Emergency Ban Announcement

by Jon Carter, Game Health Advisor

1st April 2020

Earlier this year, upon looking at the state of our game, our Director of First Edition realizing that the speed of the game is simply getting out of control. Recognizing that our departments are already stressed, Charlie asked me to form a special task force to try to get the game back under control. We did an audit of the cards that were contributing to the spread of negative play conditions and have to recommend the following bans to take place immediately.

Handshake – Although there have long been warnings that this card could be detrimental to the game, we have decided that in current conditions decks running lots of handshakes is a common practice that does not encourage healthy deck development. It is too easy to spread across decks. We hope that banning this card will allow deck specific alternatives that do not spread across the game to emerge., like (e.g., Live Long and Prosper).

Another card that drew our attention was Group Therapy. This card brings a range of CIVILIANs into a single facility. By putting packing so many skills so densely into a single facility, this card is part of the escalation of the game. We are hoping to find new ways to mobilize the "Jack Pack" farther across the spaceline. We hope that placing distance between these personnel will help return the game to a manageable speed. If you have at least six range between them, your deck will be more balanced. In an emergency situation, Near-Warp Transport of one or two essential personnel may be acceptable on a limited basis.

While not as ubiquitous as the Handshake, we are also concerned that Vulcan Mindmeld is bad for the game. By allowing your Vulcan to literally reach out and touch someone and grab the skills on any personal personnel present, this card allows the spread of skills across personnel at a dangerous speed. We have found that skills shared through equipment are safer for the game because counters like disputer overload help keep their impact contained. Additionally, the Continuing Committee strongly recommends liberally employing Equipment Replicator technology across all decks so as to avoid any localized shortages.

As long as we are on the subject of Vulcans, we are also banning the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. While personal personnel battle is always dangerous, by encouraging Vulcans to remain in close contact with their opponents, we feel that this interrupt potentially contributes to the ill health of the game.

While we hoped these measures were enough to slow down the game, testing and simulations suggested this was not enough. So our final recommendation is to ban Crowded Bar. By encouraging you to empty your hand onto the spaceline, this card prevents you from holding cards safely in your hand or deck. The more people are out and about on the spaceline, the harder it is to manage a balanced game. In a similar vein, we are also shutting down Holoprogram: Cafe des Artistes along with all holodecks and closing Quark's Bar and all associated holosuites. At this critical time we are forced to slow the game speed down, and even long term romantic partners contribute to improper spread by using public hologram-enabling facilities.

Finally, there is one card that we are just placing on the watchlist. Neuropressure Massage – Simply put, allowing this to happen across all Vulcans seems irresponsible. We recognize that the benefits of the card can be safely played between romantic partners, but in large groups, it will only hasten effects that are bad for the game.

We hope these changes will help flatten out the speed of the game, making it easier for design and errata to do their jobs. One deck type change you can take while we work on this is trying out decks in new quadrants, as we think promoting a distance between affiliations can only help us manage the game going forward. Another option we recommend is decks built around homeworlds. These will let you shelter in place until the game is more clearly balanced.

Director's Note: Folks, if you haven't figured it out yet, this announcement is our April Fool's Day joke for 2020. We know these times are strange and uncertain, but this was an attempt to make the best of our troubles. We hope that you can laugh at the humor in the above. In any case, please do what you must to keep you and your loved ones safe. Stay home if you can, wash your hands if you can't, and keep on trekkin' in the universe.

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