Card Extra

Hostage Trade from Kathy McCracken (11/30/2000)

When opposing sides each hold captives, they may be able to arrange an exchange of prisoners. But if the captivity is one-sided, you may get your personnel back only by handing over new hostages to your opponent in trade for the old, with the captor calling the shots and setting the terms for the hostage trade.

The mechanics of the trade are simple. Take your captives to the location of their owner's crew or Away Team, release any or all of them, and in exchange, choose an equal number of new captives from the other personnel there. Discard the incident, and your trade is done.

Getting Hostage Trade in play is simple, too; you can seed it, or play it for free. Because it's "Unique" and not a hidden agenda, you're limited to one in play at any time; but you can stock several in your deck (recycle them with Prepare the Prisoner if you don't have a current need for one) and replace it the turn after you use it.

In addition, while Hostage Trade is in play it curbs the use of Prisoner Exchange and Fajo’s Gallery for both players, by limiting their use to once per turn.

Combos:

• Hostage Trade + Captured OR Cardassian Trap OR Mandarin Bailiff: Turn a randomly-selected captive into your choice.
• Hostage Trade + Fajo's Gallery: Get two card draws when you first take a unique captive, and another two when you trade him for a new unique hostage on a later turn.
• Hostage Trade + opponent's multiple Captured/Prisoner Exchange deck: He might wish he hadn't used so many seed slots for these two cards if he can't recapture and re-exchange the same prisoner multiple times on his first turn. Meanwhile, you're off attempting missions with few dilemmas under them.