September 2024 First Edition Game Changes

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

2nd September 2024

Happy Labor Day! I'm writing this from my hotel room in San Francisco on Friday, August 30th, so hopefully there haven't been any riots over the weekend. Today marks the return to regularly scheduled game changes updates, although it's a very small set of changes today. You see, the finals of the World Championships are scheduled to take place later today, so we are not making any errata or additions to the ban list. Instead, we are adding 2 cards to the Watch List.

We have begun digging into the results of North American and European Continentas, and I'm sure there will be big discussions about the events of Worlds Day 1 (and possibly Day 2) while this is being posted. If you were expecting post-Road to Worlds adjustments in this article, I'm afraid you will need to wait another month. There simply hasn't been time to dig into everything, so you can expect to see post-competitive adjustments in the October 2024 update. However, both additions to the Watch List in today's update are in response to some of these events.

Now, let's get into the game changes:

Errata
There are no errata to any First Edition cards in today's update.

Modern Ban List
There are no additions to the Modern Ban List in this update, nor any cards being removed from the list at this time. You will be seeing a lot of cards coming off this list before the end of the year.

Watch List
Today we are adding 2 cards to the Watch List that are enabling aggressive Borg decks, but might be doing so a little too well. Eight of Eighteen and Two of Eleven are Borg cards that allow beaming through opponent's SHIELDS. This ability is unlimited and even allows Borg to beam through a facility's SHIELDS. It is possible this is too aggressive, and thus these cards are being watched.

A card is added to the Watch List when there are concerns about the card's impact to the health of the play environment. Watching a card allows the Department to keep a close eye on it's use and call up data on the card to make more informed decisions. Watching a card does not necessarily mean that something will happen to the card. While some cards on the Watch List to get added to the Modern Ban List or are issued errata, those changes aren't automatic because a card was being watched.

And that's all for the First Edition Game Changes update for September 2024. Please join me in thanking the hard working volunteers of the Department of First Edition. Our artists, balance experts, writers, testers, and rules masters work very hard to keep the game state happy and healthy. Please give them a shout out on the forums to let them know they are appreciated! Our next regularly scheduled update will be Monday, October 7th..

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