[MidnightLich]

17 June 2019 Planet Killer
By the time the Planet Killer(and its companion card Ravenous Hunger releases on the 21st, it will have been 2,488 days since it entered Utopia Planetia. You see, the Planet Killer was one of the cards the original designers of the [Self] mechanic wanted to see made, and it was originally designed in August 2012 for The Sky's the Limit. The problem, and the source of the delay, was how difficult it is to represent eating a planet in the game.

The closest analog was probably The Sheliak, but that card has been banned for years, so it's not really something to be modeled after. Teams from both TStL and The Cage tried a lot of different variants, but most of them didn't feel epic or scary enough to justify printing the card. Eventually, TStL team decided to put off making the Planet Killer, but we knew The Cage wouldn't have that luxury.

Ironically, it was the original idea of a second card that enabled this [Self] monster to eat planets that ended up being the final idea. During The Sky's the Limit, the need to have all of the instructions on the cards caused that team to move away from a secondary card. That is where The Cage team started, with the Planet Killer itself telling you what happened. The team debated a lot of ways to make this work, from rules changes to new mission overlays, before eventually cycling back to the original idea.

We hope this card ends up being worth the wait.

[GooeyChewie]

Today's card of the day is Crippling Injury. Fun fact! Even though this card takes away the personnel's regular skills and Strength, it leaves their classification. In the likely event that it goes on an OFFICER personnel, they won't have the heart to take that personnel off the active duty list! I don't know if that little nod to the story was intentional or not, but it's cool!

[MidnightLich]

Today's card of the day is Crippling Injury. Fun fact! Even though this card takes away the personnel's regular skills and Strength, it leaves their classification. In the likely event that it goes on an OFFICER personnel, they won't have the heart to take that personnel off the active duty list! I don't know if that little nod to the story was intentional or not, but it's cool!

Oh yeah. I'm very happy with this card. It came about because we didn't think we could make a Christopher Pike in the chair that would be satisfying. Instead, we thought a dilemma could capture the story far better than a heavily restricted personnel. And you're dead on about the OFFICER-classification personnel staying a leader.

Fun fact - originally, this card put the personnel in the point area but kept them in play. That truly took them away, preventing you from replacing them, but was too harsh on decks that needed a key personnel. We tried making this a random selection, but that weakened the dilemma too much. Instead of cutting it, we reworked it to keep someone like Gowron (for Legitimate Leader of the Empire decks) in play, but injure him to just above the point of uselessness.

-crp

[redshirtsr71]

Oh yeah. I'm very happy with this card. It came about because we didn't think we could make a Christopher Pike in the chair that would be satisfying. Instead, we thought a dilemma could capture the story far better than a heavily restricted personnel. And you're dead on about the OFFICER-classification personnel staying a leader.

Fun fact - originally, this card put the personnel in the point area but kept them in play. That truly took them away, preventing you from replacing them, but was too harsh on decks that needed a key personnel. We tried making this a random selection, but that weakened the dilemma too much. Instead of cutting it, we reworked it to keep someone like Gowron (for Legitimate Leader of the Empire decks) in play, but injure him to just above the point of uselessness.

-crp

Do you think this means shutting the door on a Captain Pike in chair personal. Or is it just tabled for now?

[BCSWowbagger]

Do you think this means shutting the door on a Captain Pike in chair personal. Or is it just tabled for now?

Probably.

As I see it, and I think as Team Delenn saw it, there just wasn't a good way of making a Beep-Pike card that was (1) true to the story and (2) not 100% binder fodder. Never say never, but we tried to fill the game's need for a Beep-Pike card with this dilemma. If a future design team comes along with a killer idea for a Beep-Pike card, we don't intend for this to stand in their way. We just didn't see it happening.