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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#580732
I play Test for Weakess and download Earth Outpost under my opponents control.

My opponent is playing Borg, and we both have Battle Bridges.

I attack the outpost, and one of their tactics is Borg Cuttng Beam. Can they use it?

(I believe yes, because [BO] simply means it couldn't be included in the deck if not Borg, but once the game starts, it remains legal.)
 
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#580778
Once the game has started, [BO] simply means that you must be "playing Borg" in order to use the card. Hence in this scenario, the opponent is "playing Borg," so the tactic may be used. Similar situations can arise, for example, if a Borg player takes control of a ship via Alien Parasites or Neuro Servo Device. In the strange case they "hit" with their "off-color Beam", they will assimilate one of your personnel, but they will be under house arrest.

Incidentally, the specific definition of "playing Borg" has been removed from the glossary. According to the currently glossary, it is arguable that in your scenario that Borg Cutting Beam cannot be played by the opponent if they have yet to control a [Bor] card that game (for example, they are using a "scout vessel" deck and declined to seed an outpost or seed a ship).
glossary18 wrote:You are playing Borg (or are a "Borg player") if you stock any Affiliation Borg-affiliation personnel, ships, or facilities (or any Borg-use-only cards) in your game deck or in any side deck, even if you have not seeded or played them. If playing Borg, you may not stock any non-Affiliation Borg-affiliation cards. You are not playing Borg if you stock non-Affiliation Borg-affiliation Borg personnel such as One or Icheb.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#580789
I partially agree and partially disagree with that answer. Disagreement first:
FranklinKenter wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:09 pm Once the game has started, [BO] simply means that you must be "playing Borg" in order to use the card.
I don't think [BO] has any in-game effect whatsoever. [BO] is strictly an icon that limits deck construction. As long as you have a legal deck (meaning your [BO] cards were stocked in a deck that included at least one [Bor] affiliation card and no cards belong to other affiliations), the [BO] cards within that deck can be used freely, whether or not you are currently legally "playing Borg".
In the strange case they "hit" with their "off-color Beam", they will assimilate one of your personnel, but they will be under house arrest.
In the specific case of Test For Weakness, since the battle is against your facility (not a ship), and since Borg Cutting Beam requires your ship to be involved in the battle, I think the entire gametext fizzles. The Attack/Defense bonus work and the damage works, but nobody gets assimilated.

Agreements:

Otherwise, in the situation you mention with (for example) Alien Parasites taking over a non-[Bor] ship, I do agree with you that the personnel would be relocated to the non-[Bor] ship and placed under house arrest.
Incidentally, the specific definition of "playing Borg" has been removed from the glossary.
Not moved, but merged. There is no longer one definition for "playing an affiliation or faction (non-Borg)" and a second, slightly different definition for "playing Borg." This merger occurred in June 2020.

You are correct that a player is not officially "playing Borg" until he or she seeds or plays a [Bor]-affiliation card. (This is how it has worked for other affiliations since Glossary 1.7.) It is therefore indeed possible that a Borg Scout Drop player (such as you describe) will not be officially "playing Borg" until some point in the Play Phase, which is a change from past behavior.

However, since the [BO] cards work regardless, that should not pose a problem to using the Borg Cutting Beam. (It could pose a problem if your opponent encounters your seeded Borg Servo or Defrosted Menace before you put a [Bor] card on the table.)
 
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#580797
BCSWowbagger wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:20 pm I don't think [BO] has any in-game effect whatsoever. [BO] is strictly an icon that limits deck construction....
Borg Use Only Icon wrote: [BO]

A card bearing this icon in its title bar can be stocked in your deck and used only when playing Borg.
That seems fairly clear to me that you have to be "playing Borg" to use a [BO] card.
Not moved, but merged. There is no longer one definition for "playing an affiliation or faction (non-Borg)" and a second, slightly different definition for "playing Borg." This merger occurred in June 2020.
However, there was good cause for this distinction. According to the entry above, you have to be "playing Borg" to even stock [BO] cards in your deck in the first place. But you can't be "playing Borg" until the game actually starts!
The ultimate Borg egg and assimilated chicken problem.

And even beyond [BO], there are weird cases such as Borg Servo where, if encountered on the opponent's first turn, you may not assimilate a personnel because you might not be "playing Borg" yet- nevermind the fact you've committed to be "playing Borg" by seeding the card in the first place.

Or even more open-ended, this opens the possibility that a "Borg" player can score ordinary bonus points (e.g. Parallax Arguers)- if done before they play a single [Bor] card. Safe to say, this is clearly not intended.

