This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
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 - Beta Quadrant
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#490415
AllenGould wrote: I'd argue that ATA's issue, at heart, is the same as Rogue Borg and Brain Drain - they're all cards that hit personnel out of the blue. (You have to proactively walk into dilemmas, so they "feel" fairer.) Walking over with personnel and battling feels fine, blowing up ships the same (until we hit lockout territory). But the ability to just point and whack people "from range" doesn't feel right these days. And Shrouding fits the logic as well, since just dropping in a random dude doesn't feel much different from just popping a Rogue Borg, even if it's technically a personnel.
"Action at a distance" is tricky, but not fundamentally broken. Remember the Alamo is perfectly fine. Plasma Fire and Warp Core Breach aren't even playable. So I still believe that the issue is appropriate costing, not the effect.

ATA also is not "out of the blue", it's telegraphed three turns in advance. This is quite a bit of time to do things (e.g. even if you can't win by then, on the last turn you can Leeroy Jenkins your personnel into missions to clear out as many dilemmas as possible).

My proposed fix would be something along these lines...

Countdown: 4
Once per game, plays on table. When countdown expires, discard all personnel in play (even if time-traveling).

(And if this isn't balanced, the countdown is an easy tweak. Surely there is some countdown value for which the card isn't broken, since 99% of games will be over by then.)
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#490418
BCSWowbagger wrote:Today:
Rogue Borg Mercenaries
[Int] Rogue Borg Mercenaries

Horga'hn may be the most powerful card ever, but RBM is the most obnoxious. My very first tournament (late 2002), my very first game, was versus a guy who Defended Homeworld for Lore, and the rest of his draw deck was Rogue Borg, Lore Returns, and Crosis. He waited until I attempted a mission, hit me with the Higher Fewer / Scow combo that was underneath every single mission, then buried me in RBM for a lockout. (At the time, I was impressed; 13-year-old me was astonished that anyone could own more than 2 or at most 3 copies of a rare card like Crosis.)

That's all RBM did. It seems they were supposed to be kind of a cool pop-up battle, maybe once or twice a game, where the intensity of the battle scaled with the owner's investment in the strategy. (I've misplaced my Brady Strategy Guide, so maybe somebody can remind me what it says about RBM, but I think it was something like that.) Neat gamesmanship, right? But, instead, in a classic "here's why good Interrupts are hard to design in 1E" moment, RBM only ever showed up in one of two very degenerate uses:

(1) The deck I faced, a hard lockout deck that prevented me from playing the game.

(2) RBM "ping" decks, where a single RBM would be sacrificed in a battle with opponent's crew on opponent's turn... thereby stopping said crew and preventing them from doing anything that turn. Another kind of lockout, essentially.

Decipher refused to ban cards, so instead they started making counters. RBM is probably the most-countered card of all time: I count 11 explicit counters to it, increasing over time from the very modest (Targ and Intruder Force Field) to the dramatic (Sense The Borg + Borg Neuroprocessor) to the absurd ( [Ref] Reactor Overload) until finally Decipher gave up and pseudo-banned it with Strategema.

Strategema is what got it added to the original OTF ban list, because every card named by pre-errata Strategema was banned. But, interestingly, RBM was considered a serious enough problem that, about three weeks earlier, there was a discussion about banning RBM (and Q, and for some reason Strategema itself) from Open format as well (where the only banned card has always been Raise the Stakes). However, decisionmakers were starting to work on OTF at that time, and decided that it was better to tackle everything at once in OTF's comprehensive ban list rather than single out a few cards for special treatment.

On a side note, while I was trying to figure out exactly what was going on here, I discovered that the ban list went from "here's an idea whose time has probably come" to "we're done, ship it to Playtesting" in six weeks flat -- and this happened over the Christmas holidays, when things around here usually get very quiet. The speed with which the 1E Department moved in those early days is both thrilling and terrifying.

(There was also a brief public comment period in May, which was surprisingly sparse given the explosive content.)
Fun fact: RBM and Crosis were seriously considered for redesign when we were working on the [1E-TNG] [NA] Borg for The Sky's The Limit. At that time, the appetite for such drastic changes to cards was almost non-existent, so nothing like that was done and the cards were ignored.

