The Clown: Playing Doctor

Even in the farthest reaches of the Delta Quadrant, folk shouldn't go around practicing medicine without a license. Patients get hurt when their physicians haven't been properly trained.

At a minimum, The Clown: Playing Doctor will stop one personnel in the crew or Away Team that encounters it. If there are no personnel in that crew or Away Team, at least one personnel will die. Hopefully, your opponent will have stocked up on multiple personnel with a particular first-listed skill (for example, Seven of Nine + Kathryn Janeway). While the selection is random, don't miss the mathematical fact that you're more likely to pick a particular first-listed skill the more often it appears in the crew or Away Team, so the odds are in your favor (though by no means guaranteed) that you'll do maximum damage.

Your opponent's holographic personnel in the crew or Away Team can sneak up on The Clown and snatch away his scalpel. If they do, it doesn't neutralize the dilemma completely; it merely stops the personnel instead of killing them. In some cases that will be enough, but in general you'll want to minimize the availability of holograms to your opponent. Although The Clown: Playing Doctor is marked , it may prove to be a bit tougher planetside, where your opponent has to work a little harder (an extra card play or two) to make personnel available. On the other hand, certain unusual spatial phenomena may give you more options for maximizing the luck of the draw, as in the following ...

Combos:

• Rascals + The Clown: Playing Doctor at opponent's space mission: Change up to four of opponent's crew members' first-listed skill to Youth, maximizing your chances of The Clown selecting one of those Youth personnel and killing - or at least stopping - all four.
• Dr. Q, Medicine Entity + The Clown: Playing Doctor at opponent's planet mission: The "problem card" is, of course, Holo-Projectors. Without the Holo-projectors, opponent's personnel are much less likely to interrupt the surgery.
• The Clown: Playing Doctor + Elim: Don't mess around with random selections. Choose which first-listed skill you want to eliminate.