For posting 1E deck designs for feedback from other players and members of the community.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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Community Contributor
#453094
Takket's recent thread about speed solvers reminded me that the best definition of a "speed solver" I've ever seen was written in May 2018 by Jason Drake -- but it was in a private design forum, where we were discussing one of the biggest difficulties facing the game and a card we were hoping might help solve it.

I talked to Charlie and Jason and got both of their permission to post the conversation. They agreed it would be nice to contribute to the conversation about speed solvers, and also nice to show everyone how Design thinks through big messy issues while working on cards. I'll post the conversation below, but, since this card was being worked on for months before and months after this particular discussion, I'll need to lay the groundwork with some context:

At the time of this conversation, the card was called "Ladies & Gentlemen." It would later be called "Intermission." For me and one other team member, it was the card we were most excited about in the entire set. It was also the very first card cut from Project Delenn.

The purpose of Ladies & Gentlemen was to deal with a problem Design has identified again and again over the past decade: the game's speed keeps increasing. OTSD games can see each player take 30 turns. Design's official target for the "modern" OTF game is 10 turns per player. We are now routinely seeing games that end in just 5 or 6 turns... sometimes even less. The game still takes 60-70 minutes; there are just fewer turns for players to do anything in. There's a widespread perception that the acceleration of the game has something to do with "speed solvers" and the way speed solvers disadvantage interactive decks (which are unable to get set up in time to successfully interact with those speed solvers).

Design has tried addressing game speed many times. Nearly all have been cut, from "Situation Room" (cut from Cold Front) to "Slow The F Down And Get A Carrot" (cut from The Next Generation).

For Ladies & Gentlemen, our concept was simple: give more interactive decks a few extra turns to get set up by preventing a "speed solver" from clearing most of its dilemmas while the interactive deck is still putting on its pants. By May 2018, after several iterations, here is what the card said:
[Evt] Ladies & Gentlemen
[Countdown:4]
Seeds on table. Players may not attempt (or scout) missions. (Immune to Kevin Uxbridge.)
We thought this would accomplish two things:

(1) The most time-consuming parts of most games are attempting missions and moving people around to prepare to attempt missions. L&G added several turns to the game, but they would be SHORT turns, because everyone would just be setting up instead of attempting missions. So interference would have more setup time, but it wouldn't make more games go to time. (We do NOT want more games to go to time.)

(2) There's a perception in Design that speed solvers don't invest in defensive cards, because they count on their sheer speed to allow them to win before their opponent can stop them. But, if interaction has more time to strike, speed solvers would have to adapt by investing more resources in defense, which means less space for "jumpstart" cards, which means slower, more balanced and flexible decks.

In May 2018, we had 120 cards in the file. We needed to get it down to 90 or so before it could be sent to testers. (The final size of Project Delenn is 63 cards.) We were talking about which cards to cut when Jason said we should cut Ladies & Gentlemen.

His comments are in the next post. Then I'll post the internal responses, leading to a new revision of the card. Then I'll post a short epilogue describing this card's fate.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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#453095
BCSWowbagger wrote:The following post was written by Wambundu (Jason Drake) on May 13th, 2018 in the Delenn internal thread "Card-by-Card Review".
4051 ladies and gentlemen CUT

Honestly, I've been working on this, but it took longer than I expected. So...


Evolution of Game Speed

Let's say that, prior to the First Contact expansion (when Assign Mission Specialists began the accelerated reporting process), a game typically took 14 turns; and let's say an average game today takes 7 turns.

Twice as fast, right? But a "turn" is a big bucket containing a lot of elements.

Previously, 14 turns gave you 14 card plays and 14 card draws. Today, we expect 7 turns to provide you 21 plays and 21 card draws. Measured in card plays, the game is not shorter at all, but 50% longer. More cards enter play (and need to enter play), which makes the selection of personnel in your deck more relevant to the outcome (balancing the skill matrix and free report options, for example). Ergo, there are more actions and more strategic/tactical decisions, which altogether means there is "more game" being played.

Previously, I expect the average winning deck faced no more than six dilemmas, given not only the popularity of two-mission wins but the various dirty tricks for bypassing dilemmas. Today, victory requirements require viable decks to solve at least two missions, all the dilemma bypass strategies (Q, Senior Staff Meeting) have been hit with errata or bans, high-point missions are more vulnerable (because built-in rules protect lower point missions from theft and because skill inflation makes it much easier for your opponent to steal missions without a deck built to steal missions), and Delta Quadrant players need 140 points. I estimate that the modern winning deck faces approximately eight dilemmas. So here, also, there is a an increase in the number of cards that enter play, certainly more interaction (with opponent's dilemmas, if nothing else), and thus 25% "more game".

It's also worth noting that, prior to First Contact, the 30-card seed deck counted 6 missions. So today there are 6 more seed slots available, and the available cards include a number of downloading chains (increasing the actual seed slots even more) and a variety of ways to begin with personnel or ships in play. And, although the choice of seeds & downloads is generally predetermined by the deck design, there are always choices involving arrangement and placement which happen during the seed phase. So with more choices and more cards, there is "more game" happening during the seed phase, too.


But while draw rates and reporting rates have increased, the range of ships has not. Continuing with the estimate of 14 turns shrinking to 7 turns, each ship can only move half the distance it used to over the course of a game. Likewise, the ability to "unstop" your nouns has not increased (it has actually decreased), so your personnel and ships can only take half as many actions that result in being "stopped" over the course of a game. Viewed from a broad perspective, it is accurate to say that ships now move only half as fast and the effect of being "stopped" now lasts twice as long.


Strategic type classification

What is a "speed solver"?

I find an interesting comparison to be Chris Sonsteby's Worlds 2017 deck and my own Worlds 2014 deck. Chris used a substantial twenty dilemmas (counting Quantum Incursions), with the rest of the deck geared towards overcoming dilemmas as quickly as possible and minimal contingencies for interference and defense. He predicted his opponents would likewise not attempt much interference (e.g., battle), and so he would be able to solve his missions despite minimal seed deck support for his own engines. My 2014 deck used just 13 dilemmas (counting the Kobayashi Maru Scenario and excluding the self-seeds), with heavy contingencies for defense against battle and some minor potential for interference. I predicted that my opponents would attack me, and so my defensive cards would mitigate those effects while my minimal dilemma seeds would not create an excess vulnerability.

If Chris had optimized his deck to solve his missions in the fewest turns possible, he would have seeded just 12 dilemmas and added 8 more cards for engine support. If my deck has been optimized to score 100 points as quickly as possible, I would have elimimated the defensive cards in favor of more mission-oriented resources.

So are these speed solvers? I say yes. Absolutely yes. They are built to score 100 points faster than the opponent, based on the predicted nature of opposition decks. In that sense, every deck is a speed solver; and so long as victory is awarded to the first player to reach 100, neither Ladies and Gentlemen nor any other card we imagine can change that.

