A Borg Cube is one of the most formidable challenges players can face in Gale Force Nine’s Star Trek: Ascendancy – Borg Assimilation Game Expansion. Confrontation with one of these engines of destruction is inevitable. Caught unprepared, a battle with the Borg can be devastating. When one civilization brings the full weight of their fleets to bear or teams with a rival civilization to confront a Cube, the Borg can be defeated, often at great cost.

A Space Battle against a Borg Cube is similar to a battle between players with a few key differences. On the Borg turn, each player will choose a Borg Cube in play to activate. The Cube’s first action will be to initiate a Space Battle with every Starship in the same and adjacent Sectors. In this way, two or more different players can find themselves battling the Borg together.

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A Borg Cube has nine attack dice. For each hit that player’s inflict on a Borg Cube, the Borg will lose one of those dice. When an attack die is lost, it is placed on the Borg Combat Card, when all nine dice are on the card, the Cube is destroyed.

The Borg are nothing if not resilient. During a prolonged Space Battle, the Borg will adapt to the players’ attacks. When combat begins, a Cube will have no shield modifier. At the start of each round, the Borg Shield modifier will increase by one until it reaches a modifier of four. The shield modifier increases the difficulty of a player to hit an opponent in a Space Battle. Players may find that the Borg become invulnerable to attack if they are not defeated quickly.

A Borg Cube can also repair the damage done to it. When the Borg attack player ships, they roll their nine attack dice, minus any dice placed on the Combat Card. For each six that the Borg rolls in the combat, they remove one of the dice from the Combat Card and add it back to their attack dice pool. Each hit the Borg inflict will destroy a player Ship, if there are multiple players involved in the Space Battle, the Borg hits are divided evenly among the player’s Ships. The target number the Borg need to roll in order to hit starts at five, however that number lowers as more worlds are assimilated by the Borg. The more planets the Borg control in the Alpha Quadrant, the more effective their attacks are against the species of the Quadrant.

The Borg are not without their weaknesses, however. The Borg rarely regard the species of the Alpha Quadrant as a threat until they attack the Borg. This means that in a Space Battle, players get a First Strike attack in the first round of combat. This is their only chance to inflict as much damage as they can against a Cube before the Cube returns fire. After that first round of combat, attacks occur simultaneously with players and the Borg rolling their attack die at the same time, until one foe retreats or is destroyed. The Borg never retreat.

When players defeat a Borg Cube, each player involved in the battle claims a Borg Tech Card. These cards represent tactics that can be used against the Borg in future battles or advancements and advantages that a player may use for the rest of the game.

Raise your shields and charge phasers when the Borg invade GF9’s Star Trek: Ascendancy with the Borg Assimilation Game Expansion, available later this year. Players will get their first hand-on experience with the Borg in August at Gen Con 50 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Keep your sensors scanning at http://startrek.gf9games.com/ for more information about Star Trek: Ascendancy and the Borg Assimilation Game Expansion.