Mot's Useless Card Review #89: Altonian Brain Teaser

As the "Useless" Card Reviews close out their second year, I'm going where I've never gone before... Deep Space Nine!

Many of you out there are thinking right now, "well that's hardly a useless card." Others have called it a waste of a seed slot. To those of you in the latter category, here's what you've been missing.

Without even considering combos or circumstances, the Brain Teaser is a fairly strong "filter" dilemma. Though it stops only one person, it is an absolutely guaranteed stop. What makes it menacing is that it is so arbitrary. People rarely think of CUNNING when selecting personnel, looking for skills above all else. Thus, it's quite frequent that a critical skill in a player's deck will be found only on personnel who happen to have unusually high (or low) CUNNING. It may be that a player's MEDICAL personnel all have higher CUNNING than their SCIENCE and SECURITY, without them even realizing it. Or they might have several personnel tied for "most CUNNING", which makes the random selection your choice.

For example, take a popular combo like Unscientific Method / Barclay’s Protomorphosis Disease. You can expect to need 2 SCIENCE, a MEDICAL and a SECURITY to safely pass through (or a single SCIENCE personnel with Treachery or Greed). But change that Unscientific Method to an Altonian Brain Teaser, and now what does it take? You've got the 2 SCIENCE, but it may happen that your highest CUNNING personnel is MEDICAL, so you'll need to get a replacement for that instead. Or it might be SECURITY you need to reinforce. Who knows exactly what critical skill your most CUNNING personnel is providing? Do you have a high CUNNING to "sacrifice" who isn't your only source of a key skill?

Add to the Brain Teaser's filter the potent ability to partially cancel bonus points scored at that location. (Partially, in that they'll still count for purposes other than winning the game.) Short of having PADDs, your opponent isn't going to pull off the requirement of CUNNING > 15. Suddenly, mission specialists, point dilemmas and more are good for passing Dead End, and very little else. The ramifications of this are virtually endless.

With the larger seed decks allowed by the DS9 "missions seed free" rule, you've got space to consider an Altonian Brain Teaser to front some or even all of your dilemma combos. It adds an extra and unexpected filter to the combo, and makes sure that point dilemmas like Barclay, Hyper-Aging and the like don't come back to bite you.

However, the Brain Teaser's real power is unleashed when it is not part of any fixed combo, but when you seed it wherever you happen to need it and go out to trigger it if your opponent doesn't.

If your opponent seeds multiple copies of a simple universal space mission like Explore Interstellar Matter, you can expect the "Cytherians Shuffle" in your future. Shut down your opponent's attempts to score points from multiple Cytherians by seeding a Brain Teaser at the end of the spaceline (the location where at least half of those Cytherians will be scored).

Is your opponent hunting down your Borg Scout Vessel swarm? Brain Teaser will take care of that. Huddle your Scouts in one location if trouble's coming and release a Brain Teaser there to cancel the 5 point "bounties."

See a low-point mission on the spaceline? Odds are your opponent was planning to use mission specialists to bring the value up. Or the reverse, is there a very high-point mission out there? Maybe your opponent was planning a single-mission victory with the help of self-seeded dilemmas or a Colony. Brain Teaser shuts that down too.

Speaking of Colonies, you can worry less about one at Q’s Planet with a Brain Teaser in your Q’s Tent. Or you could even reseed a Teaser from your discard pile if you triggered one earlier in the game at another location.

Think you can guess where your opponent's outpost will go? Brain Teaser would sure come in handy if they were planning to sit there slaughtering Aamin Marritzas and Kova Tholls all game.

Afraid of mission thieves? Protect your missions with a Brain Teaser in front. You can redshirt that card away when you're ready to complete the mission yourself. Meanwhile, the combo your opponent was specially geared to overcome has an unexpected new element. Dilemmas they are usually able to pass without thinking might suddenly prove lethal to them if the Brain Teaser grabs the right person. What's more, the bonus points they'd planned on gaining from Mission Specialists or seeded dilemmas (usually Barclay's) won't help them on to victory.

Many of these strategies rely on guessing what your opponent is going to do based on their mission selection, but this is not hard to do in most cases. (And also why bluffing is becoming more popular.) Even a single Brain Teaser in your seed deck, used strategically, can and will win games for you. It has for me.

You'd think after sitting there trying to solve a puzzle unsuccessfully for over 140 years, your legs would cramp up and you'd give up... but then, I'm not a Trill. ;-)