Mot's Useless Card Review #86: Persistence of Memory

With more "OR"s than any other Star Trek card, you wouldn't think people would have any trouble finding uses for this card?

And yet this artifact rarely appears on the tournament scene. No doubt part of the reason is that many of the uses for Persistence of Memory are reactive. You don't go into a game knowing your opponent will play a Horga’hn, Static Warp Bubble, Kivas Fajo - Collector or The Traveler: Transcendence you'll want to reverse. Still, those are some of the most popular cards in the game right now. If you're including Persistence of Memory for no other reason than reacting to these cards, you probably won't be disappointed.

You can also use Persistence of Memory to react to a rather new strategy. With the addition of the Gamma Quadrant to the game, Black Hole has seen more use by players trying to destroy one quadrant while basing their efforts in the other. Persistence of Memory reverses the Black Hole, protecting your quadrant from your opponent's nefarious plan. Still, don't take too long working on your missions, or else the spaceline will expand to an almost impassible size!

Persistence of Memory joins with Thought Maker as the ultimate in probe rigging. Stack your cards in just the right order for one successful probe after another. Just remember you have only 10 seconds to pull it off. Know exactly what icons you want to set up, and what cards in your deck will have them.

Reversing the announcement of "Devidian Door" is one sure way to "cure" the multitude of "fate worse than death" dilemmas. You can undo the effects of Vantika’s Neural Pathways, DNA Metamorphosis, Framed for Murder, and many others simply by pulling the personnel back to your hand and reporting them again.

Of course, sometimes death is bad enough. Persistence of Memory can reverse two of the grizzlier forms of death - Supernova and Anti-Time Anomaly. While reversing Supernova won't restore your outpost or any personnel you happened to lose, it will restore a mission - without any dilemmas - for you to attempt.

Reversing Anti-Time Anomaly can be very interesting indeed. Anti-Time Anomaly decks still show up now and then on the tournament scene. Very few have the means to stop their own Anomalies. Why would they want to? Persistence of Memory. Your opponent may get off one Anomaly against you, but they'll be hard-pressed to play anymore once you've acquired the artifact. Not only do you in effect nullify Anti-Time Anomaly, you bring back from the dead all the personnel you lost the first time around!

Finally, reversing Mona Lisa is probably the most aggressive strategy you can take with Persistence of Memory. In the late end game, you can play Persistence of Memory on Mona Lisa to simply create 10 points' worth of artifacts for Kivas Fajo to be present with. But once you've paired them up, you're inviting a nasty maneuver from your opponent. You could instead play a Disruptor Overload yourself, or even an Auto-Destruct Sequence on the ship carrying the precious paintings, inflicting a 25 point loss on your opponent!

One card that can turn 10 others on their ear. Not a bad deal.