Lojur and Rand- Review!

Today I'll look at the remaining crew cards- Janice Rand and Lojur.

Lojur (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion) 
When your ship fires a [Secondary Weapon] Upgrade that requires you to disable it, you may disable Lojur instead of that [Secondary Weapon] Upgrade.
Cost: 2

Lojur is very straight forward, and provides a decent benefit without having to discard. He doesn't take up an action which is great. You've got to look at Lojur as a 2 point add-on for the benefit of getting to shoot torpedoes in consecutive turns, without having to take Picard/Dukat/Martok shenanigans. That's what Lojur is essentially doing. Is Lojur worth 2 points? Yes. I think this ability is perfectly costed. Whether you think Lojur is REALLY good is dependent upon whether you think Torpedoes are a good investment. That ultimately depends on what kind of force suits your play style. I've seen people wreck face with Torpedoes, and I've seen Torpedoes do very little. There are a number of other secondary weapons that would benefit from Lojur's ability, so it'll really depend on your list, and if you're finding your secondaries are not going the distance quickly enough. 

Moving on, we'll take a look at Janice Rand:

Janice Rand (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion) 
After your ship moves, discard Rand to allow your Captain to perform the Action on one of his [Elite Talent] Upgrades as a free Action this round.
Cost: 2

Well HELLO JANICE! That ability only costs 2 points. There are a number of great abilities that can be used with Janice Rand. Interestingly enough, Engage doesn't really get that much better with Janice. Engage has to be built around to work effectively, and I don't think Rand brings a whole lot to that build... you may get an extra battlestations from Picard, but I actually think Janice Rand works really well with the Klingon offensive upgrades. You get to make those big attacks punch really well with Rand. At that point, you're looking at a 3 point upgrade instead of a 2 point upgrade, so it's really up to your build and whether it really needs a boost to the elite talent. I could see this working best on builds that have a really tight action economy. On Donatra's ship in a Klingon Attack Build, this really could be great (since Martok is going to give his action to Gowron etc.,)

These are low cost upgrades that do one thing really well. The game doesn't have enough of these kinds of cards. Attack Wing is sometimes a game of inches, and these cards definitely help get every inch out of your upgrades. They are not auto includes by any stretch of the imagination, but for 2 points, should definitely be considered in builds with Elite Talents and Secondary Weapons.