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 :-)

37) I’m a Doctor, Not a Bartender – Interrupt – Adds Anthropology to one MEDICAL personnel until end of turn.  OR Downloads a bartender to replace (discard) your MEDICAL personnel in play (or vice versa).

    The third installment of the I’m a Doctor series of cards, Bartender allows yet another form of personnel downloads at Interrupt speed, but is it as useful as its counterparts – I’m a Doctor, Not a Doorstop and I’m a Doctor, Not a Bricklayer?

    First there’s the issue of usefulness of Anthropology.  There are 4 dilemmas that either require or have alternate requirements that involve Anthropology (compared to two with Geology.) – Primitive Culture, Primitive Humanoids, Aggressive Behavior and Photonic Energy Being.   Overall, outside of the obvious Anthropology, all you’d need is the following – Leadership x2, Diplomacy OR a Hologram and a Civilian.  Not really that difficult when you look at it.  Unlike Bricklayer, Bartender doesn’t have an inherent ability to pass a dilemma.  It also can give you a skill which can resolve both space and planet dilemmas, whereas Geology is logically a planet-dilemma skill.

    Then there’s the other option – Downloads a bartender to replace (discard) your Medical personnel in play or vice versa.  First, let’s establish who are bartenders – Mr. Nog, Mr. Quark, Quark, Guinan and Saldin.  Three Ferengi, a Fed and a Kazon.  Outside of the Quarks, none of the rest of them can be gotten into play relatively easily.  Since the interrupt is played on a person, there aren't any quadrant-restrictions or facility-restrictions.  Saldin isn’t that useful – Civilian, Security, Computer Skill and Archaeology just doesn’t really impress.  Guinan however can be quite potent against a relatively annoying tactic – Q-Flash swapping.  Even though it’s just once per turn, she can nullify one Q-icon Event, Interrupt or Dilemma where present.  The other fact is that she’ll double Captain’s Log on any Enterprise she’s on, which could be good for jumpstarting Fed attack decks.  But the real power is for the Ferengi, obviously but especially so if you’re trying to do the Mr. Mr. Shuffle as both Mr. Nog and Mr. Quark downloads the other two Mr’s (Mr. Brunt and Mr. Rom, respectively)

    One of the advantages of this is that you can use Bartender as many times as you have Medical personnel in hand that you want to use.  Another advantage is that it can work in reverse.  Don’t want Quark anymore?  Play Bartender and download any Medical you want.  Need Dr. McCoy?  Get rid of Guinan and download him.  But the disadvantage is that the person you play this on is discarded, unlike Bricklayer which downloads any Geology personnel at no cost (although this is but once per game).  Some interesting possibilities with this, to be sure.

Combos – Kirk + Admiral Riker + Guinan via Bartender + Future Enterprise + Kurlan Naiskos + Maximum Firepower = the makings of the anti-Borg one-ship armada.

Combos – Bartender + Organ Harvesting Vidiians – Play Bartender on Dr. Farek for Mr. Quark, Harvest the other AMS for whomever and now you have a person whom you can Harvest at will without consequence, he’ll simply download his replacement (inspiration from Dave Bowling’s fun deck at GenCon 2001 taken to the next level)