But with that in mind, I think a more useful distinction would be "Direct Solver", characterized by a lack of non-seed resources available for interference, and a lack of non-seed resources for defense, especially where such defense can be achieved with the existing mechanisms used for solving missions (e.g., continuous high-volume reporting to overcome battle losses). Within that category is some variation in expected game turns, based largely on the number of seed slots devoted to dilemmas. Chris's deck would certainly be a Direct Solver; my deck would be less of a Direct Solver because of defensive resources; a deck which ran a couple of copies of Brain Drain and used Diplomatic Intervention would be slightly less direct; and so on.

Furthermore, we can distinguish Direct Solvers that do not expect to attempt missions in the first 3-4 turns. The delay might be due to a large number of dilemma seeds (slower reporting/fewer starting personnel), the use of personnel to set up engines or bonus points (Process Ore, Dabo), or the availability of dilemma-busting strategies that require specific or numerous cards (Extraordinary Methods, special downloads, etc.).

The counterpart to this, obviously, is a deck which does attempt missions in the first 3-4 turns, and this would be most affected by Ladies & Gentlemen. Strategically, such a deck does not expect to overcome dilemmas immediately, but tries to remove kill dilemmas (at the cost of personnel) and reveal wall dilemmas, in both cases relying on the ability to report the necessary replacements and/or needed skills. Let's call this a "Speed Attempter."

The distinctions are important for several reasons, which I will get to shortly. :)


Some Overused Cards

DILEMMAS, recent decks using:

Dead End = 225
Friendly Fire = 144 (Personal Duty = 54)
Cytherians = 134 (Mission Debriefing = 37)
Rules of Obedience = 132
Quantum Leap = 116
Medical Crisis = 109
Jol Yichu' = 99
The Ghost of Cyrus Ramsey = 97
Scientific Method = 93

Quantum Incursions = 122
Denevan Neural Parasites = 106
Edo Probe = 72
FLI + Garbage Scow = 53
Buried Alive = 45
Emergent Life Form = 28
The Whale Probe = 25
Sidebar regarding Quantum Incursions

What's so good about Quantum Incursions? The Empathy requirement has been noted as difficult for some affiliations, but other dilemmas requiring Empathy (without more common alternative requirements) include Cardassian Trap, Frame of Mind, Lethean Telepathic Attack, Mission Fatigue, and Talosian Cage. They have 19 combined appearances in recent decks.

Any specific instance of Quantum Incursions requires only two different skills, and no more than two levels of one skill. By contrast, The Ghost of Cyrus Ramsey requires an extremely rare 3 Transporter Skill or 3 MEDICAL classification (48% of the MEDICAL personnel in the game do not have MEDICAL classification, and it cannot be added with skill-adding cards); Medical Crisis effectively requires 3 MEDICAL and 2 Biology, and can easily be set up with multiple dilemmas that remove MEDICAL. These are the game's most popular wall dilemmas, yet they are not as popular as QI.

To pass Quantum Incursions, suppose you start with 4 skills (a substantial requirement for a wall), with the ability to add two more on the next attempt (next turn), one more on the turn after, and nothing else further on. Remember that you can't just have any of the four skills and you can't just add any skill; 1 SECURITY doesn't help without 2 AU personnel, and a second SECURITY doesn't help without Navigation; also keep in mind that you might have to work on some other missions while pinging the QI for a favorable set of requirements, so a low limit is reasonable.

With that, the aggregate probability of passing QI within a given number of turns is as follows:

1 turn = 16.7%
2 turns = 44.4%
3 turns = 72.2%
4 turns = 86.1%
5 turns = 93.1%
The dilemmas in italics are those which explicitly require time (as measured in game turns) to overcome. Dead End and Edo Probe cannot be overcome with skills; they are likely to send you to another mission, ultimately causing delays via movement and stoppage. Friendly Fire and Emergent Life-form lock out a mission or ship for the duration of a countdown. Cytherians causes a delay for ship movement (and lots of it). Garbage Scows, Buried Alive, and The Whale Probe are all guaranteed one-turn delays (perhaps requiring Mission Debriefing).

Among the remaining dilemmas, Denevan Neural Parasites is going to have maximum effectiveness late in the game, especially if a player expects to lose the following turn if he can't complete a mission (thus incenting him to send down a very large away team). And the other six are just really good walls.

Now remember that, for mechanics still linked to turns in the same manner as always (countdowns, stoppage, and ship movement), the game has already shrunk by half (from an estimated 14 turns to 7 turns). So it's no wonder that these stall dilemmas are highly popular. Ladies and Gentlemen will eliminate four more turns of available ship movement, unstoppage, and countdown which need to take place after missions are attempted and dilemmas encountered.


Some Underused Cards

A number of cards provide a continuous benefit for completing a mission. And by "continuous", I mean that the benefit potentially increases if you have have more future turns once it's earned. For example, "once each turn you may..." is continuous. So is "download a personnel", because the personnel can be used for more things the longer he is in play.

OBJECTIVES
I picked out four of the most apparently lucrative Objectives with continous benefits, those being Protect Historic Encounter (one personnel download, but also includes a free report when seeded), Establish Trade Route (download a facility and two equipment), Combined Strike (5 card draws, bonus points, and a possible download), and Collect Metaphasic Particles (double turn + add Youth and unstopping ability)). The have eleven combined appearances in recent decks.

MISSIONS
There are 10 missions worth 30 points or less that include "when you solve" game text. Benefits include card draws, personnel downloads, and even a facility download. They have five combined appearances in recent constructed decks.


ARTIFACTS
I picked out what I thought were the seven most powerful which met the requirement of continuous benefits: Betazoid Gift Box, Interphase Generator, Kurlan Naiskos, Orb of Prophecy and Change, Orb of Wisdom, Sword of Kahless, and The Earring of Li Nalas. Their combined appearances in recent decks is seven.

(I excluded The Genesis Device because its beneift does not increase with the number of remaining turns. You fire it off exactly once, and decks which use it are explicitly trying to avoid playing a lot of turns afterwards or doing more than one other mission.)

Again, the game has already shrunk from an estimated 14 to 7 turns, so it's no wonder these cards are not very popular. And for these Objectives, Missions, and Artifacts, Ladies and Gentlemen will eliminate up to four turns of available benefits.



Can the effect of L&G be achieved already?

Stefan Slaby won the 2017 Austrian Regional with me shoot you die, a deck with relatively modest battle power that seeded 22 dilemmas. Some of his comments from the "Road to Worlds" interview:
Non-AQ decks could have avoided the battling entirely, but would have to do 140 points against 22 dilemmas and Mission Debriefing, so that didn't really worry me.

... my resources and my battle abilities were still rather limited, and could easily be outpaced by a dedicated battler.

