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 :-)

49) Orbital Bombardment – Objective – Plays on your non-(FEDERATION) ship.  It is WEAPONS +4 against planet facilities, and may target landed ships in battle (those ships may not return fire).  Also, if this ship is at a planet location at end of your turn (and has not battled this turn), you may probe: (SKILL DOT): Targets hit.  Kills up to two opposing personnel on planet (random selection).  Opponent may counter-attack next turn.

 One of the broken links have just been mended and has eliminated one of the last vestiges of ship armada escape in the game.

 For a while, if you had the ability to hide or out speed an armada player, it was enough.  Then the dual-icon combo dilemma of Female’s Love Interest and Radioactive Garbage Scow was created and, combined with Mission Debriefing, it got more and more difficult to avoid the battle group.  Even with landed ships, such as the Bajorans and everyone from Establish Landing Protocols or the non-counterable Blue Alert, it was difficult to avoid their battling tendencies once the Kazon Warship combined with the Kazon Collective showed up.  Not only was it a huge ship with a Defend Homeworld-downloadable matching commander, but also it could hold any compatible ship inside of it.  No longer could you simply relocate yourself from your opponent or be happy to be in a different quadrant, now all they needed to do was to get any ship that has less staffing than a Warship, load up and with a Space Time Portal and Wormhole, they flew to your location, unloaded all the ships and if they didn’t Outgun you, they simply obliterated you.  But if you could land on a planet, at least you had a shot.  Now this.

 They get Weapons +4 and you don’t get to attack back if you’re landed on the planet.  No more landing Voyager on turn 1 to build up forces before taking off near the end of the game and going through dilemmas as fast as humanly possible.  No more letting the Emissary do the reporting inside a Hidden Fighter’d Bajoran ship.  You’re now left with few options to avoid battle – Cloaking is still somewhat safe although Tachyon Detection Grid is a pretty common Tent card, however that can be countered – Magnetic North works over planets if you have no staffing icons but, with a couple others, there’s no direct counter to battle.

 The last function is equally nasty, even if you’re of the same affiliation – If you probe correctly, you can kill two people on a planet at random.  It’s not initiating a battle either which means that it can be done at a Homeworld, to whittle away at your opponent’s personnel hiding away on the planet as well as bringing a more concrete counter to Mysterious Orb/Issue is Patriotism Defend Homeworld decks.  I’m personally not looking forward to having to deal with this card for the battle aspect than that.  Now to just get around that by GenCon 2002….

Combos – Elim + Orbital Bombardment + Mission Debriefing – It’s your turn to die.

Combos – Kazon Warship + Razik + Make it So + Orbital Bombardment + Battle Bridge – Razik and crew board Warship, get Make it So and Orbital Bombardment on the ship plus a helpful Battle Bridge and Voyager can’t even land in peace.