[Hoss-Drone]

Hey everybody, Hoss-Drone with another First Edition video forum entry where i'm gonna talk about some things that came up at NACC and some thoughts about the state of the game we love and what needs to be looked at (positive and negative) after worlds since no errata's, etc will be issued before then. Putting it here, means everyone is essentially on notice instead of putting it in on my channel where it might not be watched.

That said, i will also likely do a video in the future where at least one of the below gets discussed in detail. The details of that video are being discussed now, but long story short - i hope to have a couple of community members join me in a round table discussion.

1. We need to do more to get people to play and it needs to happen immediately - but those of us who do play - need to show up. We had 10 for 1e, and 8 for 2e and that's less than what i was hoping to show up. Life happens, i get it, but this game is going to die - and soon - if people aren't willing to make the time to go to events. If you want this game to survive, you have to make it a priority at this point b/c even an old die hard dinosaur like me is getting frustrated.

2. Those who were at NACC - i think had a great time. As long as this is true, i consider the event a success regardless of #1.

3. Cultivating relationships is the paramount of the long term viability of this community. Part of the reason we had a great time - was that the event location worked with us to be open early and open late to make the 1e event happen. This doesnt happen if I, and my local player Mark, didnt cultivate a close relationship over time with the owner of the store. Make your local game store owner your friend. Make your player base a friendship group. I was asked point blank this weekend "how do you get a good player base going" and my response is always the same - "your player cant just be people who randomly play, they need to be your friends so they WANT to play and you have to also play THEIR PREFERRED GAME and thus, a positive feedback loop is formed.

4. Aggro borg is warping the meta. 3 of the top 4 decks were aggro borg and the off deck was specifically designed to beat it, and it did, but it couldnt get full wins and thus, didnt take 1st in the event. MVB's deck was certainly a sight to behold as an engine but it also had glaring weaknesses and one got exploited hard by Maggie and it literally determined the outcome of the tournament. Meanwhile, the borg players just curbed stomped every other deck they faced. This issue is the one i hope to undertake with a round table discussion but sneak preview: Aggro borg needs another nerf because right now, top level meta is either you play it or you have specifically be ready to beat it and thats not good. The God deck/Anti-god deck meta is not a healthy meta and even though MVB beat all 3 - he clearly, CLEARLY did not enjoy playing those games and neither did anyone else. I say all this with everyone knowing fully that i'm an avid player who loves to play them and wants them to be good (b/c i remember the years they werent) but after watching 1e NACC from my neutral cloud above the fray - i'm very disconcerted.

Fortunately, i think the answer is simple - Assimilate Counterpart needs to be bonus points. Right now, a borg deck can scout 1 mission, get a counterpart or two, or three with A Willing Companion and be hard to impossible to beat modified b/c that gets them to likely 65+. But thats the only thing that should be looked at imho and the rest of the issue is also that players need to understand this meta reality and push back harder on it with their deck designs.

5. Annexation Drone and the Transport Drone need errata to say "here" or "at this location". Its current wording is unclear that the drone has to be present with the transporters to work. It led directly to a loss for a player and a serious NPE in that game.

6. The game needs a deck size limit. A player should not be able to absorb the majority of the game clock downloading a card out of a 100, 200, 300+ card deck. There's a reason why most (every?) ccg has a deck size limit. James certainly didnt play a 250 card deck to be a jerk or annoying - but it ended up being annoying to the opponents, to me the TD having to search through multiple times on a fail to find and unnecessarily cumbersome to James himself.

[AllenGould]

6. The game needs a deck size limit. A player should not be able to absorb the majority of the game clock downloading a card out of a 100, 200, 300+ card deck. There's a reason why most (every?) ccg has a deck size limit. James certainly didnt play a 250 card deck to be a jerk or annoying - but it ended up being annoying to the opponents, to me the TD having to search through multiple times on a fail to find and unnecessarily cumbersome to James himself.

There's a few games with hard deck sizes (Pokemon decks are exactly 60, no more no less), but I'm coming up blank on any offhand with hard ceilings. Most have some combination of mechanical incentives to stay low and/or organized play incentives (namely time limits on how long you can legally spend looking). The latter would be appropriate here IMO.