Proposed changes:
Borg Use Only Icon wrote: [BO]
You may only stock this card in your deck if all personnel, ships, facilities in your deck have the [Bor] affiliation.
playing an affiliation wrote: You are "playing [affiliation or faction]" or are an "[affiliation or faction name] player" if you control or have controlled at least one card belonging to that affiliation or faction (or any [BO] card, in the case of Borg), or used a multi-affiliation card you have controlled in that affiliation mode at any time during the game, regardless of whether any such cards are still in play. Only cards which you own are considered when determining if you are playing an affiliation or faction. See faction.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#580807
Those both strike me as reasonable tweaks. I'll put both on my list for discussing with Rules this month and hopefully implementing on 1 August.
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#580953
FranklinKenter wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 5:38 pm Or even more open-ended, this opens the possibility that a "Borg" player can score ordinary bonus points (e.g. Parallax Arguers)- if done before they play a single [Bor] card. Safe to say, this is clearly not intended.
I was in the middle of half-agreeing with you here - I think the rules hint very strongly that once you're Borg you ignore bonus points, but it doesn't explicitly say that you ignore any points you managed to pre-game. :)

But then it occurred to me that this may be a fairly narrow shenanigan window - you can't seed any Borg facilities, no TWBC (or the ship!), no Network Gateway, no TNG objectives... I *think* you could still be playing a Scout Vessel deck, but you're really coming from a standing start. Even in a hypothetical world where we say "sure, you score all the bonus points you want until you play your first Borg card"... I'd be really curious if that's actually an advantage?
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#582735
I'm sure you all saw this, but we patched this in this month's rulings, pretty much adopting @FranklinKenter's sensible proposal.
 
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#582757
BCSWowbagger wrote:I'm sure you all saw this, but we patched this in this month's rulings, pretty much adopting @FranklinKenter's sensible proposal.
Except you didn't fix the typo. :P
playing an affiliation wrote: You are "playing [affiliation or faction]" or are an "[affiliation or faction name] player" if you control or have controlled at least one card belonging to that affiliation or faction (or any [BO] card, in the case of Borg), or used a multi-affiliation card you have controlled in that affiliation mode at any time during the game, regardless of whether any such cards are still in play. Only cards which you own are considered when determining if you are playing an affiliation or faction. See faction.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#582874
Dukat wrote:Was it 'fixed'?

It seems that, as long as you haven't seeded any facilities or Borg cards and haven't played any Borg cards, you are not a Borg player at that time and can score bonus points.
I think it's fixed enough, in that if a Borg player somehow manages to score bonus points, they would have to do it before:

- Seeding or playing a ship, personnel, facility
- Seedin any of the objectives/incidents
- seeding a Transwarp Network Gateway

at that point, if they can do all that, score enough bonus points to be relevant, and still win, then I vote for that being impressive enough to keep around.
 
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#584012
boromirofborg wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 12:44 pm
Dukat wrote:Was it 'fixed'?

It seems that, as long as you haven't seeded any facilities or Borg cards and haven't played any Borg cards, you are not a Borg player at that time and can score bonus points.
I think it's fixed enough, in that if a Borg player somehow manages to score bonus points, they would have to do it before:

- Seeding or playing a ship, personnel, facility
- Seedin any of the objectives/incidents
- seeding a Transwarp Network Gateway

at that point, if they can do all that, score enough bonus points to be relevant, and still win, then I vote for that being impressive enough to keep around.
I agree with Dukat. It wasn't "fixed," but I proposed the simplest patch to make it as tight as possible without going back to the way things were.

Indeed, I still think it should go back to the old rules. There was nothing wrong with it- other than the unaesthetic dichotomy of having two rules: one for Borg and one for non-Borg. However, Borg is an unaesthetic dichotomy in its entirety in almost every way. Arguably, we have two different intuitive notions of "playing Borg" that are supposed to be the same, but technically aren't. One that impacts you when building your deck and one when after you've played your first Borg card. At least to me, that feels more unaesthetic than how it was before.

I hope that Rules can relieve its itch to "minimize the glossary." In this age, there is no real need to remove items from the glossary if the glossary provides a thorough explanation of the card. Simply put, just because the card "says it" does not mean it does not merit clarification (see for example Gatherer rules entries). There have been numerous cases where items or entries were removed as redundant or unaesthetic, only for those cases to the re- and mis-interpreted another way. (The most recent example of this is the Q-continuum side deck, all of whose references in conjunction with the other specialized-type side decks were removed, leaving up but to wonder whether [Q]-cards are discarded, placed in a point pile or placed beneath the side deck.) Case and point: "It looks good" or "it now/already says it on the card" should not be a reason to edit or change the glossary.

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