So you’ve got a scout with lot of citizens one jump away from an Android armada. What do you do? The answer: drop a battle avoidance card like Phased Out on the scout and walk right past them! Battle avoidance is a great strategy in Star Chamber, and I’m going to tell you how to use it and how to counter it.

Why avoid battles?

Star Chamber is about ship battles and weapon mods, right? Wrong. Star Chamber is a game of influence. Ship power is used to kill incoming enemy citizens, letting you gain or keep planets. Battle avoidance lets you get your influence on the ground without firing a shot. I have frustrated many new players who play with powerful weapon mods with a few Infinity Drive scouts. Battle avoidance wins games.

How Do You Use Battle Avoidance to Your Advantage?

The major draw-back of battle avoidance is that while your enemy isn’t destroying your ships, you aren’t destroying theirs either. Each of you is free to move around the map with as much influence as you can carry. The key to Battle Avoidance decks, then, is to have more influence than the other guy. There are four major ways to do this.

1. Packing production boosters like Creche or Metropolis to crank out citizens.
2. Packing influence boosters like Xenology Degree or Scientific Expedition.
3. Packing citizen destruction cards like Brain Burrower.
4. Packing influence reduction cards like Sinister Implant.

Using some combination of these things is a good idea.

How Do I Win Games Using Battle Avoidance?

Decks with too many battle avoidance cards cannot win militarily, because your opponent will have too many reinforcements flying around. Pure battle avoidance decks focus on the Political and/or Destiny win. A moderate amount of battle avoidance cards can help any deck, because it lets you grab planets that are behind the lines or defended by a large fleet. Lots of battle avoidance cards can let you almost ignore what your opponent is doing, as long as you keep your homeworld well defended. This does not apply when playing decks with lots influence boosts or citizen destruction cards of their own.

When Is It a Good Idea to Use Battle Avoidance?

If your opponent is running a very defensive deck, battle avoidance can be gold. Also, battle avoidance is great to use vs. the Entropy races when moving towards a contested planet. As long as you have more influence than the other guy, you win.

When Is It Not a Good Idea?

If your opponent is playing as a race that tends to rely on influence boosts rather than ship power to conquer planets, you will want to destroy his influence carrying fleets as often as possible. This means ditching or holding on to any battle avoidance cards in hand.

If Battle Avoidance Is Only Effective Against Militaristic Decks, Why Should I Use It?

Ah, here’s the kicker: battle avoidance cards are great at war. Slap those cards on your bombers and watch them ravage the board unopposed. That’s why Stealth Bomber is such a great card. Vote for War whenever you’re playing a fellow influence deck.

Types of Battle Avoidance Cards

There are two types of battle avoidance cards: cards that make your ships withdraw from battle at a certain point and cards that let your ships skip battle completely. The latter is obviously better because your ships are safer, but cards that give this ability are fewer and less flexible than cards that merely let you withdraw. The large majority or battle avoidance cards are mono Mind cards, but almost every race has something that lets them avoid battles.

Modifications

The all-time king of battle avoidance cards is Infinity Drive. It costs one Mind, can be played on any ship, and saves your ships from all beam and cannon damage. Battle avoidance modifications tend to be permanent or semi permanent, so be sure not to use them on ships you want to enter battle. Battle Avoidance mods are often best played on bombers or weakened scouts. Card breakdowns are at the end of the article.

Zaps

Battle Avoidance zaps let you save a ship or a group of ships from several rounds of damage for one turn. Hit and Run is a great card of this type: it saves your whole fleet from 4 rounds of damage AND gives them a boost to their beam weapons [Zorro wrote an excellent article on Hit and Run -- Editor]. Cease Fire is a great Ferrier card that lets you skip an entire battle on any planet on the map. These cards are situational, you can’t rely on them the way you do ship mods. False Distress Signal is a very interesting card of this type: it lets one ship skip battle completely OR it can be played on an enemy ship to reduce their forces. It even bounces back if played at a friendly flag!

Ships

This is where most of the non-Mind cards come in. Most races have a ship or two which withdraws from battle for certain rounds. Only Satellite avoids battle completely, a reason it is still a Kej staple.

How Do I Counter Battle Avoidance Decks?

OK, you’re building a military deck and you definitely do NOT want ships just waltzing through your lines with Infinity Drives. How do you prevent it from happening?

1. De-mods: Cards like Forbiddance or Bergauldt Rays will remove those dangerous Battle Avoidance mods.
2. Ship destruction cards: Ships avoiding your fleets? Blow 'em up. Problem solved. The Clave specialize in this; Time Bomb or Ramming Speed are commons effective at destroying Battle Avoidance ships. Rarer things like Irradiation or Entropic Burst can be effective as well.
3. Influence control: Fight fire with fire; Battle Avoidance ships aren’t effective if they don’t have the influence they need to take stuff over.
4. Massive fleets: The most popular Battle Avoidance card is Infinity Drive; Infinity Drive ships are still around for the first three rounds of combat. Sit a few ships with torpedoes and/or powerful missiles in the path of the ship with Infinity Drive.
5. Warp Shell Generator: The Androids do not like playing hide-and-seek, so this card lets them keep laying the smack down on Battle Avoidance decks.

