Sunday, July 01, 2012

Good Card, Bad Card #71





“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional,”- Rand Paul

I'm starting to come around to the idea of abolishing the Senate. Or maybe we should abolish Kentucky for electing such an obvious unqualified person. It was kinda sad though, the mandate didn't sit well with me until John Roberts explained it. I don't like the government telling me whats for my own good. I have a healthy Jefferson-esque distrust of government. At the same time, I think government can do great things, when it's run by smart, honest people who aren't beholden to big donors or corporations. Has there been a president since FDR that wasn't? Too bad he didn't have a few more years, healthcare would been a constitutional right by now.

As for GCBC, we have a new set to dive into: Lineage. When I heard the theme would be species I wasn't thrilled. But rewarding decks with diversity and punishing decks without it, i.e. Borg and Klingon, isn't the worse thing to do. There will be some collateral damage, i.e. Ferengi and Bajoran. Overall, it's a nice, simple set. Nothing earth shattering, and that's a good thing.

Bad Cards: Shadowplay/Brothers

Why: I'm starting with the "bad" today because we have two for the price of one. First off, I hate wordy dilemmas. The "when you reveal, discard blah, blah, blah.." stuff. What I like less it that these two are just glorified giant attribute walls. No skills tracking required. Those skills listed are just there for Legacy-related purposes. Skill tracking has been just about obsolete from 2E since sets 9 or 10 in the Decipher days. The v-sets only made the problems worse. Only recently has there been little progress bringing that back into the game. This is a small step backwards. Brothers is worse than Shadowplay. Holograms aren't that strong, so giving them a big attribute wall is probably a good thing. But Android decks aren't bad. They're a little slow (but that's what Energize is for), but once they get rolling some dilemma piles have absolutely no answer for them. In the dilemma department Lineage only gets a "D" grade.

Good Card: Oh No!

Why: I've been waiting for a new "lose 5 points" dilemma. My favorite part about the last WCT League season was when I play Damaged Reputation on Neil when he was playing Klingon, and had the past Kang out. Then it got even better when he attempted his next mission and I used Manheim Effect and played it again on him. I won the game 100-95. There needs to be a sneaky defense to mega-crewing, or simply having 'uber-attributes'. There's lots of attribute boosting cards out there now (Enterprise-J, Kohlar, Comp/Opp drone, dissident Seven, etc), it's only fair that there's a defense for it. I wonder if anyone has ever used the 'lose 5 points' dilemmas sucessfully as a wall? I never have. Be cool if someone did. I might've given Lineage a bad grade on dilemmas, but Oh No! gets a A+.

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