Mot's Useless Card Review #94: Hypospray

Personnel battle has been steadily on the rise since the revision of the rules in First Contact. With Blaze of Glory just around the corner, it's reasonable to expect a sharp spike in that growth - your deck should be prepared to do battle.

Nor users have an obvious benefit to gain from the Hypospray, using it to "suspend" their mortally wounded personnel as disabled until they can be returned to an Infirmary to be restored. While it may seem like a bit of effort, it can often beat waiting to process them back from the discard pile via the Ore Processing Unit and downloading them back into play at the expense of another card play.

Hypospray's first function proves more valuable, however. MEDICAL personnel are often a weak link in a line of defense. More often than not (especially for the Federation), they have the lowest STRENGTH in a group of personnel, and are thus routinely stunned or mortally wounded by their adversaries. A Hypospray will quickly turn the tables however, allowing even your weakest MEDICAL to stun your strongest non-android adversaries. But you may wonder, since it isn't cumulative, is it worth playing the equipment to protect one personnel? Don't think so? How about all of them?

Genetronic Replicator remains a powerful and popular card, with a notable weakness when it comes to personnel battle - the 2 MEDICAL required to make it work must be unstunned when the battle ends. Even a Federation super-Team featuring Julian Bashir, Beverly Crusher (Prem), and Beverly Picard can be brought down in battle if all three are stunned, a feat easily accomplished in light of their low STRENGTH. Enter Hypospray. As soon as one of the double-MEDICAL personnel pairs off with their adversary, they can stun them. Now they need only beat the random selection at the conclusion of a losing battle to survive and patch together anyone and everyone in the battle. With the hole in the Replicator patched with a Hypospray, your Away Teams become nearly invulnerable to personnel battle. Non-Federation affiliations not fortunate enough to have so many double-MEDs to choose from might instead try Vekor and a Medical Tricorder for the same effect.

Not to mention how funny it is imagining say Dr. Soong with a Hypospray in one hand and a Medical Tricorder in the other defeating a bat'leth-armed Klingon warrior.