Seeding four dilemmas under most missions (and having Mission Debriefing out) was a great experience, I can only recommend it to anybody who thinks games take too few turns these days! (Fair warning: It does create a lot of modified wins, though.)
From the tournament record, you can see that Slaby had just one Full Win and three Modified Wins.

And I know his experience is not unique, because I've had it myself. Here's what I think happens: When Player A builds his deck with the expectation of reaching 100 points in, say, eight turns, he subconsciously budgets about five minutes for each turn. If his opponent can win in fewer than eight turns, his opponent gets a full win. But if his opponent has interactive delaying tactics, the time budget doesn't get adjusted, so even if that opponent moves more quickly, the game will go to time at about 9 turns. Player A subconsciously attributes this to the fact that his opponent was playing an interactive deck and, despite being a good sport and a perfectly congenial fellow, he never adjusts his playing speed to allow his opponents a chance at a full win.

Competitive deck-builders are aware of this, and adjust their interference strategies appropriately. They avoid those which require a lot of clock time and, even more so, those which cost them too many turns en route to victory.


Predicted Effects of L&G

I have no objection if you want to send this to the playtesters, but I doubt their feedback will change my mind. I expect they will say that the card is a lot of fun, and certainly anyone would find it interesting for the pure novelty. But it will take time to see the full implications in a competitive environment, and I don't think playtesting replicates tournament timing restrictions.

L&G will cause a slight increase in outpost-killer decks, but these will still be rare because of the isolation of the Delta Quadrant and the frequent usage of Homeworlds. Less overwhelming "ambush" decks will have more time to prepare an attack, but they won't be able to attack until the four turns have expired, because their opponent will hole up at a facility if not allowed to attempt missions. Thus all of the action will start happening four turns later, each turn will take longer because there are more cards in play to manipulate, and the combined effect will be a severe increase in games going to time.

The unpopular (and in my opinion interesting) Objectives, Missions, and Artifacts listed above will become even less popular, because L&G will remove four turns of potential usage.

The overused dilemmas listed above (which hamper variety and creativity) will see even more play, because L&G will remove up to four turns of ability to overcome these turn-dependent effects.


Defining the "Problem"

If a particular strategy, tactic, card, faction, etc. is being overused in comparison to others which are available, then our job as Designers is to make the overused strategy weaker and/or make the alternatives stronger.

But we should target the strategy and not the result.

If my opponent and I are each playing Federation Continuing Mission decks with 18 dilemmas, no battle contingencies, and a plan to win by solving any 3 convenient missions, who gets hit harder by Ladies and Gentlemen? Whoever is more effective. And that, in a nutshell, is my primary philosophical objection. It's the same failing as Scorched Hand, Shape-Shift Inhibitor, and In The Zone. Each of these targets something that all players are trying to do as much as possible (draw cards, play personnel, or score points) and explicitly punishes you for being good at it.

...

Now let's revisit the concept of a "speed attempter" and ask the question: Is this actually a strategy or is it merely the observation of someone being better at doing the same thing everyone is trying to do?

If it's simply an observation of quality play, then we should do nothing at all. (Or, if we want to make games longer all around, approach it more directly-- e.g., by increasing dilemma difficulty or increasing victory point requirements).

If it's actually a distinctive strategy, on the other hand, then it must have particular strengths other than simply being fast. It must also have particular weaknesses resulting from opportunity costs-- i.e., it is surrendering certain opportunities in order to maximize attempting (and solving) speed.

If we as Designers believe this is an overused (and relatively overpowered) strategy, we can identify those strengths in order to make them weaker; and identify the opportunity costs in order to make them more substantial.

[Note that any strengths and costs related to a generic Direct Solver will also be true of a Speed Attempter, so we don't have to explicilty constrain the former, only the latter.]

Some of the features of a "Speed Attempter", then:

* Minimal Reporting Locations
The deck gives up extra free reports that are location-dependent, because the time required to collect personnel from around the spaceline delays mission attempts.

* Engines that do not require personnel or other set-up
The deck avoids engines which require personnel, especially those which require personnel in specific or diverse locations, because personnel need to be available as soon as possible to attempt missions.

* Non-renewable Resources
The deck favors one-off mechanics like Assign Mission Specialists and any once-per-game download (e.g., Anya [DL] Salia). It is expected that the advantage of tripping dilemmas early will outweigh the potential advantage of alternate engines which can be used continuously.

* Weak Mission Crews
The deck attacks missions with incomplete skill sets, again expecting that the advantage of tripping dilemmas early will outweigh the advantage of having more personnel survive.

* Lack of In-game Interference Ability
The deck skips interactive and interfering cards, expecting that it's more efficient to increase one's own speed than to decrease the speed of one's opponent.

* Ability to overcome turn-dependent dilemma effects (Dead End, Friendly Fire, Quantum Incursions, Cytherians)
Viz.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#453097
BCSWowbagger wrote:The following post was written by Wambundu (Jason Drake) on May 13th, 2018 in the Delenn internal thread "Card-by-Card Review".
4051 ladies and gentlemen continued...

PLEASE NOTE that these aren't meant as actual card designs to be included in this expansion, but as an illustration of principle. If my deck can accomplish in 2 turns what your deck accomplishes in 4 turns, with no definable drawbacks on my side and no other advantages on your side, then there's nothing to be fixed. But if we can identify weaknesses (or opportunity costs) in my deck, those can be enhanced; if we can identify strengths (or capabilities) in your deck, those can likewise be enhanced.


Constructive Suggestions: Clock Speed

One of the biggest weaknesses of non-speed decks is the risk of going to time and settling for a modified win (or, in many cases, suffering a modified loss).
[Inc] Time is the Fire in which We All Burn

Seeds on table. Donwload a chess clock from
outside the game. After the seed phase, any
player who exceeds 35 minutes of total play
time loses the game.
If that seems too harsh, a general tournament rule could work something like this:

1) If either player wants to use a chess clock (and one is available), it will be used in lieu of traditional game timing.
2) The seed phase is off the clock, but limited by the tournament director to 10 or 15 minutes.
3) Each player has 30 minutes available once actual play begins. Your clock generally runs during your turn, but also runs during your opponent's turn while you are downloading or playing a card, or making any choices (e.g., "opponent's choice" for personnel selection on a dilemma).
4) When a player's 30 minute initial time expires, they can no longer take any action during the opponent's turn unless it is (a) a required action, or (b) allowed by a card which entered play that turn. Their clock is reset to 10 minutes and they may take their own turns normally. If the reset clock expires, they can no longer take any action that is not a required action.
5) The game cannot end if either player has time remaining on his initial 30-minute clock, even if time is called. However, if overall time has been called, and your opponent's initial clock has expired, you may declare the game ended at any time.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Another way to speed up game time would be a return to deck size limits. An admittedly complex arrangement, but one which allows variety, might look like this:
1 side deck + up to 75 cards in the draw deck
2 side decks + up to 70 cards in the draw deck
3 side decks + up to 60 cards in the draw deck
No more than 3 side decks would ever be allowed, and the draw deck limit should be a "hard limit" -- i.e., you cannot label opening downloads as "outside the game" unless such text actually occurs on the card.