[Armus]

Like I said in the Continentals thread, I'm SHOCKED that nobody brought straight KCA to an event full of Aggro Borg. 2 Homeworlds, off-quadrant, easy missions, and enough firepower to put up a fight make them a natural meta choice.

Also, I thought speed solvers rendered Aggro Borg obsolete? That was the take coming out of Drag-racer Worlds last year.

I think this is interesting data, and I'm not even saying your take is wrong, but I think we need to look at Kaiserfest and Worlds results to see what those metas are doing.

I'm sympathetic to the deck size issue vis a vis downloading and game clock. That's a fair criticism.

[LORE]

Like I said in the Continentals thread, I'm SHOCKED that nobody brought straight KCA to an event full of Aggro Borg. 2 Homeworlds, off-quadrant, easy missions, and enough firepower to put up a fight make them a natural meta choice.

My dilemma combos were built to beat KCA as I fully expected Jared or MVB to play them.

[phaserihardlyknowher]

I had some additional thoughts and actually logged on to start this very thread, so I'm going to piggy-back some of my observations:

1. It's a mod, mod, mod, mod world. The overwhelming number of games were mod victories. I suppose this is partly the result of nerfing AMS, but I don't think it's a bad thing. You could also look at it as playing the maximum amount of Star Trek: CCG possible. For me, anyway, it also meant I was in most games for the duration rather than just riding out the time once I'd clearly lost.

2. I think I saw the most interaction I've personally seen in a long time. Every game I played save one had lots of interaction between the players in the form of space battle, interrupts or dilemmas that forced interaction (Deadly Donation, Undetected Beam-In). This also contributes to the mod environment.

3. I'm an objectively bad player who was playing an objectively bad deck, but other than the last game against James (see: Aggro Borg), there was a path to victory for me in every game if I'd made different decisions. This isn't to make an excuse for loosing, quite the opposite, better players won because they played better while at the table. Additionally, 3 of the 5 games I played came down to the final turn with the outcome unclear, that's way more engaging than otherwise.

As Kevin's observed, the meta isn't perfect, the best decks are either aggressively interactive (Aggro Borg) or aggressively non-interactive (Distant Control, Homeworld Turtling). But on the whole it feels healthy. Games should run down to the final turn.

Also, I thought speed solvers rendered Aggro Borg obsolete? That was the take coming out of Drag-racer Worlds last year.

Jared observed that the AMS nerf made Aggro Borg even better because now they have more time to get up and running. I don't know what brilliant tech is out there to beat because for so long that tech was just "go faster". Maybe the next affiliation boost can contain some anti-[Bor].

[The Ninja Scot]

Like I said in the Continentals thread, I'm SHOCKED that nobody brought straight KCA to an event full of Aggro Borg. 2 Homeworlds, off-quadrant, easy missions, and enough firepower to put up a fight make them a natural meta choice.

Also, I thought speed solvers rendered Aggro Borg obsolete? That was the take coming out of Drag-racer Worlds last year.

I think this is interesting data, and I'm not even saying your take is wrong, but I think we need to look at Kaiserfest and Worlds results to see what those metas are doing.

I'm sympathetic to the deck size issue vis a vis downloading and game clock. That's a fair criticism.

I didn't play KCA as it didn't have enough homeworlds for me to feel comfortable with and the Borg don't really care about quadrants. Kris and I played in a Masters two years ago online where he was playing this same deck or something similar and I was playing KCA. He locked down both of the homeworlds with Experience Bij and Dead End and I figured he would've done the same thing again so I wanted a deck with more homeworlds to hide at. If I had made the deck better, it might've solved faster and been more resilient. I almost made it a Klingon/Bajoran deck with both Qo'nos and both Bajors but I think me putting in the Examine Singularity to deal with Black Hole talked me out of that.

Michael

[Hoss-Drone]

Like I said in the Continentals thread, I'm SHOCKED that nobody brought straight KCA to an event full of Aggro Borg. 2 Homeworlds, off-quadrant, easy missions, and enough firepower to put up a fight make them a natural meta choice.

Also, I thought speed solvers rendered Aggro Borg obsolete? That was the take coming out of Drag-racer Worlds last year.

I think this is interesting data, and I'm not even saying your take is wrong, but I think we need to look at Kaiserfest and Worlds results to see what those metas are doing.

I'm sympathetic to the deck size issue vis a vis downloading and game clock. That's a fair criticism.

