[BCSWowbagger]

it's that he guarantees a solve on your *winning* mission. You can go all in to clear the dilemmas, because all you need is Dix plus any warm body of the right affiliation. And you can hold Dix in hand until either your last turn (Temporal Micro-Wormhole him direct to your ship), or even until the last attempt (Devidian Door direct to the planet). He's a single card play instead of the multiple needed to rebuild your solving crew.

With skill densities and report speed the way they are now, how often are we seeing people get stuck on the last mission because they passed all the dilemmas and couldn't still clear the requirements?

This is quite a rare experience, in my little world. I see people get stuck on the last dilemma all the time. But mission requirements? If it's late in the game, the odds are very high that the player held all their solver people in reserve anyway... especially if it's a mission with particularly difficult requirements. So you can devastate his team all you want; he's just going to pop over with Team B and solve anyway.

Dix allows you to not do that... but then he has his own costs. (Unlike "Physics x3" or whatever, there's not really a backup if Dix dies an untimely death, except another Dix.)

[Spectre9]

Often the idea of having personnel with skills isn't just to pass missions though.

Dilemmas are a thing and having a card that doesn't pass dilemmas is a big drawback.

If you're really looking for that next archeology or exobiology skill to pass a wall and you draw Dix you're gonna be pretty disappointed.

Holding him back does cost you. It costs you in your deck building and having a dead card in your hand. The more copies you stock the more bricks you have.

If the true power isn't building a deck with a 60 point mission you can easily pass then I don't see passing lower point missions as a problem. Often enough "warm body" is pretty much all you need personnel are so skill dense.

If you have more than 1 big point mission that you really need Dix to pass reliably you run into the once per game limitation and if you do rely on one your opponent can just lock you out with a Dead End or other walls.

[Dunnagh]

This is quite a rare experience, in my little world. I see people get stuck on the last dilemma all the time. But mission requirements? If it's late in the game, the odds are very high that the player held all their solver people in reserve anyway... especially if it's a mission with particularly difficult requirements. So you can devastate his team all you want; he's just going to pop over with Team B and solve anyway.

Dix allows you to not do that... but then he has his own costs. (Unlike "Physics x3" or whatever, there's not really a backup if Dix dies an untimely death, except another Dix.)

What if your opponent carefully killed all the personnel with the matching skills to actually solve the mission? Not sure about constructed, but that happens all the time in sealed deck.

[BCSWowbagger]

What if your opponent carefully killed all the personnel with the matching skills to actually solve the mission? Not sure about constructed, but that happens all the time in sealed deck.

If you pull Dixon Hill, an ultra-rare from a very rare set, in Sealed, congratulations, you deserve him.

In constructed, yes, it does happen, but, like I said, if you're trying to grab, say, Diplomatic Conference, you typically don't even have your solver personnel in the attempt. So your opponent can deny you mission requirements all he wants; you're still going to bag the mission right after the dilemmas go away.

[AllenGould]

In constructed, yes, it does happen, but, like I said, if you're trying to grab, say, Diplomatic Conference, you typically don't even have your solver personnel in the attempt. So your opponent can deny you mission requirements all he wants; you're still going to bag the mission right after the dilemmas go away.

True, but one card play for Dix (that can easily be reported Just In Time and not be risked beforehand) is a lot faster than how many cards and plays to get a spare solver crew for this particular mission.

These threads are interesting to me though, because it shows how time has changed our memories of how these cards worked.

[commdecker]

Many of the ideas in this thread have been proposed before, and some have even been sent to playtesting. This early post in the thread sums up what happened next:

On Dix: some folks feel very strongly that ignoring a full set of mission requirements in a game that is fundamentally about solving missions is inherently overpowered. Others feel that reducing Dix's ability to less than that -- given that he is otherwise an incredibly terrible card with zero real skills and a useless classification -- would make him worthless.

(Full disclosure: I am in the latter camp.)

The inherent contradictions between the two camps mean that consensus has been elusive, and Dix has remained on the ban list for years despite several serious attempts to get him off it.

[sexecutioner]

The obvious one with Dix is the mission solving ability.

The not-so-obvious one is combining him with Carlos and drawing cards from the discard pile.

How do players feel about that ability? Bear in mind that Carlos can be easily accessed with Rods.

EDIT: Plus both are free plays with War Council

[AllenGould]

The not-so-obvious one is combining him with Carlos and drawing cards from the discard pile.