- - - - - - - - - - -
[Door] Q's Tent: Pavilion

Place one atop Q's Tent side deck (up to 20 different
cards) during the seed phase. Q's Tent is now open and
in play. You may not download cards from your draw deck.
I think that's fairly straightforward in its intent.


Constraining "speed attempters" by reducing the value of their strengths
[D] Dead End

Unless you have at least 50 points, place dilemma atop
mission; it may not be attempted by a player who has not
solved a different mission. (Unique)
[S] Cytherians

Place on ship. It is RANGE +2, cannot be stopped, and must
do nothing but travel to far end of spaceline. When reached,
discard dilemma and score points. [10]
[D] Friendly Fire

Unless 2 Leadership, 2 SECURITY and STRENGTH > 30 present,
kills one personnel (random selection), then place dilemma on
this mission (or this Empok Nor); it cannot be attempted or
scouted. X = number of seed cards remaining. [countdown: x]
and/or...
[S] Personal Duty

One personnel with OFFICER or Leadership (random
selection) is "stopped". To get past requires
(OFFICER OR Leadership) and (Treachery OR Honor).
These aren't necessarily refined ideas, but illustrate the manner in which we can allow other decks to close the gap. If these turn-dependent dilemmas are weaker, then the advantage of attempting early is reduced.


Constraining "speed attempters" via manipulation of opportunity costs
[D] Dal'Rok
Place on mission. Now and start of each turn, kills personnel
with lowest total attributes at this location. May be nullified
by INTEGRITY+CUNNING+STRENGTH>150 at this location.
This is exactly the sort of card which puts the hurt on aggressive, early mission attempts. You might have a mission selection that allows you to beat Lack of Preparation with 2 or 3 personnel, but hitting this with a small crew springs an ongoing death trap.

It's probably too weak in the current game, because even an aggressive speed attempter can meet the requirements fairly quickly. So I think we should use this as a template to ramp things up.
[D] Trial of Q
Place on mission. Now and start of each of your turns, discard
one personnel (your choice, from anywhere in play) and opponent
may draw a card. Nullify with 2 Leadership and INTEGRITY > 60.
This is harder to cure than Dal'rok, cannot be escaped by leaving the mission location, and provides ongoing benefits to your opponent which are greater in quantity (and more useful!) the earlier you encounter it.
[D] Unauthorized Operations
Unless 5 Leadership present OR INTEGRITY > 30 present
and CUNNING > 40 in your other crew or away team, two
personnel killed (random selection).
This one has very high requirements that will make things rough for an early attempter, but without requiring a massive crew or away team to be involved in the actual mission attempt.
[D] Fear of the Unknown
Unless STRENGTH + INTEGRITY > 70, for each remaining
seed card here, two personnel are killed (random
selection) and opponent may draw one card.
Here I go again with "for each remaining seed card". If we're targeting speed attempters, we want the dilemma encountered early (before they have a large crew/away team); and we don't want that effect to be easily duplicated by simply preceding this dilemma with a filter.
[Obj] Scout Settlement

Seeds or plays on planet furthest from your
only homeworld (excluding those where a
facility cannot be played). Once each turn,
if you have exactly one Headquarters in play,
one ❖ personnel who matches Headquarters'
affiliation may report to planet for free.
Who doesn't want another free report? This one is easy and useful, but has the built-in drawback of necessarily splitting your reporting locations. A speed attempter can't use this as well, so this card increases their opportunity cost.
[Obj] Remote Helper
Image
Plays at any spaceline location (opponent's choice).
At the start of each turn, draw a card. Moves only
at the end of your turn towards far end of spaceline.
When reached, discard Objective, play up to two cards
for free, and score points. [10]
RANGE 5 WEAPONS 7 SHIELDS 7
A speed attempter generally lacks battle capability and wants to avoid side quests that involve something other than attempting a mission. This would increase the drawbacks of those strategic components.
[Int] Something something Caretaker

Make your alpha-quadrant ship RANGE +4 this turn
OR Allow it move (using 3 RANGE) from any end of the
Alpha Quadrant to one end of the Delta Quadrant spaceline
(opponent's choice), or vice versa.
This makes it easier to interact with a DQ opponent, making interaction more powerful, and thus increasing the relative opportunity cost of a speed attempter. The secondary function also makes it easier to deal with multiple reporting locations, late-game encounters with Cytherians (et. al.), and complex Objectives that require actions at multiple (or non-facility) locations.
[D] Female's Love Interest & Garbage Scow

Female's Love Interest: blah, blah, blah

Radioactive Garbage Scow: Place on mission; mission or scouting
attempt ends. Mission can't be attempted or scouted. Ship
with Tractor Beam and 2 ENGINEER can tow Scow. (Unique)
The Garbage Scow is a tough sell to include in a deck because of Borg invulnerability. In addition to back-and-forth towing contests (which I think are fun), it increases opportunities for interaction by forcing ship movement away from the mission.
[Tac] Maximumer Firepower

attack: 2 + x
defense: -x
x = number of personnel aboard your ship.
Hit = [Flip] [Flip] Direct Hit = [Flip] [Flip] [Flip] [Flip]

Casualties: randomly kills one personnel (on a Nor, one personnel
at site of opponent's choice).

RANGE: -1 WEAPONS: -1 SHIELDS: -1 Hull: -35%
All direct solvers like to report lots of bodies. This would leverage that into a powerful attack option without requiring other resources, hopefully increasing the opportunity cost of a speed attempter (which chooses not to use it).
[Obj] The Separation is in the Preparation

Seed one. You may make two card plays each
turn, but may not draw cards during your turn
(except during the end of turn) and may not
attempt or scout missions. [Countdown: 4]
This is pretty similar to L&G, but affects only the player who seeds it in exchange for other significant benefits. There are a lot of ways to use it, but I think the draw limit would constrain any strategy based on pure volume.


Restoring relative game speed

Per my analysis above, there is a lot more reporting, drawing, and dilemma-encountering going on in the modern game despite there being fewer turns. But there is a lot less opportunity for moving ships and people around, attempting missions (hence the drive to start on those early), and fight battles.

So unban Distortion of Space/Time Continuum. Sure, it would immediately become one of the most powerful cards (if not the most powerful card) in the game, but if everyone is using it, it might balance out and create more diverse gameplay.

Or we could work on some errata/alternatives:

DoS/TC variant I:
[Int] Distortion of Space/Time Continuum

Plays to "unstop" any Away Team or ship (and restore ship's RANGE).
Then opponent chooses: For the rest of the turn, you may not initiate
battle OR you may not attempt or scout missions.
If all you're doing is attempting missions OR if you're only prepared to battle at this time, then the card only provides additional mobility (a good thing). However, if you are in a position to do both, the card pretty much guarantees you can either do both or else do one twice.


