Avaril wrote:Hoss, My issue here is not a worry about the smallest dilemma pile you can make, it is about the ability to destroy the effectiveness of bigger piles by seeing a large portion of it and destroying an integral part of it.
The counter proposed is not having dupes in dilemma pile or having larger piles, both counters make whatever you are trying to do with your pile worse. Sure it will help versus this deck type, but is that a real counter? I would say no because making your deck worse versus almost all other decks is just not a great deck building strategy.
...But isnt that what all cheating does? You attempt a mission and face your opponent's dilemmas. You see some of them, but you "cheat" past the key one(s) in order to solve the mission. Milling the dilemma pile is essentially the same thing - just done in a new way by going after it before its drawn instead of after it's played. OT kirk is another example of cheating pre-emptively. As long as your opponent gets to draw and spend - its up to him to build a dilemma pile that can withstand whats thrown at it. Be it a "facing" cheater or a "pre-emptive" cheater.
If you're worried about the effectiveness of a larger dilemma pile - I would direct you to Unexpected Difficulties, Machinations, Delirium, Endangered, Vacation from the Continuum and all the other dil pile manipulators out there.
Personally, i've seen dilemma piles that were 80 cards big work simply because they were bloated with unpredictable draws. As the game continues on, there are more and more dilemmas that are effective and bigger piles become more and more useable.
If I build a 45 card pile and my opponent nukes 24 of them, I still have 21 to work with, the good ones left in there are more likely to be drawn AND i've been more than likely putting more people on the table and working towards solving with more efficiency. So there's my counterbalance right there.