[Discovery suxs]

Back when whatever Rare we got in a pack was exciting, Wind Dancer was a huge disappointment to me. I'm not sure I've ever seen an Away Team stopped by it.

Again, Wind dancer was really powerful. Most decks didn't want to use mission specialist back then because they didn't exist =) And as most Youth was found on them that was really hard. having enough strength was really hard without lots of hand weapons or a varon-t disruptor. music was not an easy skill to find back then, especially if you didn't play Fed.

It could actually be a really decent wall back then. For some it was a missed mission entirely.

So basically you are saying it does not hold up today.

[SudenKapala]

I think it is being said that no, today, indeed it doesn't hold up. And that yes, back in the days of Premiere and perhaps even slightly afterwards, it did hold up big time. But perhaps Boffo played in a local META that was -- consciously or incidentally -- more secured against it.

I've never seen it work either, I think, myself -- but in the PAQ era, I didn't have one at all, let alone two (one of my collection and one for a deck). And later, I wouldn't have wanted to use it, even when I got it. So -- what we might additionally say, is that the card was perhaps power-drained (i.e., nerfed) too quickly by making available for the non- affiliations, better and more versatile personnel. Which they deserved.

So, come to think of it, I'd say that it didn't have much "right of existence"(?) to begin with, since its use was lopsided for and was bound to be "corrected" sooner rather than later.

But for all its artistry and great work, Decipher may have also employed the power of as a commercial ploy to sell more units. If everyone wanted to play 1 affiliation mostly, then everybody wanted those cards, and thus more were needed in circulation.
Which is a logical albeit capitalistic way of running a CCG business.

[phaserihardlyknowher]

If we're going back to PAQ era, there are just so many. I guess if I had to pick one, I'd Anti-Time Anomaly because it's such an "screw you" to what actual game play should be about.

But for all its artistry and great work, Decipher may have also employed the power of as a commercial ploy to sell more units. If everyone wanted to play 1 affiliation mostly, then everybody wanted those cards, and thus more were needed in circulation.
Which is a logical albeit capitalistic way of running a CCG business.

I doubt there was that much thought put into it. I think it had more to do with those being the popular characters and the ones we knew the most about. It already felt like stretching to give some of those single serving Klingons skills like Exobiology, but they lacked either the imagination or the will to create a Klingon equivalent of Data.

[SudenKapala]

But for all its artistry and great work, Decipher may have also employed the power of as a commercial ploy to sell more units. If everyone wanted to play 1 affiliation mostly, then everybody wanted those cards, and thus more were needed in circulation.
Which is a logical albeit capitalistic way of running a CCG business.

I doubt there was that much thought put into it. I think it had more to do with those being the popular characters and the ones we knew the most about.

In my play group there were people who didn't doubt that at all. The got a lot of fan service done in those first sets, and was easily the best affiliation for some time after Premiere. But my knowledge on CCGs in general is rather limited, so I just assumed those 'accusations' were true. I didn't hold it against Decipher -- it was a commercial product, after all. And the amount of love and respect poored into the game is evident.

It already felt like stretching to give some of those single serving Klingons skills like Exobiology, but they lacked either the imagination or the will to create a Klingon equivalent of Data.

I think J\'Ddan has 2 reasons to have Exobio; his professional skill and his way of smuggling.
But that's besides your point, which I do appreciate.

Just to delve into this further--
The Brady Player's Guide's first chapters deal with the conception and production of the game in its infancy -- and I was very glad to have read them. They answered a lot of my questions about artistic and other choices.

One thing that stuck out for me was that Paramount, at that early time, was adamant that visuals must really come from TNG -- they were not allowed to be fully computer generated or otherwise created from outside the series -- and it may have been like that for the canon 'prose' / text content as well.
So that may be a reason for why we never got a equivalent of Data. And now, because that level of adherence to established canon is what we're used to, the current design philosophy wouldn't allow for it, still, I guess (which is totally fine with me)?

(But that, to me and my group, didn't account for the sheer power difference between and the other 2 affs.)

