The first thing that really stopped the irrepressible rise of the Borg was the aforementioned 'may' ruling. Well, I say stopped, when I really mean that it slowed it down. The may ruling, and the 50/3 ruling combined killed off the Borg dreadnought as a strategy in official rules play, but it did not really slow the Borg down all that much. Borg Missile and Tactical Drone 4270 still made the Borg dangerous in even faction pure environments, and when the Borg Missile was errata'd to be 1 APT rather than 1 APT per hit, MGCs ably took their place. Even as late as the US nationals, the Borg were the faction to beat in mixed play (and pretty good in some variety of purity).
The next step in the fall of the Borg was the "Borg Nerf" forcing their ships to perform the spin manoeuvre after movement rather than before and limiting primary weapons fire to range 2. Thematically, the first change makes sense: The Borg were always depicted on screen as a slow and relentless enemy, so the balletic antics of Borg ships in the game always seemed a little odd. The second change only makes sense in terms of game balance - No matter how good a pilot you were, you could never be in a position where you could shoot the Borg and they couldn't shoot you. Both of the changes look good on paper, either thematically or in terms of balance, but both together were perhaps too much of a heavy handed change. Personally, I'd have preferred the change to primary weapon range, but not the change to movement. Both changes contradict the rules on the cards in the ship packs themselves (although this may have changed - if anyone has bought a cube, sphere or diamond recently, and the additional rules cards in the packs have changed, then please let me know) but the change to the spin manoeuvre is more difficult to explain that the change to PWV range, and I like the change to PWV range, since it rewards good piloting. Having played 6 months (I think) with the rules changes I now think that the combination of both changes was too much.
The final thing that really put the nail in the Borg coffin for me was the increasing number of anti-borg upgrades that you can take. It started as early as the first Collective OP event, with Elizabeth Shelby (who gains a green die and a heap of re-rolls when facing Borg) but lately it has gotten much worse. The Thunderchild expansion gave us Hayes (+2 instead of +1 when attacking Borg) and Persistence (4 instead of 2 dice when targeting Borg) but the real tipping point was Unimatrix Shielding (2 extra shields, but when defending against Borg, you can disable these shields to cancel a hit). I can't see many reasons not to take Unimatrix Shielding for Fed (2 extra shields are always useful) and given the borg's relative lack of dice efficiency (No BS natively) they really hurt the borg player's ability to damage federation ships.
We played a 1 ship no points limit game to celebrate Christmas last weekend, and there were 3 federation ships and 2 borg ships. In game 1 (we played the game twice) the Borg ships were the first and second ships to go down. In game 2, they went down second and third. Having played as one of the borg ships in the second game, the abundance of monotanium armour plating and unimatrix shielding made the borg's damage negligible. That particular card combination (Unimatrix Shielding and Monotanium Armour Plating) is anathema to the borg. It robs you of quality and essentially reduces the damage you do by 2 each turn (for those watching at home, Hathaway Worf does similar things).
Don't get me wrong, I think it is good that there are cards specifically designed to work differently against different factions, and the Borg were massively overpowered at one point, but the combination of the 'Nerf', 50/3 standard and these new upgrades make the borg almost unplayable now.
Or do they...
The Borg are certainly not the powerhouse that they once were, but my thesis is this: The Borg are now a finesse fleet, that are forced into playing more in character now than they ever were before.
As I've written above, the Borg can't rely on Target Lock for efficiency any more, which renders cards like the extra-action Borg queen somewhat less effective than she was. As I'm only too fond of reminding people though, there are other ways to get re-rolls on attack dice. In the case of the borg, tactical drone 4270 allows a re-roll at the cost of a drone token. This means that cards like Hathaway Worf and Monotanium Armour can't stop you from taking that re-roll. The drone token cost is annoying and limiting, but being able to add quality to dice without needing a Target Lock is a great ability with so many cards around that limit the effectiveness of Target Lock. With protocol about to become the go-to resource for many non-OXP venues, this means that you can spend your action on other things, like scan. The ability of the QVP allows you to spend a scan token from beside your ship to increase the number of attack dice you roll, so a doubled up scan token (thanks to protocol) can be especially useful on the QVP, as it both adds attack dice and limits defence dice.
In universe, the Borg rely quite heavily on assimilation to weaken their enemies, and with actions now free for cards like second of five and BATS, the power of ganking cannot be underestimated. With Unimatrix Shielding such a big issue for the Borg, using BATS or similar to get rid of it before you fire seems like a decent tactic to ensure that your hits don't get cancelled.
Tactical Cube 001 came with a Borg Faction version of Data who might just be the key to ensuring that opponents don't get any dice quality either. Use Data to disable the likes of Picard 9 and Captain Spock, and into the bargain you get a free scan token. Then use Tactical Drone 4270 to re-roll those attack dice, that can be boosted by the QVP. Seems both effective and in keeping with the Borg in universe.
A card that still carries with it a great deal of weight is Magnetometric Guided Charge. Permacloak builds or federation defence stacking builds can be seriously hampered by the liberal application of MGCs, and it also gives you back range 3. Sure, at 5 points it isn't cheap, but 360 range 3 attacks make the most of those borg firing arcs.
Whilst the movement of borg isn't what it once was, having the ability to fire in any direction makes it tactically astute to get behind your opponent at the first opportunity in order to make their life difficult. The Borg player doesn't need to turn around to fire their weapons whereas your opponent either does, or has to use secondary weapons with reduced quality to do so. The federation dorsal phaser array is an issue here, but the answer is simple: Just steal it, discard it or disable it.
To summarise then:
1. 50/3 hurts the borg due to their high cost
2. Anti-Borg upgrades rob you of attack strength and dice quality
3. The 'Nerf'' stops you from Manouevring quite as effectively and stops you firing at range 3.
but, you can do some things about this:
a. Ganking can get rid of that anti-borg tech, and no faction does it better than borg
b. There are other ways to get dice quality for borg, that don't rely on Target Lock
c. Borg still have some ships (QVP) and upgrades (MGCs) that allow you to work well within this restrictive environment.
Don't give up on the Borg just yet, just don't be too disappointed when then aren't as point and click as they once were.
Picard knew how to beat the borg, and how to command the borg - but i'm not Picard.
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