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By Se7enofMine (ChadC)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#589171
As a non-competitive player, i have no horse in this race. My friends and i dont play abusive strategies cause its friendly games. None of us ever stock QtR or anything related to it.

So, at the end of the day, whatever is best for the long term health of the game, id support that.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#589173
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 2:12 pmSo current Ref is bad design. I makes it where you really *must* be playing 1-2 ref seeds ,or you stand a significant non-zero chance of not getting to play many rounds.
________________________

So the future:

Let's say all the bad stuff is gone. A ref of soft-counters sounds good. There should be more interactivity and more counters to everything. There should be counters to Tribbles, tactics, mission attempts, staffing of ships, etc. A ref deck there that helps with some of the safety rails would be good.

If I was to list current ref cards that kind of fit this, I would say:

Villagers With Torches
Mirror Image
Panel Overload
Scanner Interference
Oof
Scorched Hand
The Juggler

All of those hurt strategies and curb possible abuse while also not completely shutting them down. They also provide some interaction and self ways to nullify.

Those are good examples of counters that wouldn't exactly be worth a card on their own, but are cool to have.
To my surprise, the more I think about this position, the more I find myself sympathetic to it. Death to the "Hard Ref" cards. But Villagers, Mirror Image, Scorched Hand... mayyyyyyyyyyybe even The Wake of the Borg? I'm never ever in a million years going to stock these cards, so maybe (just maybe) the [Ref] pile is a good home for them? Maybe even one or two other "soft counters"?
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#589178
Maybe it's time to remember what the Q's tent was originally designed to be, a sideboard accessible during play. But you had to actually play a card to access things from it. They still did not come for free.
Last edited by Smiley on Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#589183
BCSWowbagger wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:47 pm To my surprise, the more I think about this position, the more I find myself sympathetic to it. Death to the "Hard Ref" cards. But Villagers, Mirror Image, Scorched Hand... mayyyyyyyyyyybe even The Wake of the Borg? I'm never ever in a million years going to stock these cards, so maybe (just maybe) the [Ref] pile is a good home for them? Maybe even one or two other "soft counters"?
Me too. After reading this thread I've been mulling over the idea of a "defensive sideboard" some more and think it has potential.

Yes, Q's Tent was originally meant to be an in-game sideboard -- not a download warehouse (as that mechanic didn't even exist back then) -- and is still an appropriate place for general-purpose situational cards, offensive and defensive.

But perhaps there is a place for defensive-only cards obtainable at a cheaper price than playing a Tent from hand and losing a draw, and with faster timing. There are a LOT of very situational counters Decipher made (Plexing, Subspace Interference, Thermal Deflectors, Assimilate This!, ...) that are rarely worth stocking. Adding [Ref] to cards like these may give them a glimmer of a chance at leaving the binder and mean some real choices in the QT:CW tent.

Some other stronger suggestions have been made in the thread and might be workable, like adding [Ref] to Asteroid Sanctuary. But much of the [Ref] mechanic was designed around ensuring the "hard counters" hit, and so Q the Referee and Tribunal of Q make them all super-powerful, downloading with suspends-play timing, allowing you to ignore any blocking effects, and so on. This may not be appropriate for the "soft counters"... it may be OK for Asteroid Sanctuary, but definitely not for Goddess of Empathy, which would become an uncounterable nullifier to any Interrupt at any time, which you can cycle during your own turn if you want to play an Interrupt.

So (to my great surprise as well) I may actually be open to adding [Ref] to more cards *if* it is part of a larger re-orientation of the [Ref] mechanic from hard counters to soft counters, with accompanying changes to Q the Referee and Tribunal of Q (one of my least favorite cards ever made).
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#589186
Rachmaninoff wrote: Sun Nov 20, 2022 10:31 pm So (to my great surprise as well) I may actually be open to adding [Ref] to more cards *if* it is part of a larger re-orientation of the [Ref] mechanic from hard counters to soft counters, with accompanying changes to Q the Referee and Tribunal of Q (one of my least favorite cards ever made).
Yes, very yes. Tribunal would be too strong in this (potential) new order. I could buy QtR being okay but wouldn't presume it.
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#589189
I think, for the sake of not having to errata more cards that would need to change drastically to fit the new paradigm, just ban the [Ref] mechanics as a whole and add a new icon to the things we would want to include in the new soft counter system. Make a lot of them and make them only fit in the Tent and as such solve a different problem as well. =)
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#589197
I love the make more soft ref cards (so you have to choose) and with that ban tribunal. No infinite recursion, you have to pay a cost and make choices about when you bring your soft tech into play
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#589200
pfti wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:04 am I love the make more soft ref cards (so you have to choose) and with that ban tribunal. No infinite recursion, you have to pay a cost and make choices about when you bring your soft tech into play
I'd rather see tribunal errata'd not banned so those choices still have relevance. What that errata would be idk but I agree it wouldn't be "use card draws for all the shenanigans.
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#589226
I'd sooner remove [Ref] entirely, and beef up the soft counters to improve the risk-reward where needed.

