December Errata Updates Some Borg Objectives

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

9th December 2019

Today, we are issuing an errata to five (5) different Objectives: Assimilate Homeworld, Assimilate Planet, Establish Gateway, Harness Particle 010, and Salvage Starship; this update also includes the same change to both printings Assimilate Homeworld, Assimilate Planet, and Establish Gateway, for a total of eight (8) updated cards. These errata are effective immediately, except for online tournaments in-progress (including those that start today).

These objectives get updated wording, but largely retain the same functionality as the originals. If you'd like to get more detail about the reasoning behind these changes, please continue reading. Otherwise, you can find updated versions of these cards linked on the front page, and in our deck builder. High-resolution versions of these cards will be available Wednesday when our system updates the master errata file.

Why are these changes being made?
In April 2019, the Rules Committee began taking a look at the wording for Borg objectives, specifically regarding cards that used the "not yet scouted" wording. This was brought to their attention both through a rules question from a tournament as well as some Borg cards that are in development. Once they dug into the rules, there were concerns that objectives that used "not yet scouted" were unclear, and they began comparing objectives that used this wording to those that didn't.

Rules determined the "not yet scouted" wording was originally used to prevent a Borg player from stealing a mission where their Borg opponent had already completed an objective, similarly to how non-Borg players can't attempt a mission that's been solved. Because they were cleaning up these issues, and because of issues with some cards still in development, they decided to update this wording to remove ambiguity. Since objectives that target missions are placed on the mission when completed, they chose the new "target a mission with no objective on it."

This new phrasing serves the same purpose as the original "not yet scouted" wording, and prevents an opponent from stealing a mission that's already been completed by a Borg opponent. For the sake of consistency, the Rules Committee, Design, and Errata agreed to apply this new phrasing to all of the objectives that target missions.

There is one minor change, in that this new wording gives Borg players a little bit more flexibility to change their objectives even after scouting under a previously played objective. However, scouting is still objective specific. This means that if you change your current objective after scouting is completed for a mission, you will have to scout that mission again if you target it with a new objective. As explained under "scouting complete" in the Current Rulings Document (CRD):

"An objective that allows you to scout a location requires you to complete scouting for that objective in order to probe to complete it. For example, if you scout a mission with Establish Gateway and then switch your current objective to Harness Particle 010, you must scout the mission again with Harness Particle 010, even if you have already resolved all dilemmas beneath the mission."

Finally, though unrelated to these errata, the Rules Committee also discovered a few problems with the scouting (and probing) rules. Firstly, the team found there was inconsistency between the timing of scouting being complete, the timing of end-of-turn probing, and Service the Collective. These issues were mostly solved with rules updates that clarified when scouting was complete and the timing of probing. In short, scouting being complete now happens automatically at the end of the turn, and probing is no longer mandated to be the last thing that happens.

Hopefully, this explanation makes clear why these changes were made (with the exception of the reference to cards that are still in development). If you have any questions about these changes, Borg rules, or First Edition in general, we have an entire forum dedicated to 1E Rules Questions.

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