Congratulations to the winner. I voted for both the top two cards this time.
My card (Lifeboat/Beresford) wasn't popular but I'm interested to see if anything can be salvaged from it.
I do still like the set aside to play when you want mechanic but the details obviously weren't quite right here. The point (as the name alludes to) was to resuce you from having several terminals but no village or lots of money but no +Buy. The trashing option was a late addition to make it a bit more flexible and perhaps this was a mistake. Anyway it would be great to hear anyone's ideas for how to improve this card.
I think there were just too many pieces. I would isolate the "play when you want" feature and strip away all the distractions. So what simplified top half would be most useful on a "when you need it" basis? All of those things, really: the +2 Actions, the +Buy, the +$, and the trashing. So let's narrow it down to the most situational two or so options, and drop the price accordingly.
Next, you don't need a "when you play this" clause, because everything is "when you play this" by default. Thus, we get:
Lifeboat
$2 - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
Return this to the supply.
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When you gain this, set it aside; at the beginning of any future turn, you may add it to your hand.At this point, what's jumping out at me is the "return to supply" piece making the card too weak. But forcing such a weak card to stick around might not be great either. So how about this?
Lifeboat
$2 - Action
+2 Actions
+1 Buy
You may trash this.
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When you gain this, set it aside; at the beginning of any future turn, you may add it to your hand.Now it no longer qualifies for this challenge, but that doesn't matter anymore. Anyway, now we have a card that you can use when you need it once, and then whenever it comes up normally, unless you actually want to get rid of it. I'd say that's a pretty fair $2 card, but there may well be room for further improvements, and I'm positive there are other directions to take your original card in and fix it up a different way.