Pic: Another taunt from Nick Yankovec. This time Will Hoskin getting a little too familiar with the Heavyweight Belt.
So Sykes came to me with a fantastic idea for an April Fools' GCBC, but it was on April 3rd. Classic Sykes. I think he wanted me to rant on Fizzbin, and the recent Fizzbin errata for Tribbles. I don't think there's anymore I can add to that topic that anyone hasn't heard me say. It created a Legacy (2E) 'Rock/Paper/Scissors' effect on the game, and hopefully errata will have the same effect on Tribbles that it had on 2E. Legacy is now a great meta call for a dilemma pile. Catch people playing too much non-skill horseshit and you can have an easy day stopping people. Hopefully Fizzbin becomes what it was intended, a reward for players to actually 'go out' (not an insane "jackpot"), and not just a way to rack up cheap points with Poison/Utilize for other players. I was more nerd angry when Charlie posted a thread asking for feedback about the Trouble Pile. It's common knowledge that 80-90% of the people outright hate it. And, full disclosure, we tested it at the Corbett house and that's exactly what the kids said about it. I was upbeat when trying it out, I thought it was going to add to the game. Turns out, that's what people don't like about it. When it comes to Tribbles, especially, people don't want to think too much. They don't want to have to 'track things'. Charlie ignored this and put it out anyway. It bombed. Since it was optional, we all just kind of accepted it and moved on. I felt the feedback thread was Charlie trying to shine up a turd. Honestly, I was just annoyed to be reminded of the Trouble Pile at all. The thread, I suspect, was created to justify making new Trouble cards in the future. There's a troublesome habit now in Design (Tribbles and 2E) of 'chasing bad money with good money'. Designers keep wanting to make new cards for ideas that missed the mark (not just a little, badly) the first time around. I feel that this is a waste of time and energy, and maybe there's a little pride involved. I said something I regret in that thread. I feel it's true, but I have been trying (very poorly) to frame my opinions without criticism. I called nameless people "wannabe Magic designers". What I mean by this is that some designers worship at the Alter of Magic Blogs. There's a reason they get paid for what they do, they're very good at it. We're not those people. So it's my theory, they read these blogs, fancy themselves their equal, then try to import, or create, overly-complicated ideas into trek games. Trek design has too much high-brow thinking and not enough common sense. We need designers to make good cards for this game, not Magic.
So for a very belated April Fools' joke lets take two cards from the last Tribbles expansion, Tribbles Royale, the Peak Performance of Tribbles...
Why: Honestly, it's the only card in the set worth a damn. The 1,000 Time Warp is nice, but the time I drew a 4-card hand somebody played Masaka before my first turn. That'll make you super nerd sad. Dabo is good because somebody is going to use two powers ahead of you a decent percentage of the time. Against some decks, maybe over 50%. It's good against a speed deck, and it's good in a speed deck. It's a 100k you don't have to wait for a 10k to drop ahead of you. The only other option for that is 100k Clone, and we are all bored of playing that by now.
Why: I'm still trying to figure this one out. Maybe the SanDiego Tribbles Design Institute (Yes, the STD Institute) had visions of some Tribble Attrition Deck that can wear a deck out through the discard pile. But the denomination is 100, how many times am I going to play it during a game? Five to ten maybe? What benefit am I getting removing a few cards out of each opponent's discard pile? Nothing really. Then to really make no sense, I have to remove the Rival, my own card, to get the worthless ability. That way I can't even toss a few into an IDIC deck for bonus points. The very fact they decided to add 'Remove from Game' into Tribbles proves my theory that the people designing Tribbles are only thinking about themselves, not the players who want a clean, simple, fun game. Anyone who regularly read GCBC in the past remembers me ranting about K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). In 2E it's a suggestion people should consider. In Tribbles, as we found out with the Trouble Pile and nonsense like Rival, it's gospel.
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