Design Log: Stardate 08.18.2003

Throw'em In the Brig!

To an inveterate Romulan like myself, one of the most interesting "verb" keywords has always been Capture, with Punishment (of captives) a close second. Anything that can let me take captives – or do something interesting with them – appeals to me more than the cards that just let me kill personnel. After all, if I kill your personnel, you can just play another copy (or retrieve the dead one and replay him). If I put your unique personnel in my brig, on the other hand, you're stuck not being able to play another one. And sure enough, Call to Arms has its quota of Capture or captive-related cards.

The only one that actually has the Capture keyword is also a Maneuver card, The Enterprise Incident. Allowing your [Rom] ship to begin an engagement – with any of your other ships at the same mission with [Rom] Intelligence aboard (c'mon, we know that's just a euphemism for the Tal Shiar!) allowed to join the party – it rewards a win by letting you throw an opponent's Leadership personnel involved into your brig. While you'll have to make sure there's actually a Leadership personnel aboard the ship you attack (otherwise it fizzles), few adequately crewed ships are going to be without at least one.

The 3-cost Restricted Area doesn't have the keyword because it's a dilemma (the designers chose not to saddle dilemmas with keywords, partly because the bold-faced keywords could be confused with requirements of some kind), but it's nonetheless everything a capture card should be. A close relative to Pinned Down and Pursuit Just Behind, instead of stopping or killing personnel Restricted Area instead... throws them in the brig, of course. Try your mission (either planet or space) with 12 or more personnel, and you may end up with three of them in the brig, wishing they had succumbed to Explosive Decompression instead.

Finally, we have Psychological Pressure, a Punishment card that makes good use of those captives you just acquired when you can match the dilemmas you choose with the captives' skills. Say I have two of your personnel, one with Physics and one with Medical, in my brig. On your next mission attempt, I select An Old Debt as one of my dilemmas. No matter which set of requirements you want to use to overcome the dilemma, you need to use one of those two skills, and Psychological Pressure requires you to discard a card from hand to use that skill.

Starting battles, taking captives singly or in multiples, punishing them... what more could a Tal Shiar agent want?

Kathy McCracken
Major Rakal
Star Trek Intelligence Officer

August 18, 2003

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