[geraldkw]

Reading some of the player created resources and this viewtopic.php?p=489046#p489046 has convinced me that the anomaly can probably come off of the ban list.

The most interesting part of the argument in this post was this:

The big advantage of bringing it back is to discourage decks that spend all their resources to build a megacrew in the first few turns, and to encourage decks that have greater robustness and maintain a slower, but steadier pace

I remember playing this card back in the day and I never felt like it was overpowered. Granted we all played with at least a temporal rift and a Kevin or two in our decks, which is fine with me, I like verbs playing a meaningful role in the game. If anything, it often pushed the game to an actual conclusion instead of everyone just waiting to draw into multiples of every skill they actually took risks and tried to solve missions, which sometimes paid off and sometimes blew up but it was better than spending several more turns trying to draw into our super crew.

[geraldkw]

I guess no one wants to talk about this anymore.

[BCSWowbagger]

Not that I don't want to, but rather that I never played with it, so I really have nothing intelligent to say. I also really liked Rachmaninoff's post, but the only way to discovery what ATA would do today is to try it, and I haven't.

[SirDan]

All I have are distant memories of ATA+Hologram decks. It wasn't fun then, I can't see how it would be now.

[Spectre9]

In my play group a long time ago we all kinda agreed not to play with it.

It's not fun having everything wiped out.

But how is this not the same as Stop First Contact which can be even more devastating?

There are other issues such as chaining multiples copies and combining them with holograms.

I think the interesting question is does it help or hinder battle decks. It makes it very hard to patrol the spaceline if your people are going to die leaving your ships floating in space unstaffed.

[princedetenebres]

Well, I suppose for Stop First Contact you've at least got to *do* something to get that monumental benefit, only one affiliation can complete it and it's somewhat resource intensive, completing a specific mission/objective with ways of blocking it or outright nullifying it (I remember a game against a 30-card SFC deck where I landed a Vulcan lander at MMC on the first turn of the game to prevent it before the Borg even had a turn, it was great though admittedly it was just good luck on my part that I happened to be running a Protect Historic Encounter deck and could do that!).

Whereas ATA is just play a card and there you go -- though on the other hand it does at least hit both players... but if you're all/mostly[Holo] you probably don't care too much.

Yet, with the speed of the game these days, unless you're playing it on Turn 1-2, it might well be over before it does anything, and is, of course, subject to Kevin/Quinn.

I think I'd be fine with it coming back with an errata that discarded holograms and nullified temporal rift/time travel pod. Fine, play it, but no getting around it.

It'd also be nice if it had some sort of requirement a la Examine Singularity to nullify it as well. Something hard, requiring multiple ships, say SCIENCE, Astro and some amount of cunning. Obviously this would require changing it to an event that played on a location where those requirements could be met to nullify it, but at least then it wouldn't be kevin/quinn or nothing.

[geraldkw]

Yes, holograms need to be discarded, so I guess it needs at least that errata.

Some way to deal with it shouldn't be a single card though since that's a "Silver/Magic Bullet" kind of solution that the CC (correctly, IMO) tries not to create.

If anything, some kind of requirement on the card itself should allow the opponent to nullify it, but I'm not immediately coming up with something that makes sense thematically and has a significant game play effect.

I guess what could happen is the card could be a dilemma that if hit in the first N turns of the game will require the attempting(/scouting player) to stop the crew/away team until the end of their next full turn or place on table as an event that only affects their personnel(possibly with a shorter countdown). This would force them to go all in on speed solving before the countdown expires, accept a brief pause, or pack solutions(kevin, etc). All of those things would mean possibly adding a turn or two for slower decks to set up.

Obviously there are design problems with this, such as having to keep count of what turn it is becoming a necessary rule.

So I guess I am sort of talked(or talking myself) out of just bringing this back without change, but I think it's not impossible we could see the card come back, retaining essentially the original flavor without the broken aspects.

