[DISCO Rox No More]

Did you miss the part where James literally just said the remastered wording was clearer?

Yes, I did, because two people can literally be writing posts at the same time.

And even if I had been able to see the future and know what he was going to post, it doesn't do a whit of good if I can't actually see what the remastered wording is.

[DISCO Rox No More]

Oh, okay. So when you criticized "the way people here" play, you didn't actually mean "the way people here" play, like the Continuing Committee and its community are some kind of weird outliers.

You meant, "the direction Warren Holland and his team decided to take the game after the PAQ era," and the way every player has played the game since then (except PAQ-era traditionalists).

I meant both, because one is a continued evolution and extrapolation from the other.

That's fine. If you want to criticize landmark game decisions from early 1999, that's your prerogative.

The problem between now and 1999 is that different incentives motivated the designers in 1999 than now, but (at least in this example), people seem to want to continue down the same path that Decipher was going down, even though there's no deeper need to.

In 1999, Decipher had "less noble" incentives for their design. They didn't prioritize gameplay above all, they had to think about things like profit motives, since it was a business. This lead to a refusal to errata. Another natural effect of the profit motive an increasing power curve in the cards.

People today don't have profit as an incentive. Therefore, there are other tools available now that weren't available then. And designing the game shouldn't be constrained to following the perverted track that Decipher was going down.

There should be no reason that design intentions from the original launch of the game (like mission stealing and its consequent interaction) shouldn't be returned to.

I bristled only because you were implying (or so it seemed to me) that this decision that was made when I was 9 years old was somehow my fault or the fault of my colleagues on the Rules team. I apologize if I inferred too much from that.

It's a game design problem, not a rules or ruling problem.

[DISCO Rox No More]

Sure do. And if you want to play Tom-and-Rollie Trek, you can... just limit yourself to PAQ Era cards and rules.

However if you like the richer, more expansive game that T&R Trek grew into, you have to take all of it, including the parts that don't line up with "Original Intent."

Hope you don't like , , , , , , , , , , , or cards, because none of those are part of the original intent of the original designers either...

Yeah, this make a whole lot of sense.

"You can only pick one or the other, you can't design so that you can pick the best of both worlds!"

Ok.

[Armus]

Sure do. And if you want to play Tom-and-Rollie Trek, you can... just limit yourself to PAQ Era cards and rules.

However if you like the richer, more expansive game that T&R Trek grew into, you have to take all of it, including the parts that don't line up with "Original Intent."

Hope you don't like , , , , , , , , , , , or cards, because none of those are part of the original intent of the original designers either...

Yeah, this make a whole lot of sense.

"You can only pick one or the other, you can't design so that you can pick the best of both worlds!"

Ok.

Ok, if you're going to cite 'original intent' as a reason for a design of something you don't like, then my response is perfectly valid.

If you're going to say "do a better job", which I think is the essence of your argument, that's fine, but "original intent" isn't the hill to die on because that argument is too easy to knock down.

I can cite plenty examples from ALL ERAS of "Decipher Fucked Up", "Decipher didn't know what they're doing", "Decipher did Great" and all of those statements with "The CC" replacing "Decipher".

The game is a mutt, and it's been a mutt in one way or another since Tom and Rollie left. Don't complain about having a mutt if you're pining for a purebred, as the purebred Trek is still available to you. But also don't claim that your mutt is necessarily better as a point of fact, when really it's an opinion.

Don't get me wrong, you're entitled to your opinion, and from what I've seen some of your suggestions aren't bad. But don't claim some "original intent" high ground as a reason that decisions that were made were bad because you didn't agree with them.

Any specific suggestions you have should be evaluated on the merits, same as everybody else, no more, no less.

[Armus]

How ridiculous would it be if it just let you attempt and not complete it?

I am 100% sure you can complete the mission, if a card allows you to attempt it.

Prepare to have your mind blown.

The way people here play Star Trek CCG has completely changed from its original intention, because people would rather play Star Trek Solitaire than worry about defending their corner of the spaceline. So they resorted to nitpicky, legal jiu jitsu to make it so a card lets you attempt, but not complete, missions.

It is indeed well and truly ridiculous.

