Wesley's STCCG card of the day #208

Hi, folks,

now the pressing question resolves: Did the default entry I made beat all the others (and not shed such a great light on this contest) or is it somebody else... ?
Well, the 'Net won. Only a second place for this cute one:

Star Trek: Collectible Card Game
The Internet Expansion

Rank # 2, 799 points, Author: Wesley !

OVERWORK

Interrupt, common (!)
You may take an extra turn after this one. All your personnel permanently lose 2 STRENGTH. May not be used more than twice per game.
"In situations of crisis, personnel in all fleets often do an incredible job, wearing themselves down to a point of permanently ruining their health."

The secret to successful play of this card is timing. If you use it too early, you suffer a lot from the lost Strength, if you play it too late, you'll not get enough benefit from getting an extra turn. Your timing will also depend a lot on whether you intend to use one or two of these cards.

Using just one keeps your loss at a tolerable rate, especially if you compensate for the Strength drain by using a Weapon equipment. You can easily afford to do so as you will get an extra card draw (for the extra turn) and thus the weapon (Phaser or Disruptor) will not hurt your card management and you still get a better net result than just from using a Distortion of Space/Time continuum as you get to move all your ships and get another card to play. Plus, if you have the Traveler out you still have a net gain of one card drawn. But all personnel that is not in the primary away team will still lose in this scenario.

Using two of this card will really hurt your Strength making you very vulnerable to any kinds of Dilemmas and Away team attacks. The first one can pretty much be played as if you had just one (though you might go for it a turn or two earlier) and the second should really be reserved to quickly completing a mission when the last Dilemma stopped you in your tracks and you have no Strength requirement to pass.

But this is just the regular play. When everything goes desperate and your opponent comes very close to winning you can risk pretty anything and without another turn to try you'll definitely not solve any missions, so just play the Overwork and hope there is no Strength requirement in any Dilemma.

Note also that this card is an interrupt, so you can as well play it on your opponent's turn, which won't change much in a two player game (you could as well play it on your own, unless your opponent takes double turns due to a Horga'hn) but could mean the difference between winning and losing in a multi-player scenario when a failed attack or a newly uncovered Borg ship suddenly puts the player to your right in a position from which she can win on her next turn.

Other cool concepts for Overwork are

- a Klingon deck with a handful of Targs and a Traveler. 4 extra cards for the two turns (with Traveler) could as well mean 4 Targs, so why not take the extra opportunities to move characters and play cards? You won't draw any net extra cards (as the Targs use up the four draws) but you can play more of them (thus easing the effect of a long wait for your Red Alert).

- A deck designed around high Integrity, Diplomats and Q. It just flies and if you happen to have three outposts at a Diplomatic conference... (In this deck you can play the Overworks as soon as you get them, you'll never need Strength unless somebody attacks you at the outpost. Just make sure you have enough seed cards to seed your Q last - otherwise you might run into Outpost Raid).

- Anything based on Borg Ships and Bynars. You don't need the stats of your crew to hit Borg ships or outposts, they just need to fly their ships and you'll get those events out just that much faster. The advantage of Overwork over the Horga'hn or Temporal Narcosis is that you can just play it, without having to solve a mission or wait for any prerequisite. If you find a way to overcome or avoid the side-effects of the Strength penalty, you'll find that two extra turns can easily turn a lost game into a victory, but you'll definitely have to take some thoughts before just throwing it in your deck or your opponent will sees a few Chalnoths and laugh away as your crew loses its best member and the speed advantage (as they are now stopped).

Favorite combo(s):

- Overwork + Klingon K'Vorts plus Shield/Weapon enhancers + Borg ships. Why solve missions ? I'm fast enough without that...

- Overwork + Traveler. More cards!

Ratings for : OVERWORK

Wesley's rating:                8.0
Cole's rating:                  8.0 (Quote: "Ouch!")
Jack's rating:                  7.5 (Quote: "Ouch!") (*)
Conner's rating:                6.0
Heather's rating:               6.5
John's rating:                  8.0
Leto's rating:                  7.9
Q's rating:                    10.0 <--- Now THAT's a rating ;-) !
Ray's rating:                   9.5
Tony's rating:                  8.5
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:                 7.99

(*) Which again proves that great minds do think alike :-)

And for those who now cry "Hey, he's rated himself so high - no wonder he came in second!": It did not matter. I could have taken a 1.0 or a 10.0 - it would always have been 2nd - the distances were comfortable to each side...

Please direct all email concerning card of the day to: crusher@kiss.de

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With all back issues from #1 up to today !

LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

"A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart"