Mot's Useless Card Review #13: La Forge Maneuver

Here's a card few people would look at and declare "useless." At the same time, it's one you hardly ever see played. Now why is that? Consider all the pluses:

Much easier to use than a Tachyon Detection Grid. (Granted that TDG really DOES decloak the ship in question, but 9 out of 10 times, you just want to attack it anyway.) All you have to do is play all-planets yourself, and you are guaranteed at least six valid targets for this card. And since right now, planet missions seem to be a little more often played overall than space, odds are your opponent will provide a few more targets.

And even if your opponent was not so courteous as to play planet missions, you can still take care of the problem with Hail or Wormhole. You might try setting up a powerful ship or two like the Edo Vessel and Husnock Ship at your outpost. They may be too slow to hunt down opponent's ships, but if you stop them as they fly by, or bring them to your outpost, you can unload on them. And with La Forge Maneuver, you won't be stuck with a useless tactic if your opponent is playing cloaked ships.

Not to mention a particularly devious, seldom-used function of this card. Notice the game text says: "if THE next action..." not "if YOUR next action." You don't have to be the one doing the attacking. Pop a Borg Ship at your outpost, and send it maruading down the spaceline. Your cocky Romulan or Klingon opponent will cloak their ship and wait for the Borg to pass over. What a nasty surprise for them when you play La Forge Maneuver, allowing the Borg to detect the cloak ship at reduce it to so much atmospheric debris!