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Tantalus Field

    Tantalus Field

    Alien device that vaporizes victims at the touch of a button. Used by James Tiberius Kirk to achieve his captaincy. A Kirk not from his universe revealed its secret to First Officer Spock.

    Artifact Artifact
    Special icons: Alternate Universe The Original Series

    Place on your Mirror Quadrant ship here. (Unique.) Once each turn, may discard top card of draw deck to kill a ❖  personnel here OR discard top three to kill a unique personnel here.

    Characteristics: Original Series The Original Series.

    Rule hint for this card

    This card has an clarification:

    You may not use this artifact to kill a personnel if either the artifact or the potential victim is aboard a cloaked or phased ship. See cloaking and phasing.

    Taken form Glossary - Version 1.9.5.

    Card logging info: Logged by openCards team at May 1st, 2009.
     

    Tantalus Field

    This Card-Review article was written by Evan Lorentz and was published first on "Decipher's Website (decipher.com)" at Dec 7th, 2000.

    The secret behind the mirror Kirk's success can be the secret behind yours. With the Tantalus Field, you can vaporize a personnel once each turn - any personnel, if you're willing to pay the price. Killing a universal personnel will cost you the top card of your draw deck, while a unique personnel will require more of a sacrifice - the top three. (Only a personnel with an enigma icon is safe from the Field.)

    The real trick to using this artifact is in moving (and protecting) the ship it is played on. You may want to make heavy use of RANGE enhancement cards (or tricks like Wormholeimage) to make it easier for you to chase down a personnel you'd like to eliminate, or to avoid an armada your opponent is sending after your ship.

    Also worth considering are ways you might minimize the cost in discarded cards, by knowing ahead of time what it is you'll be giving up. The Orb of Prophecy and Changeimage will give you a peek at the top card of your deck, and even let you move it out of discard's reach if you don't want to lose it. New Essentialistsimage and the 47th Rule of Acquisitionimage will let you position one of your personnel from in play as your Field discard. More elaborate, but with greater effects, is Zalkonian Storage Capsuleimage: store enough cards, destroy your own Capsule with a Kevin Uxbridgeimage or Mercy Killimage, and you could potentially arrange many turns' worth of cheap Field payments.

    So what do you do with the Field if you've got it up and running? That's the easy part. You could try to eliminate personnel with skills required by your opponent's missions. Or you load up on dilemmas requiring a specific skill and gun for that. If battle's on your mind, you can use the Field to kill off high-STRENGTH personnel from Away Teams or crews you plan on attacking, or matching commanders from your opponent's ships (especially effective against Rinnak Pireimage!). There are even a few reasons you might use the Field to kill your own personnel, like if they're under the negative effects of a dilemma, or have been captured or assimilated by your opponent.

    The possibilities are both endless and... well... Tantal-izing.

    Combos:

    • Tantalus Field + James Tiberius Kirkimage: An obvious combo, but appropriate. Seed Halkan Councilimage (with the I.S.S. Enterpriseimage as your download), and you can even get this up and running on turn one!
    • Tantalus Field + Process Oreimage: With Ore Processing underway, you don't need to worry as much about making blind sacrifices from the top of your deck. You'll be getting those cards back from your discard pile soon enough.