[Armus]

This conversation reminded me of my one of my dream card entries from last year

Prehistoric France
3.5 Billion BCE Earth: Origin site of life on earth. Would become Jean-Luc Picard's old stomping grounds.
Seeds on table if Devron System is in play; download Anti-Time Anomaly. Anti-Time Anomaly is not duplicatable, and is relocated here instead of discarded after it has had its effect (or if nullified). No player may attempt Investigate Anti-Time Eruption unless they seeded a copy. Dead End is nullified at Devron System. Investigate Anti-Time Eruption is worth +25 points when solved (or -25 if Anti-Time Anomaly here).

My goal with this card was to find a design solution to allow ATA back into the game. I figured starting with it in play would give both players fair warning and allow them to plan accordingly. It also would potentially act as a throttle on early game deployment (or accelerate it if a player was feeling bold) and create an interesting choice dynamic.

Also, once it had had its effect it would hang out on the time location being not duplicatable and prevent stacking, which was the biggest problem with the concept to begin with.

I'm not sure if this idea was any good then, or of it's interesting now, but if we're talking ATA I figured I'd add my

[Hoss-Drone]

The problem is that the card has a huge npe problem. We can talk in circles all day going back and forth about how to play it, play around it, etc but the bottom line is that it would pretty much single handily drive away any new or b inexperienced player. Even veteran players who are used to 1e chicanery have too many bad memories of this card making games either stupid long, stupid arduous or stupid one sided.

The only way I can see this coming back is to overhaul it to then point it's a new card or make some other cards around it to balance it and that seems like more work than is worth it for a card no one really likes.

Let it stay dead.

[Rachmaninoff]

My two cents, as the author of the post that sparked this discussion.

I don't think ATA can come back "as is", with no changes. But I think changing "kill" to "discard" and adding a "once per game" restriction would would fix the biggest issues in a simple enough way, and improve Trek sense in the process.

the bottom line is that it would pretty much single handily drive away any new or b inexperienced player

I disagree with this, on several counts.

First, when I first came across this card back in 1995 I *was* a new and inexperienced player. One of the three friends in my playgroup pulled an ATA in his first starter. It didn't drive any of us away, it was a neat and powerful card, but we just took it as part of the game.

Second, new players come to the game with fewer preconceived notions than we think.
A lot of CCGs (and games in general) have reset mechanisms (Wrath of God and Nevinyrral's Disk in M:tG), so why would a new player be shocked to see such a card in STCCG? The issue is more this:

veteran players who are used to 1e chicanery have too many bad memories of this card making games either stupid long, stupid arduous or stupid one sided.

where veteran players have come to understand a certain boundary between what's over the line and what's not. I do not see why a new player, without this understanding from experience, would automatically assume there are no "board reset" mechanisms.

(I make the same argument with mission stealing:

there are plenty of games that allow sneaky "swooping in": you can steal in basketball, you can intercept a pass in football, so why would a newbie be shocked that a mission can be stolen in STCCG? Especially since the opponent's side of the mission has requirements and attempting icons. I'm convinced the issue is that *experienced* players have come to play and conceptualize the game in a way that makes "mission stealing" a surprise/advanced strategy, whereas a *new* player could more easily understand that you have to watch your own missions too

.)

Third, why would this be any more of an NPE for a new or inexperienced player than:

-Playing Warp Core Breach on their ship without an ENGINEER.
-Wormhole-ing over and destroying their ship in battle.
-Stopping First Contact and removing half their deck from the game.

All of these are similar "action at a distance" effects that can wipe out a crew -- in fact, with less advance warning than the Anti-Time Anomaly, and in a fully asymmetric way without any losses on the other side.

Now, you wouldn't dunk on a new player in a casual game by pulling out an Anti-Time Anomaly or Stopping First Contact, any more than you would go for aggressive steals when teaching your 5-year old how to play basketball. But that's part of teaching, and at some point you teach them to be careful when dribbling and passing for when the training wheels come off.

