Good Card, Bad Card #43

Today's GCBC comes to you from Wheeling, West Virginia. After an exhausting family vacation in our nation's capitol last weekend (we all stayed at "Spooky Uncle BenHosp's" place), I've decided to hit the road for a little solo "business/dork" trip. On the way to the regional in Columbus is a poker room in Wheeling. So I figured I could probably pay for the trip. I arrived yesterday and was told it was $150 a night for a room at the casino, no poker rates, nothing they could do for me. I guess you can act like that when you're the only joint in town. So I told them they're nuts and drove over the spooky Wheeling Suspension Bridge (it's like Mothman Prophecies, same river too) and found a cheap room. Went back to the sad poker room to play, but the table broke up after 45 minutes. Today, the 'Wheeling Expedition' got off on the wrong foot, after a early lunch I hit the poker room and quickly lost $300. It's different here, usually you buy in for a $1/2 no limit game for $300, but here it's only $200. The games are soft (passive/bad players), which is sometimes bad for me because I'll lose my patience. I figured since I was in the "bizarro world" of poker I'd change it up, leave for a little while and come back for the tournament tonight. I'm a decent cash game player, but a terrible tournament player. Maybe here it's reversed. I got the rest of tonight and half of tomorrow to dig out of the hole before heading to Columbus to meet the esteemed CC Chairman, Charlie Plaine. I'd be happy at this point to break even in Wheeling.

Since I'm on "time out" until the tournament I can return to GCBC. We're on to the set In the Mirror Darkly now. I'm not a fan of this set. It's not terrible, but I don't like the themes. Mirror Starfleet never did it for me, and the revised Voyager stuff makes me sad. I also need to decide what deck I'm playing Saturday, I have 3 to choose from. I haven't played in Ohio in about 2 or 3 years, but I used to come here regularly. It's usually mostly jobbers and 2 or 3 solid players. It'll all depend how much I suspect I'll see OT Kirk. When it gets to bigger events, midwest fools love to 'go blue' (play Federation).

Good Card: The Dal'Rok

Why: This card is good because it's double hate. It's anti-weenie AND anti-dual HQ. Two meta cards for the price of one is never bad. Another boost for Dal'Rok is that it returns to the dilemma pile. It's always satisfying when your opponent gets cute early game and attempts with 6 and you play Hard Time + The Dal'Rok. They just lost two fools and got nothing accomplished.

Bad Card: Lam

Why: Man, the Breen could've been so awesome in 2E. Instead, they made them lame and useless. They had a few chances to make Dominion a good affiliation, but they always screwed it up. I just don't understand Lam. So he's a weenie with a drawback, which means he should have some cool extra stuff a normal one cost guy doesn't. Lam had 4 skills, instead of the usual 3 on a 1-cost personnel. But they're usual skills, nothing great. And for attributes, he has strength 7. Now riddle me this Batman, if I'm playing Dominion why the hell would I need another high strength guy? I have a whole race of 8-strength drugged-up warriors, it's the one attribute I got covered. Come on, give me some Integrity to help out my shady Vorta and dirty Changelings. And what the hell am I going to do with this guy late-game? Stop dudes I need just to have this clown in play? Just like I told the lady at the casino, "No thanks, I'll find something else."

Good Card, Bad Card #42

I had a "wow" moment playing Trek yesterday. I picked the wrong deck and only won one game, but that's the game that pissed me off. BenHosp was playing Tragic Turn (imagine that), and there was 2 already underneath my space mission. So I went with 4, cutting down on his draws. It worked, at least I thought it did. BenHosp played one dilemma, Tragic Turn. He was throwing a 'hail mary' hoping to consume an All-Consuming Evil. He was playing the right guy, because everybody hits on me. Sure enough, he hit the ace on the second consume. I managed to prevent the kill, unstop my guys with Ruling Council then attempt again. This time I used Damar and gave BenHosp 1 draw, 2 to spend. He was playing the right guy, because he hit a Clown: Guillotine. This time dudes died, and I was unstaffed. At this moment I contemplated murder. Murder on lots of people. But I knuckled down, since BenHosp was playing Borg and I was Terok Nor I was slowing him down a ton, so I knew I could still squeeze the game out, and I did. For years I've been saying Tragic Turn is bad for the game, and now I just got clowned by it played by itself, straight up. It's such an absurd, sad thing for this game that that could happen, I just had so sit back and say, "wow."

What You Leave Behind was Decipher's big "Fuck You, Goodbye!" to ST:CCG. This set is filled with so much 'bad' I don't know where to begin. For this set, they knew it would be their last, so they didn't give a shit and threw every bad idea they had left into it. It's so bad, even the common cards are overpowered, game-breaking cards. Kinda sets the framework for the v-sets now that I think about it. Every card is a walls of text, and tons of skills on every personnel. When did simple, solid cards become a bad thing?

