[Armus]

IMO with White Deprivation in particular, it's "What are you doing as a card and not a rule?" Absolutely there would be the downside of having yet another rules entry, not to mention upping the number of loaded icons by one, though I think a special case can be made here that the Jem'Hadar were designed and balanced around Ketracel-White. Similarly, it would streamline the rules a little (possibly, one never knows for sure) if all affiliations shared the same attack restrictions, punting the exceptions onto a card; it doesn't seem right to have some aspects subject to player whims, though.

It started as a rule. Decipher card-ified it (and Cybernetics Expertise) in Holodeck Adventures.

What do we want: Bloated rules docs or excessive cards?

I thought it was the latter over the former because it's easier to read cards in-game than pull out the yellow pages-sized glossary. This seems like you want to go back the other way.

I'm not sure that's the best idea.

That said....

James, as both the consolidator of rules and the foremost RefHammer advocate, how do you propose balancing the equities here? To me, I can kind of see this as a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

[Ensign Q]

I think at one point it was a good decision to make some ref cards otf rules and then some peoples ASD kicked in and now they want the "endlösung" to ref. lol

[JeBuS]

It started as a rule. Decipher card-ified it (and Cybernetics Expertise) in Holodeck Adventures.

What do we want: Bloated rules docs or excessive cards?

I thought it was the latter over the former because it's easier to read cards in-game than pull out the yellow pages-sized glossary. This seems like you want to go back the other way.

I'm not sure that's the best idea.

That said....

James, as both the consolidator of rules and the foremost RefHammer advocate, how do you propose balancing the equities here? To me, I can kind of see this as a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

White is easy. Reword Shrouding to force the player to download Deprivation. Done.

[BCSWowbagger]

James, as both the consolidator of rules and the foremost RefHammer advocate, how do you propose balancing the equities here? To me, I can kind of see this as a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

I think this whole thread has gotten away from the real question!

People are arguing about whether cards need to be banned forever or not. People are therefore asking "well, then how do we keep people from attacking homeworlds? How do we keep them from redshirting? How do we keep them from just running Kivas Fajo - Collector x 1million?" And other people are saying, "Well, here's a laundry list of ways to deal with each of these cards!"

These are not problems we can or should solve today! These are not plans we need to lay! "What do we do about White Deprivation?" is a question that has tormented Errata teams for a decade and may well torment them for a decade more! I've seen good and bad answers, both in these public forums (you can search 'em if you want 'em) and behind the scenes, but it's not the question at issue today.

The question presented by my post and by the poll itself is far more narrow than any of that. It is, simply:

Between 2009 and 2013, the game developed two extremely robust cards, Tribunal of Q and Q's Tent: Civil War, to support cards. That infrastructure was needed at the time, despite the costs, because cheese was rampant, cards were very numerous, and OTF did not yet exist (Civil War came out when OTF was under a year old).

In the current game of 2019, do Tribunal and Civil War still make the game more fun than it would be without them?

If yes, then keep them.

If no, then ban one of them (or both of them).

Personally, I think that, at some point in the past 24 months, we reached the point where the Tribunal/Civil War complex subtracts more fun than it adds.

Either way, no judgment is being passed on any other cards. Nobody in Design is going to see overwhelming support for banning Q's Tent: Civil War and misinterpret that as "oh, well, the community wants all cards gone immediately!" There are many reasons to support banning Civil War while keeping other cards in place. (Likewise, Design isn't going to look at a show of support for Tribunal of Q and misinterpret it as the community wanting more cards.)

We do not need to have the overall Ref argument to have a conversation about the future of Tribunal and Civil War -- neither of which are cards, neither of which are from the Decipher Era, neither of which have Ancient Sacred Traditions around them, and neither of which are vital to the efficient stocking and deployment of cards.

That's my answer.

[Ensign Q]

Trib is absolutely existential for the Ref cards to work, otherwise you would have to randomly draw into Qref (and run like 20 copies) or the cards are useless.

CW Tent is basically just QTent (which is not connected to Ref.) and pretty much only helps managing your Ref-Pile.

