Look out! The members of The Circle are coming out to play

The Circle is yet another Bajoran card that works with the discard pile. What makes it stand out, however, is that it focuses on an opponent's discard pile rather than your own. This zero-cost, unique event allows you to spend two additional counters during each of your turns, provided that any opponent has at least seven personnel in his or her discard pile.

Before you start posting on the message boards about how broken this card is, take a moment to think about the complexities involved in getting seven personnel in an opponent's discard pile. While any deck involving Jake Sisko, Reporter Behind the Lines (and selected others) may voluntarily discard cards, most will not. This means that, if you want to get any sort of benefit from The Circle, you may have to devote a part of your deck to the task of getting personnel in an opponent's discard pile.

The first option that will spring to mind is a dilemma pile with lots of dilemmas that kill personnel. A Tragic Turn pile could work well here, but it is a popular dilemma and many players have added Escape to their deck to counter this exact situation. Instead of killing personnel, you could use dilemmas that force your opponent to discard cards in other ways. Memory Invasion, Meaningless Words, Secret Identity, The Dreamer and the Dream, Revelry and Mugato are all excellent discard dilemmas that can help trigger The Circle.

If you're impatient and can't wait to use The Circle, there are several other ways you could increase the number of personnel in an opponent's discard pile. When you play Surmak Ren, Medical Administrator, each opponent is forced to discard one card from hand for each headquarters mission he or she commands. You could also use an assassin, such as Trazko, Hired Muscle or The Albino, Killer of Children, to kill specific personnel. If that doesn't appeal to you, you could always try combat. No Love for the Spoon Heads, Rash Aggression and Militia Patrol all offer you the chance to kill personnel after winning combat. You could even add Kurn, Bajoran Security Officer for an extra kill. That would then allow you to add multiple copies of Bat'leth for extra discards. Then there's The Stone of Gol which you can use to kill one personnel before the combat begins. You won't be able to play that equipment immediately because it has the Artifact keyword, but your Bajorans will have no problem completing an Anthropology mission, right?

The last thing to mention is that, should Excalbian Drama and Fesarius Bluff become popular, then you may not even need to use any of the methods above. Your opponents will be discarding cards using these two dilemmas, and will give you those extra two counters in no time at all.