Keevan & Hugh's Strategy Debates #3 - Part B ... Keevan & Hugh ... [3/25/99 17:39]

K&HSD #3 : Behold the power of cheese!

(Personal Note: the idea - and inspiration - behind this particular
installment comes from a Stage 1 RTF I played in where 2 players used
abusive strategies and ruined the fun of the game for me and most players.
This is an attempt to explain and understand the use of those strategies. It
is in no way directed against players that choose to use those strategies.
Well, at least that's what were saying officially ! Hugh)

In part A we discussed the general use and abuse of cheese and the six most popular cheeses. Now let's take a look at how to counter them.

Section THREE: Counters (Just don't buy the Limburger cheese please!)

A. Your basic cheese slicers: Amanda and the Goddess of Empathy!

Your two best defensives against cheese are one of the Troika, the
Immortals, Amanda Rogers (who nullifies one cube of cheese just played) and
the Goddess of Empathy (an event that prevents ALL interrupts until the end
of your next turn) .

Amanda Rogers is most players first line of defense. Along with Kevin and
Q2, most players used to stock these with some frequency. Amanda negates
Crosis. That brain drain goes away. A pair of wormholes fizzles. She is
the man (OK, that just is too weird!) when it comes to stopping cheese.

Unfortunately, she has some problems. The first is in sheer numbers. A
player can only have so many Amanda's and Palor Toff's (to reclaim Amanda)
in their deck. Someone specializing in cheese will usually have more
interrupts than you will have Amandas. A Q2, nullifies an Amanda--and the
counter war may be on. And for each Amanda you face fighting Q2--another
interrupt has the potential of robbing you of your game.

But other than numbers, and Q2, there are other, more dangerous risks to
using Amanda: The Line Must Be Drawn Here and Oof!. Both of these cards
penalize you for using one of the immortals. They were necessary to combat
people who overused counters--but the penalty can sometimes be worse than
the cheese itself!

The Goddess of Empathy, on the other hand, is a far more powerful counter of
cheese because she negates all interrupts all together until the end of your
next turn. Unfortunately, she costs you your card play (barring a parallax
arguers) and, like computer crash, is double-edged--when in play, YOU cannot
use any interrupts either (no shape shifting, adapts, etc.). The window she
provides, however, is often enough to turn the tide of a game. If you need
that protection to actually move to your mission without being "pinged"
she'll be there. I'm amazed we don't see the Goddess in play more often.

Alas, Amandas and Goddesses are not enough--

B. Specialized counters:

Intruder force field is a good defensive measure against the ping (although
it is NOT a captain's order...)--but opens the rogue borg up to their second
swarm use. Although Hugh nullifies a rogue borg attack and can be
downloaded by "sense the borg"--I find very people stock these cards in
multiple to truly defend against a dedicated rogue borg deck. Worse, one
Hugh only cancels one borg battle. The best defense against rogue borg is a
combination Force Fields, Hughs and Amandas: Hugh what you can, always
nullify Crosis! But his is often not enough to prevent the deaths of a
great number of people or the delay at the mercy of the "ping". Rogue borg
are so powerful that EFC dedicated a drone to allow the borg to combat them
AND it has been alluded to that a new counter will appear in Blaze of Glory.
I would like to see a card that nullifies rogue borg and is not itself
discarded. . .but until then. . .rogue borg are simply evil!

For Thine Own Self no specialized counters exist--so Amanda or decent
sized away teams are your best defense. Scans (which are always a good
thing anyway!) help prepare yourself for dilemmas that split and separate
you.

Although Plexing cures Phobias, plexing is so rarely seen outside of the
binder that it really isn't an effective enough counter. Phobia's actually
have yet another nullifier!?!: Wolf. . .but like plexing, it rarely sees
the light of day.

An I.P. Scanner nullifies Brain Drain, but like plexing or Wolf, this is
another card rarely seen outside of the binder. With its built in nullifier,
it's not as destructive as other cheeses.

Hugh: But all these counters are clearly not enough. And the more counters
Decipher makes, the more chances do those abusive strategies have to be
successful: you can't very well start stocking enough counters against all
cheese strategies or that's all you'll be drawing! We need something else,
something more. We need something to encourage players to not use those
strategies. That's the heart of the problem: too many players put too much
emphasis on winning, at all costs.

Keevan: Although I don't completely agree with my compatriot's caustic
attitude towards cheese (gasp! I've been known to use it!) I do share the
fear that the game might degenerate into a metametagame--trying to stock all
available counters to fend off all strategies or trying to outguess what
everyone else's guessing. As it is, risks have to be taken, cards included
or excluded, and go from there.

But I HAVE been on the losing end of a field trip deck, stuck by rogue borg
at a Dal'Rok, and lost in a temporal rift. Losing a game because you do not
have the right counter at the right time is not fun. I personally know
several players who either have quit the game entirely, or cannot fully
support it because of these abuses. I hope that in developing future
strategies (either counters to existing or even new potentially abused
cards) Decipher realizes that as players frustrations rise, profits fall.

Hugh: We are going to start something in Montreal at our next tournament
that we hope can give players the incentive to go for something else then
those abusive strategies. By presenting this here, I hope to give TDs an
option that can help them improve the tournament environment. Part of the
regular prize support is gonna be given through awards. At the end of each
tournament, players are going to vote on three categories (these are not
official yet, but it is the current proposition):

-Most original deck;
-most pleasant adversary;
-most challenging adversary.

This way we hope that the emphasis will shift from "winning" to "having
fun". I would take the opportunity to ask Decipher to consider using a
similar system during the Worlds (and maybe even Qualifiers). That would
send a very clear signal as to where you intend to take this game. IMHO, it
would do more than any counter card could (not to doubt the ability of the
PD team! ;-)

Keevan: I like this idea and hope that it succeeds in Montreal and other
players and TD's look into using it elsewhere.

Until next time. Please, don't cut the cheese. . .