Good Card: Sylvia

Why: They weren't really any good capture dilemmas before Sylvia, and there's really not that many now. The capture dilemmas usually cost too much and have lame requirements. For Sylvia, they decided to 'get around' the cost part this time by going the "-1 for each event" route. That's was a good idea, most capture decks have some events out. The requirements on Sylvia are brutal, one side has cunning > 38, that's easy to track. The other side has 2 engineer and 2 science, most mission attempts don't even begin with that. It does suck that it's a planet-only dilemmas, but you can't have it all. At least now you can Ensnare them early and Sylvia them later.

Bad Card: Navaar, Experienced Gift

Why: This is the worst card in 2E right now that does not have the phrase "prevent and overcome" on it. This card is so far off the mark I don't even know where to begin. Let's see, for somebody who can create any skill you need she brings 5 of her own to the table. One top of that, 2 of them are doubled up. Leadership x2? Does Navaar really need the ability to use Bridge Officer's Test? So you can pop any skill you want just by blowing up a 0-cost event. Fantastic, I have no problem with that. You can do it as many times as you have events, and you get to keep the skill until the end of your turn. Fantastic.... wait, wtf!? No limit really, and till the end of the turn, not mission attempt. I'm getting all this for the low rate of a 4-cost personnel? Goddamn, Navaar must have Jayson Werth's agent. Considering what Navaar is worth she should cost around 9 to 11 counters. Now Design got it into their heads that they wanted everyone to go back to skill-based dilemmas but they didn't addressed these silly cards that can create skill out of thin air. No big picture thinking = shitty game.

Good Card, Bad Card #41

You know what's a lot of work? Gardening. At Wal-Mart today while walking by the garden section I got the dumb idea of fixing up the yard. Its been a rough winter and I noticed the other day the rosebush and small garden area was a mess. So I bought a $10 shovel, a couple plants and went to work. Figured, how hard could it be? I quickly learned 2 minutes into it I'd need my $8 machete and $9 hatchet to take down this dying rosebush (yes, I previously purchased those items at Wal-Mart for no particular reason). That son of a bitch wasn't going out without a fight. I went into this wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. I had to call a timeout, go get water and proper attire. 3 hours later I had the whole tiny garden area shovel out, made pretty and replanted. Now it's a big patch of dirt with 2 tiny plants in it. Honestly, I don't know how landscapers do it, that's some back-breaking hard work. And I did a terrible job at it. Turning our attention to GCBC, somebody on the boards asked me to do a virtual promo edition of GCBC. Since I'm going back through sets the next icon back on the trekcc.org site is for all the virtual promos. So what the hell, might as well make a stop here.

Good Card: Engage Cloak

Why: One of the perks for doing a virtual promo is that you get to take a card with a crappy image and give it a new one. Sadly it seems that they usually use a worse image. Not with Engage Cloak. This card was from Premier so it had to have a sad image from Star Trek: Nemesis. I don't hate on the movie like most people do, but I'm not a fan of the Scimitar. It's a lame ship that could've been awesome. The only cool thing about the Scimitar 2E card is that it calls your opponent a "loser" when you win an engagement. The lame image of the original is a half cloaked Scimitar. But now we have a Klingon ship, like it's supposed to be.

Bad Card: Data, From the City of Rateg

Why: I don't even like this card in general, and I hate the promo even more. He's Romulan, so I could use Alternate Identity to get around paying retail for him, but I still don't want him. I don't play dissidents when Romulan, I just don't think it's Tier-1. Sure, he's got monster attribute, but Romulans can easily make that happen with Power Shift. Now let's get to the promo, they should've changed the title to 'Autistic Data'. He looks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Main, "I'm in Rateg....definitley in Rateg. Sarek is dead, definitely dead. Fishsticks for dinner" This Data looks like BenHosp watching FoxNews, all twitchy and confused. It's ok for me to make Autistic jokes, I got a kid with a "touch of the BenHosp". It's like having a black friend....

Good Card, Bad Card #40

Anybody who watches MMA is a douchebag. That's been my theory for about 3 years and I'm sticking with it. This weekend they were having some crappy MMA promotion show at the Tropicana were I play most of my poker in A.C. Not surprisingly it was the first time I ever cursed at a guy at the poker table. I decided to stick around because I figured this 'toughguy convention' would be good action. It was, but there's nothing more sad than a lucky toughguy. After my Aces got cracked by 10-8 off-suit I decided to pack it up and go home. Is there a moral to this story? Not really, I just hate MMA, people who watch MMA, worse than them is the girlfriends of the guys who watch MMA. They wear stupid toughgirl hates and act tough. UFC/MMA has created a culture of douchebaggery in America and I simply don't care for it. Anyway, for GCBC we've reached the very first virtual set "The Undiscovered Country". I like this set. I still don't understand how they got the first set so right, then the 2nd set (last GCBC) so wrong.

