Donner's Tharendim Strategy Guide

Tharendim

Starting weapons:  4

Starting shields: 1

Support ability:  Remove 1 energy from the engaged ship.

"I'm a ninja!  I'm invincible!"

Tharendim is an assassin ship.  If built right it can almost guarantee two Opposition ships get destroyed each round.

Strengths:

Tharendim is very good at destroying Opposition ships that have low shields.  With just Moravi's Strike and Zarichi's Feint Tharendim can destroy any ship that has 3 or less shields on any phase.  Tharendim can also do some very good "purchasing" with its Black Market card.  On top of this, Tharendim starts with a good amount of weapons.

Weaknesses:

Tharendim starts with very low buying power.  Each card in the deck has only 20 credits to its name.  Tharendim also starts with very low shields.  On top of that, actually buying any cards with Tharendim slows down its assassiny goodness.  In fact, I recommend NEVER buying cards for Tharendim and rely purely on what Black Market Pricing gets you.

Preferred General Strategies:

Start off by installing all the techs from the Tharendim deck that you can.  The sooner you can get down to just the 4 boost cards, the better.  Tharendim prefers to buy cards purely through Black Market Pricing.  Recycle either Dimensional Sabotage or Zenrichi's Feint for Black Market Pricing (depending on which you'll need for the next round) to get two Station cards into your hand before the installation phase.  This will allow you to tech up and keep getting Moravi's Strike back.  Your preferred TRIBA should include engaging (and possibly destroying) one Opp ship and assassinating another.

Preferred Station Cards:

Tharendim prefers any station cards that get Opp ships to that sweet point of 2 or less shields or assassinates other Opp ships.  These include:

Desperate Measures (great when cloaked!)

Strike Force Tactics (also great when cloaked and solo!)

Pydro's EMP (simply amazing, especially if you can get 2 or more!)

Since Tharendim starts with low shields, it is also helpful to get anything that grants more shields.   Cloaking Device also works well with Tharendim since it gives you the option to stick around and destroy an Opp ship one vs. one or jump to an empty sector to help you keep your base Cloak in play for another round.

Fun tactics:

Use Dimensional Sabotage to swap your own shields and weapons and get to another sector.

Use Dimensional Sabotage and a movement Station card to swap a high-shield Opp ship to low shields, then follow them for the kill.

Engage one ship with your cloak up, dimensional sabotage another to a better sector, and assassinate a third to clear a sector quickly.  Add Strike Force Tactics to the mix and you can take on 4 ships in one round, solo.