Having guaranteed access to a card removes the strategy. We have seed cards for a reason, folks. :P
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
 -  
2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#589227
AllenGould wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:36 pm I'd sooner remove [Ref] entirely, and beef up the soft counters to improve the risk-reward where needed.

Having guaranteed access to a card removes the strategy. We have seed cards for a reason, folks. :P
I like the sideboard, but since we only have one game, the ref allows meta policing and flexibility withouth bloating the deck. this really only works when there are far more ref options than 13 in a civil war tent
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First Edition Rules Master
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
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#589228
pfti wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:38 pm
I like the sideboard, but since we only have one game, the ref allows meta policing and flexibility withouth bloating the deck. this really only works when there are far more ref options than 13 in a civil war tent
Here's my counter argument - if you can get a counter at response speed (meaning, you don't have to have this pre-seeded, you can wait for the action and *then* go get the appropriate counter before the action resolves), then the counter both can't be very good, and it's just as good as a de-facto ban,

If you have to make choices and spend real costs, then that gives space to make the ability stronger without having to caveat it overmuch. If it's trivial to get then the game isn't more interesting, we're just making it a rule that (for instance) you can't attempt a planet with less than three people.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#589230
^ In a world with Tribunal, I tend to agree that the existence of [Ref] cards that say "you can't do something" is something akin to a ban on that thing.

(Not really, because I just played a tourney yesterday where none of the three players had stocked Tribunal or a Ref tent at all. But it's something like a ban.)

But the world we're discussing is a world without Tribunal. If you want to pull out Villagers during the game, you're going to have to have Q The Referee on the table, and you will have to have either seeded or played that Ref. You can't infinitely recurse your fire-and-discard [Ref] cards, and you even have to make choices about your persistent [Ref] cards. After all, if you discard that Q The Referee to fetch Villagers, that means you can't discard it to fetch Mirror Image or Goddess of Empathy or The Juggler later on -- at least, not without digging out a second Q the Ref and putting that on the table, which would be another cost. Worse yet: if you decide to use The Juggler now, it's in the discard pile and can't be fetched back easily, so you're going to have a much harder time using it later.

If you're using a Ref tent, you're also limited to mission attempts with 4+ personnel, which is a substantial cost in itself.

So this would be a very different [Ref] economy from the current "everyone gets all [Ref] at the low price of nearly-free."
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#589232
BCSWowbagger wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:03 pm ^ In a world with Tribunal, I tend to agree that the existence of [Ref] cards that say "you can't do something" is something akin to a ban on that thing.

(Not really, because I just played a tourney yesterday where none of the three players had stocked Tribunal or a Ref tent at all. But it's something like a ban.)

But the world we're discussing is a world without Tribunal. If you want to pull out Villagers during the game, you're going to have to have Q The Referee on the table, and you will have to have either seeded or played that Ref. You can't infinitely recurse your fire-and-discard [Ref] cards, and you even have to make choices about your persistent [Ref] cards. After all, if you discard that Q The Referee to fetch Villagers, that means you can't discard it to fetch Mirror Image or Goddess of Empathy or The Juggler later on -- at least, not without digging out a second Q the Ref and putting that on the table, which would be another cost. Worse yet: if you decide to use The Juggler now, it's in the discard pile and can't be fetched back easily, so you're going to have a much harder time using it later.

If you're using a Ref tent, you're also limited to mission attempts with 4+ personnel, which is a substantial cost in itself.

So this would be a very different [Ref] economy from the current "everyone gets all [Ref] at the low price of nearly-free."
This isn't an and/or hypothetical. Tribunal can get errata to make it so that you can 1. Get multiple soft counters in a game and 2. Appropriately cost it. Saying it's either tribunal or no tribunal is intellectually dishonest. The 2 sides are not mutually exclusive and there are 3+ theoretical avenues to persue.

It seems like the majority of respondents here want the following:
1. Hard ban refs made rules and the ref card banned or errata to remove that part.
2. QTR to remain available
3. Soft ban and interaction but not ban refs to remain
4. New soft ban and hard interaction cards to be added to the ref pool to force choices in the deck/tent
5. Tribunal to receive errata to add cost to getting and using that pool.

Anything I'm missing?
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#589233
Hoss-Drone wrote: Mon Nov 21, 2022 8:09 pmTribunal can get errata to make it so that you can 1. Get multiple soft counters in a game and 2. Appropriately cost it.
I don't think it's Tribunal anymore, then. It might have the same title and image, but the change will be a pretty big makeover, and whatever emerges from it would only be recognizable as Tribunal in spirit.

Which is fine! If that's the right tool to achieve this idea (and note that I only said I was increasingly sympathetic to the idea, not that I've firmly decided the best way forward), then we should pursue it and remake Tribunal as needed (or ban it and replace it) (or just ban it). But, whatever the approach, it does not seem that Tribunal as we know it will be part of it.
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