Card Extra

Assign Support Personnel from Kathy McCracken (07/13/2000)

Between the high-quality personnel with three, four, or more skills, and the single-skilled erstwhile dust-collectors turned mission specialists, lie a vast number of personnel cards with two skills. Too skilled to be downloadable with Assign Mission Specialists, they nevertheless get passed over routinely in favor of their more highly-skilled colleagues. Assign Support Personnel gives them a new lease on life as (what else?) "support personnel" aboard your larger ships.

With this objective on table, support personnel, defined as those with exactly two skills (but no special skills), may report directly aboard your compatible ship with two or more staffing icons. If you haven't drawn the one you need, you may download him (to a matching ship or facility) at the cost of discarding the objective. You'll have to play another copy to restore your ability to report subsequent support personnel aboard, but that's a small price to pay for downloading two precious skills and a classification (and perhaps a crucial staffing icon) when you're stuck in the Gamma Quadrant.

Combos:

• Assign Support Personnel + your Galaxy or Galor or D’deridex in the Gamma Quadrant: I call it "Assign Mission Specialists meets Crew Reassignment." You'll call it a life-saver when a vital skill falls prey to a dilemma far from home.
• Assign Support Personnel + Ty Kajada: Don't want to trek back to your outpost for another SECURITY to pass that Berserk Changeling? Ty Kajada can pop in on the bridge on your next turn.
• Assign Support Personnel + Tomalak + Neral: Together they equal Sela + OFFICER. They take two card draws and two card plays to Sela's one, but you don't have to cool your warp engines at your outpost until you draw them; they're two personnel instead of one when you need three bodies to pass Chula: Pick One to Save Two; and if one gets killed, you've only lost half the skills.