DoS/TC variant II:
[Int] Distortion of Space/Time Continuum

Plays on any non- [Bor] ship. "Unstops" ship, crew,
and ship's Away Teams and restores any of this turn's
RANGE already used by that ship. [-8]
[Door] Distortion Matrix

Seeds (limit one) or plays on an Alpha Quadrant mission with
no facility (opponent's choice); neither player may seed a
facility here. When you play Distortion of Space/Time
Continuum, ignore its point box (discard interrupt instead).
Doorway nullified if you attempt this mission OR if opponent has
SCIENCE and ENGINEER aboard a ship here at the start of your turn.
The point loss balances out the power of the card; then, the optional Doorway lets you avoid that point loss if your opponent is unable or unwilling to expend the time nullifying it and putting himself into a potentially interactive situation.


DoS/TC variant III:

Errata same as Variant I, but with the following new card:
[Int] Distortion Ripple
Download Transwarp Conduit OR If opponent just played
Distortion of Space/Time Continuum, suspend opponent's turn and
take a full turn (but you may not play, download, or draw cards).
My biggest concern with DoS/TC is not repeated mission attempts, but the ability to get "stopped" at a mission attempt and then escape from an opponent who wants to come over and initiate battle (this would reduce interaction). So, this.

I feel like there are other ways we can bring back DoS/TC as a card which is inherently limited (e.g., once per game, huge negative point box), and then ease up some of those limits as a 'reward' for a deck strategy which is interesting but currently weak (e.g., one which doesn't attempt/scout missions for several turns, or which has very few free reports, etc.).
Last edited by BCSWowbagger on Sun Feb 17, 2019 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
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Community Contributor
#453098
BCSWowbagger, May 15th wrote:Great post. Took me all day to get through it, but I was left with tons to think about. Not a chance I am ready to act on any of it by this Tuesday.

Can we push l&g discussion off for an additional week?
Wambundu, May 15th wrote:That's probably a good idea.
MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine) and Orbin (James Monsebroten) are the lead designers on Project Delenn. They don't tend to respond to giant forum posts in written format. Instead, they wait until our hourlong Tuesday meeting, and we hash it out then, usually in a discussion that lasts 15-30 minutes.

At the Tuesday night meeting on May 15th, it was real quick and easy: everyone agreed to defer consideration of L&G until the meeting on May 22nd.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#453100
BCSWowbagger wrote:This post was written by me, BCSWowbagger (James Heaney) on May 21st, 2018.
The regional is over, so it's back to work for me! I have thought about this post over the week and agree with a lot of it -- at the start, most of it! -- but I also disagree with a good chunk.

Game Speed and Its Discontents

In general, we agree that the game is moving faster, and that this has been to the detriment of several card types that generally require time in order to be valuable.

Ships are far less capable today than they were in the early days of the game. While instant-value events (like Kivas Fajo - Collector) remain potent, time-value events (like Surprise Party) need extraordinary value to justify use. (It has been observed that Surprise Party should not be played after Turn 3, because, by the time it provides you enough benefit to pay for itself, the game will likely be over.) "When you solve" text on missions is in a similar boat, and Artifacts are nigh-unjustifiable, because you aren't likely to find time to use them effectively, particularly after getting Dead Ended. (I love ya, Iconian Gateway, but if I'm not going to see you until solving potentially my second mission, when I am going to have time to play you and use you?) Stops are also far more effective than they used to be, as you note. Hippocratic Oath, which was once a nuisance, is now effectively a kill in the majority of cases where it is encountered (the game ends before the personnel becomes unstopped and can be effectively redeployed). As you go on to note, even more of these "time-value" cards came out after FC. (You refer to them as "continuous-benefit cards" and point to Establish Trade Route, Sword of Kahless, and others.)

All these things (particularly the hurt to ships' effective RANGE) have had a strong negative impact on mid-range interference decks. You can still run a highly effective armada deck today (indeed, I just got clobbered by Kevin Jaeger's, again), but there's extremely little space for the kind of deck that says, "I'm going to mostly solve missions but I'll fly over for a little combat if the opportunity presents itself." Neat stuff like Kurlan Naiskos and Saltah'na Clock have gone from arguably O.P. to binder fodder. Matt Hayes loves pulling these tricks out of the bag anyway -- and repeatedly watching Hayes's traditional, fun, gimmicky decks try and fail to pull off their stunts (to say nothing of actually winning) before my standard direct solver wins... well, it's really clarified for me just how completely some key dimensions of the original game have been eroded.

I like your use of the phrase "direct solver" instead of "speed solver," and agree it is more illuminating. We are driven to "direct solver" builds, as you write, because other builds struggle to stay ahead of the direct approach in the modern environment -- an environment where ships don't get to move far, stops (including stops after battle) are devastating, and failure means there's no time to recover before your opponent wins. Even if you can keep up with the direct solver build, the players of direct-solve builds often get utterly flummoxed by interference tactics, and the resultant slow play leaves you with a mod win. (Had my opponents consumed less of the clock trying to get over their shock at being assimilated, I would have had full wins in all three games in this tournament -- of course, I've argued for Exhibition Format as a possible response to this.)

I quibble with many of your particular numbers, because I think you understate the scope of the problem.

In my experience of pre-First Contact play (which was, admittedly, among friends who did not have full access to all cards), the game did not last an average of 14 turns, as you suggest, but rather closer to 30 turns. This is broadly consistent with my recent experience of OTSD.

One might think that 30 turns = 30 personnel in that context, but players did not play personnel every turn. Events were a far more prominent part of the game, including interference events like Static Warp Bubble, precisely because these time-value events had a lot more time to build up value. In my last OTSD event, my opponent and I spent literally eight turns locked in a Static Warp Bubble - Spacedoor - Palor Toff cycle until he finally ran out of Toffs. But those turns did not last a long time, because there were few actions available for us to take during them.

I lost a lot of ground there, but had room to spare because I'd recently captured a bunch of his Klingons, stole a mission (Test Propulsion Systems, which had great benefits over the next ~20 turns!), and had enough firepower to seriously threaten more than 8 turns' worth of personnel if he flew my way. By the end of this game, we had a lot fewer personnel on the spaceline than we find in a regular 8-turn game today -- yet, measured in card plays, the game really was quite a bit longer than what we see today. This was because a lot of our card plays were expended on non-personnel cards, including many cards that direct responded to one another's shenanigans. (There were also very few downloads available.)

All this is unthinkable in modern play, because the number of turns in which to do things is just too dang small.

The Problem

This is a problem. I think it's the problem. Direct solver dominance is not, I think, the real problem, just an obvious symptom of it. The problem is that cards with a strong time-value component (including entire card types: ships, artifacts, many objectives) are vastly underpowered today, which takes a huge dimension of the game (including many interesting cards that already exist) right out of competitive play. The root cause of the problem is "not enough turns."

