It's been a while since the last one, but don't worry, I'm still alive. ;-)  I've also got an incentive to hurry these up, because I've got a very strong opinion on one of the cards revealed in the past few days.  Also, this one was a tricky one to do, but here it is:

Yikes.  This card is going to have a huge impact on the game.  The first thing I thought of (as many players did) was the development of a "paranoid" deck archetype, which seeds at least two Q the Referee and puts all of the [Ref] cards in either the draw deck or Q's Tent, aiming to counter any possible cheese strategy.  The only downside would be a slight loss in efficiency, which will be described later.  I like the way one player (Chris Brennan, if I recall correctly) described the basic state of the game after Q the Referee (QtR).  There will be three general deck types: "paranoid" decks; cheese decks, which hope that few players continue to use all the bullets; and basic decks, your typical mission-solving or perhaps even battle deck.  A rock-paper-scissors relationship will exist among them: "paranoid" decks will beat cheese decks, because they can most likely counter the cheese deck's strategy.  Cheese decks will beat basic decks, by exploiting a combo or loophole to either speed up the cheese deck to the point where the basic deck can't compete, or to lock down the basic deck to the point where it can't compete either.  Basic decks, on the other hand, can beat "paranoid" decks, because all the extra cards, even with QtR's cycling ability, still reduce the efficiency of the deck.  It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.

The next thing I looked at was the list of cards that now bear the [Ref] icon.  Intermix Ratio: this one definitely deserved it, and it finally allowed Decipher to correct the mistake of not making it seedable.  Even with Quark's Isolinear Rods, it still cost a card play, but with QtR it can be downloaded directly into play.  Mirror Image: another card that probably deserved [Ref] status, especially now that cards cannot be downloaded into the hand, preventing free Remodulations in Kivas-heavy decks from this card (play Kivas, if your opponent Mirrors it, flip It's Only a Game to download Scorched Hand from the discard pile, where it can be remodulated again).  Oof!: (man, that punctuation looks really weird together, and if you look at it sideways it's almost a smiley, especially with that parenthesis!)  Another card that is definitely a magic bullet, whether against troika abuse or Fightin' Words, arguably the most powerful Q-Continuum card in the game.  Intruder Alert!: (there's that punctuation thing again)  I wonder why they didn't put the [Ref] icon on it when it first came out?  After all, it released in Blaze of Glory, while the [Ref] icon debuted months earlier in The Dominion.  It still leaves the window to Kevin an Intruder Force Field before the Intruder Alert! protects it (if used for that), so that's another odd choice.  Temporal Vortex?  This is probably going to have one of the biggest influences.  Distortion abuse has existed for a long time, but it got really nasty with the advent of cargo runs.  The Sheliak and Borg Ship have been in just about every deck since their release, as well.  For a Borg player, it makes Stop First Contact that much easier as well, as you don't have to worry about getting the Queen's Borg Sphere to download it out of the Tent to avoid the bad probe.  Scorched Hand?  Still not worthwhile even as a [Ref] card.  Any deck which is abusing card drawing mechanics already has methods to dump cards from their hand into play, whether personnel for free, interrupts, or whatever.  And as for The Juggler, undoubtedly the oddest choice for this list?  It stops a few things: probe manipulation for one.  It makes New Essentialists and 47th Rule a little nastier.  The biggest thing IMO is the ability to shuffle an armada player's deck after they replace a Ready Room Door on top of it, making them re-draw another.  This will slow down many armadas that use this, because even if they stock lots of these, it'll probably be at least two turns to draw another, which gives speed decks plenty of time to go and win.

So, now you've got a whole bunch of magic bullets to stop strategies.  Q the Referee also provides ways to make them less obtrusive in a deck.  Playing them for free is a small advantage, although many of them (Scorched Hand, Juggler, Wake of the Borg, Oof!, Temporal Vortex, etc.) already play for free, and you'll probably be using the download function to get a specific bullet, or cycling it instead of playing it if your opponent isn't using that strategy.  It'll be useful in two main situations I see.  First, if you're lucky enough to draw the bullet you need.  Play it for free, and keep the QtR to still be able to cycle other bullets.  Secondly, it makes Scanner Interference decks a lot nastier.  They can load a deck with lots of SIs, and perhaps seed a few too.  Without Pattern Enhancers, Kevin Uxbridge: Convergence, or landing ships, you'll have a hard time getting personnel off of headquarters, or off of planets, making things like Sheliaks much nastier.  Of course, landing ships are not too uncommon these days, and many decks stay in space, so I don't think it's completely broken.  All the SIs in the deck play for free (OK, one each turn, but that's still a significant advantage) and any extras after the lock has been established can be freely cycled.  The cycling ability is another major strength of this card.  Discarding cards in play to draw cards may seem powerful, but it's pretty slow (one card each turn, plus the loss of a seed slot for each turn you want to do this).  Besides, you can already do this with Plans of the Tal Shiar or Obsidian Order (which are also useful for tripping things like Dal'Roks or Sheliaks at the opponent's missions), although QtR is more general-use.  It's the ability to discard a [Ref] card from hand (or place it below the draw deck) to draw a card that really makes this card stand out.  Although it may seem like you can now stock all the [Ref] cards you want in your deck without any loss, this just isn't true.  Take the following instances:

- You draw more than one [Ref] card in your opening hand.  If you're using all fifteen (or thereabouts), it won't be uncommon to draw two of these in your opening hand, and three would by no means be unheard of.  You can only cycle one per turn, so essentially you've got only 84% of the opening hand your opponent will.  That's not enough by itself to determine the game, but between two players of about equal skill and deckbuilding ability, this might be enough to definitely shift the momentum in the early game.

