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. Where No One Has Gone Before has lots of useful hallucinations to inspire card design...
PICTURE: While the picture has been well composed, with Tasha's gaze directing our own to the circle in the back, I find it ghastly. Her scars and costume are like a scene from some sort of S&M video and are somewhat inappropriate for this G-rated game. The tunnel has one cool feature: dark figures with flashlights pointing in all directions (We Are the Borg! Oops, sorry), but it's otherwise set in a boring cavern wall. I'm overdosing on "Planet Hell". A 2.2.
LORE: First, the title. I AM glad they didn't stick with the name given to the gangs in the episode, which is "Rape Gang". It would have been a bit too violent for the game. Heck, we couldn't even use the word on the Decipher boards. The odd thing about the lore is the use of the name "Natasha" rather than "Tasha". I know it's her full name, but it's been rarely used. It could be an evocation of her past (she got the nickname "Tasha" later in life), but the meeting with her sister Ishara never revealed this (quite the opposite). We're left with adequate lore, generalizing while simultaneously giving a specific example. A good 3.4.
TREK SENSE: A lot of unanswered questions. Why only two Away Team members? What is the rest of the team doing in the meantime? Why are the gangs even attacking a big team and how are they splitting it up? In any case, two personnel get chased. By different Gangs? By the same one? Who gets caught and killed is left to chance, though Cunning is the deciding attribute. Smarts should count for something, but here, this logic is subverted by the even/odd device. So someone with a CUNNING of 8 escapes, but someone with 9 doesn't? Or how about this? A stupid 2 gets away, but a brilliant 13 doesn't. Nonsense. What little is there gathers up 1.5 points.
SEEDABILITY: You've got a chance for 2 kills with one stone, but not really any easy way to make sure it hits. After all, if both personnel picked have even CUNNINGs, you're out of luck. Of course, both could be odd... Just what ARE the odds (sorry, pun not intended) of hitting the right personnel? Well, first off, the dilemma is murder on the Borg. All the drones have very uneven 5s and 7s and go to the discard pile (to circumvent the one scout-one death syndrome, put a big wall in front of Hunter Gangs). Half the Counterparts are also odd. The Bajorans won't lose half their personnel, but such luminaries as Odo and Rinnak Pire will bite the big one. The Cardassians are fairly well divided in the middle, but their SCIENCE will be hurt the most (seed at SCIENCE missions). Only a third of the Dominion falls under "odd", but those include a number of Founders AND Weyoun. The Federation is also well divided, with a number of good personnel in there (Picard, Kirk, Guinan, Bashir and Dax to name only a few), with SCIENCE again taking a specific hit. Klingons will mostly lose OFFICERs, but are all over the map on this one. Same for the Romulans. Non-Aligned personnel are in the best shape right now with less than a third of their numbers being odd, and those being mostly specialized CIVILIANs anyway. So it can be effective depending on on your opponent's choices. I wouldn't write this one off quite yet. A 3.5.
TOTAL: 10.6 (53%) Risky, but could pay off.
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