you get the necessary cards out more readily.
Hit the Deck!!
I have to admit that when I first got into the game I was so caught up in a frenzy of bloodlust thinking of ways to pummel starbases that I nearly missed something critical:
If you are supposed to draw a card when none are left in your deck, you lose the game.
Nothing to do with the text on any cards, here’s an actual gameplay mechanism that affords an Alternative Victory Condition. Okay, so winning or losing in this manner can’t really be classed as “alternative” because there it is in the rules under the normal Victory Conditions, but think about it: A win like this probably happens so infrequently that it’s best to be grouped along with the rest of the Alts - pardon my copious amounts of creative interpretation, but hear me out… If you consider a game where there’s minimum-sized decks and no fancy extra drawing (like with the Society of Conscious Thought or the Venal Tower), then it’s going to be at least Round 45 before anyone gets their entire market depleted. Any games that I’ve played are usually over in half this time, so the chances of a game dragging on until someone gets ‘decked’ seem pretty slim. Unless you develop a means of making your opponent’s market disappear at a quicker rate than normal that is, and there’s plenty of ways to achieve this.
Exhausted, House of Ill Repute and Furnace Mill can all be used to send cards straight from the market to the scrapheap. Not only does this push your opponent towards getting decked, it’s also likely to have them howling in frustration as their juicy big cards bypass their hand entirely. A lot of decks rely on a few key cards as part of their integral strategy, so the loss of any of these cards to the scrapheap can really tip the balance in your favour.
There are also a great many cards that force your opponent to discard from their hand, including Ferox, Exposed Plans, Arkanor, Faulty Implant Manager, Perch of Persecution, Security Breach and House of Animosity. The possible advantage with these cards in a decking strategy, aside from the annoyance factor, is that they could entice your opponent to draw heavily (e.g. by forfeiting income) to replenish their hand, and all the while their market is getting closer to rock bottom.
Even if your deck doesn’t have any specific mechanics to deplete the enemy market, it’s worthwhile considering that if a game does drag on (which it could, despite what I said above) then sooner or later one of you is going to run out of cards. A simple trick like occupying Sansha’s Nation could allow you to recycle your scrapheap instead of drawing each turn, effectively creating a “draw timesink” where you’re guaranteed not to deck before you opponent. Putting cards back into your market, for instance with Slave-dog Stowaways or Human Containment Facilities, could also help in this instance.
When your starbase is upgraded, destroy Cathedral and draw a card. Your opponents cannot win the game unless your starbase is destroyed. You cannot lose the game unless your starbase is destroyed.
Okay, so hopefully by now everybody’s drooling with glee over their new Alternate Victory deck ideas and the carnage that will ensue. Then it hits you: Behold the grace and majesty of The Cathedral (fanfare of heavenly trumpets….) There it is in a one-card nutshell – the end of the Alt Win strategy you spent so long devising. The key element of this card is that the owner in question cannot be beaten unless their starbase is destroyed. “What? But I just decked you after I undocked my armada of ships from my 30-shield starbase, emptied your wallet and your hand and threw my 4 Archaeological sites into all those different regions I control...and... and… ARRRGGH!”
You get the picture? None of it matters unless you’ve teched your deck to counter this one card. Similarly, it’s safe to say that if you’re able to get a Cathedral of your own into play, then you only have to worry about not getting blitzed. Opponent’s been sitting on the Eve Gate the whole game? Happy camping, muchacho…
Another point to note is that if you’re going for one of the Alt Wins that doesn’t involve decking, your own Cathedral will stop your plan backfiring on you should your opponent attempt to utilise your card text.
Of course, there’s a number of ways to bring the hallowed walls of the Cathedral tumbling down (even if it’s just temporarily), including using Legal Department, Mind Trap, Gravity Storm, Depleted Resources, Power Shortage, the Precognition Tower ability, Bomb Threat… or possibly an assault from a Caracal pumped with Guerilla Warfare (if you’re Minmatar) or Central Fleet Command (if you’re Caldari)… By whatever means, some anti-Cathedral teching is imperative for any Alt Win deck, and there’s enough variety here to mould well with your chosen archetype.
In Conclusion
Hopefully this has given some food-for-thought to both noobs and veterans alike. I think it’s worthwhile to try and come up with deck ideas that are a bit different from the usual blitzers that tend to pervade the playing community, if for no other reason than to witness the surprised look on your opponent’s face. Plus, the greater the variety in the metagame then the more this already fantastic CCG will evolve and stay fresh…
Just remember, it’s a 0.0 low-sec jungle out there, so you gotta be decked and teched to deal with it:
“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong… but that’s the way to bet!”
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