One of the banes of design is not getting cards to do what you want. Or really, not noticing when cards don't quite say what you
mean.
Take
Battle Stations: Sovereign Class for example. One of limits we added was this:
At the start of each turn, you must activate or discard each of your cards.
All through testing and proofing and internal discussions and conversations with Rules, we though it was an interesting restriction, and an answer to a few trickes that appeared in playtesting, like using extra seed slots for several seeded
Computer Crashs.
When I was writing my article late Monday night into Tuesday, I read it again and though, "huh, that looks like it just discards all cards with that icon, including face up ones. I wonder if that's bad?" But it was well after midnight so I didn't have the brainpower to think much more about it.
And then someone on Discord noticed what this wording implied, and it was relayed to our Nemesis planning board. Rules confirmed that it was so. There were thoughts that it could be a happy accident: just a bit harsher of a restriction than we were planning. Then it was pointed out that it would pitch Borg objectives, which would ruin an admittedly fringe deck, but maybe that's still okay? But then
Villagers with Torches,
Q the Ref, and others were mentioned, and it became clear this was a problem.
A whirlwind of activity later, our amazing Art and Programing folks jumped in and fixed it. From the outside, it felt like someone snapped their fingers and the new card appeared from a Q-Flash. But we know it was effort, so big thanks to the team for facilitating and implementing the last-minute change. Here's what that line of text changed to:
At the start of each turn, you must activate or discard each of your face down cards.
This is a more literal interpretation of what was in our heads. The new text is already up, the image will be in place on time for release tonight.
Thanks!