A Trio of Errata

by Matthew Zinno, 1E Errata Lead

8th October 2016

The Errata Team has been working to improve the rules and the balance of the game, and to release cards from the OTF ban list.  Here today are three revised cards which are now ready for release:

Ressikan Flute

One of the original residents of the ban list, it was quite powerful in the Decipher era thanks to combining it with skill-gaining cards like Vulcan Mindmeld.  A popular deck type would solve one mission, acquire this artifact, and use Vulcan Mindmeld to grant Music to several Vulcan personnel, getting enough bonus points during that operation to win the game.  The Errata Team had already been trying new ideas for it when Design brought it into the new Inner Light mechanic while developing the 50th Anniversary expansion.  It now has a self-imposed cap of 5 people (and Jenice Manheim still gives a lower cap, at 4).  Most importantly, it now only counts Music personnel who are involved in solving the mission.  People in play elsewhere, or played later, or even stopped during the attempt -- they don't count.  

Outgunned

This card was known to be an important element of a particular abusive deck a little while ago, and the Errata Team looked for a long time at modifying this card to stop that situation.  Decks that could quickly put together a high-weapons fleet (such as the Kazon swarm deck -- for which there was also errata to Kazon Warship) -- could use this card to perform a mass capture.  This was an activity that could happen even during the victim's turn, and in situations where the opponent would normally be protected from battle, such as at homeworlds.  Moreover, the fleet movement rules made it difficult to avoid the "only ship" clause on the card, since a fleet moves one ship at a time, meaning that the first of the fleet to move would be vulnerable to this card (and then it would be eliminated, so the next to move would also be vulnerable, etc.).  

Despite significant rewording for rules purposes -- and so that the desired text would fit (thank you, Art Team) -- the main change is that now Outgunned plays as part of battle.  This has several ramifications which help limit the former abusive nature of the card.  First and perhaps most obviously, it is now subject to battle protections such as homeworlds.  (More fully, I mean that cards like Strategema can prevent you from being battled at your homeworld, and thus can now prevent you from being Outgunned there as well.)  Next, it's generally limited to the attacker's turn; you'll generally be sage on your own turns, since in the general case, initiating ship battle is an "Orders phase" action.  Finally, even though the new text involves the battle being "cancelled", the rules already state that in such a situation, all cards involved are still "stopped" -- and therefore, a fleet will not (normally) be able to battle again, which naturally limits Outgunned to once per turn.  

The Discovery of Sha Ka Ree

This card was flagged earlier and put on the watch list, with a concern that it was too powerful.  With In The Zone banned, there was no longer that particular curb on the number of points that could be scored with this mission.  However, playtesters were unable to build a deck they considered abusive, and so it came off of the watch list.  While we had it, though, the Errata Team decided to take care of the rules discrepancy which was introduced with the 2EBC card Breach Barrier, which made "The Great Barrier" into a region.  In the end, adding this Region specifier has been the only change.
 

Discuss this article in this thread.