Card Extra

Anya from Kathy McCracken (01/1999)

Since Alternate Universe gave us the Howard Heirloom Candle, with its mysterious ability to prevent "Anya or Salia from morphing this turn," players have awaited the debut of the two allasamorph shape-shifters. They're here at last, giving every affiliation access to the shape-shifter abilities implemented by a number of Dominion interrupts.

While Salia is a fairly typical V.I.P., her bodyguard Anya has the relatively rare combination of CIVILIAN and SECURITY, very high INTEGRITY, and two special skills related to Salia. First, she can special download Salia, making it easy to get her Diplomacy, Exobiology and other useful skills into play. Once Salia is in play, Anya then protects her charge with her life, replacing her in a single-minded "security sacrifice" if she is "randomly selected" for anything. It won't protect her from everything - opponent's choice dilemmas and battle pairings, for example, are not random selections - but she'll be safe from Armus - Skin of Evil, Female’s Love Interest, Angry Mob and a host of other dilemmas.

Combos:

• Anya + Salia + Diplomatic Conference: If Lack of Preparation forces you to risk your V.I.P.s, Anya can protect Salia from the Misguided Activist that makes a good followup dilemma at the mission.
• Anya + Caught Red-Handed: If you don't have the personnel matching the impersonator that your opponent has used to infiltrate your crew, you can still expose him using a Non-Aligned shape-shifter and this interrupt.