Case in point: This Argument ^^^

Strongly implies that you prefer the "original intent" of being able to steal your opponent's missions as superior to any future card- or rules-based limitation that came along later.

Am I misunderstanding you?

Assuming I'm correct, you next argument seems to imply something along the lines of "yeah, you should have , , etc. cards and *they* should be able to steal missions too!

How am I doing so far?

Assuming *that's* a fair characterization of your position, then my response is that there's no objective reason why your game is necessarily better than the game as it exists today. It's a matter of personal preference.

Having played this game since the beginning, I've seen it all, and I actually thought that the Fair Play middle ground *was* a good solution, and *did* account for original intent, as it still allowed mission stealing (the rule never changed), but also gave players the option of building their decks in a way that shut that strategy down (and, sorry, but any strategy that involves winning without going through your oppionent's dilemmas doesn't get any sympathy from me when it gets punched in the dick... that's *MY* opinion).

Now if you wanna hit the CC on the OTF Rules, or the phasing out of cards or the mechanic in general, I think you have some degree of a valid case.... if we're being real, OTF Trek is de facto "1.5E" and has been for years... it fundamentally IS a different game for several reasons, and those reasons led to specific decisions being made that did fundamentally change the nature of the game.

Whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion, and again, you're entitled to yours. Personally, I think it's not perfect, but it's definitely playable. Is it skewed toward solvers/solitaire at the moment? Yeah, probably, but that's a dial that can be adjusted if Design/Rules/Balance decide to do so.

[DISCO Rox No More]

Case in point: This Argument ^^^

Strongly implies that you prefer the "original intent" of being able to steal your opponent's missions as superior to any future card- or rules-based limitation that came along later.

Am I misunderstanding you?

That's an extreme interpretation.

I don't mind potential card-based limitations as a counter if a strategy becomes super powerful. For instance, a card that stopped away teams/crews that attempted enemy missions would be a "card-based limitation" and I could get behind that. It leaves them vulnerable to being attacked by a defending opponent, for instance.

However, there's a difference between "limitation" and "shutting down," and "Fair Play" (as either a card or a rule) crosses the line into "shutting down." Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions specifically because of this card/rule, so functionally, it's been shut down by that card/rule - and their choice not to play stealable missions isn't even at a cost, since 1-mission wins were never really feasible, and they're able to easily pull off 2-mission wins without stealable missions (thanks to things like AMS, which they probably would be using anyway since it lets you start off with two free personnel in play).

Assuming I'm correct, you next argument seems to imply something along the lines of "yeah, you should have , , etc. cards and *they* should be able to steal missions too!

How am I doing so far?

Fine.

The problem is your initial response implied that if I want the "original thing" (mission stealing), then I have to reject any future innovation (new affiliations, card types, etc.), and that's not a defensible position. Maybe you didn't mean to imply that, or maybe you've accepted that that's a ridiculous position to take, in which case I don't see the disagreement.

Then my response is that there's no objective reason why your game is necessarily better than the game as it exists today. It's a matter of personal preference.

This is a tautology. Your opinion differs from mine. All of us have different opinions. Do you have a point?

Having played this game since the beginning, I've seen it all, and I actually thought that the Fair Play middle ground *was* a good solution, and *did* account for original intent, as it still allowed mission stealing (the rule never changed), but also gave players the option of building their decks in a way that shut that strategy down

Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play?" What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?

If not, then no, it functionally wasn't a "middle ground."

and, sorry, but any strategy that involves winning without going through your oppionent's dilemmas doesn't get any sympathy from me when it gets punched in the dick

If I played a mission-stealing deck and I stole your your missions and I didn't go through any of your dilemmas, that's not my fault. That's yours.

Nobody put a gun to your head and said you must seed all your dilemmas under my missions.

You just got greedy and decided to count on my not stealing your missions. Your bad strategy is on you, not on me.

[Rachmaninoff]

Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play?" What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?

Not wading into the rest of the debate (at least not yet; I've written extensively about my thoughts on mission stealing elsewhere), but did want to address this point.

After Fair Play I never built a deck that was a *dedicated* mission-stealer where that was my Plan A. I did plenty of opportunistic mission theft afterwards. Sometimes this was slipping a single copy of POTTS into a Romulan deck with a few Espionage cards in the Tent, if I saw a high-point mission or thought taking the risk on a low-point mission was worth it, I'd go for it. Sometimes this was seeding a single PNZ myself to bypass an opponent's HQ: Defensive Measures.

