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 :-)

Sherlock Holmes
Card 115 – Personnel – Non-Aligned – CIVILIAN – Biology – Physics – Music – Computer Skill – At the start of your turn, you may draw cards (without downloading) until your hand is equal to opponent’s. 
Integrity 8 – Cunning 12 – Strength 12

 He’s considered by quite a few people as being too powerful of a game mechanic, he’s considered by some for being okay and still some as not being all that powerful. Let’s see.

 First of all, he’s easy to get into play with Holoprogram: 221 B Baker Street; all you have to do is give up your opening normal card play.  Pretty simple really which is possibly why some people could have a problem with him, because it should be more difficult to get him in play or something.  Outside of the Hirogen OP, you’re going to have to seed a Holodeck Door and the Holoprogram or a seeded ship with a Holodeck (either naturally or by the aforementioned Holodeck Door), so you’re devoting at least one, possibly two seed cards to get him out.

Second, the turn after he makes it in play, you can have your hand as large as your opponent’s which all relies on your opponent and to a more reasonable extent, your playing area.  If your opponent plays by getting fewer cards out of their hand than you do, then you could do more damage to your opponent by using Sherlock.  Plus, your opponent can mess with you as well by intentionally keeping their deck as small as possible (self-seeded Containment Field to feed unimportant cards into, playing Referee-icon cards for free instead of cycling or converting the card draw for a download, etc.)

Also, your hand limits your effectiveness as well for if you can’t get rid of those cards that you draw with any ease (i.e. multiple means to report cards for free, etc.), again you’re shooting yourself in the foot.  John Watson is pretty key with this guy because he gives you the ability to shrink your deck as far as possible to keep your potential maximum gain as high as possible.  Plus, with the right discard pile cards, you can get back whatever you’ve discarded as soon as possible.  Barring the usage of a lot of cards which you can play on your opponent’s turn, card drawing mechanisms such as Ancestral Vision and Traveler: Transcendence don’t help the deck much, however things such as Remodulation, Ore Processing, The Power, Mutation, etc. can help do wonders.

Just one problem – If Sherlock dies or is captured, you’ve just lost all of that ability to draw all of those cards, which makes this form of card drawing potentially fatal.  Get an opponent who plays a Protection Racket or worse, a Tantalus Field on you and Sherlock is no more.  There are any number of things which your opponent can do with their personnel to mess with this drawing mechanism, so it doesn’t work for everyone.  However, if you can protect him, with the right support, it could be downright powerful.

Combo – Sherlock + Watson + Data, Keep Dealing – Watson discards the hand, Sherlock can draw more, DKD can pick out the keepers from the discard pile for next turn.

Combo – Sherlock + All Threes – He’s a Data, help bring those DKD cards to your hand.