And that is precisely the problem which "Ladies & Gentlemen" is intended to address: it takes the game as it exists and bolts some extra turns onto it.

Now, we could do that more simply than L&G does. You suggest that we should to just that: add more turns directly, by adding tougher victory conditions / more or stronger dilemmas. That would give the game extra turns, for sure! But that solution would introduce new problems: we would have more turns but the game would last longer -- and the game is already quite long, likely at the frontiers of player tolerance.
(NOTE: After making this suggestion, which you don't seem to make particularly seriously, you interpret L&G to be an attempt to solve a different problem -- a perceived problem of direct solver dominance. You express philosophical opposition to attacking them in this way -- opposition which I happen to agree with. You then suggest many possible approaches that would weaken the grip direct solvers hold on the game, and a number of those suggestions are intriguing and perhaps worth considering. However, since I don't think the problem is direct solvers at all, I have nothing to say to those suggestions at this time -- I don't think they're addressing the same issue that L&G is tackling.)


An ideal solution to the time-value problem, then, would increase the average number of turns played but not the average number of minutes played.

That's why L&G represents (in my mind) a breakthrough: L&G adds four extra turns to the start of the game, but we expect those turns to be relatively short turns. Better yet, we expect that the remaining turns will also be shorter than they are at present thanks to the salutary effects of L&G. In all, we expect L&G to achieve the goal stated above -- more turns but not more minutes. After years of searching for something like that, it's one of the first single card ideas I've ever heard that seems like it might actually pull it off without imposing new General Quarters-style limits on the game. But let me explain my thinking on why it achieves that goal. [EDITOR'S NOTE: that first link goes to a 2017 1E All-Staff discussion of game speed; I'm not authorized to make it public right now.]

How L&G Achieves Both Prongs

I think it's fair to say that the overwhelming plurality of time spent during the game is taken up by players either (1) resolving dilemmas or (2) even more than that, deciding who to send on particular mission attempts and how to get them there -- assigning different mission teams to different ships, figuring out how to get ships to missions (and, ideally, away from those same missions during the attempt), confirming each team can meet both known and unknown dilemma and mission requirements, etc. The complexities of mission attempt planning, especially given the pressure on players to not waste a single turn on avoidable problems, make this often even more time-consuming in terms of actual minutes than staffing an entire Dominion armada and winning a battle with it.

L&G hits these precious minutes coming and going. First and obviously, the restriction on attempting missions while L&G is in play means nobody's having these mission-planning "confabs" while L&G is in play. They're playing cards, they're drawing cards, but they're not spending much time preparing for attempts they can't make. Second and less obviously, the time L&G affords players to build up resources, play time-value cards and manuever themselves (those ships can move around to different missions! there's time to build secondary outposts!) means that, when L&G goes away, the average player will have significantly more mobility available to them in the early game than the average player today has available even in the endgame. Having more mobility (and, heck, just more resources on the table) significantly reduces the pressure on players to perfectly predict the dilemmas they will face this turn and prepare/deploy multiple teams accordingly.

The end result of this: several more turns are added to the game, but the turns that are added are quite short, and all other turns in the game are somewhat shortened as well.

This is good!

Where I Think Your Critique Is Spot-On

In its current design, L&G significantly increases the value of a number of "time-value" cards, including ships, time-value events (e.g. A Willing Companion, Klim Dokachin), and certain kinds of Objective. It does all this by adding turns to the game without (I expect) adding minutes to the game. That's pretty good!

But it doesn't do everything we'd like it to, and, in some cases, it even makes the problem worse.

One thing a game-lengthening card ought to do is make stops and timed lockouts less devastating (e.g. you pointed at Friendly Fire and QI, I pointed at Hippocratic Oath above), but L&G doesn't do that.

Worse, any "time-value" cards that can't be used until a mission is solved (e.g. you pointed at Establish Trade Route, I mentioned Test Propulsion System, and of course every Artifact falls under this as well) are actually made less valuable by L&G because -- as you correctly point out -- L&G increases the number of turns in the game while decreasing the number of turns that these cards can actually be used. After all, once L&G discards, everyone's going to have more resources on the table, which means that the game is likely going to last 1-2 fewer turns after L&G than it does today -- and, by definition, L&G prevents any of these cards from being used until after it discards. So L&G gives many of the cards we are concerned about extra time to pay for themselves, but simultaneously takes time away from other cards that we want to get out of the binder.

Addressing That Critique

It seems to me that the solution to this issue is clear: if we want L&G to boost all time-value cards, not just some, then L&G needs to trigger in the midgame, not in the earlygame.

We want Artifacts to have a few turns to get used. We want Combined Strike to be more stockable. We want people to have a bit of time to go home and file their mission reports without anything more pressing on them. We want players to have time to shake off their lockouts and stops from the first mission, and maybe go rescue their Love Interest victims, thus reducing the strength of those overused time-suck dilemmas you listed. We don't want L&G to be quite so easy to turtle into -- it would be more interesting, it seems, if L&G hit after both players had at least ventured out from their outposts.

This all happens if we just move the activation time for L&G from start-of-game to middle-of-game, and I don't think we forfeit any of L&G's benefits if we do so.

So what would you say to this, Jason? (And Charlie, and James M?)
[Inc] l&g mk 2
[Countdown: 4] [HA]
Once per game, seeds or plays on table; may not be activated unless opponent has solved (or scouted) a mission. Players may not attempt (or scout) missions.
In any case, Jason, thanks for a very thoughtful and detailed post critiquing L&G. There was much I agreed with, and it helped me articulate my thoughts about the need for this card much better than I have been able to in the past. And even the parts I disagreed with were helpful, and I generally ended up disagreeing only in part.
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#453104
Again, Charlie and James M refrained from written posts, but our meeting on May 22nd was lively. We kept discussing these points, and, ultimately, we agreed that L&G Mk. II was a good approach. Jason was onboard with Mk. II, and the update went into the file, with just some minor text massaging for Rules purposes.

EPILOGUE

On August 22nd, Project Delenn, Version A was sent to playtesters. Ladies And Gentlemen now had this text:
[Inc] Intermission
[Countdown: 4]
Once per game, seeds or plays on table; activate only if opponent has just solved (or completed scouting) a mission. Players may not attempt (or scout) missions. (Indestructible.)
(Side note: "Indestructible" is another thing from the Delenn design file that didn't make it to the final product. It was basically just shorthand for "Immune to Kevin Uxbridge" so we could put more cards on 3/3 Event templates instead of 0/7 Incident templates. The reasons it was cut are beyond the scope of this thread.)

For Project Delenn, we wrote an extensive, sixty-page Design Document explaining to testing, rules, and creative how each card worked and why we made it, hoping that this would help reduce the communication and confusion problems that had arisen in the past. (For example, I have been told that the reason Search and Seize increases the point value of Rura Penthe is to make the rotated version of the mission stealable. But Design never communicated this intent to Rules. Rules just thought it was for extra points. So Rules never pointed out that the stealability doesn't work. The problem wasn't discovered until after release, too late to fix it.)