I do think Fair Play was a bit too harsh on stealing

(probably would have been enough if it protected 30 point missions rather than 35, since without bonus points you need 4 30-point missions vs. 3 35's)

, but there was still room for building Espionage theft *options* into decks even afterwards.

[winterflames]

So you should always seed dilemmas under all 12 missions? Because I can't see that as feasible for a 30 card seed deck. If I seed 18 dilemmas under your missions, then another 6-10 dilemmas under my missions, that leaves me with 2-6 cards for setting up my own game? One has to be a way to play cards. So it severely limits the kinds of decks I can play. No Empok Nor decks, because that would add additional dilemmas to the count, between 2 and 4 seeds after somewhere to report. No non-self-seeding Treaty decks where you need ODN, that is 2 seeds plus facility. Even Voyager decks would be hard, with caretaker's and a ship and home away being minimum 3 seeds.

Just thinking aloud

[Armus]

Case in point: This Argument ^^^

Strongly implies that you prefer the "original intent" of being able to steal your opponent's missions as superior to any future card- or rules-based limitation that came along later.

Am I misunderstanding you?

That's an extreme interpretation.

I don't mind potential card-based limitations as a counter if a strategy becomes super powerful. For instance, a card that stopped away teams/crews that attempted enemy missions would be a "card-based limitation" and I could get behind that. It leaves them vulnerable to being attacked by a defending opponent, for instance.

However, there's a difference between "limitation" and "shutting down," and "Fair Play" (as either a card or a rule) crosses the line into "shutting down." Realistically, people aren't playing stealable missions specifically because of this card/rule, so functionally, it's been shut down by that card/rule - and their choice not to play stealable missions isn't even at a cost, since 1-mission wins were never really feasible, and they're able to easily pull off 2-mission wins without stealable missions (thanks to things like AMS, which they probably would be using anyway since it lets you start off with two free personnel in play).

Ok this is taking a much different tone than your initial statement. I was getting big "Back in Tom and Rollie's Day..." energy from that. But on the merits, it sounds more like your complaint is the ease of which a steal-proof deck can pull off a 2-mission win moreso than it is with Fair Play's existence. If AMS didn't grant any (or limited) bonus points, would it be as much of a thing? Or if Fair Play only worked on <= 30 point missions instead of 35, would that make a difference to you?

Assuming I'm correct, you next argument seems to imply something along the lines of "yeah, you should have , , etc. cards and *they* should be able to steal missions too!

How am I doing so far?

Fine.

The problem is your initial response implied that if I want the "original thing" (mission stealing), then I have to reject any future innovation (new affiliations, card types, etc.), and that's not a defensible position. Maybe you didn't mean to imply that, or maybe you've accepted that that's a ridiculous position to take, in which case I don't see the disagreement.

Then my response is that there's no objective reason why your game is necessarily better than the game as it exists today. It's a matter of personal preference.

This is a tautology. Your opinion differs from mine. All of us have different opinions. Do you have a point?

I reacted the way I did because it read like you were stating your opinion as fact and you were taking an absolutist position. Maybe that's not the level you were coming from, in which case yeah, we probably disagree less than I originally thought.

Having played this game since the beginning, I've seen it all, and I actually thought that the Fair Play middle ground *was* a good solution, and *did* account for original intent, as it still allowed mission stealing (the rule never changed), but also gave players the option of building their decks in a way that shut that strategy down

Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play?" What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?

If not, then no, it functionally wasn't a "middle ground."

Um... actually, yes, they did. Ref-Drain decks were definitely a thing in the mid-to-late Decipher era, Especially post-Voyager, when Temporal Micro-Wormhole gave any affiliation access to a personnel (Dr. Telek R'mor) that could download for free on turn 1 and be compatible with whatever ship and crew he landed on. Do enough Ref-able stuff, make your opponent pop their 2-3 seeded Q the Refs, then Wormhole over to wherever they are and gank a mission (or two!). I mean, this is more an indictment of the late Decipher era, where this kind of stuff barely cracked the top 5 of abusive strategies, but it does provide a counterexample to your assumption.

and, sorry, but any strategy that involves winning without going through your oppionent's dilemmas doesn't get any sympathy from me when it gets punched in the dick

If I played a mission-stealing deck and I stole your your missions and I didn't go through any of your dilemmas, that's not my fault. That's yours.