-crp
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#490440
BCSWowbagger wrote: I think JeBuS has a point that I shoulda done this as an article series. I think I'm committed now, though.
Always more demand for video content, though. :D
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
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2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#490445
I happened to be rooting around in my game closet, and came across my Brady Games book. Here's what it says about RBM:
Brady Games wrote:Rogue Borg have strength in numbers, and so when planning to use them, a strategy that involves stocking many of them in your deck is required to be effective. The general strategy is to stock six or more in your deck, and hold them in your hand as they come up until you have a group of five or six you can unleash directly on the opponent. *lots of text on how battle works*
A large group can thus devastate an opponent's crew, although the battle may last many turns before the crew is eliminated, and during that time the opponent might bring up additional ships to beam over reinforcements! These battles occur at the very beginning of each turn, and of course as in all battles the personnel involved are "stopped" for the remainder of the turn, which means they have the additional effect of occupying the opponent's forces, slowing their progress.
Brady Games wrote:Wait until you have Crosis and enough Rogue Borg Mercenaries in your hand to overpower a ship's crew, and then unleash Crosis and the mercenaries onto your opponent's ship all at once. You will defeat the ship's crew and leave Crosis onboard to stop any further attempts at manning the ship by your opponent. If you have the Lore Returns card, you can play it on the commandeered ship to allow you to take control of the ship and begin to attack other ships in your opponent's fleet.
So, it seems pretty clear that Decipher intended RBM to be a ship lockout strategy, but did not envision the ping version.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#490449
Thank you for finding and then TRANSCRIBING that, Maggie! That's research dedication right there!
jadziadax8 wrote:So, it seems pretty clear that Decipher intended RBM to be a ship lockout strategy, but did not envision the ping version.
I think it's clear Decipher wanted you to be able to take over a ship. (Lore Returns makes no sense otherwise.) Losing one ship is an acceptable outcome in 1E, and shouldn't be game-breaking for anyone.

I don't think they foresaw the RBM x60 decks that used RBM in large enough numbers to allow you to take over EVERY ship and lock out the entire game.

Thank you again! I'm still kinda bowled over you typed that all up.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#490450
Today:
Romulan Minefield (I got indulgent because that's my card)
Scanner Interference (where the more interesting story is why is it still banned?)
[Evt] Romulan Minefield

Writing about this card after designing it is a bit of a minefield for me, ha ha ha.

The official reason given for the ban is on the card page:
Errata Team 2 July 2018 wrote:Romulan Minefield is part of a powerful combo involving free plays and a draw engine, IDIC: Power of the High Command, without cultural enforcement. Due to concerns from the Errata Team and players, Romulan Minefield is banned to avoid warping the rest of the competitive season.
On pre-errata IDIC: Power, you could draw cards for Schemes even without having any Vulcans in play, so people were playing all-Romulan decks that seeded IDIC: Power anyway just to generate card draws. This was crazy good. Following the maxim "ban the thing with the smallest impact on the game, not the thing that is 'most to blame,'" the CC took Minefield out of circulation (instead of Power, which was briefly discussed).

However, IDIC: Power was fixed (or, in the eyes of some players, yes I'm pre-empting you Armus, spayed, (pun intended)) in September of this year, yet Minefield remains banned. What's up?

I don't have access to the current Errata team forums. (Which is for the best.) But I think Errata is aware that, while the Minefield/Power combo was particularly degenerate, there were concerns that Minefield was still too good even without Power... particularly in an environment with Holographic Camo (which had not yet been banned). Were those concerns justified? Hard to say, since Minefield was legal for such a short time and nearly everyone used it with Power. I'm certainly too biased to judge.

There was public discussion of making Minefield into a unique card, like some other schemes... but, without the comprehensive "scheme" support Vulcans have, that seems to turn Minefield into binder fodder, and guts its designed intent. The proposal to remove the "for free" text completely ran into similar problems: it corrected the problem, but also made it very hard to use the card as intended.

What was Minefield's intention, you ask? Well, here I can speak with authority, since this is the one card on the ban list where the idea came straight from my brain:

Romulan Minefield is supposed to be a defensive card. The mechanical "flavor" for [22] [Rom] as a whole was defined as "we turtle up at Drone Control Room," making DCR an extremely tempting (and virtually undefendable) target for an opponent. Minefield is supposed to help a [22] [Rom] player block (or at least slow) an aggressive opponent who is trying to attack DCR. You play a bunch of them between your own missions, then mostly ignore them. If you want to use them aggressively against an opponent, you have to burn card plays, just like Subspace Warp Rift (which is binder fodder). Originally, only Drone-class ships were immune to Minefield's effect (making it a VERY focused [22] [Rom] card), but we decided Chess Game decks might like to use it to defend the Neutral Zone, so we extended it.

What I think we overlooked in Design (other than the Power/Minefield interaction, which we very obviously missed) is that there are a lot of [Rom] missions in the game, and this made it relatively easy to use Minefield aggressively, heavily polluting your opponent's part of spaceline at the very low cost of "free". Moreover, an aggressive opponent is unlikely to allow you to actually put your missions next to each other -- aggressive opponents almost always interleave missions. Because of this, despite promising playtest results, Minefield never really got used the way Design hoped. It was almost universally used offensively.

If I were redesigning this today, I'd probably pitch this text instead:
Plays on your mission (for free if a non-homeworld whose only printed icon is [Rom] ). Span is +2. Passing non- [Rom] ships must stop here for rest of turn or incur damage.
That would limit free plays to Covert Installation (NZ), Covert Rescue, Establish Medical Complex, Extraction, Iconia Investigation (NZ), Inspect Strategic Snare (great combo, as intended), Investigate "Shattered Space" (NZ), Investigate Raid, Quash Conspiracy, Strategic Diversion, Study Lonka Pulsar, and Supervise Dilithium Mine (Remus). That, in turn, would drive [22] [Rom] players strongly toward playing these [Rom] missions, which only further reinforces the flavor of the faction. Meanwhile, making it "your" mission means you will always suffer at least some cost from using this aggressively, and can't screw over an opponent who just happened to pack lots of [Rom] missions.

