When I said I was going to write an article on Maman Picard, the general response was "what, you're gonna write about swapping it out with Beware of Q?".  And why not…the card was released 6 years ago and, AFAIK, has never made it into a serious deck.  It was bad enough when there were only 3 affiliations and it had a 33% chance of hitting, but 1 in 8?  Still, I believe it is possible to use this card effectively…

    So, how can we use this card in a way that will hurt TE players while not overly weakening up against KCA players?  How about the following combo?

                 Edo Probe / Maman Picard / Dead End

    Most players, seeing the first card in the combo, will probably expect either a Higher the Fewer / Dead End combo or a Maglock.  If they retreat, your combo has served its purpose (keeping the mission from being solved).  If it's a KCA player with 50 points or more, the combo won't do much good….but that's the risk in using Dead End.  If it's a KCA player with less than 50 points, it shuts down a mission and takes 10 points away.  But, if it's a TE player who continues…there's where it gets interesting.

    Let's assume for the moment that, since the player is continuing, he's already solved a mission or two and has a sizeable crew: this is your last chance to stop him before he can win the game. So, he attempts, laughs at Edo Probe, and then hits Maman Picard and has his ship relocated to the end of the spaceline.  What nasty things can you do to it?

    First off, note that the card says "the spaceline" so you can't transport between quadrants.  That's ok; if your deck is built right, your opponent shouldn't be able to win without leaving the MQ anyway.  So, you relocate him to the end of the spaceline, where you left something nasty, say, a Black Hole?  He will, of course, attempt to move away…which is why you will seed a Mission Debriefing to stop the ship as soon as Maman Picard ends the mission attempt.  Your Q the Referee will download a Temporal Vortex if he tries to Distortion his way out, and at the end of the turn his ship and all his people will be sucked into the Black Hole.  (Of course, he could have Examine Singularity in play, but how likely is that?  If the card is popular in your area, replace Black Hole with another annoying card.)

    Of course, there's always the chance that your opponent will be using a KCA deck or will attempt with one ship while saving his real crew for a backup.  In that case, you may as well swap out Maman Picard for a Q-flash after all..