How do players feel about that ability? Bear in mind that Carlos can be easily accessed with Rods.

Carlos is pretty meh in my book - it's only optional in the "I need to move these people together and apart" sense. I don't think I ever heard of an evil plan involving him.

(Which may be because while you can swap Riker in for Picard while he's playing detective, Carlos requires giving up Data who is a bit trickier to replace.)

[sexecutioner]

The not-so-obvious one is combining him with Carlos and drawing cards from the discard pile.

How do players feel about that ability? Bear in mind that Carlos can be easily accessed with Rods.

Carlos is pretty meh in my book - it's only optional in the "I need to move these people together and apart" sense. I don't think I ever heard of an evil plan involving him.

(Which may be because while you can swap Riker in for Picard while he's playing detective, Carlos requires giving up Data who is a bit trickier to replace.)

In a Fed deck, absolutely. In an N/A deck, there's less need for Data.

I could imagine some weird bullshit Handshake and Mutation tricks with this.

[Armus]

The not-so-obvious one is combining him with Carlos and drawing cards from the discard pile.

How do players feel about that ability? Bear in mind that Carlos can be easily accessed with Rods.

Carlos is pretty meh in my book - it's only optional in the "I need to move these people together and apart" sense. I don't think I ever heard of an evil plan involving him.

(Which may be because while you can swap Riker in for Picard while he's playing detective, Carlos requires giving up Data who is a bit trickier to replace.)

In a Fed deck, absolutely. In an N/A deck, there's less need for Data.

I could imagine some weird bullshit Handshake and Mutation tricks with this.

This exactly underscores my point. Maybe it's still broken. Maybe it's not. Maybe there's a tier one War Council deck out there (hell, maybe it involves Barbers!)

But until we get the cards back in the field it's all theory craft. If TPTB want actual data, maybe crowdsourcing the playtesting to the entire player base for a period of time is the way to get that data and make a more informed decision.

[BCSWowbagger]

^ Post-worlds is the perfect time for such experimentation!

Now, I say this because I like Armus's idea, but now I will Devil's Advocate against it.

I know for a fact that Errata has been open to releasing cards from the ban list without errata. They just send candidates to testing rather than the whole community, so we only see it out here if the tests go well (as with Black Hole).

And there are some good arguments for doing it that way. After all, testers are there precisely for the purpose of validating stuff like "Dixon Hill is too good / Dixon Hill is okay." And, like Matt said just a couple posts ago: when Dix gets sent to testers, they end up divided on that very question. There's no strong reason for Errata to think it will be different if it goes to the public.

All of this makes me think that, much as I would like to see a "supervised release" for Dixon Hill specifically, Errata's probably not going to bite, and fair enough. Which means the real answer here is the same as it's always been: we need more playtesters.

[AllenGould]

Another angle to hit it from - what do players want Dix for? (Or ATA, for that matter).

What does Dix do to improve the game? (For the sake of argument, pretend Dix never existed - how would you sell people on why this card is a good idea?)

[MidnightLich]

A brief comment on the "temporary release:"

In general, something like this is more trouble than it's worth. However, I can envision a situation where we do a very limited version like a weekend pass as long as a) it's not anywhere during the competitive season, b) it's well advertised, and c) groups can opt in or out at their discretion.

To be clear, I haven't discussed this idea with anyone else. But I could see us doing a well advertised, well documented test where a specific card is pardoned for a week (possibly longer if for a specific, online event) in order to give us data.

But, in an attempt to be perfectly clear, this is just me riffing on an idea. Nothing official at this time.

-crp

[AllenGould]

In general, something like this is more trouble than it's worth. However, I can envision a situation where we do a very limited version like a weekend pass as long as a) it's not anywhere during the competitive season, b) it's well advertised, and c) groups can opt in or out at their discretion.

"OTF no-banlist" might be an interesting exhibition format for conventions and the like.

[MidnightLich]

In general, something like this is more trouble than it's worth. However, I can envision a situation where we do a very limited version like a weekend pass as long as a) it's not anywhere during the competitive season, b) it's well advertised, and c) groups can opt in or out at their discretion.

"OTF no-banlist" might be an interesting exhibition format for conventions and the like.

Yeah. But if we're aiming to get useful data re: amnesty, I think it would be best to limit which cards have the pardon to the smallest few.