August's Balance Team Announcement

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

3rd August 2020

Welcome to the First Monday of the month, August 3rd, the day that the Department of First Edition issues balance updates. Typically, this includes the release of errata, updates to the OTF Ban List, and changes to the Watch List. After a fairly busy July, we have a very short update for August.

Errata and Ban List Updates
Some time ago, we added Five-Year Mission to the ban list because its draw was proving to be excessive in decks. The original version was a play phase draw, which have proven to be far too powerful. In addition, while it was lightly culturally enforced, players were getting around that by using special downloads on opponents turn. All in all, the card was banned and we've been testing revisions ever since.

Today, after months of testing and revision, we're releasing the updated version today. This card now works only if you're playing all cards, much like the recent changes to The Final Frontier. And the draw has been moved from the play phase to the end of turn, like standard drawing engines like The Traveler: Transcendence. And since we were updating the card, we took the opportunity to correct the grammar mistake in the name: adding the hyphen to "Five-Year."

And now that the card has updated text, it is hereby removed from the Official Tournament Format (OTF) Ban List as of today as well. Enjoy having this card back in the environment!

Regular updates to errata, the OTF Ban List, and the Watch List are scheduled for the First Monday of each month. The next scheduled update is Monday, September 7th, 2020.

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