- When you cycle a [Ref] card, you draw another.  Again, it's nothing surprising in a heavy [Ref] deck.  Essentially, you've gained nothing (except possibly drawn a more useful [Ref] card).  Losing a card draw is not something to take lightly.  Normally, it's reserved for very powerful functions of cards (Q's Tent, Ops-downloads, etc.) that let you choose a card in exchange.  This problem could be circumvented somewhat by using Guest Quarters to gain more control of your draws.

Although each of these disadvantages is small, if they happen repeatedly, it could add up to a large card advantage for your opponent, and card advantage is nothing to scoff at.  In "that other CCG" (Magic), a card that (once per turn) allows you to draw one card if you have exactly seven cards in your hand is extremely pricey, and (I think; I don't follow it that closely) restricted to one per deck.  And that's in a game where you have to discard down to seven cards if you have more at the end of each turn.
Besides, it costs a seed slot, another small drawback that could, when combined with the others, be quite large.  It's a bit like the modern opinion on chess strategy: instead of gaining advantage with huge tactical plays, it's often a better strategy to aim for smaller, easier, and more subtle goals that eventually add up to a huge advantage (for example, having better pawn position, or gaining a tempo)

An alternative to these problems that some players have suggested is using Q's Tent to house numerous [Ref] cards.  This is something I would advise against.  Q's Tent has much better uses: it gives you the ability to essentially choose any of thirteen cards you want, although you do have to choose your pool of thirteen ahead of time.  Of course, some decks have used Q's Tent solely as a download refuge, and if you're doing that in your deck and have some extra slots, it won't hurt to throw in a few [Ref] cards if seeding QtR.  I just wouldn't turn a normal Q's Tent (i.e., meant to be accessed by playing Tents stocked in the deck) into a large stockpile of [Ref] cards, especially because of the metagame factor, described in the next paragraph.

After this card releases, with the ability to download any [Ref] bullet (suspending play, no less), I can almost guarantee that very few (if any) players would risk a cheese deck immediately following release.  The entire point of a cheese deck is to place first, or at least in the top few places, in a tournament.  If your goal is not to win, but rather to have fun, you wouldn't be playing cheese.  Right after release, there will undoubtedly be a relatively large (at least 25-30%) percentage of the field playing paranoid decks, and you'll be almost guaranteed to take a loss somewhere.  Even one loss in a four-round tournament is often enough to kick one out of first place.  In a five- or six-rounder, you might end up losing even two games, in all likelihood relegating you to at least 4th place or below.

Of course, in time, the percentage of paranoid decks will decrease significantly, due to a Balancing Act syndrome: the threat of having your strategy nullified keeps 95% of players from playing it, tilting the gain-versus-loss balance in the direction of loss for many decks (if you probably won't even end up playing cheese in a tournament, the loss in efficiency can really hurt).  At this point it'll be very interesting to watch the metagames in different areas to see if some form of stability is achieved, or if it will oscillate between little cheese, then heavier cheese once many players stop stocking QtR with lots of bullets, then lesser cheese when players start responding to the heavier cheese.

For most of this review, I've been assuming that you'll use all the [Ref] cards, but this is IMHO not the optimal option.  I'll probably seed one QtR, but only put a few bullets in my draw deck, so the loss in efficiency is not nearly as great.  Which ones I'll pick depends on my deck type: which ones would hurt me the most?  If I'm stocking Wormholes of my own, I probably won't use Operate Wormhole Relays.  If playing an Invasive Beam-In strategy, I won't worry about Intruder Alert! as much as I'm prepared for personnel battle.  It'll all end up resting on which strategies could hurt my deck the most.

The final verdict: Another card that will have an enormous impact on the metagame.  I'm expecting the State of the Metagame Report the month after release to go off the charts: the [Ref] cards because of QtR; and the extra seed room for non-[Ref] bullets, like Examine Singularity, The Line Must Be Drawn Here, Space-Time Portal, etc.  Again, I'll advise against loading up a deck with all the [Ref] cards in the game.  A few will suffice.  With the decrease in cheese that's sure to follow release, the extra card advantage you'll have against paranoid decks will do you well if the rest of your deck's good enough.

Next: Lt. Sisko (I'll skip Arne Darvin and 1,000 Tribbles for now; I'll explain in the next review)

Steve "Sergei Rachmaninoff" Boyles