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I am trying to figure out what the minimal restrictions should be at my venue to make sure OP events are still fun. Having two players roll off for the win because they couldn't hit each other is not acceptable IMHO. I want to get your opinions before I present this to my players to vote on:

Restricted Combos:

1) Weyoun (Captain Skill 6) + Varel on same ship

2) Sopek and Varel on same ship

3) Koss and Borg Dispersion Field on same ship (Edit: redundant if #4 approved)

4) Borg must be played faction pure. Only dual faction Borg ship allowed is the Soong. Edit: All other factions cannot use Borg upgrades

What do you guys think?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
5) Only one Tactical Station can be used per ship per turn

Its not bad, but you still have the Weyoun/conditional surrender combo possible.

we were kicking around:
1) Faction Pure
2) No borg at all. Sorry Soong/Target Prime borg missiles and Borg mines are wrong on anything.
3) No Transphasic Torpedoes
4) No Barrage of Fire
5) No Volley of Torpedoes
6) One tactical station per ship (we know someone with 4)

3,4, and 6 are to avoid easy ways to one shot someone even through their defense dice. 5 is because cain firing over and over again is just bad ruling nobody liked.

I forgot about Volley of Torps. I don't mind the card, but no chaining of it.

May have to adopt your other ones, but I want to start slow and not restrict things unless I have to. Having said that those Borg Missiles and Borg Mines need to go on my list.

So:

6) Volley of Torpedoes cannot chain off another Volley of Torpedoes

7) No Borg Missiles

8) No Borg Mines

Yeah, those Borg missiles are no fun. We play faction pure at our OPs, and while that helps keep the worst of it out, Feds and Borg have a serious leg up over most everyone else. Klingons still have a good chance, but I don't think anyone has won an event with any faction besides those three yet.

I think the best I've done with Romulans is third.

Oh, I take it back, I won once with Dominion. Since I don't play fed or Borg, I haven't anything else, though I might need to go back to Klingon or Dominion if I really want to win...

faction pure.


full stop.


once people start talking about banning things like tactical stations, which are FAIR cards that cost 4 pts for +2 attacks on a discard (when 2 attacks permanetly cost 4 pts), you might as well just ban borg at that point.

faction pure avoids the "free tactical station" chain and 99% of abusive combos, and is the only way its played here (6 stores run OPs here, all are faction pure)

borg mines are a perfect example of people getting worked up over nothing before they even play against them, they suck for a 10 pt card,


personally I have been winning lots of OP's with klingons, if a 10 pt mine card is "OP" then what is my 5 pt stasis feild that outranges, out-initiatives, and totally disables your borg super ship?

Faction pure is insufficient.

Full Stop.

See, I can say that too.

Look, when 3 factions are responsible for 90% of the wins at OPs, there's a problem. Are other factions winning on occasion? Yes. But most of the time it's Borg, Fed, or Klingons.

How many times have you won with Romulans? Or Dominion? I won't even ask if you've won with Bajorans or Kazon. Heck, even Bioships are winning more than Romulans or Dominion and they have one ship.

When 30% of the field win 90% of the events, the game is unbalanced.

To be perfectly clear, I am talking about FACTION PURE events. We have run 10 or so OP events now, and I won once with Dominion, and every other time the winner was Fed, Borg, or Klingon. This is not balanced. People are not just running random lists, either.

90% of statistics are made up.


I notice that good players, regardless of faction, do well constantly. the same people keep winning around here, regardless of what they bring. and yes, this includes romulans, they were OWNING every OP with cloaked mines and so on up till borg got released, now they have to sit on the back bench till the scimitar comes out.

thats how games work when things are released in phases, you release stuff, something rises to the top, you release more stuff, something else rises to the top. wash, rinse, repeat.

its the price you pay for having so many factions, options and so on.

once you start banning things "because you dont like them/think they are OP" then whats to stop me from saying things like the romulan "i reduce that 10 hits to one hit" non unique card from being banned?

tactical officer? OP BANNED!
donatra? banned!
independent ODO card? banned!


every faction has super strong points, and it very much is well balanced in faction pure, with borg being the notable exception (and even borg is only a bit undercosted, they consistently LOSE here)


if you are arguing that kazon or bajoran should be winning OPS... I dont know what to tell you, thats just bonkers these are offshoot novelty factions, not yet even close to being properly fleshed out.


faction pure addresses pretty much everything, you are welcome to house rule things as you see fit,


personally, faction pure solves almost all issues, addind a few points to the borg ships is the only hole I feel needs plugging besides that.


at my events,

its faction pure, borg pay primary weapon -1 extra pts for their ships.

I understand that Faction Pure does solve a lot of combo issues. I think it may be going too far and am trying to focus on the least amount of restrictions that will keep OP events fun.

I aim to let players discuss and vote on our restrictions and to gradually increase the restrictions as needed.

I don't know about the minimum but... These are some things I've been considering.

1) Ship pure seems a good compromise over faction pure. - Dunno if that still leaves major holes though. But, considering the last 2 games I had in Sunday's OP was Weyoun/Varel on a Sphere, followed by Picard on a Sphere, it might help.