Good Card: Breaking The Ice

Why: The persistent keyword does make me sad, but this dilemma makes me happy. I don't recall ever playing this dilemma on someone and it not working. This requirements are so easy to track it's pretty hard to screw it up. And trust me, I'm an expert on screwing it up. The other reason I like it is because it changes things up. It takes a usual planet skill, geology, and puts in on a space dilemma. Not only that, but it goes hardcore and puts it x3. This dilemma was a fantastic idea, unlike our next card....

Bad Card: The Cost of Freedom

Why: Somebody who didn't know sh*t about Cardassians had a terrible idea and it became this card. This is another example of terrible risk/reward leading to a bad card. The only attribute Cardassians need is integrity, so getting a cunning/strength +1 or +2 isn't that great. I can use Comfort Women for that. What's the risk? Getting all my people stopped, basically losing a whole turn. No way, screw that. The chance for a couple attribute points isn't worth a wasted turn. I've only seen one person ever try to use this card, and it was a complete failure. This is a card which you have to base your entire deck around and it's simply not that good.

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Today's Pic: For some reason last Halloween I bought a giant fake sword. It was sitting in my room and my brother asked, "Why do you have a giant sword in your room?" To which I replied, "Why not have a giant sword in your room?" Months later me and the kids get to HeroQuest #13 'Quest for the Spirit Blade'. Turns out, they look very similar. Connor, already obsessed with HeroQuest, ran upstairs, got the sword, and 'by the power of Greyskull' did his best He-Man impression.

Good Card, Bad Card #39

The set Favor the Bold is a big, steaming pile of monkey crap. Numerous cards have already hit the "bad card" list. It was tough just finding one 'good card'. This set was all about dilemmas. One selling point being it had the first card designed by the community. Well, we all saw how bad that worked out. All I can be thankful for is that there was no 'broken' in the set, just a lot of bad. It was the second virtual set release by the Committee, so maybe it was just filled with terrible cards that Brad couldn't get Decipher to make.

Good Card: Neral, Seasoned Politician

Why: You're certainly getting a lot of bang for your buck with this Neral. 3 Cost for 2 Leadership, 4 other skills and a kick-ass ability. This card was required because the dilemma An Issue of Trust completely murders Romulans. Now you might wonder why I made Neral a 'good card' and not Klag, the Klingon version with the same ability. Well, Klingons were already good, played frequently Day 2 of Worlds. I've only seen Romulan once or twice, and with only Far Seeing Eyes nonsense. At the time of this cards release I remember being pissed because it made no sense that Klingons got Klag and Cardassians got nothing. They got crushed by An Issue of Trust more than anyone. Eventually they got Central Command, but at that time it was a huge mistake.

Bad Card: Let Them Worry

Why: This card makes no goddamn sense to me. I've said in the past just about all the "HQ specific" dilemmas are terrible, but this one takes the cake. It cost 3 and has lame requirements. All these HQ dilemmas stop a guy and then have a 'bonus', but this one's bonus is to stop them all. Why the hell have the first part if I'm going to stop them all anyway. Am I really going to play this in a non-Dominion deck? No way. And if I'm playing infiltration and I really not going to have 3 shape-shifters out? Of course I will. So whoever designed this dilemma gets the 'Picard Facepalm' because it's the definition of Design Fail.

Good Card, Bad Card #38

The last 4 days have been a blur of driving, poker bad beats, throwing dice with black guys, boardgames, beer, star trek trivia, scotch, yuppies, star trek ccg, more driving, wrestlemania and a lot of yelling at BenHosp. At one point I was so sleep deprived and delirious I told him I wanted to put Phil's beard on him and perform a sexual act on his face. Yeah, it was that kind of weekend. Almost like a GenCon experience. That's why I love Regional season, it's an excuse to travel to a place you have no business in and act a fool. Overall it was a great weekend, other that losing to the BenHosp Klingon deck for the 10,000th time it was fantastic. For GCBC we're on to the set Raise the Stakes. This was a 90-card set, which I wasn't a fan of. I think the CC should stick to 45 card sets. I think smaller, better sets are the way to go. After the debacle that was Peak Performance I think ever set needs to be tested thoroughly.

Good Card: He Wasn't Nice

Why: This card is good because you can get your opponent in two different ways. One, you can take out his main guy, like Archer or Kirk. Two, you can take out 3 personnel if he's got 3 of a non-unique out. With this dilemmas being printed zero, but +5, it gives you protection. It can't be nerfed by Access Contamination or Donatra. It also allows for it to be downloaded with Uninvited. I like cards that give me options and this dilemmas gives you just that.

Bad Card: Leverage

Why: I still have no friggin' clue why anyone is supposed to use this card. So if I'm playing against capture I'm certainly not going to give him more, I'd rather get my guys killed. Another suggestion to me was that it was a defense against Tragic Turn. Well, it doesn't work on stopped people so it's not really helpful. It goes in the category of the card This Side of Paradise. A card that doesn't do what it was designed to do. Proving that up until recently there was a serious disconnect between Design and Tier-1.