[Discovery suxs]

There is so many universal missions in the game. I think opponent should not be able to attempt them anymore. If it says any crew that is different of course. I personally have a deck with 5 universal missions. So opponent could just do my missions and win the game. I can't do a thing about it. Honestly based on the deck theme. Those missions are my only real choices.

[Latok]

Not every theme deck is going to work, maybe HQ: Defensive Measures will help yours.

[Discovery suxs]

Not every theme deck is going to work, maybe HQ: Defensive Measures will help yours.

True but I still think opponent should not be able to do universal missions. I personally think opponent should never be able to do your homeworld mission. Vulcan is 40 points for example.

The card would work if it didn't have countdown.

[nobthehobbit]

I wonder what Rules might think of a rule change in OTF that if you've seeded only one copy of a universal mission, it's protected, but if you seeded more than one copy, they're not.

[SudenKapala]

With the current variety of missions, are multiple copies still often seeded by one player? If so, then Nob might have a point for such a protection that Disco proposes.

[Discovery suxs]

I still go back to non alinged decks. You don't have the options of other factions. I can pretty much guarantee you a pure non alinged deck has a universal mission in it.

[Ensign Q]

nob idea sounds best to me. one universal is protected.
otherwise Explosive Decompression

right now univeral missions are basically unplayable and there are a lot of them. would add like 70+ missions to otf with no effort.

[Latok]

I still go back to non alinged decks. You don't have the options of other factions. I can pretty much guarantee you a pure non alinged deck has a universal mission in it.

I guarantee that's incorrect.
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=19100
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=19341
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=17785

[Jono]

I won the Gen Con Masters tournament last year using 4 universal space missions while playing Borg.

I played a Vulcan deck in the Cardassia regional this with 4 universal space missions. One of my opponents was using 4 universal missions (2 space, 2 planet).

Universal missions can be good (especially if they can be grouped together by a region). Because they each have the same requirement to solve, there should be a penalty for using multiple of them.

I can see something that protects them if you don’t use more than one copy of any given universal mission.

[DarkSabre]

I think that right now its currently fine.

Universal missions are easier to use, esp in multiples of the same, there has to be a cost for that and if you feel people are going to mission steal use HQ: Defensive Measures.

[AllenGould]

Universal missions are easier to use, esp in multiples of the same, there has to be a cost for that and if you feel people are going to mission steal use HQ: Defensive Measures.

[DarkSabre]

This thread makes me feel like I need to say this again:

COUNTERS were always meant to be in this game. Strategy, what to put as a counter in your deck, what not to put in your deck, etc

Yeah Decipher screwed the pooch with having 'red pill' cards that eliminated whole abusive deck designs and did nothing to really help the game except force people to always have those cards on hand.

It used to be that Q Tents were a major component of that but it has turned into a download machine instead.

I remember when it used to come down to pure strategy. Now, not so much.

[BCSWowbagger]

I wonder what Rules might think of a rule change in OTF that if you've seeded only one copy of a universal mission, it's protected, but if you seeded more than one copy, they're not.

This has struck me as a good idea for about a year now. (We tried to make a ❖ mission for The Cage but there's simply zero design space for it right now.) The wording is clean enough:

Players may not attempt, scout, or complete missions they did not seed unless that mission is universal or shows at least 40 points or their opponent seeded more than one copy.

Mechanically, the balance feels very right. A single copy of a universal mission is not a problem. It is, in fact, exactly identical to a unique mission, and they are written and balanced the same way. That also helps make the rule very intuitive: I can't steal your missions unless you're doing something obviously abnormal with them.

The biggest problem with this change is actually the cards Design has made to make universal missions playable under current OTF rules. If you change the rules so that different universal missions are non-stealable, then Explosive Decompression, Pursuit Just Behind, Renewed Spirit, and to some extent Assert Authority all get much stronger. I think there might be stomach for the rule change, but Renewed Spirit in particular poses a problem. It's a problem that probably has to be playtested to measure its impact and see if any stronger actions need to be taken.

And there is currently no process in place to allow the Rules Committee to initiate a playtest, so any rule changes that need to be tested tend to come out of a Design process rather than a Rules process (which, in turn, leads to worse proposals that tend to get killed off by Rules & Testing alike).

But, basically, you're right: universal missions are barely playable or designable right now, and that's unfortunate, because there are a ton of cool universal missions out there with great art that people don't want to use in an abusive way but right now can't risk using at all in most decks.

[BCSWowbagger]

Sorry, double-post because I forgot to reply to this with a Provocative Suggestion:

It used to be that Q Tents were a major component of that but it has turned into a download machine instead.

Austin's right. Ref piles became extremely important during the game's Dark Age, to the point where it was no longer sustainable to run games without them, and new Ref infrastructure (Tribunal + Civil War) grew up around that. But there are fewer and fewer cards in the game, fewer and fewer of them matter, and more and more of them are pretty narrow meta calls.

So, question for the group: have Ref problems been fixed enough that we can ban Tribunal of Q and return to traditional Q-the-Referee cycling, with all the deckbuilding choices that entails?

If this gets a lot of answers, I presume mods will split the thread.

[AllenGould]

So, question for the group: have Ref problems been fixed enough that we can ban Tribunal of Q and return to traditional Q-the-Referee cycling?

I would argue that's too low a bar. The only Ref cards we should have in the end are actual meta "I have anticipated your move, and now you have activated my Trap Card muahaha!" (insert Mr. Burns "Excellent" gif here)

(This is in contrast to the Dark Ages where Ref cards were "stock this to not die".)