[Data's Socks]

There's a card I find interesting in its implications, and that's The Devil. IMO it's good to have a deterrent to multi-affiliation decks as a matter of principle, keeping more card choices meaningful, but that straight up attempts to shatter a Treaty deck, at Interrupt speed, with no advance warning.

Wonder if the vulnerabilities that Treaty decks have already (e.g. ship staffing, conditions for mission solving, having headquarters spaced too far apart) serve to keep The Devil in check because it doesn't have a consistent environment in which to thrive. Plus being able to take precautions against it maybe makes it one of the PAQ haymakers that can continue unchanged.

[Boffo97]

Semi tangential to the purpose of this thread, but still technically within the title's parameters:

Way back just after Alternate Universe was released, I was playing the friend who got me into this game (and who thus had a much better collection than me at the time). I knew he loved playing Hor'gahn since it was so powerful back then. So I stocked one of the fancy schmancy new cards I had, Jamaharon. Sure enough, I had Jamaharon in my hand when he earned the Hor'gahn, and I immediately nullified it.

There is no better satisfaction than when your opponent asks "Wait, what does that card do? Let me see it.", reads it, and then sighs.

But then I stopped for a second and asked "Wait. In the storyline of this game, what precisely just happened?"

[Armus]

Semi tangential to the purpose of this thread, but still technically within the title's parameters:

Way back just after Alternate Universe was released, I was playing the friend who got me into this game (and who thus had a much better collection than me at the time). I knew he loved playing Hor'gahn since it was so powerful back then. So I stocked one of the fancy schmancy new cards I had, Jamaharon. Sure enough, I had Jamaharon in my hand when he earned the Hor'gahn, and I immediately nullified it.

There is no better satisfaction than when your opponent asks "Wait, what does that card do? Let me see it.", reads it, and then sighs.

But then I stopped for a second and asked "Wait. In the storyline of this game, what precisely just happened?"

Simple: He displayed his Horga'hn indicating that he was seeking Jamaharon. By playing that interrupt, you helped him find it. Since he found it, there was no further need to seek it so the Horga'hn was clearly no longer needed.

[SudenKapala]

Semi tangential to the purpose of this thread, but still technically within the title's parameters:

Way back just after Alternate Universe was released, I was playing the friend who got me into this game (and who thus had a much better collection than me at the time). I knew he loved playing Hor'gahn since it was so powerful back then. So I stocked one of the fancy schmancy new cards I had, Jamaharon. Sure enough, I had Jamaharon in my hand when he earned the Hor'gahn, and I immediately nullified it.

There is no better satisfaction than when your opponent asks "Wait, what does that card do? Let me see it.", reads it, and then sighs.

But then I stopped for a second and asked "Wait. In the storyline of this game, what precisely just happened?"

Simple: He displayed his Horga'hn indicating that he was seeking Jamaharon. By playing that interrupt, you helped him find it. Since he found it, there was no further need to seek it so the Horga'hn was clearly no longer needed.

This story and the reaction to it -- yet two more reasons why I love loving this game.

[Takket]

Semi tangential to the purpose of this thread, but still technically within the title's parameters:

Way back just after Alternate Universe was released, I was playing the friend who got me into this game (and who thus had a much better collection than me at the time). I knew he loved playing Hor'gahn since it was so powerful back then. So I stocked one of the fancy schmancy new cards I had, Jamaharon. Sure enough, I had Jamaharon in my hand when he earned the Hor'gahn, and I immediately nullified it.

There is no better satisfaction than when your opponent asks "Wait, what does that card do? Let me see it.", reads it, and then sighs.

But then I stopped for a second and asked "Wait. In the storyline of this game, what precisely just happened?"

I actually had that happen when I unstopped an away team at a ❖ mission with Renewed Spirit. "What? All of them? No way, can I read that?" LOL

[Entilzha]

Persistence of Memory. Because it made my favourite deck go from suck to blow.

(In other words, my no personnel deck that would win due to my opponent going into the negatives before Black Hole could suck up the spaceline got foiled because my one loss had my opponent stock a Q's Tent with this card and a Q's Planet).

May as well have called it the Mega-Maid Maneuver.