[geraldkw]

This seems like a rule that can be offloaded to an Incident that says something like:

Plays (for free). Draw a card.
(explain the nemesis rule as a card effect)

or something like

Seeds on table. When your nemesis icon personnel enter play, draw a card(once per turn).
(explain the nemesis rule as a card effect)

I am guessing the main reason not to do this is that the rule is confusing and too hard to explain on a card? I would think a glossary entry for a specific card is preferable though to having a rule and having this in the rulebook in addition to the glossary.

[pfti]

It also takes away the random times you get to use it against an opponent. It doesn't happen alot, but using a lore to kill my opponent's soong has been a game changing swing

[MidnightLich]

Off-loading the Nemesis rules has been tried at least once, that I can recall, with limited success. In spite of that, these icons and rules are high on the list of candidates to be removed from the rules and off-loaded onto cards.

-crp

[BCSWowbagger]

The usual big obstacle that offloaders run into is cost. Why would you use a seed slot a card that doesn't help you very much -- and, in some cases, hurts you?

So you end up with two options: (1) make the mechanic more powerful, to justify the seed slot, or (2) somehow get the mechanic into the game at lower cost than a full seed slot, but without making it an auto-include. All of this, of course, will be subject to the withering scrutiny of the community, which wants clear, concise, and accessible rules but also doesn't want 1E to lose any of its quirkiness or for their delicately balanced Guramba decks to be disrupted. And why shouldn't they want the best possible game?

I am a big proponent of offloading, but all this makes it a real challenge to get offloads just right. Nemesis is somewhere in the middle of the challenge curve: it's one of the easiest concepts to offload to a card (I've done it, it's really not a lot of words), but one of the hardest to give a player a good reason to stock it as a card.

[Armus]

Make it a card.

Seems to have worked for White Deprivation...

[BCSWowbagger]

Heh, funny you mention that: I've been arguing for years that White Dep should be a mandatory download on post-errata Jem'Hadar Shrouding (or some other similarly popular card) instead of a . Don't make opponents bring loaded rules; make a player who wants to use tech pay for the tech with loaded rules.

(And then bring back the Founder Suicide rule the same way; that rule was wicked cool.)

[princedetenebres]

I somehow missed that the Founder's death triggering jem'hadar suicide rule had been dropped. Huh.

[Isidus]

A Nemesis card could do something more interesting than just off-loading the kill rule.

Something like "I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia" which allows a personnel to be moved instantly to his/her nemesis instantly. Just a thought.

[BCSWowbagger]

I somehow missed that the Founder's death triggering jem'hadar suicide rule had been dropped. Huh.

In 1999! https://starshipexcelsior.com/othersite ... arules.pdf

Since my childhood playgroup only had actual rulebooks to go by (and this rule never appeared in a rulebook), I actually never heard of it until many years after it was gone, and have never gotten to play with it.

Sweet rule, though.

[Klauser]

<Warning - old player rant follows>

Having played through the late Decipher 1E era, I have a lot of bad memories of those late expansions doing just this - offloading rules onto cards.

Until we learned of the financial hardships Decipher was enduring towards the end their run, I didn't understand why they did this.

Likewise, Decipher also stubbornly refused to ban existing 1E problem cards (with the exception of Raise the Stakes). They just printed other cards instead.

One of the reasons Decipher created QTR and Referee cards starting in 2000 was due to these policies, resulting in a defacto two-tier rules situation. You could build and win using decks with imbalanced/OP cards, unless your opponent stocked the right referee cards in their Q's Tent. Which of course competitive players did.

Many players considered this as tacit recognition that the game was broken, and moved on to 2E or other CCGs.

Since then, TCC has done a solid job in smoothing out major 1E problems from the Decipher era - like this one - and making the game more playable.

IMO, offloading rules back onto cards is a step in wrong direction.

[SirRogue]

IMO, offloading rules back onto cards is a step in wrong direction.

I agree 110%. My biggest gripe with Decipher was that they were incredibly negligent with taking an active role in fixing their game, refusing to ban or errata cards, insisting on "fix it in the cards". While was a great balancing stroke for the game, it still put the onus on the player to make sure you had the right counter to the right broken card or you still fell victim to it. One of the best things TCC ever did was to take ownership of the health of the meta, fixing things that need fixing. If not for this, 1E would never have made the comeback that it did.

If anything, we should doing the reverse of what is suggested here: be taking more cards that require have become mainstays in the game because of their overarching balance to the game and making them rules rather than requiring cards that must be played (a la General Quarters, You Are a Monument). I appreciate how the list of Ref cards has been generally chipped away by fixing the initial problem cards, an look forward to the trend continuing until there are none left.

Rather than returning to the clunky days of offloading rules onto cards, I alternatively suggest creating useful reference cards for, say, the top 10-15 most obscure or commonly misinterpreted rules aspects (similar to the Tribbles reference cards). You don't have a make a playable card in the game just to make the rules be handy. You could even require players to bring the reference card(s) relevant to your deck and provide them to your opponent (as BCSWowbagger mentioned with White Dep, the onus should be on YOU, not your opponent, to make sure everyone knows how your cards work) so you don't all lose 20 minutes of game time looking up rules entries. Playing infiltration? Here, opponent, here's all the things you can do with my personnel when they are part of your crew, and all the times I can do things with them. Playing Borg? Give your opponent a card (or 3) on how Borg do things differently than everyone else! If 1E rules are really so unwieldy (and yes, I know there are a lot of things to remember) that we are considering putting rules on cards, why not just...put the rules on cards that can sit out for reference and don't need to find a lame excuse to "play" them?

[boromirofborg]

I also think that White Deprivation shows an excellent example of why not to do this.


One of the core flavor and balancing points of an affiliation was offloaded.

Imagine if the Borg Attack restriction was offloaded.


Also the flavor is what sets the 1st generation Decipher games apart from later games. 2E never felt like the universe the way 1E did.

[AllenGould]

I also think that White Deprivation shows an excellent example of why not to do this.

One of the core flavor and balancing points of an affiliation was offloaded.

Counterpoint - how often did deprivation actually happen? How often do those two nemesis icons actually line up in game?

These turn into gotcha rules, where an old grognards gets to go "oh, you forgot about this obscure entry that's never happened in a game you've played, because it requires this incredibly specific combination of cards and events, so now you're screwed." to new players for cheap wins. And that's not a great way to get or keep new players, because the only defense is "read the whole rulebook and glossary".

[boromirofborg]

Deprivation rarely happened - because you had to plan for it if you were using Jem'hadar. You had to use seed slots, and include Vorta, and the rest.


Now, you could actually build a Jem'hadar deck without any Ketracel white and get randomly blown out if your opponent happens to be running White Deprivation.



It reminds me of how 2E, Decipher simplified assimilation into just gaining control. Which is fine, and easier.


But it lost the flavor of assimilation from 1E. That truly no longer was your Worf, it was another drone, etc.



For rules like KW, it was never about your opponent getting a surprise blowout, it was about a deck construction limitation.

Nemisis icons are a bit different, in that their don't matter at all, until they matter a lot. I don't have any emotional attachment to it, but at the same time, I'm not a fan of unloading onto cards because of the game changing nature of it either being there or not.



Maybe as the game is moving more and more DigitalFirst, we consider that any cards that offload rules are mandatory seeds, somehow?

[eberlems]

unless you wanted some No Way Out points to win.