[MidnightLich]

8 June 2019 Augment Aggression
Originally, The Cage was a large set (81-99 cards) that focused on and cards. This included Khan and company, which was a very popular request for the block. Once the decision was made to cut back to a medium size set (54-63), we decided to focus on the Native personnel and leave the other groups for later in the block. That meant most of the Khan stuff was pushed off to a later expansion. We kept one card, which you haven't seen yet, as a tease.

But late in design, we had feedback that testers wanted more of a tease of Khan. When a hole opened up due to another card being cut, we pulled back this dilemma. This, plus the yet-unrevealed card, are meant to tease that Khan and his augments are out there.. and they are coming.

-crp

[Takket]

8 June 2019 Augment Aggression
Originally, The Cage was a large set (81-99 cards) that focused on and cards. This included Khan and company, which was a very popular request for the block. Once the decision was made to cut back to a medium size set (54-63), we decided to focus on the Native personnel and leave the other groups for later in the block. That meant most of the Khan stuff was pushed off to a later expansion. We kept one card, which you haven't seen yet, as a tease.

But late in design, we had feedback that testers wanted more of a tease of Khan. When a hole opened up due to another card being cut, we pulled back this dilemma. This, plus the yet-unrevealed card, are meant to tease that Khan and his augments are out there.. and they are coming.

-crp

That explain a lot. My first thought on this card was “cool but kind of odd that you can’t actually DL the guy in the image with it!!!”

[Data's Socks]

It's like Where's Guinan? but this time with something for a crew to really worry about. Looking forward to the extra tease.

[Discovery suxs]

The card going in my augment deck. So I'm happy for sure.

[MidnightLich]

9 June 2019 Reallocate Dividends

Sigma Iotia II, the gangster planet from "A Piece of the Action," was one of the few missions we knew we had to include in the finished project. The original version was 25 points, but gave you a download of The Book there when you seeded it. Eventually, the mission morphed into what you see today. The only real controversy of the finished version is the inclusion of the Klingon attempting icon. However, the rest of the team liked giving the other factions more "23rd century" missions when and where we could, so it was left on.

-crp

[BCSWowbagger]

Ah, that reminds me of E.C.S. Horizon, the second-deepest continuity cut in The Cage!

But its download of The Book also ended up causing major balance issues, and folks tended to see it less as "ha ha this is a funny reference" and more as "why is getting even more stuff when it's already too good?" Which was a fair point! So Travis's ship (which later corrupted the culture of Sigma Iotia II) got cut.

(The first-deepest continuity cut in The Cage was an affiliation icon on the opponent's end of a mission that also got cut... but that one ended up in a later set in the block, and my fingers are crossed that it survives.)

#FunFacts

[jrch5618]

9 June 2019 Reallocate Dividends

Sigma Iotia II, the gangster planet from "A Piece of the Action," was one of the few missions we knew we had to include in the finished project. The original version was 25 points, but gave you a download of The Book there when you seeded it. Eventually, the mission morphed into what you see today. The only real controversy of the finished version is the inclusion of the Klingon attempting icon. However, the rest of the team liked giving the other factions more "23rd century" missions when and where we could, so it was left on.

-crp

... I have to ask. The fact that you card-linked "The Book" - is that a sneaky spoiler of a card in this set?

Ah, that reminds me of E.C.S. Horizon, the second-deepest continuity cut in The Cage!

But its download of The Book also ended up causing major balance issues, and folks tended to see it less as "ha ha this is a funny reference" and more as "why is getting even more stuff when it's already too good?" Which was a fair point! So Travis's ship (which later corrupted the culture of Sigma Iotia II) got cut.

(The first-deepest continuity cut in The Cage was an affiliation icon on the opponent's end of a mission that also got cut... but that one ended up in a later set in the block, and my fingers are crossed that it survives.)

#FunFacts

No coincidence that the Horizon's captain is the 2E card of the day, eh?

