Mot's Useless Card Review #40: Gift Of The Tormentor

This is a Q-icon card, which means it can only go in your Q-Continuum side deck, and you can never directly encounter it yourself. Which means essentially that when your opponent hits this card, if they have zero points, they win.

Why ever would you do this? Well, there is a high gloating factor involved here. It is, after all, the Gift of the Tormentor - and you are the Tormentor. Just seed The Higher... The Fewer before any Q-Flash you've placed, guaranteeing your opponent will not have a score of zero when they hit this card. Then smile at them, and say "wow, you could have had 100 points right now. What a shame." ;-) (You can seed any dilemma that involves sure fire point scoring, for example Royale Casino: Blackjack, and get the same protection.)

But gloating is not enough for most, especially with such a high risk factor attached to it. Fortunately, there is a way to take this a step further. Take note of the very important detail that when the Gift of the Tormentor is discarded, it goes into the discard pile of the player encountering it - it crosses from your Continuum to their discard pile. Once it's there, a really great opportunity emerges, in the form of:

Are These Truly Your Friends, Brother?

If the random selection should just happen to grab the Gift of the Tomentor just placed there, then you receieve 100 points immediately that may not be nullified. Not bad, huh?

Now, to this point, I haven't revealed anything that many of you didn't already know. After all, the "why would I ever use Gift of the Tomentor" question shows up on the BBS about once a month, and is always answered in this manner. And yet, why is it I have never seen a deck built around this idea? Undoubtedly because people dismiss this scenario as too unlikely for a number of reasons. Let me then suggest a few ways to increase the odds on this proposition.

First of all, there exists the possibility that your opponent will have more people in their crew or Away Team than cards in their discard pile. This could happen if your opponent is able to attempt a mission early in the game, or if they are attempting with a "mega-Team" later in the game. So you need a way to get more cards into their discard pile...

You have three great choices for this: Subspace Schism, Static Warp Bubble and Telepathic Alien Kidnappers. Play the Subspace Schism after as many of your opponent's card draws as necessary to get more cards in his discard pile than in his prospective Away Team. If there are enough cards in the pile, don't use them anymore. (After all you definitely don't want too many cards in your opponent's discard pile - that just decreases your odds of a successful draw.) The use of the Static Warp Bubble is fairly straight forward. Don't forget, it can be nullified by any player's use of The Traveller: Transcendence, so if too many cards are going into your opponent's discard pile, you can play a Traveller to "call off the hunt." Using Telepathic Alien Kidnappers, you'll hopefully pick off an additional card once in a while to add to the discard pile. Again, don't allow too many cards to be discarded. If your picking proves too accurate, then start naming card types you know your opponent (probably) doesn't have in their hand: Missions, Outposts, Stations, Dilemmas, etc.

The reverse of this problem could also be true - your opponent has plenty of cards in their discard pile, too many for your tastes. This happens most often when your opponent is playing a lot of Kivas Fajos and/or a lot of the countering troika of Kevin Uxbridge, Amanda Rogers and Q2. Fortunately, there are ways to deal with this problem, too...

Countermanda and Fire Sculptor (you remember Fire Sculptor, don't you?) are perfect for the job. Most Kivas-heavy decks also run a few Palor Toffs. Since you'll be playing Countermanda anyway to guard against the horrid unlikelihood of your opponent having zero points when they encounter Gift of the Tormentor, she'll be on hand if your opponent tries to pull stuff back from their discard pile. You can then reduce that pile by three cards. Fire Sculptor "melts" one card of your choice out of your opponent's discard pile. Anything that isn't points is a good choice. :-)

Finally, you want to make sure that your opponent's Away Teams are as small as possible. I mentioned that you can use Schisms and Static Warp Bubbles to increase your opponent's discard pile if necessary - but why make things harder on yourself? A smaller Away Team can trigger Are These Truly Your Friends, Brother? on a smaller discard pile. (Which means better odds.)

This means that second only to dilemmas that affect your opponent's score, you should seed dilemmas that remove, kill or stop some (but not all) of their Away Team or crew: the Love Interests, Alien Parasites, Punishment Zone and Parallel Romance are grade A for this job, with Chinese Finger Puzzle, Yuta, Firestorm, Tarellian Plague Ship, Cardassian Trap, Hunter Gangs, Thought Fire and Zaldan falling into the "not bad either" category. This runs counter to the normal logic of allowing as many crew as possible to hit the Q-Flash... if you can remove one to three personnel before the Flash, you increase your odds dramatically.

Your Continuum itself should probably be about one-third Gift of the Tormentor and one-third Are These Truly Your Friends, Brother? Again though, you want any cards that affect your opponent's score or removes personnel: His Honor, The High Sheriff of Nottingham, Mandarin Bailiff and Penalty Box. Also include The Higher... The Q-er to help increase the chance that one of each of your critical cards will be encountered in each Q-Flash, and Incoming Message - The Continuum to make a smaller number of seeded Flashes work for multiple missions. These cards should make up the remaining third of your Continuum. (Also, as long as you are thinning their Team, you might seed an Alien Parasites to be encountered after the Flash...)

The real goal is to score the Gift of the Tormentor, but this doesn't mean you should pass up other opportunities for points. Borg Hunting is ever so popular right now, and each Ship has a 45 point point box attached. Be prepared with a sacrificial Kova Tholl or two on Yridian Shuttles (for more points) to release any Borg Ships you think your opponent may have seeded and get them into your opponent's discard pile ASAP. Use Devidian Doors to "report" Kova Tholl or Samuel Clemens directly into your opponent's discard pile. They both have 10-point point boxes you can score if you aren't lucky enough to draw the big 100 points - and in this manner you may legally score the points on the Samuel Clemens card more than once per game. ;-)

Good luck, and good hunting!