I said after worlds last year that I wasnt convinced that Aggro-borg were obsolete - I opined repeatedly that Aggro-borg not being present ALLOWED super speed to thrive unchecked. Others felt like speed was out of control and Peter simply found the speediest of those decks which resulted in a discussion about that particular deck being potentially OP. Then after worlds i showed the world the Ds9 orb experience deck which beat that deck when Kris piloted it (so, not apples to oranges but Gaia to Red Delicious) and both were nerfed on the merits that they were both doing things drastically above the curve before there was a chance to put them into a tournament vs aggro borg to see what would come out of it. My opinion based on playing both sides of that potential matchup is that Aggro borg would beat Peters deck, peters deck and ds9 orb experience are a coin flip matchup and Ds9 orb has advantage vs Aggro borg. But all 3 likely dominate the meta as the counters to any of them dont translate to the other 2. Your precious KCA just lose to 2 of them - not great odds.

Put all this together and it should be no surprise to someone looking at the bigger picture and understanding the history of the last 2 years that aggro borg is left alone on top.

[Hoss-Drone]

6. The game needs a deck size limit. A player should not be able to absorb the majority of the game clock downloading a card out of a 100, 200, 300+ card deck. There's a reason why most (every?) ccg has a deck size limit. James certainly didnt play a 250 card deck to be a jerk or annoying - but it ended up being annoying to the opponents, to me the TD having to search through multiple times on a fail to find and unnecessarily cumbersome to James himself.

There's a few games with hard deck sizes (Pokemon decks are exactly 60, no more no less), but I'm coming up blank on any offhand with hard ceilings. Most have some combination of mechanical incentives to stay low and/or organized play incentives (namely time limits on how long you can legally spend looking). The latter would be appropriate here IMO.

The most infamous of these is Magic the Gathering tournament rules stating that if you cannot shuffle the entirety of your deck with two hands without assistance - there was serious penalty. At least, thats what the rule was when i left the game many years ago, not sure where its at now and i remember even back then there was consternation that it was "ableist" and they may have clarified/qualified/outright changed it to not be that.

But i'm sure my info is likely out of date on this front but its the standard by which i think of the starting point of card game tournament play.

There are several card games you dont mention that i know off the top of my head had mandatory deck sizes - Highlander, Battlemech, Star Wars: Destiny, Marvel Champions and someone remind me if Decipher's SWCCG did or not - i barely ever played that game but know that draining the opponent out WAS the win condition.

[phaserihardlyknowher]

The most infamous of these is Magic the Gathering tournament rules stating that if you cannot shuffle the entirety of your deck with two hands without assistance - there was serious penalty. At least, thats what the rule was when i left the game many years ago, not sure where its at now and i remember even back then there was consternation that it was "ableist" and they may have clarified/qualified/outright changed it to not be that.

I believe a player must be able to "shuffle the deck in a reasonable amount of time". Same for Netrunner and Lorcana, if I'm not mistaken. SW: Destiny was fixed at 30 cards. Arkham Horror: LCG varies, but it's usually 30 cards. I think SW: CCG requires exactly 60, but I could be wrong on that (a quick check of their top decks does confirm that, however). In most of these games, tutoring your deck is harder and cost systems make the play more constrained and thus players are highly incentivized to keep card count low. A smaller meta also means fewer counters you need to stock.

[Armus]

Like I said in the Continentals thread, I'm SHOCKED that nobody brought straight KCA to an event full of Aggro Borg. 2 Homeworlds, off-quadrant, easy missions, and enough firepower to put up a fight make them a natural meta choice.

Also, I thought speed solvers rendered Aggro Borg obsolete? That was the take coming out of Drag-racer Worlds last year.

I think this is interesting data, and I'm not even saying your take is wrong, but I think we need to look at Kaiserfest and Worlds results to see what those metas are doing.

I'm sympathetic to the deck size issue vis a vis downloading and game clock. That's a fair criticism.