[MidnightLich]

9 June 2019 Reallocate Dividends

Sigma Iotia II, the gangster planet from "A Piece of the Action," was one of the few missions we knew we had to include in the finished project. The original version was 25 points, but gave you a download of The Book there when you seeded it. Eventually, the mission morphed into what you see today. The only real controversy of the finished version is the inclusion of the Klingon attempting icon. However, the rest of the team liked giving the other factions more "23rd century" missions when and where we could, so it was left on.

-crp

... I have to ask. The fact that you card-linked "The Book" - is that a sneaky spoiler of a card in this set?

I mean... we pretty much had to make an OS era Artifact, didn't we? (Check back Saturday!)

-crp

[MidnightLich]

10 June 2019 Risk is Our Business

This card didn't appear in the file for a few versions, and was added in response to complaints we hadn't done enough to capture the Federation's exploration theme. A design meeting later, and boom, this card was born. As Paddy points out in his excellent article, the top half is for players, but the bottom half is open to anyone.

By the time The Cage releases, every card named on Risk is Our Business will be available except one: Corbomite Device. Late in testing, there was concern from our testers that was going to be dead in the water to battle decks, with no defenses. We made three late game changes to help with that: a personnel got a defensive special skill (you'll see him Thursday), we added Classic Phaser Banks (which is on Facebook now, or you can see next week), and we put a reference to an as-yet-undesigned card on RiOB. Using "Corbomite Device" provides options for future designers, as it can be a bluffing card and/or an anti-battle card. This "throw forward" gives us time to see how decks shake out and what they might need to move ahead.

-crp

[Boffo97]

So in a way, at least for right now, Corbomite Device is a bluff.

[BCSWowbagger]

Inspired by a discussion in another thread, a note on Obsession (which is not the card of the day; I will go to the corner now, Charlie):

Writ of Accountability

Honestly with the post errata brain drain, I would want to remove brain drain from that list

While I personally agree with you, I can't see errata-ing Writ to make that change, especially since doing so is unlikely to cause an increase in the usage of Brain Drain, IMHO.

When Obsession was in development, we had endless problems with Writ. (We aren't the first.) We almost submitted it to Errata to request Writ be banned. But it turns out that Ferengi still really need that cheap FCA download. And you can't just errata Writ to be a one-line FCA download... because Open format still actually needs the full Writ!

But I think the next change to Writ will not be a line edit, but an OTF ban. (Once somebody clever figures out the FCA download issue.) I say that without being on any future design teams, so I'm just speculating. Until then, Obsession got the clunky "You may ignore Writ" text, and that's fine.

#FunFacts

Bonus fun fact: a few years ago, Writ forced Borg Ship to receive errata bumping it from 45 points down to 15. If you run the numbers, you'll see that Obsession nearly corrects that. This is not an accident.

[MidnightLich]

11 June Recreation Room
One of the first bits of feedback we got was that needed some more card drawing. In version B, we added the first draft of the card that would become Recreation Room and the feedback was almost all negative. "This doesn't give us a card draw!" was the core idea of the feedback, combined with complaints the card would never get used. Eventually, we agreed and added in some more card drawing options for decks, but decided that this card was still interesting enough (and valuable enough) to see play, especially once it was added to Risk is Our Business.

One of the most interesting stories about this card is its creative journey. It entered the file as a "soft conversion" of the 1EC card One Man Cannot Summon the Future, which was the strong preference of one of the designers. Ultimately, we decided to give the Creative Team free reign, who suggested titles like Finnegan, Give Me the Brandy!, and Saurian Brandy. Ultimately, after design felt the latter didn't fit well with the flavor of Risk is Our Business, they landed on Recreation Room as the final title.

-crp

[BCSWowbagger]

One Man Cannot Summon the Future, which was the strong preference of one of the designers.

If you look up the deck lists, it'll be pretty obvious who that designer was.

I do like how Recreation Room shows what we can do in the conversion space now. One Man Cannot Summon, as Creative rightly pointed out, was intended as a card, even though (thanks to bizarre 1E Conversion Rules), it ended up being a very strong card for all decks. Under the traditional 2EBC conversion process, this meant that we would have needed to rework our gametext to fit the "story" of a card. Instead, under the new process, Creative was free to change the story to fit our gametext instead.

