Wesley's STCCG card of the day #95

Hi, folks,

Once again I will be doing two cards in one issue, but this time with a twist as they really are two versions of one card:

EMERGENCY TRANSPORTER ARMBANDS

Interrupt, common.
Beam Personnel up or down at any time, even during a battle before the winner is determined (Limited / Alpha variant)
Beam Personnel up or down at any time except during the resolution of a Di- lemma, unless the Dilemma card explicitly allows the use of this card. May use it during a battle, before the winner is determined (Beta variant; paraphrased)
"Devices which allow quick remote activation of a transporter when in danger."

Note: The Beta cards have not yet shipped (at least AFAIK), and I don't have any white-borders anyway so I paraphrased the effect. Decipher wants all players to use the most recent wording, so even limited ETA's will become watered down for tourney play.

OK, to the review: This was designed for the Rommies to escape Firestorms until they print the Thermal Deflectors. But a card with such a limited use was (correctly) classified as to weak. So they added the battle part of it (not too bad if you were attacked by something) and expanded the use to all Dilemmas. This in return caused lots of not-so-great players to use the ETA as an "Oops" card and beam out every time they struck a Dilemma. So they in- tended to fix this and went back to the original design. IMHO THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE !!!

Look, using this card as an "Oops" costs you a slot in your deck. Sure, it allows peeking at a Dilemma and still saving the crew (You could have used a Full planet scan instead...). Saving your *ss just once isn't the best application anyway. So you need multiples of these to be sure to survive "Oops"es. Well, I don't have several card slots in a 60 card deck to compensate for bad play. And so doesn't the aforementioned beginner. Each ETA costs him a really powerful card like a Kevin Uxbridge, a Traveler or a Picard. So I guess now these cards will become even more what they have somewhat been from the start: Wallpaper with some minor use for Rommies.

BTW: Rommie Players who want to overcome Firestorms without crew loss can do the following: Tebok + Toreth (two good OFFICERs) + Medical Kit + Genetronic Replicator. Sure that's four cards instead of one but these four will continue to be useful even after the Firestorm.

Favorite combo(s):

Uh, none here.

Ratings for : EMERGENCY TRANSPORTER ARMBANDS

                                Old             New
Wesley's rating:                3.0             1.0
Conner's rating:                6.0             3.5
Habib's rating:                 6.0             4.0
Phil's rating:                  7.0             2.0
Lore's rating:                  9.8             6.2
Owen's rating:                  6.0             1.4
Ian's rating:                   5.2             2.1
Jack's rating:                  6.8             6.7
Jason's rating:                 3.0             7.0 (*)
GoOski's rating:                ---             ---
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:                 5.8             3.8

(*) ratings were justified by "Less of a cheat card". No SNAFU here !!!

PS: I could now try to estimate the playing skills of some people from the ratings they placed on this card, but I think I'd be way off sometimes :-)

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

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LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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