[Danny]

Ruling Council

• Requires three specific personnel to play
• Unstops all your personnel with a specific icon

Homeward Bound

• Requires three specific personnel to play
• Unstops all your personnel at one mission

These are the similarities, so does anyone have any theories as to why the latter is limited to one play a turn, requires a completed mission to play and removes from the game afterwards?

Would people say that Ruling Council should be reined in and brought in line with Homeward Bound, or that Homeward Bound should be relaxed and brought in line with Ruling Council? Or both are okay as they are?

[The Prefect]

As with most things in life, I think it's about context.

Voyager isn't too bad without Homeward Bound, they had a decent win percentage and easy access to high-power cards like Chakotay, Bridge Between Two Crews, Revised Chakotay, Imposturous First Officer, James T. Kirk, Original Thinker if your opponent is dumb enough to play Secret Identity, but also Thirst for Knowledge, Field Studies, Security Drills, Running a Tight Ship. Voyager also has a fair share of powerful workhorses like Mitchell.

Add to that access to great missions like Collect Omicron Particles, Repair Null Space Catapult, Alsuran Sector, Utilize Abandoned Relay Station, Orlitus Cluster, Astronomical Survey, even Caretaker's Array and Finding Our Way to set up a Tactical Disadvantage dilemma pile.

The problem with Homeward Bound is that when it was put into a 5-Space Voyager deck with all of the above cards, the deck was near unstoppable. The win percentage at high-level events was insane - maybe even actually higher than Cardassians now. The build was so good that often a relatively inexperienced or mediocre player could take the deck and, with a little coaching or research beforehand, really punch above their weight. I've actually seen accounts of players quitting the game over 5-Space Voyager build in its Lower Decks post-release heyday.

There's not much of an analogy to be made for Ruling Council. Sure, they have Dukat, Cardassian Representative and Weyoun, Dominion Representative - two really good (maybe too good) cards that would probably not get made today. And, with post-errata Keevan, Pragmatic Captor and Remata'Klan, Steadfast Sentinel a player can nicely set up a Pattern Loss - Underlying Influence dilemma pile if they use Keevan and Weyoun together for skill denial. But, even when optimized there's not a Terok Nor build that can approach the versatility and power of a 5-Space Voyager deck, even post-errata.

In fact, if I could go back in time, I'd lobby hard against the Ruling Council errata taking the versatility away from that card. Even with the addition of the fun and thematic mill build, Terok Nor just hasn't been a powerful since.

So, while isolated on paper both cards appear to be the same type of card deserving of the same treatment, if you put them in the context of their respective builds, Homeward Bound - even as is - is clearly better than Ruling Council.

[monty42]

As with most things in life, I think it's about context.

Voyager isn't too bad without Homeward Bound, they had a decent win percentage and easy access to high-power cards like Chakotay, Bridge Between Two Crews, Revised Chakotay, Imposturous First Officer, James T. Kirk, Original Thinker if your opponent is dumb enough to play Secret Identity, but also Thirst for Knowledge, Field Studies, Security Drills, Running a Tight Ship. Voyager also has a fair share of powerful workhorses like Mitchell.

Add to that access to great missions like Collect Omicron Particles, Repair Null Space Catapult, Alsuran Sector, Utilize Abandoned Relay Station, Orlitus Cluster, Astronomical Survey, even Caretaker's Array and Finding Our Way to set up a Tactical Disadvantage dilemma pile.

The problem with Homeward Bound is that when it was put into a 5-Space Voyager deck with all of the above cards, the deck was near unstoppable. The win percentage at high-level events was insane - maybe even actually higher than Cardassians now. The build was so good that often a relatively inexperienced or mediocre player could take the deck and, with a little coaching or research beforehand, really punch above their weight. I've actually seen accounts of players quitting the game over 5-Space Voyager build in its Lower Decks post-release heyday.

