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. While a Black Hole doesn't appear in Encounter at Farpoint, it's the effects shot used to create the following Premium card first appears in the episode...
PICTURE: Here, the graphics are everything. A black hole looks like exactly nothing. The hole pulls in the entire card's graphics. It's too cool. Congratulations to card reviewer "Wesley Crusher" who originated the idea (it was in the Dream Card section of Decipher's site)! Unfortunately, the actual image is that of a s ship's eye view of jumping to warp, so... Beacuse of the little cheating on the designers' part, a 4.5.
LORE: N/A (score will be adjusted accordingly)
TREK SENSE: Why between 2 Space missions (and dead space, at that)? Because black holes in proximity to planets (or other stellar phenomena) would eventually destroy those planets. Fine. when the card starts pulling in the others though... are we to believe that systems light years away are being destroyed that fast? (Many, in the course of a game.) That would mean these planets would be travelling at warp speed towards the hole! Plus, black holes don't alternate like this and ARE duplicatable. The card just doesn't stand up to astronomical scrutiny. In reality, the hole could destroy what was at its location, not much more. A 1.8.
STOCKABILITY: If you're using Black Hole, then you're entire strategy probably revolves around it. You're either planning to cripple your opponent's slow deck or destroy his Gamma quadrant, or get some points in the discard pile for Gift of the Tormentor. In any case, it's hard to use because of the timing. Every four turns is a long time and difficult to time. And you don't want your own missions to get eaten up... Never mind that you had to seed [universal] Space missions, which don't have missions to solve. I suppose you could use it to protect yourself from Borg Cubes, Whale Probes, etc. A 2.9.
TOTAL: 12.3 (61.5%) An adjusted passing grade for a fun, if strategy-specific, card.
Comments
I realized I could actually work with that; I quickly completed an Alpha mission or two then wormholed to my Gamma missions making sure I had my copy of The Emissary aboard. This let me continue to report Bajorans despite being cut off from my normal facility.
I still won the game.