This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.

How should the CC deal with Raise the Stakes?

Find a way to "fix it" as an ante card.
5
13%
Redesign it to respect the story but with new mechanics.
9
24%
Leave it alone as part of history.
24
63%
Other (please elaborate with a reply).
No votes
0%
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#560669
Hello!

It's Friday - the last Friday in August, to be exact, and it's time for a Friday Question. I want to know your thoughts on one of the oldest and most controversial cards in First Edition - Raise the Stakes! If you aren't familiar with this card, here is the game text:
Your opponent must forfeit the game OR agree the eventual winner may randomly select and keep one card from loser's 60-card deck. (Cumulative.)
It's from Premiere, the very first set way back in 1994. When this game came out, CCGs were brand new and most of them had a concept of ante in them. Ante was an idea that Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic (the first CCG) used in his game. You "risked" one of your marbles - our in a CCGs case - cards - when you played. If you lost, your opponent got to keep your card. If you won, you got to keep their card. That's what this card was doing.

Unfortunately, these companies really quickly realized that ante was an awful lot like gambling, and that risked these new CCGs running afoul of local gaming laws. As all the CCG makers didn't want to have to deal with gambling regulations, ante cards were quickly banned and fell to the wayside. For First Edition, the one and only ante card was Raise the Stakes, and Decipher solved the problem by banning the card by rule. It's the one and only card illegal in every format of 1E, by rule.

My question for all of you is: should we do anything about that? Do you want to see us redesign the card to keep the story (the Enterprise-D poker games) but avoid this mechanic? Should we find a way to bring ante back into the game? Or should we leave it alone, banned, as a monument to history?

Sound off and let us know. I'm very curious what you think of RtS these days, and how you'd like for us to address this card, given the opportunity.

Thank you,
-crp
User avatar
 
By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Retired Moderator
#560673
I made a thread about this myself way back in the long ago, and overwhelming consensus was to leave as is, as a monument to Decipher's initial bad ideas.

It is also worth mentioning that even if it were unbanned today, playing the card as printed would result in it being largely useless as it can be easily argued that the card requires a deck be exactly 60 cards, and the various decks the player might have (seed, draw, side decks) either legally cannot be 60 cards or are unlikely to be exactly 60 cards.

That said, I'd personally like to see it errata'ed to something useful in the game, but not keeping the ante gameplay.
User avatar
First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#560675
I went "leave it alone", because the card isn't actually broken.

It's not banned in tournament play because it's too good. It's banned because (a) it mucks without tournaments and (b) governments don't like when people start horning into their gambling.

Outside of a tournament, the card works 100% fine. And not every card needs to be useful or playable in tournaments.

Decipher managed to make other poker/gaming themed cards over the years, so I don't see any compelling reason why we need this specific card.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#560680
I would like Zero Ban List.

If Raise the Stakes remains as-is, we will never have Zero Ban List.

So I'd like to make the smallest reasonable change to get it off the ban list. (Which, to me, would mean honoring the central "bluff/raise/call" mechanic but changing the stakes.)
User avatar
First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#560681
BCSWowbagger wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 10:57 pm I would like Zero Ban List.
OTF will never have a zero ban list, because of the cards it turns into rules. (Intermix Ratio, You Are A Monument, etc.)
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Moderator
#560694
Leave it be as a testament to bad design ideas that have since been abandoned, so that the mistakes might never be repeated.
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By Jesseon (Jesse Warburton)
 - Alpha Quadrant
 -  
#560705
Raise The Stakes doesn't need to be fixed or anything like that. I'm all for leaving it alone as a cultural relic. If it ends up being the only card still on the banlist in the end, that sounds like a win.
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Shipping Manager
By SirDan (Dan Hamman)
 - Shipping Manager
 -  
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
#560719
I voted to remake it as something similar, without an illegal function.

But I like to read the card literally, as pointed out above. I can't remember the last time I played with a 60-card deck. So it does nothing to me!
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#560725
Keep it as it is, for its history. Its an important artifact of 1E and gaming lore.

