Maquis is broken. Anyone who plays this silly game knows that. We're at the sad stage locally right now where we have a 'gentleman's agreement' not to play it. It's no fun to play, no fun to play against. Sort of similar to Klingons a few years back. At least they had to work to get rid of my people, not just play silly cards over and over again.
Now I'm not sure how much of this is privileged information and how much is public but of course errata is in the works. I might be talking out of school, I don't know. Maybe I get in trouble, but these are my personal thoughts regardless. I actually applaud Charlie and the Errata Gang on not acting abruptly. You do need information and these things should not be rushed. But this situation is well known and documented and it's time for action. There was plenty of debate, different ideas, different avenues to solve the "Maquis Problem". But it finally fell into two camps: Errata the verbs or give Athos IV the "you cannot command any other headquarters" Borg-like text.
I am in the first camp. Maquis got verb after verb in set after set because they're really hard to play and nobody quite did it right. Well, some smart people finally caught up and abused the shit out of them. First Neil at GenCon with straight up Maquis. Then Chris at Aussie Worlds took it to the crazy stupid level combining it with Bajorans. Problem being, like most loops, strong verbs not removing from game, which has made Stalling for Time 2E's current reigning "most broken card".
I think "nuking" Athos IV and making it a 'solo' HQ like Borg is lazy and the easy way out. The Errata Gang never tried to slow down the Maquis verbs. That's where the problems lies, there's not some built-in problem with Athos IV, it's just all the junk they've been giving year after year.
I've said it from the start how to curtail this Maquis mess. #1, Stalling for Time removes from game. #2 Alarming Rumors can only target events or interrupts, not personnel (9 personnel denial cards is way, way too many). #3 Change Defiant to one card on top of deck (or stop the ship and keep it 2).
When it comes to these types of things, just like everything in 2E, stick with the K.I.S.S. system: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Sadly, I'm afraid this thing had been 'overthought' and it'll get screwed up. I hope I'm wrong.
I was away for a bit. Thanksgiving week I caught a nasty case of Strep, and when you don't have health insurance that means you sit around shivering/sweating/hallucinating/dehydrated with chest pains and the inability to swallow for 6 days. And that's no good for a fat guy like me. Dispite my girlfriend becoming a fake internet doctor telling my I could die, I sucked it up for those 6 days and came out of it like I always do. I needed to drop a few pounds anyways.
Before the medical emergency I was going through some Necessary Evil uncommons. Those are as good as rares really. So here's two for today's GCBC.
Why: I've always loved this card. I love the image, the episode it's from. I've never been one for an Infiltrator deck, too slow and methodical. When I play Dominion I like Jemmies and free Vorta. I like to get out Keevan out quick, rack up the draws while spitting out Jemmies and then barfing out those free Vorta. I'm giving too many free draws to my opponent you say? Screw it, I'll dreamer their hand later. Dominion has always been a sub-par affiliation. One, because they have crap missions. Two, because they have no focus. Giving them one more recently with the Commodity junk wasn't what they needed. That's a failing of Design and I hope that can be corrected in the future. Overthinking, that's the culprit here again. I think they just need a few simple cards to get them on track as a top affiliation.
Why: Sure, you cost zero. But I have to lose 5 points and win a fight (which means stopping my personnel) to get a guy in my brig? No thanks, plenty of easy ways to do that now. This cards shows the early Design bad idea in 2E which thought getting a personnel in your brig was something you had to jump through hoops to do. It's why Capture decks were never played for the first 7 years of this game. Finally they saw the light and cards like Evek and Ensnared were made. But this card isn't completely useless. You get to choose the personnel, which means this card might be worth one copy of in the deck to snag any 'hero' personnel your opponent has in play.
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