In my eyes, Rec Room is One Man Cannot Summon The Future's conversion. But, in the future -- especially if it works well -- maybe there will be similar cards for other factions. One Man Cannot Summon can be converted over and over again!

(Also, maybe films block can make a conversion of Coordinated Counterattack work! We tried. We did not succeed.)

[MidnightLich]

12 June Five Year Mission
We actively resisted putting this card into the file for a long time. We knew that needed a general draw engine, testers were insistent about that, but we didn't want to just make a new version of Finally Ready to Swim. In particular, testers wanted a seedable draw engine - our original version was a riff on Let's See What's Out There, but many of our testing groups have soured on card play draw engines.

The first version of this card was a seedable draw each time you played an personnel, but it had a countdown icon of 2. However, we gave it text that prevented it from counting down as long as all your personnel were . We liked this, because it was strong cultural enforcement that gave players options to break it late game, when a key non- personnel was more valuable than an extra card draw.

Ultimately, I think we realized that avoiding making a FRtS riff was putting an unnecessary constraint on us, so we decided to riff away. Even so, this card generated considerable discussion between Rules and Design to get the wording correct.

13 June Lt. Jose Tyler
This card started out as a support personnel with Captain Pike in his lore. He stayed that way for several versions, eventually picking up a lore reference to Talos III so he'd work with Preserver Obelisk. There, he would remain unchanged until Version O. Testers had pointed out that while these new decks would be good in a vacuum, in a world with lots of battle (particularly battle) decks, they'd be DOA. One solution we found was to add in Classic Phaser Banks, and another was to give them a skill that would help them deal with an aggressive opponent. Lt. Jose Tyler ended up being the card that got the "fire back" skill, which felt very to us - we'll fight you HARD, but only if you start it.

Bonus: Originally, and for quite a few versions, his name was just Lt. Tyler. But a certain show has a similarly named character, so to avoid any possible confusion down the road, he got his first name added to the card.

-crp

[MidnightLich]

14 June The Keeper
This personnel was in the file - as was the entire Pike/Talos IV theme - before Season 2 of Discovery aired, although I'm pretty sure we knew Pike would be in the show. His original text allowed Vina to be a universal persona swap, i.e. she should change places with any personnel in your hand. We liked this, because it represented the Talosian's illusions (though in the show, Vina was still Vina even as she changed).

It was confusing and potentially game breaking, so we changed the skill to just be a Vina. This was good for awhile, but as Preserver Obelisk was developed, The Keeper became the obvious and only choice for one of your native downloads, as he was a 2-for-1 personnel. We briefly discussed a way to have him let "re-creations" report to him, but there wasn't much appetite for a new term that late in the process. Thus, he just ended up being a three-skill guy.

I don't recall their being a specific discussion about him being made to give people another Quantum Incursions weapon, but I strongly suspect we all thought that. But as that card ended up banned, it didn't matter. Empathy x3 sure isn't out of place on a character with this kind of mental powers.

15 June The Book
The first draft of this card, way back in February 2018, let you copy either a regular skill, a species, an affiliation, or a keyword. The intent with the latter was to let you turn all your personnel into ambassadors, or thieves, or things like that. Of course, "keyword" isn't a concept in 1E and we could never figure out how to even come close to wording that in a way that worked, so "keyword" was dropped before Version A.

For the next few months, you got to pick either a skill, species, or affiliation. The problem was species like Ba'ku, or Son'a, or Talaxians, that have a mission or other card that gives them unrestricted free reports. We were afraid of a deck that turned all your people into Ba'ku, them vomited out personnel late in the game. Testers eventually confirmed that this was a problem, so we had to take away the species imitation.

With only regular skill and affiliation left, we decided to let you pick both.

During all of design and development, we asked rules to make sure that we could eventually add cards that either a) let you pick two options on The Book, or b) let you re-select what you've picked. A) became irrelevant with the finished text, but I can still see a special skill on Boss Kracko that lets you re-select your skill.

Final tidbit: this card inspired us to put in E.C.S. Horizon for awhile. It didn't make the final file.

-crp