Favor the Bold Contest #3 Results: Subliminal Signal

by Chris Lobban, Assistant Designer

6th August 2008

Thanks to everybody that entered the contest. With 14 total entries, we actually had 1 person guess exactly the correct answer! The correct answer was 67 total occurrences. When the contest started, you could see 24 occurrences of the number 3 on 18 different cards, and guess where 11 more would occur (based on card numbering)? By the time it closed we'd shown you 5 more occurrences (though 1 of these was a card number, so you already knew about it) for a total of 29 visible + 10 guessable = 39. The most common guess was 33 (3 people guessed that, of course). The highest guess was 133, and the lowest guess was 27. But our 3 winners were: Richard New (guessed 67), Julius Melhardt (guessed 62) and Casey Wickumn (guessed 58). Email your mailing addresses to contest@trekcc.org for your Charles Tucker III, "Trip" foil (0D17).

So, what's the big deal with all the attention to the number 3 anyway? As you may recall, a few weeks ago, I made a reference in the Q&A thread to a card that will have everybody digging through their binders to re-think hundreds of old binder-fodder cards. Well, this is the card to which I was referring. By my count, after the release of Favor the Bold, there will be 121 dilemmas with a cost of 3. And of those, maybe 20 of them see regular play. Why is that? Well, it seems that 3-cost dilemmas have long been overlooked. If you're looking for a cheap dilemma so you can play 2 to 3 a mission attempt, you look at the 0s, 1s, and 2s. If you're looking for a good powerful dilemma that will stop your opponent all at once, you look at the cost 4, 5, or more. But with just a few notable exceptions, people seldom seem to look at the cost 3 dilemmas. Well now, that should all change. You've got 121 dilemmas to go back and look through all over again. Because now, all of a sudden, instead of costing you 3, those dilemmas are all cost 0, with a Consume of 1. And that's the best exchange rate you'll find anywhere (looking at other dilemmas, a Consume 1 never knocks 3 whole counters off the cost). Now you can afford to play dilemma combos on your opponent that never would have been possible before, though obviously at the cost of the next attempt being a bit easier. Of course, with 26 of the cost 3 dilemmas returning to the dilemma pile after a successful use, even that's not such a large cost.

I'm not going to even attempt to go through all of the possible dilemma combinations this opens up to you, with 121 potential dilemmas that you can pair it with. But just to take a quick look at a couple of the eligible... consider A Klingon Matter, Assassin's Blade and Automated Weapons just for starters. All 3 have the potential to kill 1 member of the attempt, stop the rest of them, and then return to the dilemma pile. But all 3 of them have been overlooked before now because with a cost of 3, the odds were that if you could afford to play it, your opponent could probably pass it. Now, with a cost of 0, it means that you can afford to use it against your opponent's tiny away teams for the kill and full stop. And because the dilemmas themselves go away, there's still only 1 dilemma placed under the mission by this event. Suddenly these dilemmas, and a lot of others, deserve a second look. You can also include cards like Temporal Incursions in your deck to make it easier to draw these newly 0-costed dilemmas no matter how small your opponent's team, or how much he or she is dilemma-starving you. So have fun looking back at all the 3s in the old sets, and see what types of newly playable dilemma combos you can come up with!