Mot's Useless Card Review #30: Particle Scattering Field

All three cards are similar in function: they set up obstacles to beaming. (A reason to use Transporter Skill!) This can be useful to throw up at any planet mission you think your opponent is likely to attempt. Are they playing Diplomatic Conference and three outposts? Or Hunt for DNA Program and a boat load of Galathons? Slow things down for them. Also, now that the latest FAQ puts outposts definitively in space, all the time, you can even use these two cards to stop those decks designed to quickly score their outpost mission for a coveted artifact. Make it hard for them to beam down from the outpost and try it. After all, you may not always correctly guess during the seed phase where to stick your Outpost Raid, but once the game has begun, it's a no-brainer.

Distortion Field is particularly nasty for dealing a one-two punch. If you've got a Horga’hn in play, you can make any mission of your choice virtually impassible. Just play one Field on your first turn, and then play the second on the next. Now, there's always one face up on every turn. Did your opponent remember to bring the Pattern Enhancers? ;-) This is also useful for protecting your colonies from unwelcome visitors while you sit back and score your points.

Atmospheric Ionization has some nasty uses of its own. Again, you can block a highly valued mission from your opponent. Even better, though, is to wait until an opponent has been stopped on the surface during a mission attempt, then play the Ionization on your turn to slow them down. The larger the Away Team, the longer it will take them to return to the ship and get "up and running" again. Another fun triad is Atmospheric Ionization / Barclay Transporter Phobia / Thine Own Self. If the opponent tries to beam down three people to the planet, you can give one of them a sudden fear of the transporter. The remaining two arrive to fall victim to Thine Own Self. Yes, it requires three cards, but it's a reliable way of obtaining captives.

The Particle Scattering Field can be used to protect a Colony, as mentioned above. I find it less desirable than the Distortion Fields for this purpose, though - you may as well paint a big bullseye on the Tama (AU). Obviously, if you can trap a stopped Away Team on a planet (as described above for the Atmospheric Ionization), you're in good shape. RANGE can sometimes prevent this. But if you are planning to do some "hunting" with the Tama, put your outpost as close to your opponent's as possible, and you can deliver a very nasty surprise. When is the Tama like a Q? When it's paired up with The Sheliak! Some players simply don't have enough rares to play the fearsome Sheliak/Q combo. Even worse, more and more decks today are actually capable of overcoming Q. No problem, just settle for another stopping dilemma after your Sheliak: Chinese Finger Puzzle, Worshiper (stops a lot more teams than it lets pass, in my experience), Alien Labyrinth, you name it. On your turn, fly the Tama and its Field over to the mission where your unfortunate opponent got stopped in their mission attempt. Then you just wait for the Sheliak to arrive. Your ship is perfectly safe from their attack. The Away Team is in rough shape indeed.

And there you have it. Just don't expect a four-in-one when I reach forty. ;-)