Nobody put a gun to your head and said you must seed all your dilemmas under my missions.

You just got greedy and decided to count on my not stealing your missions. Your bad strategy is on you, not on me.

Oh if we're playing in a world where unfettered mission stealing is a thing, I can (and did!) play that game, but I found that type of game to be less fun than actually having a kind of game where my opponent has to overcome my obstacles and earn the win (and vice versa).

Spending 30 minutes doing setup for a game that ends on turn 1-3 as soon as you start actually playing gets old real quick. Can I win that type of game? Sure. Do I want to spend my time playing that game? A lot less now than 20 years ago, that's for sure. It's one of the reasons I retired for a decade after Worlds 2002.

[DISCO Rox No More]

If I seed 18 dilemmas under your missions

I don't remember anything in the rulebook forcing you to seed 18 dilemmas under my missions.

You're right in pointing out that making your deck bulletproof at every conceivable level, against every conceivable strategy, is impossible. That's where the choices of deckbuilding come in.

If AMS didn't grant any (or limited) bonus points, would it be as much of a thing? Or if Fair Play only worked on <= 30 point missions instead of 35, would that make a difference to you?

It's not just AMS, that's an example. The point is that there's no real cost or penalty to constructing your deck such that it's protected by "Fair Play," since the environment is such that nearly all decks would probably want to conform to that protection anyway. Thus, "Fair Play" doesn't serve to add a useful or meaningful choice, it just shuts down certain interactive, flavorful deck types.

Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play?" What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?

If not, then no, it functionally wasn't a "middle ground."

Um... actually, yes, they did. Ref-Drain decks were definitely a thing in the mid-to-late Decipher era, Especially post-Voyager, when Temporal Micro-Wormhole gave any affiliation access to a personnel (Dr. Telek R'mor) that could download for free on turn 1 and be compatible with whatever ship and crew he landed on. Do enough Ref-able stuff, make your opponent pop their 2-3 seeded Q the Refs, then Wormhole over to wherever they are and gank a mission (or two!). I mean, this is more an indictment of the late Decipher era, where this kind of stuff barely cracked the top 5 of abusive strategies, but it does provide a counterexample to your assumption.

So your example is "It worked if you made a deck such that it tries a bunch of cheese first, and when that cheese is shut down, then it can do mission-stealing." In other words, you need to basically break the game in an unfun way to pull it off.

I think most can agree that cheese isn't fun and breaks the game environment. So then the question should be rephrased as "Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play" that didn't involve extraneous cheese? What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?"

Keep in mind that errata, non-scarcity, etc. in the modern era have made "cheese" a thing that is easily eradicated.

Spending 30 minutes doing setup for a game that ends on turn 1-3 as soon as you start actually playing gets old real quick.

-In a world with mission-stealing, that 30 minutes isn't "setup" - it's part of the game, and involves meaningful and interesting choices.

-As I said, there are ways to limit strategies like "mission-stealing" without shutting them down, that can ensure that not every game ends in 1-3 turns, even if one player attempts mission-stealing.

[Rachmaninoff]

I think most can agree that cheese isn't fun and breaks the game environment. So then the question should be rephrased as "Did anyone realistically play Espionage mission-stealing decks after "Fair Play" that didn't involve extraneous cheese? What about after "Q the Referee" further enhanced it?"

I already answered this above, but maybe I misunderstood what you mean by an "Espionage mission-stealing deck." If you mean a 98 Worlds-style deck that aims only to complete the opponent's missions and has very little ability to do its own -- then no, the point of Fair Play was to make such decks too risky. If you mean a deck that has other main routes to victory but can pivot to stealing a mission or two if the right circumstances arise, then yes. Cases like

• high point missions showing up
• as a calculated risk if your opponent lost a huge crew to dilemmas or battle, so even if you can't solve it they probably can't either, at least not for a while
• learning that an opponent doesn't have Fair Play (e.g. I once played a Borg opponent who completed Establish Gateway without having a Transwarp Network Gateway to download. Failing a mandatory download let me look through his deck and Tent and I could see exactly which cards he was and was not stocking... he had no Fair Play so that opened up stealing as an option for me even though he had QtR face-up.) Believe it or not I've also had one or two games against opponents who seeded NO hidden agendas/QtR or used them all up after the first turn or two.
• as a Hail Mary if you're on track to lose and thieving a mission can give you a chance to get back in the game. If Fair Play shows up, oh well, you probably would have lost anyway.

