Mot's Useless Card Review #22: Plasma Fire

On the surface, this is a pretty neat idea - a card to destroy your opponent's ship without getting your hands all bloody with a battle. The problem, of course, is that one needs only to have a SECURITY personnel present to put out the fire, and they get two full turns to get said personnel aboard the affected ship.

Nevertheless, this could still be useful against those players that report ships to their outposts early on in the game, and then wait to staff them later. Or those players who won't go off to try missions until they have a full compliment of personnel (that is, MEDICAL, SCIENCE and SECURITY). Either way, if the ship is sitting there, unoccupied, and they haven't got SECURITY in hand or on the table, they can kiss it goodbye.

Of course, this does not work on everyone. And that's where a great combo can come in handy: Plasma Fire and Frigid. Frigid (a Q-icon Event) is a good threat against Interrupt-happy opponents. If they play an Interrupt on your turn, you can freeze one of their SECURITY until the next Q-Flash. Some players will not normally be deterred by this. You can teach them better. They'll wish their SECURITY was thawed out when there's no one around to put out the Plasma Fire! And you need not worry - you can easily force an opponent to play an Interrupt on your turn. After all, the three most commonly played Interrupts are Kevin Uxbridge, Amanda Rogers and Q2 - and from your opponent's point of view, it's either play them, or let you have your The Traveler: Transcendence, your Red Alert!, that Temporal Rift, that Transwarp Conduit, or even your own Kevin Uxbridges targeting those valuable Events on your opponent's side of the table.

So next time you play, "fire and ice" your opponent. ;-)