Mot's Useless Card Review #79: Scorched Hand

Same goes for playing with a large hand. Are you finding that Mirror Image isn't always enough to stop the abuse of The Traveler: Transcendence and Kivas Fajo - Collector? Most players use those two events to excess in anticipation of a Red Alert! You can trap all those cards in their hand with the Ready Room Door/Yellow Alert combo, and then Scorch them all away. It all adds up to several turns wasted for your opponent on events that ended up gaining them nothing. And a lucky Scorched Hand can also work as a "counter" to the Betazoid Gift Box by removing some (maybe even all, on a lucky draw) of the cards they retrieved.

It's worth considering a Scorched Hand in the Q’s Tent of a Borg deck. Oftentimes, a Borg player will build up all the resources they need, but be forced to continue drawing. Once the deck runs out, of course, it's game over for a Borg player. With Scorched Hand, you can recycle most of your hand back into your draw deck to restore your ability to score points.

Of course, these things have been possible all along, yet Scorched Hand was not seeing much use. Now with the release of the Sealed Deck product, an unusual new way of Scorching your opponent's Hand has been created. Space-Time Portal has quickly become one of the most popular cards of the Sealed Deck, largely due to its ability to pull a ship back into your hand with all its crew if you run into a tight spot (approaching armada, stuck in Montana, impending Anti-Time Anomaly, etc.) The catch is, after pulling a ship and crew back into your hand, odds are you're holding over 12 cards. Time for a Scorched Hand. Not only will an opponent in this situation have to report the personnel again, they'll have to actually get them back into hand first. It could be almost like starting over again if enough key personnel are sent back to the bottom of the draw deck!

Best of all, Scorched Hand is immune to Amanda Rogers, so there's nothing your opponent can do to prevent any of these tactics involving the "useless" First Contact Expansion interrupt. Get ready to turn the heat up on your opponent! ;-)