Mot's Useless Card Review #27: Anti-Matter Pod

There are plenty of dilemmas that damage ships in space. (Microbiotic Colony, Null Space, Nanites, etc.) You can sometimes get one to stick to an unsuspecting crew. It's rare that you can get two to stick and destroy a ship. The once-damaged ship will either not continue with the mission attempt on a subsequent turn, or will pass the other dilemmas - either way, they are back to the outpost for repairs before making a fatal mistake.

Well, Anti-Matter Pod is just the card for the job. With a minimum of effort, you can lay a series of mines across the spaceline. (Say, we've got our orbital mines, and Star Wars CCG doesn't!) If you aren't getting enough Pods to thoroughly booby trap the spaceline, then you can settle for key missions of your opponent's, or calculate where ships will have to stop for lack of RANGE when leaving their outpost. You can also seed them at high RANGE locations - Warped Space for your opponent, or FGC-47 Research.

Funny pattern emerging here... Navigation would come in handy stopping all of this. Thomas Paris' Navigation x2 would help a lot. By putting Thomas Paris in the Q’s Tent of your Anti-Matter Pod deck, you can travel the spaceline freely. All you need is one more Navigation to stop anywhere safely. Or as a last resort, you can always use the Transporter Skill to nullify your own Pods to prevent the damage. Your opponent won't have it so easy. How many ships have you seen recently with Navigation x3 aboard? How about commonly played personnel with Transporter Skill? Taris seems to be the only one. (Unless they pick up the Thomas Paris and start playing with it...)

But then, Thomas Paris was the last review. Right now the focus is on Anti-Matter Pod. And I would be remiss not to point out the one other situation in which you'd be crazy not to have an Anti-Matter Pod: your opponent is known for their Manheim Dimensional Door deck.

(Hmmm... I don't know anyone who plays a deck with that card do I? Let me think a moment... I'm sure it'll come to me. Probably a highly ranked player in the Online League. Yes, that must be where I've seen it. I'm fairly sure it was a Romulan fan.... oh, well, it's probably not important.) ;-)

Your average MDD player is armed to the teeth with the Kevin Uxbridges it takes to defend Manheim's lab from Revolving Doors. But did they think to bring along the Disruptor Overloads? All it takes is one Anti-Matter Pod catching your opponent off guard, and the Manheim Dimensional Door is history. Nullify = destroy = discard, which means even if they were thinking far enough ahead to have Disruptor Overload, it has to be in their hand right at that moment to save the Door.

Who'd have thought Thomas Paris and a few mines could be so helpful for bringing down the mighty Conso... Hey, NOW I remember!!!! ;-)

Doing my part for conspiracies everywhere...