Mot's Useless Card Review #53: Assign Mission Specialists

Okay, I grant you, this is not really a review of a "useless" card - but rather than write separate reviews for the 3 to 4 dozen single-skilled "specialists" out there, I'll just offer an examination of this new objective.

By using Assign Mission Specialists, you can get a +5 bonus on a completed mission where one of your personnel with only one regular skill used their skill to help solve it. (You can assign your skills to the completion of a mission in any order - if both Sirna Kolrami and Jean-Luc Picard (Prem) are present at a mission requiring Leadership, you can choose to solve the mission with Sirna instead of Jean-Luc.) You can also use multiple specialists with different skills to give even larger bonuses to missions with multiple requirements.

Here is the list of skills currently available on Specialist personnel, for each affiliation:

• Federation
  • Anthropology - Darian Wallace.
  • Archaelogy - Dr. Royse.
  • Astrophysics - Soren.
  • Barbering - Mot the Barber.
  • Biology - Alyssa Ogawa (Prem) (Basic).
  • Computer Skill - Christopher Hobson, Ocett (Basic).
  • Diplomacy - Riva.
  • Empathy - Lwaxana Troi.
  • ENGINEER - Dr. Leah Brahms, Leah Brahms.
  • Exobiology - Dr. La Forge.
  • Geology - Inge Eiger.
  • Leadership - Benjamin Maxwell, Norah Satie, Sirna Kolrami.
  • Mindmeld - Taurik.
  • Navigation - Gibson.
  • Physics - Hannah Bates, Mendon, Sir Isaac Newton, Toby Russell.
  • Stellar Cartography - Richard Wilkins.
  • Youth - Calloway, Giusti, Linda Larson, Simon Tarses.
• Klingon
  • Archaeology - Dukath.
  • Astrophysics - Torin.
  • Diplomacy - K’Tal.
  • Honor - Batrell, Gorath, Kahless, Kle’eg, Korris, Vekma.
  • Navigation - B’iJik, Klag, Konmel.
  • Physics - Kromm.
  • Stellar Cartography - K’Tesh.
  • Treachery - Kell.
• Romulan
  • Astrophysics - Tomek.
  • Computer Skill - Palteth.
  • Exobiology - Takket.
  • Leadership - Tallus.
  • Stellar Cartography - Tarus.
  • Treachery - Parem, Selok.
• Non-Aligned
  • Anthropology - Kathleen Tonnell.
  • Computer Skill - Narik (EG).
  • Greed - Dr. Farek.
  • Music - Amarie.

Without Treaties, the Federation have 35 different missions with one or more requirements their Specialists can provide (sometimes with non-aligned help). The Klingons have 33 different choices, and the Romulans have 24. Also add in Dr. Farek, who contributes +5 to Qualor II Rendezvous, and is perfect for the universal Planet mission.

The Romulans may seem at first to be at a disadvantage in this deal, with fewer Specialist skills available to them than the other affiliations. It's really a blessing in disguise, however, as the Romulans can then use fewer Specialists to get bonuses out of multiple missions with similar requirements. (There are tons of Romulan missions requiring Treachery, for example.)

With the right combinations of personnel, 10 different Federation missions can be completed for 50+ points, and 7 missions each for the Romulans and Klingons. Add Treaties, and even more options present themselves.

For the truly unusual, try revisiting the Mot the Barber/Terraforming Station strategy. Use the Stations to Terraform a few planet missions to include Barbering as a requirement. Mot the Barber is, of course, a Specialist in his field, and can get you bonus points for all of the re-written missions. ;-)

But wait, there's more! You can choose to discard the Assign Mission Specialists objective in order to play another copy. Each time you play a copy of the card, you may download two new specialists to one of your outposts. It's a great way to jumpstart your deck by quickly reporting personnel (which Red Alert isn't going to help much with anymore). Two copies of this Objective, and you can download a MEDICAL, SCIENCE and SECURITY Specialist to help you bypass Barclay’s Protomorphosis Disease. Kathleen Tonnell is tailor-made for the nasty new Primitive Culture. Just a few examples of how specialists will really help you out with dilemmas.

Assign Mission Specialists is a "Captain's Order" too, which means you can download it with a Ready Room Door. (Downloading something in order to download something else might seem a bit silly, but when Ready Room Door can essentially function as a half dozen different cards, whichever you happen to need most, it's definitely worth including in a deck!)

So whether your aim is a Romulan Treachery deck, an all Dr. Farek Planet deck, a Klingon Honor Deck, a Federation potpourri, or something else entirely, you have something to gain from Mission Specialists. There are dozens of possible ways to employ the formerly "useless" single-skilled personnel.

Time to dust off these old cards you've been saving and put them to good use!