well, what more? After seeing pretty everything in the three
Internet expansions, there has to be a twist to this round's
winner... Well, we had Personnel, Ships and Artifacts. We
also saw Equipment, Events and Interrupts. Heck, even a Mission
or two! But we still lack one category...
...an Outpost!
[A WHAT?????]
Yeah, right! This round of IE design was won by somebody designing an outpost!!! (Almost as improbable as scoring 100 points with Mot the Barber)
[Okay, get to it. If it's really that great...]
Author: Ralf Schwate
WINNER/27 points
Oh, well, so simple. And when I read it, I again had to think of a Magic card. But in this case not any cheapo card, but THE card. The Black Lotus. For a cost of nothing, you get three of the thing you need most to get a quick game start. However, unlike the Lotus, this one has serious limitations to balance its power.
First, you can't use it with Feds. Feds have the speed advantage and the freedom of having three near-identical personnel for every function, so you can build your decks around that. And Fed decks win a lot because of this. The Smuggler's Paradise compensates for this advantage by giving the other affiliations a few decent cards to start with (at the cost of three less "real" seed cards). Usually these would be a ship and two good crew. And the ship might be a K'Vort class or a Tama, these require only two icons to move. Now let's have a look at the balance. The best Feds have an average of 4.5 skills per person. The others have about 3. Let's assume you seed two crew with 4 each (some of your best). Furthermore, both players draw around 4 crew in their opening hand. So the user of the Smuggler's Outpost has a potential 20 skills on table after playing the 4 crew, the Feddie has about 18. So still an advantage, but smaller than you might think.
Add to this the fact that this outpost is quite easily destroyed by a non-Fed player (C'mon, SHIELDS 14? Two K'Vorts and a Bynars'!) thus offsetting the 8 skill advantage when playing this against another red or green guy and you come pretty close to a good balance already.
And the last thing: You have to seed this at a non-aligned mission. Which means Qualor II. And that again means you won't have too much of a chance to attempt this from your outpost early unless you're playing a lot of non-aligned crew. So you will have to move somewhere else negating the Outpost Mission speed bonus (often 1 turn).
A refreshing, totally new idea, a non-broken but still powerful "Black Lotus"-type card that makes the early game more interesting, a card for non-Fed players only AND a lot of Trek Sense all in one card. Ralf, you deserve this one.
Wesley's rating: 10.0 <-- Look, that's really rare! Allen's rating: 8.7 Cpt. Stasis' rating: 3.0 "Very Weak"??? Cole's rating: 4.5 Dave's rating: 8.7 Drew's rating: 7.3 Greg's rating: 3.0 Hal's rating: 7.5 Jack's rating: 9.1 Jonathan's rating: 9.6 Locutus' rating: 8.0 Mot's rating: 9.5 Nouwa's rating: 8.5 Picarde's rating: 7.0 Ranger's rating: 6.4 Tania's rating: 4.5 Tebok's rating: 8.0 Tony's rating: 7.0 ---------------------- AVERAGE RATING: 7.3
It's funny to see a few very low ratings here... When Magic first came out, people saw the Lotus and said "Oh, come on, three mana and just once, what good can it be?". And it was one of the cheapest cards in the set. Then, later, people realized how good a fast start is. And I always get this pattern when I review a card that adds speed unless for the few extreme ones (Red Alert and kin). The less obvious ones tend to get overlooked...
And the last two bonus cards...
Author:Harry Sheski
9th place/16 points
A fair balance between abilities and requirements. Nuff said.
Author:Wayne Oliphant
17th place/3rd round card
A bit hazy in the game text, but basically a reusable Near-Warp Transport. However at Range 5 the proton torpedo case K'Ehleyr traveled in might have been the better representation for the ability.
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Wesley Crusher
Temporarily immortal STCCG Lord
"A couple of lightyears can't keep good friends apart"