Far away from home, in need of some therapy

by James Monsebroten, Staff Writer

14th June 2018

When Metamorphosis released there were some obvious cards for Delta Quadrant fans. The new time location and related cards (Holoprogram: The Voyager Encounter, revised hologorams, their downloads, Curator Quarren), and Marie Kaplan. But there was at least one other card that is extremely useful in a Delta Quadrant deck; Group Therapy.

Group Therapy got introduced in the article The Jack Pack Inside Track in which Jack and his buddies were introduced.  It was mentioned at the end of the article that the card helped address a need to get access to the Jack Pack, but does so much more.

Let's take a look at how it works:

Seeds or plays on your headquarters, outpost or site.
This means it can be used in any deck that has one such location.  For Delta Quadrant players that's any of the outposts available in that quadrant: Hirogen Outpost, Kazon Outpost, Vidiian Outpost, or Nekrit Supply Depot.

In place of a card play you can download a Federation CIVILIAN to hand.
At first glance this appearst to be a nice bonus for Federation decks, but it's actually a boon for any Delta Quadrant deck because dual affiliation personnel like Kes, Neelix, and the borg children Icheb, Mezoti, Rebi and Azan.  Since they are all Non-Aligned / Federation they qualify for the download to hand and then can be played later in their Non-Aligned mode to any of your outposts or to the U.S.S. Equinox.  If you are actually playing Federation you also gain access to Naomi Wildman for some awesome skill doubling.

OR a Federation genetically enhanced personnel to your Karen Loews.
The personnel that this downloads are all native to the Alpha Quadrant and therefore aren't normally useful to a Delta Quadrant deck outside of Temporal Micro-Wormhole.  Luckly this download provides a destination for the download (to your Karen Loews) so a Federation Delta Quadrant player can get easy access to these personnel if they can get Karen Loews, a support personnel, into the Delta Quadrant.  The easiest way to accomplish this is to downaload Karen Loews using Assign Support Personnel on turn one to your U.S.S. Voyager.  Then, starting on turn two, you can use this text to download Julian Bashir or a Jack pack personnel in place of a card draw to wherever you have Karen Loews.

If present with Julian Bashir, your Jack, Lauren, Sarina, and any Patrick may use their classication as if it were ENGINEER-, MEDICAL-, SCIENCE-, or VIP-classification.
If you are playing Delta Quadrant Federation you can make use of the last part of the text to make the Jack Pack, who you can download to Karen Loews, even better.  "May use their classification as if it were..." allows you to choose what you need for classifications on your Jack Pack whenever you need.  Are you missing some SCIENCE when you hit Scientific Method? No problem, one or more of the Jack Pack can use their existing classification as SCIENCE!

Extra Information On "In place of a card draw":

Group Therapy allows you to download a personnel to hand OR to Karen Loews in place of a card draw.  The card does not impose a limit on the number of times you can do this during a turn, so you are only limited to the number of times you draw cards (as long as you pay attention to the General Quarters limitation of one personnel downloaded into player per player per turn).  This means, if you Kivas Fajo - Collector which allows you to draw three cards, you can turn any or all of those card draws into downloads; for exaplr download Kes and Neelix to hand and with your third card actually draw a card from your deck.

Final Thoughts

Group Therapy is a great addition to Delta Quadrant decks.  It gives you access to a set of good personnel, when you want them at the cost of a card draw.  This allows you to put less copies of these cards into your deck and still be guaranteed to get them for early play.  I'm looking forward to seeing how many different types of decks Group Therapy will make it into!

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