Mot's Useless Card Review #46: Blade of Tkon

People are generally quick to dismiss this card as a watered-down Q. In truth, it's the ways in which Blade of Tkon is different from Q that are most valuable.

Despite the power of Q to reorganize the entire spaceline as you wish, the large drawback is that it is a dilemma. That means it must lie in wait until it's triggered by your opponent. Depending on where you put it, how many of them you used, and what your opponent's strategy is, that may never happen. When and if it does, your opponent has a number of different ways to prevent you from reorganizing the spaceline: Q2, Mortal Q, or simply overcoming the dilemma with the necessary skills.

Blade of Tkon plays immediately. It may not be nullified. Even the Vorgon Raiders can't touch it. And since it is an artifact, you can encounter and retrieve it on your own terms. No waiting on your opponent. This means that when you have just successfully completed a mission, you can press that advantage by moving a planet location to a more convenient location.

There are several different reasons you might want to move a planet, but one of the best involves setting up a string of Blade of Tkons. Prior to the release of Q-Continuum, a semi-popular strategy involved completing one mission, obtaining an Iconian Gateway, transporting the Away Team to the next mission, obtaining another Gateway, and continuing through a chain until 100 points were reached. Wrong Door made that a risky strategy indeed. And there was always the problem of waiting a turn each time, since the Iconian Gateway plays as an Event.

No such problem for Blade of Tkon. Just add a ship to your fully outfitted crew. Score the first mission in your chain, and then use the Blade of Tkon you've seeded there to move the next planet in your chain right next door. Your ship can then move over easily. Score that mission, and use another Blade to relocate your next mission right by the second one. Basically, you "enhance" the RANGE of your ship by bringing the planets to you! With enough Blades and missions valued at about 35 points, you could easily win the game on a single turn. And unlike Iconian Gateway or Distortion of Space/Time Continuum, you have no need to worry about stocking protection from counters.

And now a bit of revisionist history... ;-) My original review of the Blade of Tkon ended here, but then six days later, Decipher previewed Black Hole. An addendum is in order. Black Hole sucks up neighboring spaceline locations. Wouldn't it be fun if you could use Blade of Tkon to move your opponent's outpost so that it's next to be destroyed? ;-)

Now, you didn't get rid of all your Blade of Tkons, did you? ;-)