As you may have heard, The Ninja Scot and Dr. Telek R'Mor have decided to do a one-page review of every card in Holodeck Adventures.  That's right, all 131 cards!  Better set aside lots of reading time for this…  (DTRM is doing evens and TNS is doing odds)  The opinions, of course, are those of the authors :-)

23) Children of Light
Incident - Seeds or plays on table.  Your (HOLO) personnel may mix and have no affiliation attack restrictions.  OR Plays to capture all (HOLO) personnel with Iden, or (if he is aboard Olarra) all (HOLO) personnel aboard one damaged ship at his location; discard incident.

        This is a two-fold card that I look at like this – “We want all of our hologram brethren to join us and to be at peace, even fight those who created us if necessary.  But if you don’t follow us, we’re going to capture all of our kind from the ship we just damaged because Iden, our wise and powerful leader, says that it’s okay.”  Cute community, don’t you think?

        There are obvious advantages with the first function – You get two Hologram AMS personnel in Tomek and Leah Brahms, giving you great headway in quite a few missions, exposing your people to less dilemma risks in the all-important two mission win.  You get to use all 44 different holograms in the game without trying to jury-rig some kind of Treaty system, trying to come up with enough people to even keep the deck competitive and devoting 1 or 2 seed slots to it. It’s not counterable, making it one less target for your opponent to counter.

        The other function is a bit more specialized, of course.  It wouldn’t be that difficult to get Iden to capture people on the planet.  Use Mission Debriefing to stop them after a mission attempt, either use Holoprojectors or a Mobile Emitter, beam him down and have him special download it into play.  Instant uber-capture of who knows how many people.  In space, it’s a bit more difficult as you have to damage their ship.  However, it’s not impossible.  Between Iden and a Captain’s Log, Bynar’s Weapon Enhancement and a Battle Bridge side deck, ATTACK levels of 16 or higher aren’t unheard of and, because of the seeded Children of Light, they don’t care who they attack.

        The question is – How many people will use Holograms?  After all, what’s the point of using the card’s second function if people don’t use holograms in the first place?  Lately, I’ve noticed that people have only joined either the Crell bandwagon or the Baker Street contingent of Holmes, Watson, Moriarty and Regina (only two of whom are Holograms) although I suspect that Vic and others will get into the act as well.  I suspect that this will be a rather meta-game related issue, rather than a card worth issue.

        Seeded wise, it’s a must for Holo decks, capture wise, as with most capture-related cards and strategies, and are rather specialized in their use and application.

Combos - Fajo’s Gallery + Children of the Light – Time to net extra card draws for bringing lost souls back into the fold.

Combos – Seeded Olarra at Caretaker’s Array + Ready Room Door – Save the seed slot for something else, let Iden download it into play.

Combos – Children of the Light + Prepare the Prisoner - If you don’t need it, recycle it