There's not much of an analogy to be made for Ruling Council. Sure, they have Dukat, Cardassian Representative and Weyoun, Dominion Representative - two really good (maybe too good) cards that would probably not get made today. And, with post-errata Keevan, Pragmatic Captor and Remata'Klan, Steadfast Sentinel a player can nicely set up a Pattern Loss - Underlying Influence dilemma pile if they use Keevan and Weyoun together for skill denial. But, even when optimized there's not a Terok Nor build that can approach the versatility and power of a 5-Space Voyager deck, even post-errata.

In fact, if I could go back in time, I'd lobby hard against the Ruling Council errata taking the versatility away from that card. Even with the addition of the fun and thematic mill build, Terok Nor just hasn't been a powerful since.

So, while isolated on paper both cards appear to be the same type of card deserving of the same treatment, if you put them in the context of their respective builds, Homeward Bound - even as is - is clearly better than Ruling Council.

+1

[GooeyChewie]

In addition to what Shea said, the pre-erratum Homeward Bound contributed significantly to an extreme negative play experience in organized play. The confluence of factors included:

-Voyager players would complete Inversion Mystery first, and name Timescape to ensure they could make multiple attempts in a turn.
-The Voyager player could obtain Homeward Bound in multiple ways and thus usually had all three in hand when time was called.
-Opponents would complete both a planet mission and a space mission, meaning the space-only Voyager player needed to get a full win or suffer a modified loss, even if ahead in points.
-The Voyager player could complete one mission, fly to Repair Null Space Catapult, then use its text to get Voyager to a third mission, meaning they could realistically go from one complete mission to a full win entirely after time was called. Even if they didn't get it, they had no reason not to try.
-Three copies of Homeward Bound, plus enough personnel to split into two team, meant the Voyager player might be doing upwards of 8 mission attempts after time was called.
-Worst case scenario, both players were using Voyager 5-Space, the first player went through all that and didn't get a full win, so the second player went through all that as well.

Rounds were routinely taking nearly two hours. If only one or two players were using Voyager 5-Space, that meant most players were just sitting around for about an hour (or longer!) after their games. That's a large part of why Homeward Bound has the once per turn limit.

[Danny]

Thanks for the solid replies, folks

[Mogor]

In addition to what Shea said, the pre-erratum Homeward Bound contributed significantly to an extreme negative play experience in organized play. The confluence of factors included:

-Voyager players would complete Inversion Mystery first, and name Timescape to ensure they could make multiple attempts in a turn.
-The Voyager player could obtain Homeward Bound in multiple ways and thus usually had all three in hand when time was called.
-Opponents would complete both a planet mission and a space mission, meaning the space-only Voyager player needed to get a full win or suffer a modified loss, even if ahead in points.
-The Voyager player could complete one mission, fly to Repair Null Space Catapult, then use its text to get Voyager to a third mission, meaning they could realistically go from one complete mission to a full win entirely after time was called. Even if they didn't get it, they had no reason not to try.
-Three copies of Homeward Bound, plus enough personnel to split into two team, meant the Voyager player might be doing upwards of 8 mission attempts after time was called.
-Worst case scenario, both players were using Voyager 5-Space, the first player went through all that and didn't get a full win, so the second player went through all that as well.

Rounds were routinely taking nearly two hours. If only one or two players were using Voyager 5-Space, that meant most players were just sitting around for about an hour (or longer!) after their games. That's a large part of why Homeward Bound has the once per turn limit.

I played a few voyager players during this time period and taught them why Lore was bad.

[The Prefect]

In addition to what Shea said, the pre-erratum Homeward Bound contributed significantly to an extreme negative play experience in organized play. ...

In addition to Nathan's observations, what really added to the negative play experience to me was that back in the post-Lower Decks meta if I wanted to tech against 5-space Voyager I probably needed to build a dilemma pile heavy on Moral Choice and Distress Call and light on planet dilemmas. That dilemma build was very effective against Voyager, but only marginally effective against some other Fed builds and not very effective at all against non-Fed builds. So, it was a real damned-either-way scenario: either I teched against Voyager and risk getting my ass handed to me by other builds, or I didn't and hoped no one brought it.

