Wesley's STCCG card of the day #402

Hi, folks,

no comments on lags this time except this: "First Contact Demo Tour" ;-)

Okay, now that I set this aside, here's the card:

READY ROOM DOOR

Doorway, uncommon FC.
Once per turn, plays to download to one of your ships its matching commander (draw no cards this turn) OR to download one Captain's Order (Captain's Log, Lower Decks, Yellow Alert, Senior Staff Meeting or any card so marked). After use, discard doorway; place it atop your draw deck; or place it atop one of your Captain's Order events to protect that event from nullification.

Sounds harmless enough, but is possibly the most broken card Decipher ever released for STCCG. And the key to breaking it is in that harmless "...place it atop your draw deck". This means you can use the Ready Room Door an infinite number of times and thus can completely choose whatever you want to get from your deck as long as it can be retrieved with the Ready Room Door. And through cascaded downloads, this list is quite long. Via Assign Mission Specialists you can use the Door to download any two mission specialists - which is the key to the infamous AMSQ deck. To win with this deck, you just need two mission specialists and a Ready Room Door in your opening hand (plus a ship or tent). You get 2 mission specialists right away in the seed phase from your first AMS. Turn 1 and 2: Discard AMS, Play a mission specialist, Play Ready Room Door, download AMS, use it to download two mission specialists. On turn 1, you replace the door on the top of your deck, on turn 2, you can also replace it (which would be a good idea if your opponent is using a Q-Flash) or just discard it. On turn 2, solve your outpost mission using a self-seeded Q to nullify all Dilemmas. On turn 3, play a ship and solve two more missions. But you can do basically the same deck without Q - just spend 3 or 4 turns assembling the greatest crew in the Galaxy and then go off solving missions at leisure. Now all this would be much harder if you needed to have a Ready Room Door for each download, but through the eternal recycling of the Door, you can thin your deck so far by just grabbing mission specialists that the few cards left after you're done with the Ready Room Door (use it for a Lower Decks or Yellow Alert on the last time around) will always be exactly what you need.

Defense against this thing? Not many. Subspace Schisms can break the cycle by killing off the Door when it is redrawn after the first use. Mission Debriefing can make the AMSQ deck one or two turns slower. And if you're lucky, you might get an Anti-Time Anomaly out against the AMSQ player early enough that he can't complete all his missions before it goes off. But that's guesswork.

Oh, and here's a dream card to illustrate how bad a Ready Room Door is:

WONDERBOY

Personnel, Fed, universal.
Select two classifications and two skills when reporting. Fulfills the requirement for one command and one staff star. Does not count as your card play. Whenever you report Wonderboy, you may look through your deck and place a Wonderboy on top.
INTEGRITY 15 CUNNING 14 STRENGTH 11.

Sound familiar? No? But this is the net effect of a Ready Room Door played with Assign Mission Specialists. Seems a tad bit powerful to me...

Favorite combo(s):

No, no, no. Decipher, please put a fix on this card.

Ratings for : READY ROOM DOOR

Wesley's rating:                (N/A, but for power: 12.7)
Allen's rating:                 8.0
Cpt. Targ's rating:             7.0
Data's rating:                  7.3
Dr. R'Mor's rating:             8.8
EHCCGPP's rating:               8.0
Gowron's rating:                8.4
Hal's rating:                  10.0
Locutus' rating:                9.0
Nanite's rating:                9.5
Picarde's rating:               9.2
Ranger's rating:                8.5
Rekar's rating:                 9.2
Rothspar's rating:              7.0
Sheskerie's rating:             6.0
Tebok's rating:                 9.3
Tony's rating:                  9.5
Vox's rating:                   8.5
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:                 8.3

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LLAP,

Wesley Crusher
Temporarily immortal STCCG Lord

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