How Do I Counter the Counters?

You’re building a Battle Avoidance deck and you don’t want those things I just listed happening to you. What do you do? There are a few cards which can keep the paint clean on your ships the whole game.

1. Integrated Construction: This makes your Battle Avoidance mods eternal, keeping you safe from those nasty Order races with their de-mods.
2. Mediator: If you’re playing a Ferrier Battle Avoidance deck, put in 4 of these guys. You may want to splash for it in other Battle Avoidance decks. This card will keep your ships absolutely safe from card-based damage AND will keep your influence (mostly) safe as long as he’s around.
3. Nothing keeps your ship safe from massive fleets or Warp Shell Generator except avoiding the battle completely. You should pack cards like Phased Out, Cease Fire, or False Distress Signal in any Battle Avoidance deck.

Card breakdown

There are tons of cards that let you skip battles or prevent your opponents from firing. I’m only going to list cards that target your ships, and not including cards that let you skip entire battles. I’m also not including Promos. Look through the deck builder for other examples.

Mods

Infinity Drive This card is so good that it’s almost an auto throw-in for any Mind deck. The king of battle avoidance mods.

Combat Drills Hmm, never noticed this card’s ditch effect until I wrote this article. The ditch effect almost begs to be used on a Hidden Base when fleets come by. A nice way to save your Drill modded ships from destruction.

Lay in Wait Lots of Ixa cards give you benefits for blockading planets. This card lets you blockade with impunity. Combos best with Prison Colony.

Phased Out: This card is much better than Infinity Drive… for the three turns that it lasts. Make sure you have good timing if you play this card.

Hyperphasic Drive: This is a great card in theory but not in practice. It lets you avoid battles whenever you want, but costs you 4M each time you want to do so. You can’t use it as a surprise because you have to play it and then activate it. Might be useful in certain combo decks.

Custodian: This would be a great card if it didn’t make you stationary. Since it does, it’s pretty useless.

Zaps

Hit and Run: Great for getting a fleet in past heavy cruiser defense and doing massive damage at the same time. I seem to recall some other article about this card… ;)

Ruthless Efficiency: Kind of like Hit and Run, but a thousand times worse. Not worth including.

Atmospheric Decent: This card can be used to save scouts from battle to prevent blockades or take over with cruisers. Best used on scouts in hyperspace to avoid the “stationary” effect.

Brief Diversion: A pretty good card for that one-turn save you need, especially good in commons decks where Infinity Drive is unavailable.

False Distress Signal: A great card to have in a conqueror deck, probably the best pure avoidance zap there is, but make sure you time it right: you skip the battle the turn AFTER it’s played.

Ships

Storm Transport: This is a great Human ship: with 4 jump, high defense and the ability to withdraw for the last 4 rounds, this ship is perfect for carting citizens or Space Marines around the galaxy.

Dormant Missile Satellite: A horrid, useless card that couldn’t intimidate my grandmother. It fires only once and is vulnerable to torpedoes, missiles and beams. Bad.

Hunter Frigate: This is a great ship. Send it into battles with a leader; it’ll do its cannon damage and avoid every other kind.

Croneshadow: Lets you make certain that whatever this guy hits will get hit again. Pretty useless since it doesn’t work on star bases.

Satellite: This card can be used on its own to blockade enemy artifact planets, but it’s usually used in conjunction with orbital influence cards like Logical Claim to take over.

Stealth Bomber: One of my favorite Thrass cards, this card can win wars almost on its own. Note that you can safely send this ship along with other ships that have cits as long as you keep it in a separate group.

Wanderer: A great ship for transporting citizens, but it’s pretty weak and guaranteed to be hit once. Bolster with Veteran Crew if possible.

Special mention

Pragmatic Seeker: This is a great Battle Avoidance card, especially with a local Simplification. It can even save you homeworld from conquest, but unlucky battle targeting could destroy your star base when it normally wouldn’t be.

A Final Note

The final type of BA deck uses lots of specialized high-Order cards to completely prevent battles from happening. The Humans and Ferrier are very good at this kind of deck, but the cards are harder to get and harder to use than the mono-Mind cards. Once you have gotten used to Battle Avoidance and how to use it effectively, you can look into these kinds of decks. Cards for this kind of include Roaming Savior, several cards with the word 'Peace' in the title (A Moment of Peace, Peacekeeping, etc.) and cards like Emperor, Battlefield Negotiations and Negotiator. Decks with these cards can be just as effective at BA as Mind decks, but require more rares and tend to be expensive tech-wise.

Feel free to experiment with the cards I've told you about, there are many more things you can do with BA than simply not be destroyed. Boarding Party + Infinity Drive, anyone? Good luck and have fun.