Second Edition NYC Masters winner Michael Van Breemen |
MVB's Commentary: What sorts of decks were you hoping to face while playing your deck? What decks did you hope not to face? What was your toughest match-up of the day? What made it so difficult? Robin was playing my deck from Day 1 at Worlds so I knew exactly who was in play, their skills/attributes, etc. I know that it's harder to deal with if you didn't know though. Chris' Romulans I was hoping to outspeed (not to the extent of solving Inversion Mystery on turn 2 but I wasn't complaining either...) personally, I think he was just having a problem finding people to play but taking out his Unsound Logic and lack of a permanent ship (only Imperial Entanglements had ever gotten a ship into play.) Prior to this tournament, did you have much experience playing this deck (or decks like it)? Did you learn anything new about it when you played it this time? Did you use any situational cards (cards that you wouldn't expect to be useful in every game)? Are there any whose usefulness exceeded your expectations? Were there any that you wouldn't include if you played the deck again? What would you nominate as the MVP card from your deck? You discard Fontaine to download a Voyager-icon ship, getting two card draws. Next, you discard the non-needed ship from hand with B'Elanna, getting two more cards. Lastly, you use Seven to see the top two cards of the deck and re-arrange accordingly but it's very effective when it works (worked at least once in every game at some point) What was your best play of the tournament? Do you have anything else you'd like to say about your experience? |
My Commentary: As a member of the design team on the set Fontaine debuted in, I can illuminate the intent behind him. The idea was to promote the use of the flavorful cards for Mirror Bajor decks that came out in Shattered Mirror. But, in order to be a perk to those cards, he kept also promoting other cards, ones that needed no help, like mirror Garak or The Central Command. And, twisting to avoid those cards, Fontaine went through many, many revisions. Eventually, this version was settled on as the design team worked with testers to try to get to a spot where he wouldn't directly help cards that were already problematic; though as we can see here, his current incarnation could probably have used more time in the oven. This is actually one of the pitfalls of top-down design. Sometimes, when you start out with a specific character in mind, that character can be quite inspiring when it comes to ability text. Take Edward Jellico, who was also designed in a top-down approach. He was very inspiring, and the process of designing his card was generally pretty smooth. Fontaine, on the other hand, was anything but smooth - the hand weapon download was an easy fit, but trying anything else with him ended up tortuous, and I'll admit that I'm not thrilled by the final product in hindsight. I'd be happy for him to see some sort of errata, either making the card draw dependent on commanding AU Bajorans, or ditching it altogether. His partner-in-crime, Chief Engineer Torres, is an interesting case study in card balance through the card title system. In a vacuum, she's incredibly powerful: 1.5 cost for 3 skills and excellent attributes (6/6/7), and an ability that provides absolutely crazy card advantage. You'd expect her to be in every single Voyager deck, defining how you build them in terms of maximizing the draws from her ability. But, if you use her, you're not using her damage removal version. And, while damage-removal isn't exactly as bonkers as the card draw ability, it is pretty scarce within the set of Voyager cards, providing a nice balance with herself. Sort of like the character's own Klingon and Human halves. |
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