I don't know what it is about doorways, but Decipher seems to like making them very useful in multiples.  There are exceptions, of course; AU doors tend to come no more than two to a deck (1 seeded and 1 in the draw deck), Bajoran Wormholes are generally only seeded, and I confess to never having seen an Airlock or Secret Compartment in tournament play.  Battle Bridge Door comes one to a deck as well.  Still, look at the others: Devidian Door is safest in large numbers, especially with Obelisk of Masaka around.  Q's tents can come 8 or more to a deck (up to 45, in the case of some weird decks :-P) and the economy of Q-flash increases as you stock more copies.   Ready Room Doors are stocked in large numbers for armadas (although Make It So makes putting in one or two useful) and Space/Time Portal makes every deck.  Mirror Mirror brought the Guardian of Forever, which was used 12 to a deck to provide card draws.  Is it any surprise, then, that the new rare doorways in Voyager is most useful in multiples?

Like the Guardian, this doorway screams to be stocked in multiples so that you can play one each turn; in fact, it might be best used in combination with the Guardian.  Each turn, play a Guardian to draw 4 cards, then play a Barzan Wormhole to drop a ship.  You're limited to four people, but generally you'd only get 5 with a STP-drop anyway (any more and the opponent would Ref out It's Only A Game) and your people don't even need to be AU; the only restriction is that they be able to staff the ship!  (And meet affiliation restrictions, of course)  One use for this would be to make use of personnel from other quadrants more easily; don't bother with Crossover, just drop a ship with your Mirror or Delta quadrant personnel!  The drawback, of course, is that you have to use Wormhole Negotiations, which is highly stealable; be sure to use HQ: Defensive Measures and solve the mission early!  Of course, you can always use it just for transportation: either seed Wormhole Negotiations and use this to bring reinforcements to or from another quadrant, or just use it as a handy conveyance between the delta and gamma quads.  Playing Dominion?  Forget Bajoran Wormhole…you can use this card to get your invasive transporting Jemmies to your opponent in any quadrant in "this" universe!

Of course, the Barzan Wormhole isn't the only new doorway in the set; in fact, the other new doorway will probably see a lot more use.  Not only is it common, but it has several functions useful in any deck.

First off, it lets your AU personnel and equipment report for duty.  Ok, there is now absolutely no reason to seed AU Door. ;-)  Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Your Space/Time Portals will let your AU cards seed (Temporal Micro-wormhole does nothing in the seed phrase) and once play starts the TMW allows unlimited reporting of AU cards (not ships, though, so be careful there; you'll need a STP or AU Door to report AU ships, and without AU door you'll be limited to one per turn).  This card doesn't let you play AU interrupts, events, etc, so be careful if you need to play a Reflection Therapy!   The rest of the functions are just incredible.  Once per game, you can download Space/Time Portal or Dr. Telek R'Mor.  Ok, reread that last sentence.  It doesn't discard to download them.  It just downloads them.  Aside from using up the download, you pay nothing!  Don't be in too much of a hurry to use it early, though; you never know if you'll need to STP-drop a ship or get out Astrophysics or Stellar Cartography to pass one of those nasty wall dilemmas (such as Gravimetric Distortion or Navigational Hazards, both of which are reprinted in Voyager).  Of course, R'Mor is a Romulan…but the third function of this card will let him mix with anyone.  You can use the 2nd function to download him and then use the second function to allow that download to be directly to your ship.  Be careful, though: not only does this discard the doorway (which could cause trouble if you need to play more AU cards) but if he dies, he's no longer compatible with your non-Rommie personnel if you get him out again.  Of course, you can always play Nanoprobe Resucitation to get it back to your hand and play it again.  There are other options, of course; instead of using a download, you can stop your opponent's STP-drop (which could utterly destroy the plans of some decks, and the STP is still gone) or use the compatability function for a personnel who has exactly the skills you need but can't normally mix with your personnel, such as Lore in a Federation deck or Brunt in any non-Ferengi deck.  Heck, be creative.  Play in a counter-heavy area?  Use Trust Me to get Seven of Nine (Borg affiliation) into your discard pile, Resucitate her, then use TMW to get her into play.  She can't attempt missions, but you can use her to draw extra cards.  Granted, that's a somewhat silly example, but overall this card has a lot of possibilities.

And hey, you gotta love anything involving time travel!
 

William "Spock" Springer
spock@wnohgb.com