However, I'm not part of Errata. Even if Errata sees this and says, "Oh, that's a good idea," the proposal could easily fall apart in testing, as happens so often when a seemingly good idea is exposed to real play conditions.

This was a very self-indulgent entry, because I (obviously) care about this card disproportionately much compared to other cards on the ban list. I'll try to keep the next entry short and sweet!

[Inc] Scanner Interference

Why was it banned? Exactly why MilesStuntDouble and CorbinQ said it was banned: "The 'pollution' function was used to lock the opponent's personnel on planet missions for most of the game." "Opponent's would use it to download the cards it downloads and lock me out of a mission for a turn or so and then only allow me to beam up / down three guys each turn. The card got better when tribunal of Q came out as it could come from out of the discard pile. This is one of the most annoying cards in revised. NPE for sure!"

However, the pollution cards (Atmospheric Ionization / Distortion Field) got errata'd back in 2010. Why's Scanner Interference still banned?

It stayed banned for a long time just because the Errata/unban process was dysfunctional. At the time, Errata was a function of Rules, and there was no precedent at the time (that I'm aware of) for releasing a banned card back into the environment without errata. There was talk of unbanning Scanner Interference unaltered in 2013, and it just... didn't happen. Many of you remember how long we had to wait between Errata in those days, which is why there's now a dedicated 1E Errata team. (We still have to wait a while, but the bottleneck is now playtesting, not the new Errata team itself.) In 2016, a decisionmaker suggested it should stay banned because [Ref] cards that have been removed from the environment shouldn't be allowed back in (because the CC is trying to phase out [Ref] cards). That was it, internally.

And, hey, the public didn't seem to mind. The first person to publicly argue that S.I. should be unbanned was apparently hoss-drone in 2018, after Scan and Full Planet Scan were errata'd.

However, the Scan erratas are exactly the reason S.I. stayed banned for the past couple of years. Errata made an attempt to errata S.I. in 2018, but testing feedback was that the new versions of Scan and Full Planet Scan were such bad binder fodder that releasing anti-Scan hate into the environment was just adding insult to injury. (FWIW, this assessment seems to be accurate: since receiving their errata, neither Scan nor Full Planet Scan has been played in a single OTF Complete event, at least not in a public deck.)

So, at this point, it seems that the only way for Scanner Interference to get past Playtesting is if it comes back without actually interfering with Scans -- a tall order, given Errata's mandate not to mess too much with the fundamental story of a card!
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
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2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#490453
BCSWowbagger wrote:Thank you for finding and then TRANSCRIBING that, Maggie! That's research dedication right there!
jadziadax8 wrote:So, it seems pretty clear that Decipher intended RBM to be a ship lockout strategy, but did not envision the ping version.
I think it's clear Decipher wanted you to be able to take over a ship. (Lore Returns makes no sense otherwise.) Losing one ship is an acceptable outcome in 1E, and shouldn't be game-breaking for anyone.

I don't think they foresaw the RBM x60 decks that used RBM in large enough numbers to allow you to take over EVERY ship and lock out the entire game.

Thank you again! I'm still kinda bowled over you typed that all up.
You're welcome. It allowed me to procrastinate on writing my last final exam for a bit longer. :lol:

You're right, of course, on the vision. They didn't think big or small.
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#490456
BTW, reading that guide is a hoot. There's a lot of stuff in there dedicated to teaching people about the idea of a CCG. For instance, the paragraph on how trading with a collector might differ from trading with a player is pretty funny.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#490465
I don't think they foresaw the RBM x60 decks that used RBM in large enough numbers to allow you to take over EVERY ship and lock out the entire game.
You're right, of course, on the vision. They didn't think big or small.
In all fairness to Decipher, at that time the game had a 60-card limit, including the draw deck and seeds (and missions counted too). The game would also end as soon as any player decked out. Getting an RBM lockout deck to work was trickier since it took away room from your own personnel. You could include a few for pinging, but Temporal Rift was more efficient at stalling ships.

RBM benefited enormously from (1) relaxing the deck size limit; (2) the release of Lore; and (3) increases in card-drawing power (e.g., Process Ore).
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#490467
lore doesnt actually effect pinging though. rogue borgs can ping with 1 strength just as easily as they can ping with 2 strength.
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#490481
BCSWowbagger wrote:Today:
Romulan Minefield (I got indulgent because that's my card)
Scanner Interference (where the more interesting story is why is it still banned?)
oh.......................................................

crap..................

*opens deck editor*
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#490482
Takket wrote:
oh.......................................................

crap..................

*opens deck editor*
Between you and MVB, I'm starting to wonder whether the real reason nobody complained is because everybody somehow forgot it was banned. :P
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