Orbin wrote:Discovery rox wrote:i think qs planet is a neat mechanism to get an artifact, which is an especially in an environment where artifacts arent used anymore.
i guess i dont really see the issue with it.
I believe in OTF if I play Q's Planet you can't attempt it. So I could play a point loss strategy on you and Q's Planet (with no intention to solve it) to make you need an additional 40 points on top of all the point loss. Yes I would need an additional 40 points, but I can easily plan for that.
- James M
And worse - since I'm the only person who can attempt it, I get to control when the effect goes away. So even if you're in the lead, I can prevent you from winning, wait until I solve my mission and get ahead on points and then send down a Bob to remove the effect. Maybe not "broken", but it feels sooper cheap. (I'd group it with Containment Field and In The Zone, where it's mechanically sound but bad game design.)
Also wanted to add a perspective on Anti-Time Anomaly - remember that Premiere was the days when no-one really understood what TCG/CCGs were going to be or what was going to work - either for a game in particular or the genre in general. (Go look up the scoring for the SimCity CCG, or how X-Files painted themselves into a corner on the first set, to pick two examples.) And Magic isn't immune - there are a lot of old ABUR cards that everyone has forgotten because they're just incomprehensible or were proven to be completely wrong (like the idea that "one mana for three of something is equal"*)
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.
Balance-wise, it's pretty much a maxim that symmetrical effects aren't really symmetrical, because one of you knows what's coming and the other doesn't. Holograms are the classic trick (your guys die, mine don't), and there was definitely a version that played ATAs every turn or two to prevent the opponent from ever getting their feet under them again. (Or as a simpler trick - get ahead, then just spam events to lock the game down.)
Sure, you could Kevin it - but that's a bit expensive, because the game has moved to wanting you to get your events down. And if I'm dropping a fresh one every turn, that cost gets prohibitive *fast*.
In the end, ATA is on the ban list in no small part because it encourages play that the game doesn't really support (and players don't *want* it to support).
* for folks who don't know the punchline, the five cards range from utter binder fodder (white got 3 life), through staples (green with +3/+3 to creatures), to kinda-overpowered (red with 3 damage, black with 3 mana), to "this is a $6500 card that is banned or restricted in every format" (blue with 3 cards).