Wesley's STCCG card of the day #265


Hi, folks,

there are a few cards that have been reviewed in the past (mostly before AU) and have gained some additional uses. For this purpose, here are three mini-reviews to be added to the original articles:


# 97 MASAKA TRANSFORMATIONS

Event, uncommon.
Plays on any player. That player must shuffle entire hand, place on bottom of draw deck then draw the same number of cards from the top. Discard event after use.

This one has gained an extra use with the AU card Devidian Door. You can on the one side use it to retrieve your own Devidian Door (a risky proposition unless your current draw deck size is less than your hand size, but a perfect play if you know there is a Devidian Door in the last 5 cards of your deck and you have 6 cards in hand and need to use the door for some purpose). But more powerful is the use of this card to make an opponent discard a Devidian Door when he just used the effect and wants to place it out of play during his next turn. In this case, you can make for a very fast victory. Just have some Uxbridge defense ready.


#132 VULCAN MINDMELD

Interrupt, uncommon.
Allows all mindmeld personnel to add to their skills. For one turn, add all of the skills of another personnel who is present.

Do I have to mention Ajur and Boratus? Their ability works only once per game. That is once for Ajur and once for Boratus. Plus once for Sarek, once for T'Pan, once for Dr. Selar... you get the picture. Equally nice for getting a whole Federation Armada "around the corner" with a single Lakanta. Mindmeld three Vulcans with Lakanta, then distribute them among your ships and fly away. This combo, plus Wesley, can also be used if you need an urgent attribute boost of 4 or 8 points somewhere as this ability also can be enhanced. The other abilities, Dathon's and Mickey D's are less useful to duplicate, to say the few uses are rather obscure, but still, a few surprising options.


#95 EMERGENCY TRANSPORTER ARMBANDS

Interrupt, common.
Beam personnel up or down at any time, except during Dilemma resolution, even during a battle before the winner is determined (paraphrased, I only have the Black Border card)

While you still cannot use this card during the resolution of a Dilemma, thus saving yourself against a mission attempt gone horribly wrong, you can now use it between Dilemmas again (as it was in the very beginning with the old wording). So you have some extra options when having hit a Dilemma you recognize as preparatory for something really nasty and you don't think you can survive the big hitter, you can now either abort the attempt and come back later or (and many people forget this) beam in some reinforcements! The latter one is a big surprise for some trigger-happy away teams who, after triple-counting their 32-29 Strength advantage, attack and suddenly find that that funny twinkling light was a Roga Danar beaming in, resulting in fatalities on the wrong side. The new timing rules have breathed some extra life into a little-used card.


Favorite combos:

- Masaka Transformations + a Devidian door refusing to come up. Effective hand size doubling once you're down to the last few cards.

- Vulcan Mindmeld + Lakanta + Federation Armada. Who needs a WNOHGB?

- ETA + any strong character left behind on ship, during battle.


Ratings for :      MASAKA         MINDMELD          ETA

Wesley's rating:   6.5            6.0               7.0
Cole's rating:     6.7            7.0               4.5
Conner's rating:   4.0            5.5               5.5
Data's rating:     7.0            8.0               6.0
Hal's rating:      7.5            6.7               9.9
Jack's rating:     6.7            7.0               8.8
Nanite's rating:   8.5            4.5               7.0
Nouwa's rating:    6.5            5.0               6.0
Q's rating:        5.0            7.0               8.0
Ranger's rating:   5.5            7.8               4.0
Ray's rating:      7.5            4.3               3.0
Rothspar's rating: ---            6.0               4.5
Tania's rating:    3.0            4.0               5.0
Tony's rating:     7.0            6.0               7.0
Wa'Qah's rating:  10.0            4.0               7.0
--------------------------------------------------------          
AVERAGE RATING:    6.4            6.0               6.1

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LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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