By no means was Espionage an auto-include, but in the right deck (usually with a certain mix of personnel and dilemmas) a single Plans and a few Espionage cards were cheap enough to open up some good options without being gamebreaking.

[BCSWowbagger]

You will have to forgive me, because I was not exactly on the tournament scene in the early '90s, so this may be a dumb question. And it's me, so I'm going to take four paragraphs to ask this question.

We all put dilemmas under the missions that opponent seeded. This was always the expectation, and the Premiere Rulebook even says explicitly that this was the expectation. (Page 6: "Typically, a player would place Dilemma cards under opponent's missions... but this is not the only strategy to follow.")

But Premiere also had wide-open mission stealing. And it had relatively limited mission selection, a strong expectation that most players would not have access to every card (scarcity), missions were at weirdly high rarity, and there were only three affiliations anyway, so lots of mirror matches. Oh, and Espionage cards were plentiful and (at the time) low-cost to stock and play. Basically, Decipher set up Premiere so that players were virtually guaranteed multiple mission theft opportunities in each and every game.

So here I think Disco has a salient point, and it's something I've never understood: given that chances to steal missions were guaranteed, why didn't the meta adapt? Instead of seeding 18 dilemmas under 6 missions (3 each), I would have expected the meta adaptation to be that both players simply seed 18 dilemmas under 12 missions (1 or 2 under each). Any missions that got underseeded would simply be targeted by both players for an early solve. There would be no meaningful distinction between opponent's missions and your missions. The idea of "stealing" a mission would be absurd, because all missions belong to both players equally. There would be no huge psychological games about it, because there would just be an expectation that we'll be attempting one another's missions.

Instead -- for reasons I've never quite grokked, to be honest--the meta failed to adapt to mission theft. Players continued trying to seed tall combos under opponent's missions only while doing little to no "protective" seeding at all. Most players focused on the missions they seeded, not the ones their opponent seeded. When mission-robbers exploited this, players (instead of adapting) cried "NPE! Cheese!" They did this for years, even though the obvious defense is, y'know, right there. Eventually Decipher accepted this, and sharply curtailed the strategy with Fair Play-- thus also curtailing a core part of their original design.

Why? Why did players drive Decipher to this instead of seeding defensively?

There must be some solid, game-theoretic reason for this, but heck if I've ever been able to crack it.

[Rachmaninoff]

Here's my perspective. It's also me, so I will take a number of paragraphs to respond.

1. Dynamic seeding, and protecting your own missions *was* more common, at least among top players. Dave Bowling's strategy article for his winning 1997 Worlds deck explicitly says he did not have fixed dilemma combos, but would adapt based on what he thought his opponent was doing and how the spaceline looked -- sometimes self-seeding, sometimes not.

2. In Premiere, only Romulans had the ability to espionage both of the other affiliations. Federation could espionage only Klingon and vice-versa. And Romulans were also considered the "weak" affiliation then, so it meant you were playing poor personnel. This was actually one of the few advantages Decipher gave to early Romulans, they could espionage anybody else, and were immune to being espionage-d.

3. This might get at the game theory more directly. If you look at the power level of cards over time: personnel have grown MUCH stronger (and it is easier to select the ones you want due to downloading), dilemmas have grown MUCH stronger, and missions have stayed the same. This was driven by Decipher's need to keep selling cards: you get excited by strong personnel, downloading cards, and powerful dilemmas, but a tough mission just stays in the binder.

The result is a shift over time in the relative difficulty of overcoming dilemmas (which has stayed more or less constant, since dilemmas escalated with personnel) vs. solving the mission (which became way easier). In Premiere, where you are drawing/playing one card per turn, and it's usually a crappy personnel you drew randomly, it is very possible you can pass the dilemmas (which are equally crappy) but can't solve the mission because you don't have the right skills. In the modern game, once the dilemmas are gone solving the mission is usually trivial.

