May 2021 First Edition Balance Team Update

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

3rd May 2021

Welcome to the First Edition Balance Team update for May 2021. In today's update, we have three (3) clarifying errata, one (1) errata to fix an old mistake, one (1) Balance errata, and one addition to the Watch List. Let's get into the changes and share details about these decisions.

Errata Updates
Today, we have five (5) cards receiving errata. The first three (3) are all clarifying errata from the Rule Team: Buried Alive, The Genesis Effect, and Seek Hidden Reliquary. All three of these cards have caused rules questions recently, and the Rules team has worked to resolve those questions (and eliminate glossary entries). Now, the cards should more clearly explain how they function and prevent the need to look them up during games. James Heaney's (BCSWowbagger) rules article for today gets into more information about these changes, but here is a brief summary:

Buried Alive
Removed the word "mission" from "mission attempt."

The Genesis Effect
Rewrote the condition on number of personnel to make it clear it counts at the start of the attempt.

Seek Hidden Reliquary
Added "at a planet" to the download and seed of the artifact.

In April, forum user harry696 pointed out a mistake in the lore of Ajur, a card that was previously issued errata early in the CC's management of First Edition. The word "ruthlessly" was inadvertently shortened to "ruthless," and then sat unnoticed until harry696 pointed it out. Today's update to Ajur fixes this mistake.

The finally errata today comes to both printings of Maximum Firepower. The Balance Team has been hard at work studying the battle Borg decks, and exploring and testing solutions to mitigate the overwhelming power of the deck. One component they identified was the fact that Borg could use this tactic, which gave them an extra damage card in battle. This change was tested, along with another, and was well received. Though there will likely be more changes to this deck type in the future, this small change - removing the Borg ability to use this card - is being issued today.

Watch List Addition
Finally, with the recent release of Dogs of War, a lot of focus has been put on the vulnerability of treaties. Especially in light of the fact that several recent virtual cards promote the use of treaties, without giving additional protection. While it's hardly the only treaty destruction card, The Devil has been the focus of a lot of discussion. It's widely available to any deck, it's reusable, and it is at a relatively low cost. The Balance Team does not believe they have sufficient information to ban this card at this time, especially in light of the fact that other treaty nullification cards exist. For these reasons, at this time, The Devil is being added to the Watch List. Expect more information to be forthcoming about this matter in the future.

Regular updates to errata, the OTF Ban List, and the Watch List are scheduled for the First Monday of each month. The next scheduled update is Monday, June 7th, 2021.

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