At the same time, you can use the colon rule to introduce a conceptual "sequel" or replacement, to re-introduce the ante mechanic, without paving over our history (and would probably be even less work overall, since you don't have to hunt for a specific frame to recreate the card image).

"Raise the Stakes: All-In" or some other poker term ("Raise the Stakes: <Poker Terminology>").
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#560726
Boffo97 wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:23 pm It is also worth mentioning that even if it were unbanned today, playing the card as printed would result in it being largely useless as it can be easily argued that the card requires a deck be exactly 60 cards, and the various decks the player might have (seed, draw, side decks) either legally cannot be 60 cards or are unlikely to be exactly 60 cards.
A literal reading of the card means it's not only useful, it's overpowered and is played as an instant win card.

The card asks the opponent to either forfeit or agree to a very specific task. If that task is accomplishable, great, then he has a choice.

If the task is not accomplishable because he doesn't have a 60 card deck, then he can't agree, since it's physically impossible to agree to do something that's physically impossible. Therefore, the second choice becomes invalid and the opponent must forfeit.

If you let the card back in as is, then everyone is incentivized to make 60 card decks or risk losing! What an interesting shift to the meta that would be!
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#560785
Copying my response from the ban list thread...
I would like the ban list to be as small as possible -- ideally zero -- but I admit this reflects my neuroses as much as anything else. (Broken links bother me for the same reason.) I can convince myself that the [Ref] bans are actually the opposite of a ban and that players are being forced to seed them "for free."

And yes, this means finding a solution for Raise the Stakes. Which might be easier than we think, since a lot of people understandably get hung up on the ante bit. To me, the essence of the card is to give your opponent a *literal* dilemma: choosing an immediate negative outcome A, or risking a worse future outcome B which may or may not happen. And that's a cool design space to be working in.

It's hard to think of keeping A as "you lose the game," but I have faith that the CC designers can come up with balanced versions of A/B, maybe even keeping the flavor of the poker story. Maybe something like this:
Plays on table. When opponent begins a mission attempt, they must select an attempting personnel ("ante"). Opponent chooses: stop "ante" OR discard "ante" if mission attempt fails. (Cumulative.)
Almost certainly needs tweaking in lots of ways (e.g., if too strong, can make it discard after use, or the ante discard only triggers if the mission is unsolved at end of turn) but you get the idea.

I agree errata should change the card as little as possible -- but the more problematic the original is, the more latitude I'm willing to accept in interpreting what is in line with the original "spirit".
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#560788
Rachmaninoff wrote:Copying my response from the ban list thread...
That doesn't capture the spirit of the card or of poker. The whole point to making a raise or a bet is that you risk losing something in an attempt to gain something.

Your proposal makes the opponent choose between two bad choices, stopping the personnel or losing him if the mission attempt fails. There's nothing to gain, the best outcome is that you just don't lose anything.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#560797
I hear the words "zero ban list" all the time and I don't get it! It's a tool to balance the game. If you take it away you remove a tool that's useful.

I went with "leave it alone"

It's not broken, just useless. And we have lots of such cards in the game already.
User avatar
First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#560799
Smiley wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 7:38 pm I hear the words "zero ban list" all the time and I don't get it! It's a tool to balance the game. If you take it away you remove a tool that's useful.
Presumably, the ban list will always exist. Just hopefully we are doing a good enough job on design/balance/errata that the ban list spends most of its time empty and some of its time with, like, one card on it.

Wouldn't that make Balance's life easier, and give them the chance to tackle other issues, if at any given time they had between 0 and 1 ban list cards to worry about (instead of 20-40 or whatever it is now)?

Besides, Decipher was right: you get a card, in a pack or in a printer, you should be allowed to play with it. It feels bad to have a card you like that is gone indefinitely-- much less forever. Even if you have to play it with errata, that's better than not playing with it at all ever.

Rachmaninoff stated my sentiments fairly well, although I think we need to hew a little closer to the spirit of RtS to get it right.
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