[BCSWowbagger]

Trib is absolutely existential for the Ref cards to work, otherwise you would have to randomly draw into Qref or the cards are useless.

The Ref cards existed for ten whole years without Tribunal. Nobody thought they were useless then!

Back in the Decipher era, you seeded Q the Referee and fetched your Refs with that. Since Q the Referee itself plays for free, you could stock several if you felt you needed to. It made the decision about which Ref cards to fetch a lot more tactical, since access was somewhat more costly. And Q the Ref's second function allowed you to "cycle away" Ref cards you didn't need.

The reason Tribunal was created was because there were (by 2008) too darned many Ref cards that you absolutely needed in your deck, and the sheer volume overwhelmed Q the Referee's capacity to cycle them and deckbuilders' abilities to tactically stock them. (Also, there was a cheap trick with Computer Crash to prevent a Ref response that Tribunal killed off.)

But now that the volume of valuable cards is much, much smaller -- closer to what it was in Decipher days -- traditional Ref cycling should be a perfectly workable scheme again.

[Armus]

Personally, I think that, at some point in the past 24 months, we reached the point where the Tribunal/Civil War complex subtracts more fun than it adds.

This is the key sentence in that answer.

Why?
Based on what?

It also goes back to my earlier question: what is the mission of the OTF ban list? Under what circumstances should a card find its way onto (or off of) it?

Why in your opinion does Tribunal deserve a ban? What problem is it causing in the game? Ditto Civil War?

[Ensign Q]

I call it again. Distraction from the messed up Cold Front set

[BCSWowbagger]

Personally, I think that, at some point in the past 24 months, we reached the point where the Tribunal/Civil War complex subtracts more fun than it adds.

This is the key sentence in that answer. Why?

Tribunal never actually added much fun to the game. The tactical choices it adds are blunt and obvious. At its most tactical, Tribunal is used to perform arcane tricks of timing that are abstracted three levels away from the actual game. "Oh, good, we just took two minutes away from the grand epic Star Trek story we're creating together on the spaceline, so we could instead spend two minutes tactically converting draws, download, playing, and discarding this card called Containment Field (and the cards on it), which has these weird arbitrary interactions with certain cards that have an icon Decipher wanted to nerf." That's Tribunal at its best. More often, it's just a dull-as-houses card to access Defend Homeworld without spending a seed slot, or to dig up a wall-of-text hard counter. And it's no fun at all to explain to a newbie!

The value Tribunal added to the game in its heyday, was not that it made the game more fun. It was that it prevented other cards and strategies from making the game less fun -- something that was especially important back before OTF existed. Traditional Q the Ref cycling was more fun than Tribunal, but good Ref cycling is tricky, the meta was too complex to support it, and the game needed a blunt instrument to smash the power of cheese. This was, indeed, pretty much the Design thinking behind Tribunal, as I understand it. It wasn't supposed to make the game any more fun; it was just supposed to put a hard block on NPEs and replace traditional Ref-cycling so that the rest of the game could be fun again. This didn't quite work, as it turned out, and so the Civil War tent was created to completely eliminate traditional Ref-cycling and make all Ref cards available for ready access all the time, forever.

When I first returned to the game, I saw the good work Tribunal (and, soon after, Civil War) were doing. I didn't like the card one bit, but the alternative was much worse. So be it. I believe I expressed that opinion publicly on this forum as recently as the end of 2017.

But, with the hard work that's been done over the past ten years, culminating with the ascension of General Quarters and You Are A Monument into the OTF rules, there are only a few cards left that matter, particularly non-seedable ones. 10 of them are gone; another 10 are effectively moot; the remaining 10 are manageable through traditional (and more fun) Ref mechanics.

Tribunal of Q and Civil War were introduced to the game to solve a specific problem. This was not a good thing, but it was the best available option at the time. Now that times have changed, their purpose is no longer served. TribQ was brought into the game to block shenanigans, and now it is more often used to fuel them.

It's time for at least one of these pair to leave.

