Mutation

Here's a face everyone can learn to love, because it's attached to one of the most useful interrupts a player could ask for. Two functions, each geared toward resource manipulation.

First up, you can play Mutation to shuffle the top two cards of any discard pile into the owner's draw deck. This makes for an interesting relationship with Nanoprobe Resuscitation - play it on your own discard pile if you want to retrieve something that's a little bit buried, or play it on your opponent's discard pile if you want to stop them from immediately retrieving something that's right on top. This also works nicely with Handshake's discard-to-draw-seven-cards function, to return to your deck a card you wished you hadn't given up (not to mention the Handshake itself).

Mutation's second function is likely to prove even more useful. Play it, discard one other card, and then draw two new cards to replace them. This is a perfect way to purge unwanted cards from your hand - limited to once a turn, but still very useful. You can use it to get rid of a card that has come up too early or too late to be useful. Or use it to purge a copy of an important card you stocked extras of, but have already managed to draw. Or get rid of a personnel whose skills you don't need for a chance at someone who does. The possibilities are endless.

Combos:

• Mutation + Mutation: If you find there's nothing else you want to get out of your hand at the moment, no problem. Just use Mutation to get rid of another copy of Mutation, then draw two cards to replace them. In fact, there's hardly any reason not to stock as many copies of Mutation as you can - you can always use them on each other, as though they were never there to begin with.
• Mutation + Process Ore (or Bajoran Shrine): Combine Mutation's purging with the Cardassian or Bajoran recycling mechanics, and your hand suddenly becomes very liquid. You won't have to give up quite so many card draws on Ops downloads, with the extra chance of naturally drawing what you want.