Good Card, Bad Card #58

I had an idea the other day when building a deck for my daughter, "Is it safe to go back in the water?" By that I mean, is it ok to build 35 cards decks (or any small deck) again? I guess we won't really know if the Tragic Turn monster has been slain. I'm thinking it'll be like Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and come back to torment us in the future (don't worry, no picture of Pennywise, I promised after the Legacy errata you'd never see him again). I mentioned in my interview with James Hoskin, on the CC site, that Jersey was a "culture of speed", or used to be anyway. For the first years of 2E, you never saw a deck over 50 cards. For the past 3-4 years I haven't seen one under 50. Now Tragic Turn is still feasible I think, but it's good that it'll be most likely only played in bigger events. I hope....

We finished our trip back through time, going through every 2E set, wrapping up with Premier in the last GCBC. So let's fire up the Delorean, kick that sumbitch up to 88mph, and go back to the future. Here's a couple cards from the last expansion, Extreme Measures.

Good Card: Jaresh-Inyo, Federation President

Why: He made a pretty lame HQ playable. I can't recall playing Earth, Home of Starfleet Command much in the past. Maybe a lame cadet deck, trying to snag some League HQ bonus points. But now Jaresh-Inyo plus Promenade School give this HQ a legitimate build now. I can't say it's quite Tier-1, but it's damn solid. What I like better is that the personnel is not only crucial for his ability, he's also the 'backbone' of the deck. I use the term 'backbone' for personnel that provide mission skills. Jaresh gives you just about all the skills for every mission in that build, and his high integrity helps. He's got doubles of key skills. Double Honor for Honorable Pursuit, a popular dilemma these days. And double Leadership, we all know by now what to do with that.

Bad Card: Donatra, Honorable Commander

Why: New Rule: No more Kirks! After playing against, and losing to, some Donatra/Assess Contamination cheese the players said, "Well, at least Romulan is winning now." First of all, Romulans were always a solid affiliation, but they were really hard to play. That's why you didn't see them much. Second, at what cost? (pun intended) Is giving an affiliation a Kirk-like personnel the way to go about making an affiliation Tier-1? No, it's not. I'm confident that we'll never see "prevent and overcome" on a personnel again. I'm sure Design knows that it's no good for the game in the long run. Let's just hope Donatra is the last of her kind. Hopefully, years from now, we'll look back at these types of personnel like a VCR and say, "They still make you?"