Pic: Voyager, Riddles
It's Continentals weekend and the sky is falling and the state of 2E is in shambles. People on the internet say so, it must be true.
I think the numbers were 10 players for North American Continentals, in Minneapolis, and 7 players for European Continentals in Vienna, Austria. Minneapolis is a decent location. Not too difficult to fly to. A nice, cool break in the summer time to hold an event. 10 players seems a little low for a Continentals, and they had some travelers. So you'll have to chalk any attendance concerns to the decline in the local player base. Which I'll take about in a bit. Vienna? I don't know anything about European travel, so I can't say whether this location was a smart idea. Germany is right next door. Like Minnesota, this was a former player hotbed that's seen decline. If they couldn't find the will to travel, then maybe it wasn't the best choice.
What if I told you everything is exactly as it should be and you should be happy. With the state of the game that is. If you're not happy with your life, this nerd blog ain't helping with that. I was channel flipping the other night and the Voyager episode Riddles was on. Tuvok gets zapped or something and becomes retarded (you'll have to deal with non-PC words). He's happy though. He has his buddy Neelix. They bake cakes and shit. They have a good time. He only gets angry and frustrated when Neelix tries to make Retarded Tuvok become what he was.
We are Retarded Tuvok. We are less then what we were, numbers-wise. When you accept that, make peace with it, things don't seem bad at all. When you don't accept that, you start looking for reasons,villains, or worse, "problems with the game". The latter is dangerous because the game is fine right now. In fact, I haven't had a 'bad game' since the Jersey days when those DC boys were ramming Klingons down my throat year after year 6-7 years ago.
Can we organize better? Sure. That comes down to the organizers themselves. Where they choose to hold events and how much work they put into them. Most important thing: location, location, location. The events have to be near a airport hub, cheap and easy to get to. That's why locations like DC/Baltimore and Chicago work and places like Seattle and San Diego do not. The game is fine, we're not 'selling' playing a silly, decades old, card game anymore. We're 'selling' gatherings of friends and fun times.
So smile Retarded Tuvok. Bake a cake. I can't speak for you, but getting together with 8-10 friends a couple times a year seems like time well spent.
I wrote this GCBC to address this issue, but didn't pick any cards in advance. Zero Hour did release not too far back. I was on this set. Keith Morris was the Lead, and was joined by BenHosp and design rookie Alexey Korolev. Still too early to judge which column this set will fall into, but it's never to early to shit on some cards.
Why: Heler is hella good. Are the kids still saying that? If not, I have a teenage daughter who's job it is to keep me humble at all times. Heler is basically 3 cost to get a personnel and draw 4 cards, if you're doing it right. That's a pretty sweet deal. Strength means you're probably playing Bajoran Resistance. Heler doesn't have that keyword, but I don't think that will hold you back much. He makes up for that by being a Bajoran with Treachery and that opens up the wonders of Covenant. One of the best cheaters in the game. Add the old school Resistance cheater Natural Instincts and you got serious dilemma busting power. The only knock on Heler is it would've been better if his integrity was a tick lower at 4 for Adopted Authority, but that dilemma was giving you problems anyway in a Resistance deck. Who cares, just shoot everyone in the face with Artifacts, you can worry about dilemmas later.
Why: The card's effect is great. Admirals needed a push as well. All they seemed to be good for is getting past Dignitaries and Witnesses. They tried some Admiral love with Launch Orders, but that turned out to be a stinker. Somewhere along the process the 'destroy your paranoia' event was put in. I must've missed that meeting. Of course, the more powerful the card, the more affiliation-specific it has to be. I'm not sure if the effect of skill swapping is uber-powerful, and needing an Admiral seems like a sufficient hoop to jump through for that effect. Paranoia never seemed to get off the ground. I have nothing against showing it some love, but by limiting a card that could help a few other affiliations isn't the route to take. You took a card that could see a great deal of play. TNG, Romulan, Starfleet could have gotten a taste as well. As is, unless Paranoia receives a big push in the future, you'll probably never see it at all.
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