Here's the entry for Intermission:
4051 Intermission
Explanation
This card may be seeded or played, but only one time in a game. If seeded, another can not be played later; once a copy is discarded, it may not be replaced by any means. Any time immediately after a player has solved or scouted a mission, this may be turned face up. From that point on, it prevents either player from attempting or scouting mission until the countdown expires (the end of the seeding player’s 4th turn.)

Purpose
This card was developed as a response to the complaint that the game moves too quickly, is over in too few turns, and thus favors direct solvers over all other deck types. Other decks often require a little time to build up forces and move them, but direct solver decks that win the game by Turn 4 or 5 routinely make it impractical to invest significant resources into anything other than the the speed arms race. This card attempts to address the problem directly, by straightforwardly adding several more turns to the game. Direct solvers will be free to build up their teams during the “overtime”, but opponents are guaranteed at least 4 turns to maneuver in those turns before direct solvers can win.

Intended Use
This is expected to be used by the same decks that seed Mission Debriefing today: interference decks, decks that take a while to get set up, and any other deck that just needs a few more turns to pull ahead of a direct solver and secure a win. It is hoped that this will add turns to the game but not add time to the game, since the additional 3-4 turns will be spent building up forces and interference, not on the complicated work of selecting away teams and setting up mission attempts.

This also adds a lot of value to objectives, artifacts, and other cards that are best used in the mid-game, which is all too often too brief. For example, Establish Trade Route is often considered unplayable in the current game, because its benefits don’t begin to accrue until a mission has been solved, by which time there aren’t enough turns left in the game to make good use of it. Many Artifacts and even non-seedable, non-downloadable Events/Incidents face the same issue

It is also hoped that direct solvers will be forced to start investing some additional resources into defense in order to survive a potentially deadly game with more turns. Above all, we hope this will enable new decks that have not yet been imagined because they would move too slowly for the current game.

Notes
The steadily increasing pace of the game is a problem that Design has tried to address for many years, dating back to the first set of TNG Block. To date, no proposed solution has survived testing. We are excited about this one, but it is necessarily a bold card with a necessarily widespread impact on the game. We recognize that it likely requires refinement and may well fail altogether, but hope it is received in that spirit.

This card makes use of the new Indestructible keyword. See Indestructible under Potential Rules Changes for more details.
Playtester feedback to Delenn Version A was intense and negative. The details are, again, way outside the scope of this thread, but this was what we heard about Intermission:
4051A – Intermission: This card is unneeded. I don't understand why certain players feel like the game needs to be slowed down when the game already has issues with going to time during tournaments. Our group's testing has shown that in competitive play, this card can be abused and create a degenerate play style that for all intents and purposes prevents your opponent from actually PLAYING the game. This is how [redacted] used it against our playtest group. He created a dilemma strategy that was about “slow rolling”, using cards such as Edo Probe, the Scow, Buried Alive, Chula The Game, and other hard stops and lockouts, and combined it with Mission Debriefing and [redacted]. After scoring a single mission, he put his plan in motion, flipping Debriefing and causing us to be stopped after every single attempt. Due to the nature of the dilemmas, almost every single attempt resulted in a stop or lockout, so several turns were spent trying to attempt at various locations. After about 4 turns of this annoying experience, he initiated the final part of the plan, flipping the Intermission and essentially causing the games to time out. It created an absolutely frustrating experience, to be honest.... the definition of an NPE.
4051 A Intermission: This feels like a stall tactic, and will probably be used as such. If I am winning and time is winding down, I can flip this over as soon as you solve a mission to get close to (but not over) me in points and we've just put a 15 minute moratorium on the score changing. Seems extremely NPE. This resembles In the Zone.

I’m not sure people still think the game is too fast. There have been some great, tough dilemmas released in the past year and a half. And if anyone does still think it’s too fast, I don’t think 4 turns of nothing is what they want (4 turns is definitely way too much). STCCG without mission attempts is basically Klingon Warlords, without the fun part of Klingon Warlords (saying that you’re playing Klingon Warlords).
Intermission - The game doesn’t need this. A player who is already might try using it to lock out an opponent... but you banned In The Zone for that very reason! The game doesn’t need slowing down like this. It’s already a challenge to achieve a full win in time.
Intermission:
What the heck?

This card basically stalls the game for 4 turns. Well, it worked ... and it stalled ... and was extremely annoying.

For all involved.
Obviously, we had missed a way to abuse Intermission: it wasn't intended as a lockout, but was being used as one, big-time.

We had some ideas on how we might fix this. Make it so Intermission can only be triggered if you're losing. Make it so Intermission can only be triggered if you haven't attempted a mission yet. There were some other ideas, and some optimism that the card could be made to do what we wanted it to do.

But Delenn A had a lot of fires to put out, many of them related to the set's core mechanics. We ourselves were deeply demoralized for about a month after the first version was sent to testers. We had to decide which problems to focus on, and Intermission -- as an attempt to deal with a big problem, not something specific to our set -- wasn't at the top of the priority list. It was, fundamentally, an interactive card, which meant it was never going to make everyone happy.

It was the first card we cut.

Six months later, Takket posted his thread about speed solvers, I remembered Jason's post about direct solvers, and thought it would be nice to share with the community.

I hope this thread provided you with some interesting insight into the design process, both in how we approach big problems, the kind of analysis and iteration we do, and how our solutions -- especially to big problems like game speed -- often fail to work out, no matter how much we discuss it in advance. And I hope it gave you some food for thought about how to think about speed solvers, which was the original point of the whole exercise!

It is, of course, up to you to decide how to judge our work on this.
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 - Gamma Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#455509
Good read. Long read, but good. I got some thoughts.

Tl;dr - "in 1e, if you cant do it fast and right away, don't bother." - Kevin Jaeger


So I mostly agree with the premise of the issue but I think the problem with your solution is that it would have worked back before free report madness but now it would just help free report madness.

I don't have brilliant ideas or silver bullet thoughts yet but my initial thought is that the focus needs to be more on just making artifacts, objectives and ship range better and not trying to mess with the complicated areas of mission attempt and solving timing. The no dead end mission was a better idea toward that goal then l&g.
 
By HoodieDM
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#455614
Two things and *I* think this is where the heart of it lies:

#1 games are designing to become faster and faster. SW Destiny CCG max time 35 mins. Transformers TCG max time 20 mins. And these games are soaring in popularity. Talking about their OPG is a different thing of what's holding back their success more so, but games that go quicker, will attract newer/more people. If the CC doesn't care about that, then the game will be continued to see dwindling numbers.

