Ever since Assign Mission Specialists came out back in the First Contact set, fans have been clamoring for more cards that made old useless cards more useful.  Luckily for us, in the Troubles in Tribbles set we received a card that makes all those 'useless' two skilled personnel a nasty force to be messed with,  Assign Support Personnel.  Whereas AMS focuses on discarding, and downloading, ASP focuses on getting personnel out in clutch situations.  Below are my rules for effectively using this fancy little card.

First rule:  Keep ASP in play as long as possible.
 Unlike AMS that gets most of its benefits when it’s discarded to get another two cards, ASP does more when it’s in  play.  When it’s in play it makes all your capital ships (two icons or more) roving Support Personnel outposts, allowing you to pump one out when you need them.  If you are going to discard it, I suggest you do it in a life or death situation.  You know the ones. ;)

Second Rule:  Keep your Support Personnel in your hand as long as you can
 I don’t like wasting my card plays on Support Personnel when I could easily spend it on getting out personnel that have twice the amount of skills or sometimes a special download.  For that reason, I like keeping them in my hand for emergencies.  Lets say that you get stuck behind a nasty wall.  You have either two choices, go back to your outpost or whatever, or you could play that Support Personnel and save you that trip home.  Later, when you’re done the mission if you’re ready to set up a Colony you could leave your ship in orbit and play your Support Personnel (better yet, Civilians!) and beam them down to score more points.  It’s like having an outpost at a Colony!

Third rule:  Support Personnel *shouldn’t* have mission skills.
 If you’re using ASP with the reporting to ship function, like I do, you’ll find that it’s easier to get past walls when you don’t have to go all the way back to your outpost to get  a guy that can get past the wall.  For that reason, I like keeping my Support Personnel doing their job, supporting the mission attempt by getting past sticky dilemmas.  I usually like to build up a hand of a big diversity of Support Personnel that have a variety of different dilemma busting skills and playing them when they’re needed.  Better yet,  make your Support Personnel have skills that your affiliation wouldn’t normally have.  A good example would be using Support Personnel like Koral for the Klingons that has low enough integrity to get past in the Pale Moonlight.  The Feds could benefit from some Treachery from time to time, so try to keep Eric Pressman in your hand for use at those critical times.

Hopefully with the help of this article your Support Personnel will be doing double duty in your decks.

Rob “qwert” Andrews
yepthatsmeqwert@usa