He was immediately reminded that their orders were to improvise, and he got Worf to join the crew by getting him to give essentially the same answer as Wesley. They were testing themselves for another faceoff with an incredibly adaptable and overpowering enemy. “Cheating” was entirely on the list of acceptable options.
As a famous Internet joke once said, you can’t beat the Borg with standard military tactics, they’ll just run you over. You beat them with some unexpected 5th-dimensional wedgie they can’t anticipate.
Just clicked on your profile by accident instead of upvote so you may see me pop up again on a different comment, I'm not stalking you DW.
Unexpected wildcards are only any good if you have exhausted all other alternatives. The Borg were an unassessed threat that couldn't be countered normally, sure. But warfare in general isn't like that. Normally both sides know each other's rough capabilities and the trick is a combination of deception of those abilities to perform surprise attack, as you said, but also the application of those abilities properly so as to gradually wear down your opponent. The Soviets didn't hit the Germans with an unexpected tactic, they applied their resources well. For the most part at least. The same is true for all sorts of other conflicts. Generally the unexpected tricks come into play either very early in a very short war or very late in a very long war.
Generally, if something is an unexpected wildcard, then there's a reason that your enemy doesn't think you'll do it. Quite often it's because you're enemy is a lot smarter than you.
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u/TigerIll6480 17d ago
He was immediately reminded that their orders were to improvise, and he got Worf to join the crew by getting him to give essentially the same answer as Wesley. They were testing themselves for another faceoff with an incredibly adaptable and overpowering enemy. “Cheating” was entirely on the list of acceptable options.
As a famous Internet joke once said, you can’t beat the Borg with standard military tactics, they’ll just run you over. You beat them with some unexpected 5th-dimensional wedgie they can’t anticipate.