In this sense, a dedicated mission stealing deck was really risky. Your opponent tuned their deck to have the skills to solve the missions they need -- indeed, there were strategy articles suggesting ratios of how many copies of your *mission* skills you needed to stock in your deck -- whereas you would have to prepare for everything. You had to draw both the right skills AND the right espionage card before your opponent drew the skills they tuned their deck for.

(This gradually became easier over time; e.g. Q's Tent gave you a place to put Espionage cards, or Treaties + Major Rakal which let you do the same.)

4. The other big change over time is what you could do with seeds. In PAQ, you would seed a facility, maybe an AU Door or Tent, 6 missions (that were NOT free), and the rest of your cards could be dilemmas/artifacts, and there was often room for a few defensive self-seeds. Over time, seed space became more and more cramped. This is another example of Decipher escalation: a card that seeds is more powerful because you don't have to draw it naturally and spend a card play on it.

Stealing was at its worst after DS9 released. At some point I need to organize and post the decklists from 1998 Worlds, which was held during this time. Essentially all of these trends had hit the point where solving your opponents' missions was much easier than solving your own:

-Plans of the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order made it really easy to get the Espionage cards you needed, no need to spend a card play or Tent, or draw them naturally.

-Downloading, specifically AMS and Ops, made it really easy to grab the right personnel to steal an opponent's mission, you could get the skills just as fast as your opponent's supposedly "tuned" deck.

-Seed space was starting to become scarcer, so allocating space for defensive seeds was relatively more expensive.

So there's the history lesson, at least from my standpoint. Would be happy to hear perspectives from others who were active back then too. The oddest thing to me was that even after Decipher decided the game should shift to "solve your own missions" rather than "all missions are fair game", they kept the original mission template. They made exactly one mission (Construct Depot) which is literally unstealable because there is no opponent's side at all except span. I wonder why they didn't just start making missions that way rather than continuing to use up space on an opponent's side that is functionally ignored 99% of the time.

[boromirofborg]

-Seed space was starting to become scarcer, so allocating space for defensive seeds was relatively more expensive.

I agree with you that it's a odd disconnect to have missions that have both sides able to attempt, but forbidden by rules.


I would be interested to see a variant tournament when you are allowed 30 "dilemma" seeds (could also be artifacts or Nexus), and 6 other seeds and mission stealing allowed.

[stressedoutatumc]

...They did this for years, even though the obvious defense is, y'know, right there. Eventually Decipher accepted this, and sharply curtailed the strategy with Fair Play-- thus also curtailing a core part of their original design.

Why? Why did players drive Decipher to this instead of seeding defensively?

There must be some solid, game-theoretic reason for this, but heck if I've ever been able to crack it.

I can offer a thought. This thread veered hard from my original question and ended up in a shade of a conversation I see often. It can be said many ways, but it boils down to the question..."just because you can do something, does that mean you should or should be allowed to do it?"

For example, just because you could mission steal...should you? The eventual answer for the game seems to be "no" because the rules evolved to only allow mission stealing in specific situations and by taking specific risks.

It could be framed as a general question for players...Is it ok to win at any game-moral/game-ethical costs? I would personally offer "no", but again that seems to be germane to the question you are posing. Maybe the meta didn't adapt because that kind of strategy was looked-down upon. I can say it was in my circles back in the late 90s. Who want's to play with someone who uses cheese-ball strats just because they can? Like wooopdy-doo, you exploited the game and beat me. Uh, congrats. I had a friend in our trek group who always used Reskian Flute and mind-melded a bunch of music. Yep, you won but it doesn't make you a winner. Just an example. But it was unfun to have to seed and play cards to beat that specific strategy when you can argue it's more of an exploit of an unintentional mechanical interaction than skill of the player. If you play Magic, it's the same as using infinite combos to ______. The players shouldn't have to adapt to something broken the game created. The game should fix it. I wish we could count on the entire player base to have more integrity and try and win the right way, but that's exactly WHY the game has to be the one that adapts. There will always be someone out there who would rather win cheap than win right.