2) Transphasics, Volley of Torpedoes, Ablative Armour/Generators are unique.

3) All prize ship cards, except the generic ship classes are unique.

4) Only allow prizes and resources that were released up to that point in any tournaments. - Locally, we're running about 3-4 months behind.

 easysauce wrote:
90% of statistics are made up.


I notice that good players, regardless of faction, do well constantly. the same people keep winning around here, regardless of what they bring. and yes, this includes romulans, they were OWNING every OP with cloaked mines and so on up till borg got released, now they have to sit on the back bench till the scimitar comes out.

thats how games work when things are released in phases, you release stuff, something rises to the top, you release more stuff, something else rises to the top. wash, rinse, repeat.

its the price you pay for having so many factions, options and so on.

once you start banning things "because you dont like them/think they are OP" then whats to stop me from saying things like the romulan "i reduce that 10 hits to one hit" non unique card from being banned?

tactical officer? OP BANNED!
donatra? banned!
independent ODO card? banned!


every faction has super strong points, and it very much is well balanced in faction pure, with borg being the notable exception (and even borg is only a bit undercosted, they consistently LOSE here)


if you are arguing that kazon or bajoran should be winning OPS... I dont know what to tell you, thats just bonkers these are offshoot novelty factions, not yet even close to being properly fleshed out.


faction pure addresses pretty much everything, you are welcome to house rule things as you see fit,


personally, faction pure solves almost all issues, addind a few points to the borg ships is the only hole I feel needs plugging besides that.


at my events,

its faction pure, borg pay primary weapon -1 extra pts for their ships.

Metas are different in different places. You are going to see some drastic differences than the rest of us if you guys are making the Borg pay 5 extra points per ship. I used to think that Klingons were the best suited to take on the borg in faction pure, but then in collective OP1 I saw some flagship cubes/spheres with double armour laugh off the the Stasis Field. One came close by adding in a Boarding Party, but couldn't make it through the 10 hull on a flagship cube.

Fed have transphasic but can be unreliable, unless combined with other things. Though a 15 shot transphasic (2 tac stations + Tuvok) with battle stations from Picard is a scary thing.

Part of the big problem is everyone elses best equipment to handle the Borg are expensive discards, but the borg have natural high attacks and their best stuff is reusable, borg missiles, assimilation tubules, muni-whatever charges.

Faction pure solves most of the problems, but it still leaves the Borg and a small handful of cards that can be abusive.

Ship pure can be a problem because all you have to do is put Weyoun on a dominion independent flagship w/superior intellect and pull up to a Romulan Science vessel turn 1 to pull Varel off, boom same problem as mixed faction.

Double the cost of non faction cards.


As a side, I won our last OP event with a Kazon fleet supported by a single Bajoran ship (opponents were Borg, Klingons, and Roms & I won all 3 games.)

1) Ship Pure (all ships must be Faction Pure)
2) No ship may have a total cost (with upgrades) over 50 points
3) No ships with 360 degree firing arcs are allowed (this does not count upgrades with a 360 degree firing arc, or ships that have a special 360 degree attack, like the Enterprise-D and the Voyager)

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


Ship pure can be a problem because all you have to do is put Weyoun on a dominion independent flagship w/superior intellect and pull up to a Romulan Science vessel turn 1 to pull Varel off, boom same problem as mixed faction.

It wouldn't be so bad to class that as not ship pure though, despite what the 'independent flagship' resource card says. Plus, at least that way, you're now paint a good chunk more points to pull that combo off (and you can't voluntarily disable shields without a good reason anyhow).

You have to declare what faction your ship is for initiative purposes anyway, I think. So it seems easy enough to say, "irrespective of anything else and no matter what, only cards of that specific faction can go on that ship."

Sure, it might upset the people who use Defiant Kira... But then, I've never seen anyone use Defiant Kira.

Ok, I think I have proposal that I will e-mail my regulars for their input:

Restrictions:

1) Cannot have Weyoun (Captain Skill 6) + Varel on same ship

2) Cannot have Sopek and Varel on same ship

3) Borg must be played faction pure. Use of a Flagship Resource does not make a Borg ship dual faction. All other factions cannot use Borg upgrades with the exception in #4 & #5

4) Only way to have Dual Faction with the Borg is to have a ship that is printed with the Borg Faction and another Faction

5) The Borg Alliance Elite Talent Upgrade is the only way for a non-Borg ship to start the game with a Borg-slot Upgrade

5) Volley of Torpedoes cannot chain off another Volley of Torpedoes

6) No Borg Missiles (or change this to a discard)

7) No Borg Mines

8) All Limited Edition Prize upgrades are Unique. This excludes Blind Boosters


We will agree on what restriction we want for the entire Resistance is Futile Event and re-evaluate them afterwards.

Its only a 3 month OP series, have you thought about banning the flagship entirely. It would be interesting to see how things went without that resource available.

I'll bring up the idea of banning prior OP Resources. It would make it easier for new players. Just need to find some of those first.