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Launch Portal

    Submitted by Dyluk on Tue, 04/22/2008 - 19:02

    Launch Portal

    Doorway Doorway

    Suspends play while you do any or all of the following: download Engage Shuttle Operations or Escape Pod; download (once per game) a scout ship, shuttle or Borg Sphere to your ship with Tractor Beam; and (except during a mission attempt) launch any or all of your carried ships with crew. Discard, or place on Engage Shuttle Operations to protect it from nullification and extend its effects to scout ships.

    Requires: Affiliation Borg affiliation, Tractor Beam, Borg spheres, Scout, Shuttlecraft.

    Rule hint for this card

    This card has an erratum:

    This card was toned down from the old one to only allow a once per game download on the ship. And now it can't be used during a mission attempt.

    Game text before errata: "Suspends play while you do any or all of the following: download Engage Shuttle Operations or Escape Pod; download (to one of your ships with Tractor Beam) one scout ship, shuttle or Borg sphere; and launch any or all of your carried ships (with crew). Discard doorway or place it atop Engage Shuttle Operations to protect event from nullification and extend its effect to scout ships."

    Taken form Current Rulings 2018-07-02.

    This card has an clarification:

    This doorway allows you to launch any carried ships at the time you play the doorway, even without Engage Shuttle Operations in play. It may download Engage Shuttle Operations: Dominion. See card titles, characteristics. It does not allow you to break a quarantine.

    When this doorway is played during a space mission attempt to launch some or all of the crew on a different ship, the ship with the larger crew must continue the mission attempt (owner’s choice if tied), if possible.

    Taken form Glossary - Version 1.9.5.

    Card logging info: Logged by openCards team at May 1st, 2009.
     

    		Launch PortalLaunch Portal (first version)

    This Card-Review article was written by Kathy McCracken and was published first on "Decipher's Website (decipher.com)" at Jun 1st, 2000.

    This doorway can provide an emergency escape hatch from various unpleasant circumstances. If your ship is on the losing end of a battle and about to be destroyed, you can suspend play to download and launch a shuttle, scout ship or Borg sphere (if your ship has a tractor beam) or an Escape Pod (works with any ship), to save the crew. Or maybe you just encountered a Cytherians and don't have the time to run off to the end of the spaceline right now; suspend the resolution of the dilemma long enough to launch your downloaded ship with most of the crew, leaving a skeleton crew to pay a call on the Cytherians. While the Launch Portal itself doesn't allow the launched ship to move away (thus leaving it to be attacked by a Borg Ship dilemma, for example, or by your opponent's "unstopped" ships), the launching "movement" can be responded to by Wormholes to send it out of harm's way.

    Its secondary function can be just as useful. Engage Shuttle Operations lets you carry shuttlecraft on a mothership and allows them to land; but you need to get it into play first, it's vulnerable to Kevin Uxbridge (possibly leaving your landed or carried ships stuck in that state) and it works only for shuttles--the handy Romulan Scout Vessels, shuttle-like though they are, don't qualify as shuttles. Launch Portal downloads Engage Shuttle Operations and keeps Kevin at bay (works for the Dominion version, too), and extends it to work with scout ships.

    Combos:

    • Launch Portal + Escape Pod: Bail out of that battle even without an Escape Pod in hand.
    • Launch Portal + Flaxian Scout Vessel: Engage Shuttle Operations for all, with much better stats than the flimsy Yridian Shuttle.