"Losing a bunch of personnel" is not an uncommon outcome in the game. We can debate whether ATA is costed appropriately, whether it's avoidable enough, whether its effects on game length/arduousness/one-sidedness, etc. are positive or negative. But I don't buy the "it's an obvious NPE for new players" line unless we're prepared to ban Stop First Contact along similar grounds.

[geraldkw]

I agree that Stop First Contact is the ultimate NPE for a new player, Trek sense or not. I know you have to "work for it" but it basically ends the game if you depended on non- personnel as part of your strategy.

[Rachmaninoff]

Right... whatever argument there is against ATA on new player NPE grounds would surely apply even more to Stop First Contact:

• It's essentially one-sided and doesn't cause any losses to the SFC player.
• It also applies to ships and facilities, not just personnel.
• It removes from the game instead of kills.
• It pulls things out of your hand so an STP won't save you, and out of your deck so there's no coming back.
• There's no three full-turn delay, in fact a clever Borg player can do it all in one turn.
• There is no simple nullifier that can splash into any deck as easily as a Kevin or Examine Singularity.
• Anti-Time Anomaly explains exactly what it does. Without reading the glossary, there is no clue that the phrase "Timeline disrupted in 2063" on Stop First Contact isn't just flavor, but might actually mean "I have to remove half my deck from the game." So even if the newbie sees their opponent play SFC and reads the card, they likely won't know what's coming.
• Anti-SFC tactics are a lot trickier for new players than anti-ATA. "If you can't win in three turns, clear out as many dilemmas as you can and STP the most important personnel back to hand" or "Stock a Kevin next time" are much easier to explain and apply than "If you smell Borg during the mission phase, rearrange your dilemma combos on the fly to exploit the differences between scouting and attempting, especially at Earth"

Note that I am NOT calling for Stop First Contact to be banned. But we need to be consistent with our arguments, and if the concern is "NPEs for new players because all their personnel can get wiped" there are bigger problems than ATA.

Also, I want to clarify that I am not necessarily advocating for ATA. I'm arguing against dismissing it out of hand, and arguing for thoughtful testing because I see some possible upsides. I suspect the problems can be dealt with in a way that is a net positive for the game, but this is just a suspicion and is not backed up by any testing.

[AllenGould]

All I have are distant memories of ATA+Hologram decks. It wasn't fun then, I can't see how it would be now.

Or the Temporal Rift version (or the swag Time Travel Pod if you're showing off) where your people just go for a ride during the wipe out.

Honestly, battle takes more work for the same result, and no-one likes that..

[Armus]

I think it CAN work if all of the following become true through errata or design:

- it's once per game (per player)

- there's a way to nullify it in-game (maybe something in the vein of Examine Singularity)

- it no kidding takes out everything. No timey wimey holo-dodge bullshit. You want to blow up the board? Blow up the damn ship board!

I'm not opposed to really powerful events (and last I looked, Kevin Uxbridge and Quinn were still things

[Rachmaninoff]

Right, I'm thinking something like this:

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

No hologram or Temporal Rift/Time Travel Pod loopholes, and the once-per-game limitation is the same as that imposed by the existing card against it.

I'm also open to the idea of letting the opponent nullify it in-game somehow, and maybe tying it to the Devron system (like Armus's suggestion), but that takes more design work.

The goal would be to craft a good, simple reset card. Lots of games have these as a balancing mechanism, hindering decks that sprint to a fast start but can't keep up over the long haul. (For the Magic players out there, think of Wrath of God against Sligh). We have been longing for ways to slow down the game pace, and I have hopes that a tweaked Anomaly can help with that by filling the role of a "good" reset card. It may never be a card that people LIKE to see their opponent play (how many Magic players are happy when their opponent drops an Armageddon or Disk?) but that doesn't mean it's bad for the game.