Wesley's STCCG card of the day #133

Hi, folks,

let's have a look at a card they shamelessly copied from Magic:

ALIEN PROBE

Event, uncommon.
Plays on table. Both players continue the game with their hands (cards) exposed, face up on the table.
"Space probes of unknown origin are frequently encountered by starships. Often such probes seek information or contact."

Revelation for STCCG. Neat. Now of course this one has a good effect (you see your opponent's cards) and a bad effect (your opponent sees your cards).
The question is now who gains more from it.

Obviously, the less cards you have in hand, the less anyone is going to see by means of this. Also, the fewer surprises your deck contains, the better for you. So decks with few interrupts but fast cardplay benefit most from this card.

So you'll need a Red Alert to start with and then a deck that's heavy on per- sonnel, ships and equipment. Sounds like a Klingon or Romulan deck to me. (The Feds have such good Personnel that you can probably play with quite a low number of them)

Best application is obviously a Klingon attack deck with lotsa small ships.
This also has the advantage of not needing to be very fast (your opponent won't get to do anything), so you are not in dire need of a Traveler which in turn helps keeping your hand size low. Result: You always know when it's safe to play a key event (no Uxbridge) or Interrupt (no Amanda).

Then of course, there's the infamous Telepathic Alien Kidnappers / Alien Probe Combo. So much has been written about it, I won't repeat it here. Just our house rule for that one: When both cards are in play, you get to turn your cards face down and shuffle before each guess. Then cards are placed openly again. (So it still remains a guess!) However, there still is a huge advantage as you can always guess the most common card type or the one that could hurt you most.

Favorite combo(s):

(Only with the house rule, otherwise it's boooooring): See above.

Ratings for : ALIEN PROBE

Wesley's rating:             5.0
Lore's rating:               8.2
Owen's rating:               7.0
Ian's rating:                4.5
Jack's rating:               5.0 
Jason's rating:              8.0
Cole's rating:               6.0
Mark's rating:               4.0
Movar's rating:              7.5
Serge's rating:              7.0
Ted's rating:                4.0
Andrew's rating:             6.0
----------------------
AVERAGE RATING:              6.2

PS: Can anyone find out whether this already holds the record for longest running internet series ? (Counting installments, not time, of course) We should at least have beaten the internet computer game charts by a few episodes as they're only weekly.

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LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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