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 :-)

33) Tongo – Incident – Plays on table.  Once each turn, you may declare a move from the list below.  Each player simultaneously reveals a bet from hand (a personnel card; yours must be Ferengi).  Player with highest total attributes on bet is winner.  Acquire – Winner: Discard bet, then draw up to two cards.  Confront – Winner: Report bet.  Loser: Place bet on draw deck.  Evade – Winner: Place bet under draw deck. Loser: Discard bet.

 First, you have to play the card; that, for non-Delta Quadrant decks, is more valuable because after all, they don’t have easy access to Spatial Scission.  The Ferengi have many powerful cards available to them, from their own Caretaker’s Array with Empok Nor and Brunt’s Shuttle, to Ferengi Conference and Ferengi Financial Data Net which gives you downloads and card draws exclusive to them, so what benefit is Tongo?

Once you’ve played it, you can use it every turn and, depending on the function of your betting, you can either draw two cards, report the Ferengi personnel you’ve just bet or simply place the bet underneath the draw deck.  You can mess with your opponent (which the Ferengi love to do) by depriving them of their bet, whether to hand or to their discard pile.  All you have to is win the bet.

Therein lies the problem, winning the bet.  The Ferengi aren’t exactly the most attribute-lavished affiliation in the world.  Their highest attribute personnel is The Trois with 25, which is nice and all but it’s really difficult to keep getting The Trois in your hand over and over.  So, if you don’t have The Trois in your hand, what are the odds that you’re going to actually win?  Not very good.  On a rough average, the Ferengi have about 17.6 for total attributes and since they’re from hand, you can’t enhance them.  Your best shot is to hope that they don’t have people in hand.

Now, if your opponent has personnel in their hand, they’ve got a pretty good shot to be a winner but since you’re the one using the card, you can decide how it ends up.  Thinking that you’re going to lose and don’t want to discard your bet, choose Confront and place it on your draw deck.  Think that you’re going to lose but don’t care what happens to the card?  Say Evade and watch your opponent place the card underneath the draw deck while you discard your bet.  But for me, even if I rig the results every time marginally well, it’s not a particular benefit for me as the only real benefit I can see on a continual basis is personnel-deprivation mildly with the Evade text but it doesn’t do much for me.

Combos – Tongo: Confront and Losing + Dabo – Even when you lose, you’re a winner.

Combos – One Ferengi + The Trois + Chula: Lights + Remodulation or Meditation + Tower of Commerce - Renewable Tongo!

Combos – Kal-Toth + Energy Vortex + Telepathic Alien Kidnappers + Tongo: Evade – Personnel deprivation

Combos – Tongo: Acquire + (COM) Borg + Nanoprobe Resuscitation – Discard your bet only to bring them back.  It’s like getting your cake and eating it all at once, with a bonus.