It also goes back to my earlier question: what is the mission of the OTF ban list? Under what circumstances should a card find its way onto (or off of) it?

I see the OTF ban list as serving two purposes:

(1) as a temporary holding cell for cards that are "broken," or severely distorting or dominating the game, narrowing the practical range of competitive play

(2) as a permanent replacement for Decipher's failed strategy for dealing with "broken" cards: creating silver bullets (because they refused to create a ban list).

Now that we have a ban list, all the cards needing silver bullets should be gradually fixed, and all cards acting as silver bullets should be gradually changed or -- if still needed in Open -- OTF-banned.

TribQ and Civil War aren't just silver bullets; they are silver bullets for silver bullets. So they are appropriate residents of the ban list, at least until the day Open somehow doesn't need them anymore and they can get errata.

[Ensign Q]

More often, it's just a dull-as-houses card to access Defend Homeworld without spending a seed slot

Trib is a seedslot itself..

And why discuss banning the CWTent? It adds nothing to the refmechanic and actually punishes you for using it..

The only argument you brought in your reply is that there is a cheese tactic around Containment Field. So ban or fix that one.

you also pretty much confirm my assumption that you only want to get rid of Ref because you want to have a "clear" solution and just want to eliminate the card type. (10 gone, we can mange to get the other 10 as well, no matter the hoops we have to jump through)

[BCSWowbagger]

Trib is a seedslot itself..

Right. So you never seed DH. In a deck that uses DH, you always seed Trib and then pull along any other Ref stuff you can. Because why wouldn't you? It's free!

And why discuss banning the CWTent? It adds nothing to the refmechanic

CW is a huge boost to the ref mechanic by giving you a place to store all your Ref cards without (a) using up precious, precious slots in your regular Q's Tent or (b) putting the Ref cards in your draw deck, where they can clog up your draw mechanics (especially if you stock more than a few).

If you get rid of the Civil War tent, then each Ref card in your deck becomes an interesting choice that has to be weighed, as it was in the Decipher Era -- in contrast to today, when you decide to play Ref and then just automatically get 13 even though you know full well there's nearly zero chance you'll use more than 5 of them.

The only argument you brought in your reply is that there is a cheese tactic around Containment Field. So ban or fix that one.

Remember: that was me talking about TribQ at its best. I could put out a laundry list of Interactions Made Less Interesting By TribQ.

But you still haven't replied to my last post to you about how traditional Ref-cycling worked and why TribQ isn't necessary to sustain it. I'm not going to give long answers if I don't get long answers in reply!

[Ensign Q]

you replied before i edited to (stack a couple of QtR in your deck). there was also no question on your side??

so yeah, Ref would work without Trib, but it would blow up you drawdeck which is a stupid thing to promote (same with banning the Tent)

I think its already kinda stupid that you need to run a million awakens, devidian doors or holodeck doors to speed up reports...


Besides Borg? and other decks that want to probe, you can cycle the Refcards just fine without the Tent (I dont run it anyway). When 8 of 13 are useless as you claim they wont neither be missed or used anyway.

[AllenGould]

The only argument you brought in your reply is that there is a cheese tactic around Containment Field. So ban or fix that one.

Which leads nicely to the next problem - while Containment Field is free-instant-fetchable, Static Warp Bubble and TAK are dead cards. While Strategema is free-instant-fetchable, Rogue Borg Mercenaries are still dead cards (even though they've been errata'ed).

Ditto Feedback Surge. Ditto In The Zone. And so on.

We've done a lot of work fixing those old cards, but it counts for nothing if players can nerf them for free as part of their regular draw engine.

[Ensign Q]

Borg Mercenaries are banned anyway?!
In the Zone is banned?!
Feedback Surge pretty much got obsolete by banning the named cards and protecting missions

also if as anybody would ever run TAK or AK in a meta that draws 4 cards a turn and lasts 7


???

[Armus]

, Rogue Borg Mercenaries are still dead cards (even though they've been errata'ed).

They have?

I miss a memo?