November Rules Update

by Allen Gould, First Edition Rules Master

7th November 2011

This month's update starts with an item I'm very happy to present, but can't take any credit for - the release of the First Edition Glossary version 1.9. This replaces both Glossary 1.8 and the the Current Rulings Document, and marks a major milestone towards a general rules revamp.

You may ask why this took so long to accomplish. The reason is simple - the only copy of the Glossary we had available was Decipher's password-protected PDF (the same as everyone else)... and we didn't have the password to unlock it. Conversion programs were tried, but the formatting was always garbled too badly to be usable. So, over the past few years, a small group of dedicated Bajoran monks have been retyping the entire Glossary by hand. Obviously, this is no small task, and I give them my deepest thanks for the astoundingly large amount of work involved in getting this done. Now we have a completely editable version of the document, which will make future changes far easier to tackle down the road.

To help make the transition a bit easier, there's not a lot of actual rules changes this month. The only notable one is that we've moved the definition of "alone" to it's own entry, rather than being part of Ajur's definition.

While we're doing changes to rules, Jeremy Commandeur has made some changes to the 1E Revised format, which he details here.

That takes care of the big rules rewrites for the month, so let's look at this month's errata. Some of these come off the ban list, some are "in-and-outs" (we're just issuing errata immediately instead of banning them for a month and then doing it), and some are taking care of odd interactions. Tackling them in no particular order:

• Bajoran Wormhole: Mirror Universe as originally printed, didn't allow you to download the promo versions of Bajoran Wormhole. This obviously isn't intended, so we took a look at the text, and discovered that the DS9 icon is actually superfluous - the plain Bajoran Wormhole is the only legal target for this card (the MU version is limit one, so you *can't* download a second copy). So we removed the icon.
• Baryon Buildup comes off the ban list with a minor tweak and modernized wordings. Any dockable facility will now count for nullifying this (Nors and other stations in space like K-7).
• Klim Dokachin comes off the ban list, and now only hits your regular card draw, rather than all card draws if you play a unique personnel.
• Memory Wipe comes off the ban list with only a template update. No functional changes.
• Blood Oath and maH nLv are two of our four in-and-out erratum this month. These two tackle the concerns that came out of this year's Worlds event. maH nLv was changed in consultation with Design, and is now limited in what personnel can be swapped (only Klingons can be replaced, and only by and Klingons). As well, it's a straight exchange in place - if Antaak suspends play to download this during a dilemma, the new personnel will still be encountering the dilemma afterwards.

  While looking into this, we found that Blood Oath wasn't blameless in the overpowered department - the ability to convert unlimited draws into downloads was a main engine for the Worlds deck, as well as countless Klingon fast-armadas. Looking at what we've done in the past, we put the same solution here - limiting the conversion to your normal card draw.

• Our other problem area was the continued high power of the Delta Quadrant decks. We've been looking for areas where we can surgically lower the power level with minimal errata or rules changes (as opposed to just taking a chainsaw to all those five and six skilled personnel), and this is the first step: The Kazon Collective and The Vidiian Sodality both lose their "built-in treaty" abilities. Each DQ affiliation must now stand alone (well, with the help of all those Fed/NA folks, but Praxis wasn't mined in a day).

  One mention - a legitimate complaint at this point is that we've just put the boots to the Kazons, who truly don't deserve it (being the Charlie Browns of the Delta Quadrant). Unfortunately, adding new abilities is outside the realm of errata's authority. But I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing new Kazon tricks in future, now that those darned Vidiians and Hirogens can't piggyback on them.

• Lastly, another ban-list return: Vic Fontaine gets his ability cut back to a basic special download - it only triggers once, period. Holograms get an interesting utility card, but it's no longer the gamebreaker it was.

That ends our tour through the Big November Update. Please feel free to comment on the forums or by PM. See you next month!


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