Wesley's STCCG card of the day #281

Classics time again:

Classic COTD #14

KURLAN NAI... no, not another title SNAFU ;-)

TIME TRAVEL POD

But even this half-flexibility gives you a variety of options. Unfortunately most of them are not that strong or require extra cards to work. Let's see what we have:

• The basic BIG Temporal Rift. Deny your opponent the use of his best ship for five turns instead of two. Of course this 150% gain in delay does not mean a 150% efficiency gain as in many cases two turns are already sufficient for a good deck to gain a decisive lead.
• Borg Ship or Anti-Time Anomaly Evasion. Why waste two turns in an escape attempt if you can do with half a turn? In this case the announcing effect really comes into play. Your ship can leave the table at the end of your opponent's turn and come back right after the card play of your turn. Just enough to avoid some really nasty effect that might occur in the meantime.
• Borg Feeding. Why restrict yourself to evading? After all, Borg also want to have fun! So slap a Pod on your opponent's ship and with a quick count, you announce a return time of (1/2 turn for each location Borg Ship is away from target), "right before the Borg ship moves". Ship disappears and reappears just to disappear again. But more permanently this time ;-)
• Shifting of attack balances. But you could do this as well with the basic Temporal Rift. Although the extra time might help if your opponent is waiting for the last ship necessary to destroy your outpost. You might have far less need for an outpost after the three extra turns.

And that's about it here. Not too much and the extra power over the basic Temporal Rift is just too specialized to make this card really useful for the much higher effort required to get it into play.

Wait, there's one more ability not mentioned on the card but on a different one: Investigate Time Continuum. You can use the Pod to solve that mission. And you can even make a really fast concept out of this.

Try the following:

1. ) Excavation with Time Travel Pod underneath.
2. ) Investigate Time Continuum with Interphase Generator underneath
3. ) Pegasus Search with Cryosatellite containing Rachel Garrett
4. ) Restore Errant Moon

You don't even care what crew you have in your draw deck as long as it's good enough to solve most Dilemmas! Each mission done solves the next one. (Actually, the Restore Errant Moon is only present to allow for a The Higher... or a similar nasty). Add any ship and a number of Transwarp Conduits and you might actually get the fastest deck ever seen. But careful, your opponent can use the engine himself and you'll be in deep trouble if you can't get there first. So you might want to seed a few Dilemmas yourself at Excavation just in case..., after all, you know what you put there ;-)

• See above, faster than Blue Lightning and if your opponent doesn't know it, maybe even more surprising than Wrath of Wesley.

Wesley's rating:                6.0
Allen's rating:                 7.6
Cole's rating:                  6.825
Data's rating:                  8.5
Drew's rating:                  7.6
Gowron's rating:                7.8
Hal's rating:                   5.0
Jack's rating:                  7.4
Lakanta's rating:               7.5
Nanite's rating:                8.0
Nouwa's rating:                 7.0
Picarde's rating:               6.0
Q's rating:                     6.5
Ranger's rating:                7.0
Ray's rating:                   8.8
Tania's rating:                 6.5
Tony's rating:                  9.5
Wa'Qah's rating:                8.0
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AVERAGE RATING:                 7.3

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Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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