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Tactical Disadvantage

    (2) Tactical Disadvantage

    Space Space Dilemma
    Reveal your hand and the hand of the opponent on your left. If your opponent reveals ships with more total Weapons than the total Shields of ships that you have revealed in this way, randomly select one of your personnel to be killed and all your personnel are stopped.

    "Captain! We've lost hull plating."

    Characteristics: "killer" dilemma, "randomly select" dilemma, "stop all personnel" dilemma, ship related card.

    Card logging info: Logged by openCards team at Jan 1st, 2008.
     

    Tactical Disadvantage

    This Card-Review article was written by Will Hawkins and was published first on "Decipher's Website (decipher.com)" at Dec 5th, 2005.

    If you are like me, after you play your first (and possibly second) ship, the rest of your ships never see play. I may keep one in the event I become destaffed, but for the most part, I use them to fuel other cards. Once To Boldly Go releases, you might consider holding on to those ships instead of tossing them aside so quickly, because even ships you never play can see battle.

    For two cost, Tactical Disadvantage is very cost effective. If successful, those counters will buy you a random kill and a stopped mission attempt. All you need to make it work is enough revealed weapons to exceed your opponent's revealed shields. Some of you are thinking, "No way am I playing that dilemma. How can I be sure I will even have the advantage?" Well you can be sure if you play Romulans, or employ Deanna Troi, Ship's Counselorimage to do some reconnaissance.

    Then again, maybe you don't feel like committing resources to uncovering your opponent's secrets. In that case, just go by the numbers. If your opponent is playing Klingons, you know their biggest ship will have nine shields; play Borg where your smallest ship will have ten weapons. Just be sure to stock a few ships in hand, and you should have no problems. For most affiliations, nine is the highest their shields will be.

    Other than the Borg, the affiliations that have ships with weapons higher than nine are: the Romulans (with the Scimitar, Predatorimage, weighing in at weapons eleven), the Federation (with the Defiant-class ships and Akira-class ships having weapons of ten, and the Personal Flagship with its weapons of eleven), and the Dominion (with their own U.S.S. Defiant, Commandeered Warshipimage-class ship as well as a Dominion Battleshipimage).

    When I see a dilemma like this, my second thought after considering how to utilize it, is how can I avoid it. Your traditional cheater cards will be ineffective, since there's no enhancing the attributes of a ship you don't command. You might think to use James T. Kirk, Living Legendimage, but he only triggers off of dilemmas with requirements, and Tactical Disadvantage has none. There's always Knowledge and Experienceimage for those of you fond of playing Borg. All this considered, however, something a little more useful to those non-Borg affiliations is some good advice: if you know your opponent is playing Tactical Disadvantage, hold on to those extra ships instead of discarding them.

    One final note is the often-overlooked part of using this card: you get a peak at your opponent's hand when they face the dilemma. That's right, they reveal their hand and you can get fair warning if they have anything nasty waiting for you. Of course, they get to see your hand too, but if your deck benefits from that type of knowledge and the opponent's does not, then it looks like you have them at a distinct... well, you know.

    Live Long, Prosper, and take Advantage.