Discuss all of your questions, concerns, comments and ideas about Second Edition.
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Second Edition Playtest Manager
By Faithful Reader (Ross Fertel)
 - Second Edition Playtest Manager
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#596538
It's Wednesday! We're more than halfway through the week. Since we are over the hump, let's look at a question!



Today, let's look at Gateway: Historical Research. If things work out well, and they should roughly half the time, you get to download a personnel early on. This is huge and can lead to overflow paralysis!

Who is you goto download for the ability? Granted a great deal depends on your opening hand but, what your opponent is playing, local weather patters, butterflies on the other wide of the work, but by and large, who (or what) is your target with this card and why?
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#596539
Generally speaking, when I see people using it (I don't usually play with it), it's to get a key personnel like Khan out.
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By GooeyChewie (Nathan Miracle)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#596541
If I'm running Gateway, it's to alter the probabilities of the universe to make it so that I go first every round. I don't pre-select a specific personnel, because I don't go in expecting to be able to get the download. If I do, cool bonus, get whomever feels handy at the moment.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
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Regent
Community Contributor
#596617
monty42 wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:42 am Mark Jameson -> Spock -> Vash -> Picard -> whichever Ent-D I'm using.
That's cute. Glad to see [TNG] take over the download chain mantle from the [Kli] . I mean, why make card draws and good deckbuilding matter when you can just go get whatever the fuck you want... amirite? :roll:

This isn't directed solely at you, BigBen, I just easily triggered by lazy, bad design that takes away deckbuilding skill as a game consideration.

For whatever it's worth, I've yelled at the 1e guys about the same thing on more than a few occasions. I'm an equal opportunity complainer that way...
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By Danny (Daniel Giddings)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
2E British National Runner-Up 2021
#596619
Armus wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:53 am This isn't directed solely at you, BigBen, I just easily triggered by lazy, bad design that takes away deckbuilding skill as a game consideration.

How/why does downloading take away from 'deckbuilding skill'? If the cards being retrieved are being built into the deck (as opposed to being 'wished' into your hand from outside the deck), surely the skill's still there?
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#596631
Armus wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:53 am
That's cute. Glad to see [TNG] take over the download chain mantle from the [Kli] . I mean, why make card draws and good deckbuilding matter when you can just go get whatever the fuck you want... amirite? :roll:

This isn't directed solely at you, BigBen, I just easily triggered by lazy, bad design that takes away deckbuilding skill as a game consideration.

For whatever it's worth, I've yelled at the 1e guys about the same thing on more than a few occasions. I'm an equal opportunity complainer that way...
eh, one thing that made 1E (and 2e to a lesser extent) stand out compared to other games I've played over the years is easy downloading letting the game feel more like a board game played with cards compared to a card game with luck playing a role.

Don't get me wrong, I completly understand that random needs to be a part of a game, and can agree that 1E took it too far at times. But I also think if that's one of the things that sets us apart, embrace it.


Mark Rosewater - head designer of Magic wrote a colum about why randomness is good for a game. (While I don't agree with everything Magic does, I do respect MaRo as a designer, and think he's one of the best in the business. )
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/makin ... 2009-12-14

But there's a huge, key difference between ST and Magic.

When I go to a big magic tournament, like this weekend, if I play in the main event, I'll be playing 14-21 games over 7 hours. If I play online, I can easily churn out 100 rounds with a deck in a week easily. You need random, or pseudo random to keep the games from playing out the same.

In ST, when I go to Continentals in july, if I play in the main event, I'll play, at most 5-6 games with that deck? And then that particular deck I played might well go in the deck box to never be played again.

Since I started playing 2E locally a bit over a year ago now, I think I've played a total of 9 decks over 30ish games. Each deck gets to be played about 3-5 times total. That's not a large enough sample for true random to be as enjoyable.

I want to see a deck do what it was meant to do, and win or lose against other decks doing the same thing.

tldr: I agree downloading too much removes some of the randomness needed in a game, but no one plays enough STCCG for the lack of randomness to be as impactful as we think.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#596647
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 10:32 am
Armus wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:53 am
That's cute. Glad to see [TNG] take over the download chain mantle from the [Kli] . I mean, why make card draws and good deckbuilding matter when you can just go get whatever the fuck you want... amirite? :roll:

This isn't directed solely at you, BigBen, I just easily triggered by lazy, bad design that takes away deckbuilding skill as a game consideration.

For whatever it's worth, I've yelled at the 1e guys about the same thing on more than a few occasions. I'm an equal opportunity complainer that way...
eh, one thing that made 1E (and 2e to a lesser extent) stand out compared to other games I've played over the years is easy downloading letting the game feel more like a board game played with cards compared to a card game with luck playing a role.

Don't get me wrong, I completly understand that random needs to be a part of a game, and can agree that 1E took it too far at times. But I also think if that's one of the things that sets us apart, embrace it.


Mark Rosewater - head designer of Magic wrote a colum about why randomness is good for a game. (While I don't agree with everything Magic does, I do respect MaRo as a designer, and think he's one of the best in the business. )
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/makin ... 2009-12-14

But there's a huge, key difference between ST and Magic.

When I go to a big magic tournament, like this weekend, if I play in the main event, I'll be playing 14-21 games over 7 hours. If I play online, I can easily churn out 100 rounds with a deck in a week easily. You need random, or pseudo random to keep the games from playing out the same.

In ST, when I go to Continentals in july, if I play in the main event, I'll play, at most 5-6 games with that deck? And then that particular deck I played might well go in the deck box to never be played again.

Since I started playing 2E locally a bit over a year ago now, I think I've played a total of 9 decks over 30ish games. Each deck gets to be played about 3-5 times total. That's not a large enough sample for true random to be as enjoyable.

I want to see a deck do what it was meant to do, and win or lose against other decks doing the same thing.

tldr: I agree downloading too much removes some of the randomness needed in a game, but no one plays enough STCCG for the lack of randomness to be as impactful as we think.
There was a time in this game where some of the best decks (multiple Worlds Winners across a lot of years) were de facto scripted. They were 70-90 cards and did a TON of downloading... EuroBorg and Romulan Tal are the biggest examples. Because they were able to get so much downloading going on, the players who built the didn't have to make tough choices about what cards to put in their decks and what cards to leave out. You junk up a 40 card speed solver with a bunch of situational nonsense, you don't have a speed solver anymore. On the other hand, you junk up a downloader with a bunch of situational nonsense, you have answers for everything that you can dial up as needed (and discard the stuff you don't need in the process... plenty of costs need paid so it's good to have some extra fluff to burn).

It was so ubiquitous that eventually all of the recursive Download Engines got shot full of errata nerf darts, but some have been de-nerfed to a certain extent (looking at you, Quintessence).

I shouldn't be surprised that when one set of downloader decks gets nerfed, inevitably the next tier (or half tier) down comes to the fore.

And I actually agree with the premise that Downloads are good for the game, but like with most things, it's best in moderation: a key download or two can be quite handy and clutch to the outcome of the game. A deck that does all downloads all the time (or at least has the OPTION of that) can distort the meta, as decks that rely on draws become thinner and slimmer, meanwhile the downloader player is sitting on a pile of answers that can push other decktypes down the power curve to the point where even a finely-tuned 35-40 card speed solver has a hard time competing.
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