I said after worlds last year that I wasnt convinced that Aggro-borg were obsolete - I opined repeatedly that Aggro-borg not being present ALLOWED super speed to thrive unchecked. Others felt like speed was out of control and Peter simply found the speediest of those decks which resulted in a discussion about that particular deck being potentially OP. Then after worlds i showed the world the Ds9 orb experience deck which beat that deck when Kris piloted it (so, not apples to oranges but Gaia to Red Delicious) and both were nerfed on the merits that they were both doing things drastically above the curve before there was a chance to put them into a tournament vs aggro borg to see what would come out of it. My opinion based on playing both sides of that potential matchup is that Aggro borg would beat Peters deck, peters deck and ds9 orb experience are a coin flip matchup and Ds9 orb has advantage vs Aggro borg. But all 3 likely dominate the meta as the counters to any of them dont translate to the other 2. Your precious KCA just lose to 2 of them - not great odds.

Put all this together and it should be no surprise to someone looking at the bigger picture and understanding the history of the last 2 years that aggro borg is left alone on top.

You could be right.

I just find these observations interesting in the face of complaints that aggro Borg were no longer viable in the "modern" meta.

Personally, when I build a deck for a major event I always ask the question "how do I deal with aggro Borg" and if the answer isn't very good I pick a different deck. So you don't have to convince me that Aggro Borg are meta-altering.

And maybe it is a function of balance changes (AMS, &co.) and new cards ( ) slowing the game pace down a tick, thus bringing Aggro Borg back to the fore. And in that case, yes, I would agree that maybe another defanging may be in order.

That said, what I *dont* want is a 7 turn solver meta instead of a 4 turn solver meta because all of the interference is rendered useless. Much as I hate having to play against them, there's something to be said for having something like aggro Borg in the game for meta balancing purposes.

[JeBuS]

Just my

If I play an aggressive deck, it should slow down my pace to win (regardless of what the other player is doing). It seems to me, aggro doesn't slow itself down by being aggressive.

If the pace of aggressiveness is faster than non-aggressive, we're out of whack again, right?

[Hoss-Drone]

In most of these games, tutoring your deck is harder and cost systems make the play more constrained and thus players are highly incentivized to keep card count low. A smaller meta also means fewer counters you need to stock.

If anything, i view the things you mention above to be THE REASON why we need a deck size limit. In a game where we tutor frequently - searching and shuffling soaks up the clock and thus, there is a vested interest in keeping dead time in the game to a minimum. I also think there is plenty of room in the discussion for a limited deck size but not too limited. Given that the majority of decks in the game fall in the less than 100 card size and even those that go above that dont go far above it - i think we could exist in a game with a 100 card limit.

[AllenGould]

The most infamous of these is Magic the Gathering tournament rules stating that if you cannot shuffle the entirety of your deck with two hands without assistance - there was serious penalty. At least, thats what the rule was when i left the game many years ago, not sure where its at now and i remember even back then there was consternation that it was "ableist" and they may have clarified/qualified/outright changed it to not be that.

But i'm sure my info is likely out of date on this front but its the standard by which i think of the starting point of card game tournament play.

I didn't find that one, but "taking too long shuffling" is a Slow Play penalty still today (looks like they've removed a lot of the hard time limits in lieu of "this ain't American football, we expect you to play the game and not run the clock out".), and some references basically saying that having a large deck doesn't entitle you to more time shuffling.

There are several card games you dont mention that i know off the top of my head had mandatory deck sizes - Highlander, Battlemech, Star Wars: Destiny, Marvel Champions and someone remind me if Decipher's SWCCG did or not - i barely ever played that game but know that draining the opponent out WAS the win condition.

What I'd meant (and I guess didn't express properly) is that I know of games like Pokemon that have a hard deck size (n=60), and I know games that have a minimum deck size but no maximum (1E's n>=30 or Magic's n>=60), but I wasn't aware of any that had a max.

But you taught me two! Battletech is n<= 60 - you can't have more than 60, but you can have 1 card in your deck if you want. (It can do this because your deck = life, so it's a *terrible* idea. Marvel Champions is 40 <= n <=50 (both an upper *and* lower bound!)

[Armus]

FWIW WWE Raw Deal has n=60 as a rule, but there are specific superstars that get more or less (e.g., GMs and some Divas get n=50, Andre the Giant gets n=100).

Since in that game deck = life, deck size matters, but different superstars do different things and have different tradeoffs, to include deck size.

[Ashigaru]

I know (for what little it may matter) that Yugioh is "40 minimum, 60 maximum" after someone decided to prove a point by bringing a 2,000 card deck to a tournament.