>I would just like to express my extreme displeasure with a certain entry I found in the Current Rulings recently. Im speaking specifically of the entry under *Docked Ships, and six specific cards listed that can no longer them.
>
>Its not the cards that bother me. Its not even the ruling itself that really bothers me. It is the apparent lack of consistency between this and other rulings made Decipher.
>
>All along (or at least for the last year or so) Decipher has been striving to make the rules more consistent, streamlined, and easier to understand. This one ruling, IMHO, hugely undermines this effort. Decipher has consistently told us things like "Go by what the card says", "It's not in the rules", and "We cant make an exception for every circumstance" when, in the game, we are confronted with things that dont make sense in the real world. Things like Mendak and Pressman not being Admirals, or Hate Crime not exposing a changeling come to mind. These are both good rulings IMO because they help to make the game rules more "streamlined" and easier to understand.
>
>Basically this entry in the Current Rulings totally undermines that. What this entry does, IMHO, is try to make "trek sense" out of the rules, something that Decipher has been seemingly against for as long as I can remember. None of the rules, or the cards themselves, makes any hint that these cards cannot affect docked ships and up until this crd was released there was no question that they did. In my mind this sets a bad precedence.
>
>If Decipher can just pick cards and except them from rules whenever it wants, what happens to people who arent able to keep up with these online documents? In my opinion this ruling severly undermines Decipher's recent efforts in a number of ways and thought I know it improbably, would very much like to see it repealed. Decipher prides themselves on having very little errata in this game, well this is the exact same thing as errating 6 more cards to say "does not affect docked ships".
>
>And that's all I have to say about that, thanks for listening to my little rant.
>
>Bilby
This was not my method of choice for approaching this question. Simply put, there are many existing cards which make no conceptual sense to play on a docked ship, and I wanted very much to make a blanket ruling, as we did with landed ships, that nothing would target a docked ship unless it specifically said it did.
But the docked ship problem is much more complex than the landed ship problem, because battle against a docked ship *is* clearly allowed (and would make no sense to disallow), while it could be disallowed on conceptual grounds for landed ships (too small a target, essentially). Also, while there were only a small handful of cards that conceptually *could* play on a landed ship (but were disallowed by the blanket rule), there are quite a few more such cards applicable to docked ships, so a blanket rule does not seem as suitable. Believe it or not, we *do* try to maintain a balance between storyline, gameplay, simplicity and consistency; but sometimes it is just not possible to have it all.
In short, this is a problem that requires lengthy discussion by the rules committee, which does not currently have time to deal with it. Therefore, I took the bare minimum of cards that made the least storyline sense to affect docked ships, and ruled that they did not apply. I fully realize that there are other cards that "make no sense" either, but they are either cards that are seldom used or that can have *some* storyline rationale made for them affecting docked ships.
Jolan tru,
Major Rakal
(Kathy McCracken)
Star Trek CCG Intelligence Officer and Tal Shiar Agent
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Re: Comment about the Current Rulings ... Major Rakal ... [2/13/99 10:05]