#2 there are too many "free actions" now, whether it's reporting this, doing that, traveling across the galaxy, etc. etc. The main thing the CC could do is just limit those actions. I think a ship should be able to only travel from one place to place per turn. I think you should only be able to play 2 free personnel per turn (besides your download) at max. I think if there's a limit on how many things a person can do per turn, then it shortens their turns, and results in "MORE turns". You could also design that anything non-speed solver, just needs to have their things happen quicker? Like you can download and report a ship for free each turn, but you're now limited to how many free reporting personnel.

Just some ramblings, but I see that's the 2 main things with how the game has been designed up to this point. There's so many moving parts which is awesome, but again games taking 75 minutes, people are going to be able to play however they want. If someone wants to take 74 minutes for their turn (if legitimately not stalling), you can't fault them.

~D
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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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Community Contributor
#455632
I think you might be right, Kevin. We'd talked about that possibility internally and were prepared to make changes based on how the card played out in testing. Unfortunately, we never found out exactly how L&G worked, because testers used it exclusively as a stall card, and we cut it before fixing that.

Another sort-of similar card (cut from Project Wisdom) would have limited each player to play one / draw one (for just one turn). Perhaps a combination of the two is what would be needed to make this kind of card work. "Here are some extra turns. Not only can you not solve, but you're also limited in your ability to build up your forces / drain the clock with reporting shenanigans." Additional testing might be able to tell us.

Because Hoodie is right: we are able to do so many things on a single turn now, even after General Quarters, that turns just get incredibly long and we hit time after just a handful of them.
#1 games are designing to become faster and faster. SW Destiny CCG max time 35 mins. Transformers TCG max time 20 mins. And these games are soaring in popularity.
Funny story: I just hosted a Warp Speed Sealed tournament in my basement. Not a single game went past 22 minutes. Most were over in 15. This was, frankly, a little bit too brief, but it was still exhilarating to play a complete, four-round, six-player 1E tournament in just over 90 minutes. OP might want to take a second look at Warp Speed, maybe in combination with a Block card pool to limit time-sapping deck construction options.

That's a bit outside the scope of what Ladies & Gentlemen was trying to do, though. I think your point #2 is much closer to the bone of L&G's goal.
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By LORE (Kris Sonsteby)
 - Director of Organized Play
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Architect
1E Andoria Regional Champion 2023
2E Andoria Regional Champion 2023
W.C.T. Chairman's Trophy winner 2014-2015
#455647
BCSWowbagger wrote:Funny story: I just hosted a Warp Speed Sealed tournament in my basement. Not a single game went past 22 minutes. Most were over in 15. This was, frankly, a little bit too brief, but it was still exhilarating to play a complete, four-round, six-player 1E tournament in just over 90 minutes. OP might want to take a second look at Warp Speed, maybe in combination with a Block card pool to limit time-sapping deck construction options.
I've been a strong advocate for limited formats literally for decades. I loved sealed deck, for both games. We used to run Premiere Only constructed 2E events annually until the primary driver (Matt Frid) stopped playing.

But players have to want it. And they have to be willing to put in the effort to host these alternative events, build decks for them, etc. It isn't something OP can force. Right now, players seem less inclined to do the work necessary to support the faster alternative formats.
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By Mogor
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#455674
Seems part of the issue is that by limiting the report of personnel but not the elimination side of said personnel. It skews the balance drastically. Possibly, some card along the lines of It's all a dream. Only one personnel may die each turn, Only one personnel may be reported for free a turn. Count down timer 4 Player who plays also loses X points
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 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#455685
LORE wrote:
BCSWowbagger wrote:Funny story: I just hosted a Warp Speed Sealed tournament in my basement. Not a single game went past 22 minutes. Most were over in 15. This was, frankly, a little bit too brief, but it was still exhilarating to play a complete, four-round, six-player 1E tournament in just over 90 minutes. OP might want to take a second look at Warp Speed, maybe in combination with a Block card pool to limit time-sapping deck construction options.
I've been a strong advocate for limited formats literally for decades. I loved sealed deck, for both games. We used to run Premiere Only constructed 2E events annually until the primary driver (Matt Frid) stopped playing.

But players have to want it. And they have to be willing to put in the effort to host these alternative events, build decks for them, etc. It isn't something OP can force. Right now, players seem less inclined to do the work necessary to support the faster alternative formats.
Play my 1e cube draft format. It's already certified by the James Heaney institute for fun as "the most balanced 1e he's ever played"
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#456073
Nice thread, took me quite a while over two days to get through it LOL

Somewhere around here I was complaining recently about how difficult it is to justify any but the most essential verbs in a deck because if you are using many card plays on them, you are probably falling behind your opponent in terms of "forces played".

So when faced of the prospect of coming up against a "direct solver" when you are running something that is NOT a direct solver, you end up with a GREAT DEAL of verb cards that might add nice flavor to a gave but i can't possibly justify using them if it means i'm a turn or two behind my opponent in "getting out" from my facility. The benchmark i have been told to shoot for is you better AT LEAST be playing 3 personnel and drawing three cards every turn. So while I can justify playing an event like KFC or Let's see what's out there since they fill my hand with cards i can then report for free, it is hard to justify much else.

Example: Ferengi RoA cards do all sort of cool things. Good luck finding a deck that uses them in multiple. (Hint, there is 1 deck in the last year that uses more than one rule card). Can't justify using several when they take up precious card plays.

I had actually thought of a card similar to your L&G that I called "Build Up to War". It would last 2-3-4 turns and do something like allow you to play one [Evt] [Inc] [Obj] for free per turn or something to that effect and prevent executing orders. So we are back to the EARLY days of the game of "i play Picard and draw" turns that last literally a few seconds. So open up space/justification in my deck for more verbs to come out of the binder without fear of falling way behind in nouns. of course the drawback is the direct solver is probably just going to use that time playing [Evt] [Inc] [Obj] that allow them to just play even MORE personnel. Like Recruit Mercenaries or Ferengi Conference. Maybe the card needs a caveat that whatever you play for free can't allow the reporting of personnel.

So the direct solver can still build up their direct solving forces but interference person can also set up their interference cards too.

Based on the feedback I read above this would have to happen at the START of them game to prevent it being used as a lockout.
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#460992
i think the l+g is a little bit to restrictive, since you basically remove the first 4 turns of action from the game.

Id say to increase turns, first of all jumpstarts have to come with a cost, besides being able to play less dilemma, which actually spirals into game become even more quicker when everybody joins the tempo train.
points equal tempo in this game, so an idea would be to tax non-dilemma (or seeded as dilemma) cards with negative points. sth like -5 mayhaps? so seeding asm and stuff would need you to solve another mission.

another possibility might be to increase points needed for everyone to like 150 and then each turn played will give you 1 point equal to the turn. (so 1+2+3+4..) it could become too much of a strategy to stall the game then though, but it will reward you with points to reach later turns and it will also put a limit on turns before both player reach 150 automatically.

or what about dilemma that just immediately end the turn if you fail them?
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