Wesley's STCCG card of the day #238


Hi, folks,

today is the starting day for the "Classic COTD" series, now interleaving with the new cards in a 1 of 3 ratio (i.e. 1 classic card, 2 new ones). The purpose of this mini-series is to bring up the standard of the first 25 articles (Habib's) to the longer and more well-rounded reviews of modern COTD time (strange how things do evolve).

I will keep the original order of cards, but they'll get a new number so the older Habib reviews will not get overwritten on the archive pages.
(Nitpickers: Of course there will be only 24 classic COTD's - Wormhole(#8) already got redone by accident in, I think it was #73)

Classic COTD #1

JEAN-LUC PICARD

Personnel, Federation, rare.
Integrity 9
Cunning 8
Strength 6
OFFICER, Diplomacy x2, Leadership, Honor, Archaeology, Navigation, Music, Command Star (*).
"Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Born in LaBarre, France. Has an artificial heart. Reads Shakespeare. Something of a Renaissance man."
The old man himself, what a start that was. The only card in the entire game with six skills. But I've never heard anyone say this was the best personnel card. A good card, sure, but quite some distance from being the best. Why?

In contrast to most of the other bridge guys, Picard's skills are not the rare skills you only get on a handful of cards. Navigation is common as dirt in Feds and though often useful will rarely be needed more than once (except for Null Space whose effect is rather weak and FGC-47 in which case it can speed you up a little).

Then there's the good old DLH combo (Diplomacy, Leadership, Honor) which occurs five times in the game (Gowron, Dathon, Picard, Riker and Governor Worf). Of course any two-skill subset of these three is also a really common sight on missions. A number of good decks are constructed around this triad and in these decks, having the entire trio on one card proves really effective, though the other requirements on these missions usually prove too hard to make a really fast deck especially since none of the DLH cards has ENGINEER, SCIENCE or MEDICAL, the classifications you really need to overcome Dilemmas.

Picard also makes a really good start for the big mission decks, with three of his skills useful on Pegasus Search and two of them usable for DNA hunt.

Leaves me with Music and Archaeology. Besides being useful for some of the rarer threats (Wind Dancer, Crystalline Entity, Charybdis), these are also mentioned on some of the missions. DNA hunt is the prime place for Archaeolgists to go, but a quick Artifact snatch on a poorly guarded Excavation is always a great start for a game. And then there's Risa Shore Leave. Not very suitable for our Captain, he might be a Musician and fully functional male but he is not really young anymore and can't be considered a CIVILIAN either. I usually prefer sending Amarie and Alexander Rozhenko, the former also being useful on Qualor II Rendezvous...

And that's Picard's failure. He has 6 skills. But if you look at my personnel strength list, you'll find they're not worth that much (I think his best is a 7-point thing). Feeble if you compare it to Data who has ENGINEER, Astrophysics and Exobiology, all three worth 9 or better. Sure, the combination gives him an edge, but still the total is only good, not outstanding.


Favorite combo(s):

- Picard + Vash + Roga Danar + Varon-T-Disruptor: The only 4-card DNA hunt team


Ratings for : JEAN-LUC PICARD

Wesley's rating:                7.5
Jack's rating:                  9.0
John's rating:                  9.0
Q's rating:                     9.5
Ranger's rating:                8.5
Tony's rating:                  9.9
----------------------          
AVERAGE RATING:                 8.9

Almost a "classically" low number of raters for this issue, they must be all sound asleep! Hey guys, I posted that rating request in two COTD issues!!! Don't you ever read the results of your contributions? ;-)


Please direct all email concerning card of the day to: crusher@kiss.de

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http://www.worldonline.nl/~ldp/COTD.html
(for best indexing - all cards crosslinked)

http://wizlink.iserver.com/conner/stccg/COTD.html (great Graphics, plus the strategy webboard)

With all back issues from #1 up to today !


LLAP,

Wesley Crusher, the new STCCG Lord

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