Being a look back at cards from the Star Trek CCG, and what I thought of them back when they were fresh and new... in EPISODE order. Another card type introduced in The Trouble with Tribbles is the Trouble card, so in reality, the proper title of this one is "...in the Engine Room". Let's have a closer look.
PICTURE: All the primary colors show up for this pretty funny picture in the mess hall, and it's a much sharper image than the detail used on the 10 Tribbles card. Scotty's missing finger is still visible if you look for it, and his expression is priceless. The problem, of course, is that the scene in no way takes place in the engine room, but at least, Scotty mentions it (see the lore). Fun enough for a 3.5 though.
LORE: The titles on Trouble cards are a bit clumsy with their ellipses, but I like the idea here of using Scotty's words as a quote. Though the scene isn't pulled from the engine room, the text gets the idea across well enough. 3.4 here.
TREK SENSE: Because the engine room allows Jeffries tube access to the inner workings of the ship, throwing Tribbles in there may cause problems with various systems. A 100 Tribbles are enough to gum up both Range and Weapons, but not Shields. There are only a 100 after all. The attribute penalties are a bit arbitrary and might have been cumulative, but they work fine. When a 1000 Tribbles are present, you need as many as 3 Engineers to throw them out of engineering at regular intervals, or else you have to shut things down every time the ship's moved. By then, the Tribbles have gotten into sensitive areas and must again be cleared out. A cute effect. Nors don't move, of course, and don't quite have an engine room, but the related engineer area seems to be the Ore Processing Unit. Fair enough. It's a big room, so a hundred Tribbles might not cause much of an inconvenient, but 1000, well, that's enough to stop all Ore Processing there. It's easy to imagine the Trouble Tribbles could cause to Engineers, and that's carried over well enough. A sound 3.7.
STOCKABILITY: 100 Tribbles already cause a lot of trouble by requiring 2 Leadership to attempt missions here, but drop this capital "T" Trouble on it, and it causes a little more. Reduction in RANGE and WEAPONS is good, but at -1 only, it's not that powerful. With 1000 Tribbles, it gets much better though. Yes, you need only breed from 100 to change the effect to stopping a ship every turn, kind of like Engine Imbalance though the RANGE isn't spent so you could use What Does God Need With a Ship? to unstop and continue. But in combination with spaceline hazards such as Borg Ship or The Nexus, it prevents your opponent from "jumping over" such dangers. Thanks to the Tribbles' own effects, ENGINEER skills listed first in the game text box become moot, so it might be a little harder than you'd think to override the Trouble. Against Nor users, it can hose Process Ore strategies even in the Mirror Quadrant where Reactor Overload isn't so efficient. Troubles bring the baggage of having to be part of a Tribbles deck, but where these things are considered, it's one of the easiest to use regardless of your opponent's strategies. A cool 3.7.
TOTAL: 14.3 (71.5%) No trouble here.
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