Good Card, Bad Card #64

Hiatus over. After nearly a 2 month absence we're back to praise and poop all over 2E cards. I'm not sure why the hiatus began, a combination of starting a new job and being exhausted with the 'dork drama' that goes with this game sometimes. Thankfully, that seems to be in the past. I know why it continued after Worlds, I just needed time to decompress. GenCon was actually a great, exhausting time. I think I only slept a combined 12 hours the whole con. As for the Championship, I think having two ties in the Final is a miracle compared to the "Peak Performance Disaster" in Germany. My most memorable moment of the trip didn't happen in Indy, it was on the way. Driving with Phil, going through Wheeling, WV (check previous GCBC's for that terrible place) we decided to stop and kill a couple hours since it was early. No poker games going yet (since it's a sad, terrible casino), so we hit the dice table. It's all a blur now, but Phil made a guy over $12,000 while he had the dice. After some '*cough*, *cough*, aren't you glad we stop by on the way. Gas is sure expensive.' comments by me the guy threw Phil a black chip ($100). I mean, it's a tiny percentage, but free gas is free gas. Anyways, I really wasn't in a hurry to get back to GCBC. I figured once the WCT League got going again in late Septemeber I'd get the creative juices flowing again and it would happen on it's own. But the other night I get a text from an old school all-star named Brian Sykes. He told me I was lazy and to get back on it. Since I never like to disappoint my fans I gave in to the peer pressure. Since Brian hasn't been seen at a major event in 47 years I told him to nominate 2 old school cards and I would use those for the next GCBC. So here you go:

Good Card: Stricken Dumb

Why: I agree completely with Brian on this one. This is a very underused card that people should give another look. People can't ever stop playing Personal Duty and An Issue of Trust, so this cheater is useful against 90% of the dilemma piles out there. Here's another little trick I like with Stricken Dumb, at Worlds I was shocked at how much I saw The Caretaker's "Guest" being used. I used to play this dilemma a ton when it first came out, but it's just fell out of favor in our meta. Well, with Stricken Dumb, you can use the cost as a defense. Toss and money personnel in your discard pile and get him out for free. In the famous words of Brian Sykes.... "that's mad tech."

Bad Card: Rescue Prisoners

Why: At first Brian nominated Kressari Rendezvous, and I told him I already did that. Turns out I didn't, but I think I covered how bad Kressari is when I did Bat'leth and Ruling Council as bad cards. So instead he went with Rescue Prisoners. Here's the thing, this mission isn't bad, and Kahmis (the guy with all the skills) isn't bad. It's the combination of the two. In fact, you can say this was the first 2E Design fail in Premiere. Having one personnel with all the skills for a mission is very 1E-like, and that's what we wanted to avoid with 2E. It got worse as they made more and more 8 strength Klingons. Once you get three of those big boys with Kahmis you can solve Rescue Prisoners with four personnel. And we've all realized after all these years playing 2E that easy ass missions make this game suck. That's why I'm in love with the new dilemma Insurrection. Man, whoever designed that dilemma is a friggin' genius.....