Wesley's STCCG card of the day #53

Hi, folks,

I HAVE MY WARP PACK ! So let's celebrate this with:

YELLOW ALERT

Event, common AU/WP.
Plays on table. While in play cancels (discard) and prevents Red Alerts AND all your Personnel are each CUNNING + 1 (Not cumulative.)
"State of increased readiness and watchfulness. Declared by a captain in anticipation of danger or when a crisis situation has lessened."
OK, this has two facets. The first one is nice if you can't seem to get your personnel out, the second one is great if you have them on the table. Of course, fast decks have more problems with the first part than they can gain from the second. But let's get systematical.

1: Cancel and prevent all Red Alerts (both sides). This slows down the game a LOT. IMHO, Decipher hasn't done the game a service with this card, as the problem with the boring first turns will become much worse if anybody gets this into play early. On the other hand, now weaker decks have a somewhat better chance of standing against tournament-level speed decks. (It would have been a great idea to allow both sides to play TWO personnel each turn with Y.A. out. This would also better fit the explanation of Yellow Alert in the TNG Tech manual where two shifts of personnel are on duty compared to one in normal flight and three during Red Alert.)

However, this card becomes GREAT, but worsens the imbalancing effect of Red Alert if you play R.A., drop a handful of personnel and then the Yellow Alert thereby securing your early advantage. Your opponent will need a Kev Ux just to get back into the game if you can play like this.

2: Increase all Personnel's CUNNING by 1. Hey, that's nice. Although, which of the really good missions need CUNNING? Not that many, and most of them are multi-affiliated and thus not so interesting for high-level play.

Final result: A GREAT card for beginners, however its usefulness vastly de- clines with your playing skill and the number of cards you have to choose from. Expect to see LOTS of them against you, but seriously consider advan- tages and disadvantages before including it in your play deck.

Favorite combo(s):
Ratings for : YELLOW ALERT 

Wesley's rating:                6.5
Allen Castaban's rating:        7.5
Data's rating:                  ---
Habib's rating:                 8.0
Bryan's rating:                 8.0
Jeff's rating:                  6.75
Holt Kernodle's rating:         9.0
Jack's rating:                  6.5
Jason's rating:                 8.5
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:                 7.6
HONORABLE MENTION: Michael Love !

The first non-god (non-Habib:-) ) to answer my little riddle right.

The answer is: Wesley's ENGINEERING is immune to the Tsiolkovsky infection, as it is not listed in the first position. This makes him quite unique among all personnel as most of them have their most valuable skill in the first place. He has his LEAST useful skill there. (Bok is a similar exception.)

This fits nicely with "The naked now" where Wes was the only one to summon enough brain to think up an Engineering solution to the asteroid problem.

Please direct all email concerning card of the day to: blohmer@pips11.informatik.uni-mannheim.de

LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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