Thursday, October 11, 2018

Good Card, Bad Card #99

Location: Jeffersontown, KY

Pic: 2015 Worlds Final, in Australia 

I'm not going to do any 2018 Worlds bashing, which is taking place this weekend. I was just shocked there was a picture of it. You can't watch the video of this game, or any others from that event. NFL Commissioner Charlie Plaine ordered the tapes destroyed. To continue the Neverending Story that is the buffoonery of CC Leadership I noticed the 2018 Worlds foil for Tribbles is "Cheat". By the hand of Kahless, they can't stop tripping over their own dick.

Our cards today come from a quick poll I posted on the boards yesterday. The good cards were two from the recent Warp Pack: Assess Denied. Which means it's way too early to be making claims of Good or Bad, but jumping to conclusions (right and wrong) is my brand. The bad comes from Reflections 2.0. Some years back I ranked all the CC era expansions based on arbitrary good/bad card scoring. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm willing to bet I underrated Ref 2.0. Looking at it today, almost every card is useful. There are some stinkers though.

Good Card: Chell, Incessant Chatterbox

Why: Chell beat out The Devil by one vote, 55-45%. I was on Team Devil but All Bolians Go To Heaven. Assess Denied was all about Interrupt/Event prevention. Doing that on a personnel is tricky. You don't want to make another TOS Sisko, the most undercosted personnel in 2E. Chell here is a stud because he goes in 3 decks. I'll run down the list from least to most useful. First: Voyager. In a 5 space deck you'll probably have points to burn, even after you blow through 3 Field Studies. So his 'cost' isn't an issue. Second: Equinox. That 'cost' becomes even more of a non-issue when you turn that losing 5 into discarding a Nucleogenic card from hand. Equinox decks are not played as much as they should. Phil Schrader won a GenCon 2 years ago with Pressing On, a new card in Zero Hour. I haven't seen them since. Once Chell is out in your Voyager or Equinox deck he's a solid personnel (which you kinda got out for free). Finally: Relativity. You'll also have some points to burn, maybe having to scale back to 2 Field Studies. But the best part about him in Relativity is that Chell goes to the discard pile at the start of your next turn. Enabling you to incessantly play him over and over. At least three times, unless you want to get goofy. So enjoy Chell, and keep an eye out on my new adult film BIG BLUE BOOTY BOLIANS coming out on DVD.

Bad Card: Mr. Tricorder

Why: Mr. Tricorder ran away with this one 77-23% over Transwarp Conduit, a card with the dreaded "recent decks: none" tag of shame on it. I was in the minority again, which is fine. The day I start agreeing with the mob is the day I pack it up. The text on Mr. Tricorder is perfectly acceptable and useful. The only thing "bad" on Mr. Tricorder is the cost. First off, this card makes me nerd-angry. This image/story is from Generations when they were on the Amagosa (?) Station. This didn't happen on a planet. But anyways, if you made this dilemma dual it would go to 4 cost. Is it useful then? Maybe, but there are plenty of other non-skill 4 cost multi-stoppers to choose from. I like that Mr. Tricorder a planet dilemma. Stack-a-lacka missions were EVERYWHERE for awhile. As they should be, people played 90% dual dilemmas. Now that fad has faded, somewhat. The threat is still there enough, for me anyway, to keep a more balanced planet/space dilemma pile when possible. All that being said, as a planet dilemma, Mr. Tricorder is over-costed. Maybe not by the 'guidelines', but my gut says it is. If it had originally cost 2, it would've been used so much over the years it'd be in the HoF. It's a tricky pickle that costing.

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