Contrast that with the powerful Cardassian builds today that are dependent on their verbs: Central Command, The Enemy of My Enemy, and Casualties of the Occupation. I've found the best tech against that build is a solid kill pile supplemented with Swashbuckler at Heart, Dereliction of Duty, and Psychokenetic Control. And, even if I don't face a Cardassian build, that dilemma pile has a good chance of being solid against a lot of other opponents, including Ruling Council Terok Nor. Now that's not to say that Cardassian-builds may not need to be reigned in a bit (errata to Casualties would probably help a good deal), but it's not in 5-space Voyager Homeward Bound territory.

[Mogor]

Not sure how to errata casualties without eliminating it all together. Its already a +1 with a cap of +3

[The Prefect]

Not sure how to errata casualties without eliminating it all together. Its already a +1 with a cap of +3

My recommendation, and I imagine the consensus, is to require the player to either command Bajor, or to command both Bajor and Cardassia. With those requirements, the effect could remain unchanged and still be powerful, but a straight Cardassian solver wouldn't then be able to use it without being vulnerable to the kill/anti-pump tech I've already mentioned plus opening up dual-HQ hate like The Dal'Rok, Unbelievable Emergency, Final Adventure, Rascals Provoke Interstellar Incident, Odo, Timeless, Miranda O'Brien, Proud Descendant, Brota, Son of Mogh, Yedrin Dax, Heir Apostate, etc.

[Gorgo Primus]

Terok Nor is super far away from needing to be reigned in. It isn’t even common outside of Slipstream so far as I know.

Modern Cardassians seem to be out of control though, and hitting one or more of their tools seems like a sound idea a la Voyager.

[GooeyChewie]

My recommendation, and I imagine the consensus, is to require the player to either command Bajor, or to command both Bajor and Cardassia.

I would say both, because if it only required Bajor it'd just become a KCA Bajor card.

[The Prefect]

Terok Nor is super far away from needing to be reigned in. It isn’t even common outside of Slipstream so far as I know.

In slipstream it's excellent - probably one of the top two builds at the moment (after Fed Wolf 359).

But, I think errata for Ruling Council was a big mistake. At the time it was announced, I supported the idea because the argument was that Ruling Council - being so ubiquitous - had backed design for Terok Nor into a corner. At the time, that argument made sense - Balance of Terror had just been or was about to be released and Phase II was in full-swing and the build got a unique and exciting flavor. However, since then, there haven't been any cards released for the build that couldn't have been made in a pre-errata Ruling Council play environment. And, by taking away the point generation, some versatility and power in the faction has been removed.

Terok Nor has yet to break-out of lower mid-card status. Maybe that's because it's not an attractive faction to the game's top-players who are often the innovators in deck design. But, it's probably also due to the fact that the faction just simply doesn't have the deep bench of tools and tricks most other high-powered factions or affiliations have. New cards like Surjak or Winn Adami, Uneasy Shepherd may provide some interesting wrinkles to existing builds. But, Terok has yet to have a break-out moment, and it certainly doesn't need further nerfing.

[The Prefect]

My recommendation, and I imagine the consensus, is to require the player to either command Bajor, or to command both Bajor and Cardassia.

I would say both, because if it only required Bajor it'd just become a KCA Bajor card.

If I were on the errata team, that's the option I'd support as well. It preserves the design intent and power of the card, but limits its use to more specific decks; i.e. dual HQ decks.

[Naetor]

Terok Nor is one of the most interesting affiliations at the moment.

You can play multi-HQ dissident mill - new Adami and Kraxon are insane for this deck.

And more standard Terok Nor is good and has Dark Dissension in it's toolbox now. There's never been a better time to to collapse the wormhole.

[Gorgo Primus]

I love where TN is atm too, I just wish they had more themed dilemmas just for them; maybe they could make up the point loss from the old errata to Ruling Council through that.