Ruling New Jersey- Volume 2, Issue 5

The fastest highway in America opened opened for business today in Texas. I don't care about the speed limit, people can drive as fast as they want on a highway. You have to be an idiot and drive reckless on a highway to get into an accident. Sadly, there's plenty of those people. My problem is the $6 toll and why they built it. The road runs from Austin to San Antonio. It was built, with private money, because of constant traffic on the existing interstate highway. Now people can pay, and somebody makes money, for the luxury of avoiding that traffic. It's objectivism at it's finest. Ayn Rand would be very proud. A private highway making money for a corporation instead of the state.

When I see commercials for hybrid vehicles, where people are saying, "I only have to fill it up once a month" or "I never go to the gas station", I ask myself 'Are these the people getting crushed by high gas prices?' I find the people who could really use a hybrid could never afford one. A hybrid is going to run you anywhere from $23,000 to $35,000, and that's if you don't want a fancy one. The average American family is pulling in just under $50,000 a year, and that number seems to be dropping. And that only if you're white. Hispanic and black families are only pulling in 34k and 30k on average. So bottom line, no real American family can afford these cars right now. It's going to take about 10-20 years for prices to come down and for current hybrids to "trickle down" when rich people get tired of their current hybrids. But by then what kind of world will we live in?

Right now you got people with six-figure incomes driving around in hybrids saving even more money. The $100-200 they were paying at the pump wasn't hurting them anyway. I guess they can use that money to pay for their 'private express lanes'. Is that what we're going to have in 10-20 years? Traffic-filled, dirty, congested highways for the common person, and privately-owned wide-open, high speed highways you can ride if you can pay the fee?

There is a economics professor at Brown and his sell job on unfettered capitalism is that even the poorest in a capitalist country have it way better then the poorest in a different economic model, say communism. Guess what professor, no shit. Nobody is suggesting we give up the free enterprise system. Every person, like myself, who criticizes greed isn't a fan of Karl Marx and has a picture of Uncle Fidel on the wall. Greed is not good. Gordon Gecko is not a role model. It's not class warfare when I say, "When the rich get too greedy and don't pay enough taxes the whole system breaks down", it's me paying attention to history.

Good Card, Bad Card #77

I wish I posted more of my GenCon pics before going on my usual post-GenCon trek hibernation. I usually don't take pictures. Just a bunch of fat guys playing card and board games for 4 days. Good times, beers and plenty of laughs, but taking pictures of dudes isn't really my thing. But 2012 GenCon was a weird one and produced some great visual moments. Like Van Breeman's "Moment of Win". Charlie has one of me praying to the Divine Treasury during my Continental bracket game with Mike Harrington. He had a 1 in 5 random to win the game, and knowing my GenCon history with random selection I thought it was a good time to turn to religion. It worked, and I now consider bribery a form of prayer. The picture above is after a night of drinking and what BenHosp likes to call a "GenCon Random Encounter". I guess that's defined as when GenCon people encounter regular Indiana residents. These girls were fired up, we were fired up. We had props. BenHosp's trek protest signs and our WCT Heavyweight Title belt. The three guys with them didn't have a clue what was going on, and I don't think they much appreciated the situation after a couple minutes. But they couldn't do anything to stop three drunk girls and about 6 fat, drunk dorks. The next night Ken, Nick Yank and myself tried picking up three downtown yuppie Indianapolis girls at a biker rally (sounds so silly you can't make it up). That mission didn't end well. Who would've guessed two Jersey bums and a English bloak couldn't seal the deal with three executive broads.

So for GCBC, I'm going to take two cards I used Sunday. For once I got my act together and won a tournament. I felt like playing an old school Klingon kill deck. Figured nobody would be prepared for that. I was right for a change and honorable death filled the day.

 Good Card: Security Weapons

Why: I spent a lot of time on my dilemma pile for Sunday. I tried to make some big, odd Unfair Comparison/All Consuming Evil/3-costers dilemma pile, with Subliminal Signal as support. First thing I learned Sunday, All-Consuming and Subliminal Signal don't work together. Deckbuilder fail for me. Wasn't that big of a deal, the pile worked on sheer force. I had all sorts of wicked stuff. Clown: Guillotine (not played in 4 games), All-Consuming Evil (never consumed), Sylvia (never played), Unfair Comparison (played once in four games). The pile worked off of Oracle's Punishments, plus the 8 and 6 cost dilemmas. But one of the "sneaky 3's" was Security Weapons. Every game I played it, and every game it hit for a kill. In fact, in my games against BenHosp's androids and Neil mirror TOS, I won by leaving them one personnel short of solving their last mission. Not entirely because of this dilemma, but every person killed counts. 

Bad Card: Kor, Courageous Governor

Why: Redundancy. My deck wasn't based on past icon Klingons, but I had a number of them in there. I put Kor in to simply be a 4-coster for Call to Arms. I really didn't need him for that, and I realized he's useless for missions. He offers nothing different for Klingons. Skills: Anthro, Honor, Law, Leadership, Officer. Got that in spades. He ability: Klingons are +1 strength while facing a dilemma. Huh? If there's a strength dilemma that I can't pass then I should lose the game. The other two past "Blood Oath" guys are pretty sweet (however, you can use their abilities against them with the 'lose 5 point' dilemmas. See GCBC #71), but Kor should be saved for Mara fodder. Do something cool, pitch him, download Ja'Chuq and earn glory in battle.

Good Card, Bad Card #76

I got binders full of women too!

So I'm back from another unplanned hiatus. Besides the myriad of personal problems I have right now (probably the worst month of my life that wasn't spent in a jail cell), some of it has to do with actually designing cards for real now. I'm not sure how much is public knowledge or what's 'official', but a few months after the disaster of Worlds in Germany and Peak Performance Charlie did an overhaul of Design. He made plenty of good changes, and I don't mean bringing me into the fold. I didn't do much at all really for a long time. First I just read alot. Years of posts from Charlie, Brad and others from all the previous virtual sets. Occasionally I would look at playtest files and give Charlie my opinions, let him know if I saw any 'red flags'. A few months back Charlie decided to put me on an official 'design team' for the set that's due out in December (I think). So along with him, and Mark Morris, that's really all the Trek stuff I've been doing since GenCon. But League Play has started back up, which means I'm looking at cards, which means I get the itch to yell at whoever reads this which ones are good and bad. Let's take two from the new mini-set Tapestry. I haven't had a chance to play any of these cards yet, so I reserve the right to change my mind about them in the future.

Good Card: Beverly Crusher, Encouraging Commander

Why: Non-uniques getting some love, I'm all about that. I can't wait to dust off my Davies, Rixx, and Daniel Kwan's. I'm not too thrilled that the Enterprise-D is getting another matching commander, two mission win decks don't need any more help, but it's a small price to pay. Plus she has 2 Medical, that's always a clutch thing to have.

Bad Card: Shared Hallucination

Why: I'm not 100% sure why, but my spider sense goes off when I see this card. It seems way strong to me for zero cost. Remember, when something cost zero you can always play it with Uninvited. At a time when Maquis is strong, it's not cool to have to lose cards in hand. The only decks I see this card helping are decks that don't really need it (with the exception of Romulan discard, which nobody plays). Hopefully I wrong, but I have to wave the red flag at this card.