Ensnared

by Kevin Jaeger, Player's Representative

13th January 2009

"We're talking about unchecked aggression here, dude!...This is about drawing a line in the sand! Across this line you do not..."

Ever had an opponent with a particular personnel in play that just keeps annoying you? Ruining your plans? Single-handedly winning the game for said opponent? Well, now you have a card that in one fell blow will draw a line in the sand and put that carpet pee'er in his place. After getting six Cardassian Affiliation personnel into play, you can call out any one of the following carpet pissers:

James T. Kirk
Borg Queen
Reyga
Kira Nerys (since there are so many)
Leonard H. McCoy
Data
Lore
Navaar
Malcolm Reed
Krim
Odo
Bashir Founder (under the right circumstances)
Jadzia Dax (since she has a few versions)
Mot (while playing against myself or Michael van Breemen)
Spock

Okay, that's probably enough. My lists are getting out of hand. Anyway, after you've named the pisser of choice, your opponent reveals all copies of the personnel they have and you get to choose to discard five cards off the top of your deck in order to place that personnel in your brig. Five cards isn't so bad when the payoff is to potentially wreck an opponent's strategy. Nice.

Since your opponent first has to reveal all copies they have in play (if any) - you don't even have to use this event to capture. You could use it just to see if your opponent has that personnel in play at all. I can't think of a reason off-hand why.

OVER THE LINE!! I'm sorry you were over the line, smokey; that's a foul. This isn't Nam, this is bowling, there are rules. Mark it zero.

Anyway, as I was saying...I don't know why you would do that, but it's theoretical that you might not have the five cards in your deck to pay for the capture effect. So in that situation, you still get something of a benefit for the two cost paid. It's also good because if the named personnel is not in play at all, you don't have to pitch the five cards. So, in two different ways, the wording of the card can provide its player with a consolation prize. It doesn't stop there.

You still could pitch the five cards if you wanted to for a "whiffed" effect just to put five cards in the discard pile. I think the reasons for that are somewhat self-explanatory at this point since I've talked about this numerous times, but for the noobs out there, here's a short list: (*groan*)

1. Put a quick five cards in the discard pile for Causal Recursion
2. Put a personnel in the discard pile for The Caretaker's "Guests"
3. Further a Back to Basics Strategy
4. Look cool

That's about it for this card. I'm sure there're lots of ideas I haven't explored that others will figure out. Have fun capturing!