Mot's Useless Card Review #91: Memory Wipe

For those who have asked "why would I ever use Memory Wipe's first function outside of sealed deck?" ... one possible answer can be found in this week's "useless" card:

Though it's easy to see the potential strength of this card (particularly in multiple), it carries with it a major drawback. If your opponent isn't using ships with matching commanders (or Enterprise-E personnel), you can't do anything with it. With Spacedoor quite the popular card at present, matching commanders are becoming fewer and far between, as very few universal ships have them. And until the announcement of Crew Reassignment, few players were even considering using the Enterprise-E personnel.

Ways to intrude aboard your opponent's ships began to show up in Open Diplomatic Relations and Dropping In. It was then clarified that for Abandon Mission to have any effect, the matching commander or U.S.S. Enterprise-E personnel had to belong to the player whose ship was being affected. (Justified because the card targets "crew.")

Players not yet willing to give up a strategy based around Abandon Mission then looked to The Naked Truth. This Q-icon card allows you to give your opponent a unique personnel to use as their own. While that solved the problem of ownership, it couldn't jump the hurdle of compatibility. Personnel under house arrest are not part of the crew either, so unless your opponent was playing Federation, giving them an Enterprise-E personnel wouldn't pave the way for a string of Abandon Missions. Stocking countless matching commanders for the growing number of other affiliations wasn't very practical either.

At last, enter Memory Wipe. When you "graciously" seed this card on behalf of your opponent's personnel, they will be able to freely mix regardless of affiliation. This includes the Enterprise-E personnel they weren't expecting to pick up through The Naked Truth. This spells big trouble for any player who has loaded all their personnel on a single ship, because with Abandon Mission finally in place, they may not attempt any missions, and they may not beam off the ship - not unless they initiate a battle, which will of course be rather hard to do with the compatible Federation personnel you've given them along for the ride! The longer you can keep the flow of Abandon Missions coming, the longer your opponent will be stuck in this unusual predicament.

Your opponent may try to circumvent the problem by docking at one of their facilities and walking off the affected ship. Fortunately, there is something you can do to prevent that too. Docking Procedures, an interrupt normally used to delay departing ships, works perfectly in this situation for delaying an arriving ship. That gives you one turn to get there before your opponent can dock. You can destroy the ship outright, or perhaps prolong the fun by using Gomtuu to hurl the ship away from the facility again! It's almost as bad as quarantine!

Whether or not you're willing to go through all these gymnastics to put your opponent in a bind, it's about time to give Abandon Mission a second look. Dominion will be arriving soon, bringing Enterprise-E personnel out of the binders through Crew Reassignment, and presenting some potent new matching commander combos, including the Trager and Macet, and I.K.C. Rotarran and Martok - sure to be a favorite with Klingon players.