In the spirit of Alidar's Announcement Analyses, this is the first of a (hopefully) monthly series examining intricacies of STCCG rules.  I'll be focusing on 3 areas: Things that people often overlook that could give them a little edge in games.  Things that may seem confusing, but really aren't.  And important changes as the game's rules evolve.

We'll start at the third category.  What's new?

"Whose mission is it anyway?"

The biggest change in the July CR was the new duplicate missions rule.  Why was this done?  This is my understanding, from conversations with Mot, Major Rakal, other players on the BBS, and my own experiences.  A big reason, and I've seen this a lot in tournaments myself, was that many people were playing the old rule incorrectly.  They did not bring universal missions to tournaments; they were not prepared to exchange them (taking lots of time to figure out what they needed) and the forgot to reshuffle the replacement mission.  Now, while this doesn't directly lead to the new ruling, it's clear that something needed to be done about the old rule.

The second problem was that most people ignored the replacement missions, either "stealing" back their mission from the opponent, or just going elsewhere.  So nothing is really lost here, who will miss the universal mission?  In fact, something is gained.  Instead of seeding under the replacement, you have a few extra cards to seed under your duplicate.  You probably don't want a lot of dilemmas protecting that mission, just a few, so that lets you put a few dilemmas elsewhere.  Also, players will have to be more flexible where they put artifacts.  Decks will have to be designed to use all 6 missions efficiently since an opponent getting to a duplicated mission first leaves you with fewer options. Degenerate 2-mission decks are now a lot less reliable.

Shorter spacelines and duplicate missions promote interaction between players, making the game more interesting and more challenging.  That's a good thing.

The new rule also clears up problems with "your" mission.  Say you play Espionage Mission planning to solve it with Bribery.  If your opponent seeded it first under the old rule, you were out of luck, and had to replace a 40-point mission with a low point universal.  This makes Bribery, Riker Wil, 3-Way Treaty, Subjugate Planet and 62nd Rule decks a lot more viable.

OK, there have to be some downsides, right?  Biggest one is that universal missions are now a lot less useful.  They're not protected by Fair Play and will not be used as much.  But if you were only using them as replacements in the first place, and there was a chance you'd never need to make a replacement, what have you lost?

Also, there's a big downside for Borg.  I can't place Access Denied on a duplicated mission for the +1 Computer Skill, because I always see the mission as "mine" never as "opponent's".  However, I can place Access Denied on another opponent's mission and nullify an Establish Gateway on a duplicated ("my") mission.  Yup, it's not even safe to target your own space mission with EG if it's a duplicate.  Of course, Borg have no problem playing very obscure space missions or Construct Depots, so it's easy to guard against this if you're aware of it.  (which is one of the points of writing these reviews.)

In all, I think the good outweighs the bad here.  Nothing is really lost, certain deck types will finally work reliably, and I bet I'll never see that one loophole.  The new rule is the simplest and easiest solution to existing problems, and creates some interesting strategies.
 

The "That makes sense now" category,

The Rules of Executing Orders

Recently, the term "executing orders" was formally defined.  After "beginning of turn" actions, you can play cards, download cards and use "at any time" or "suspends play" actions before you execute orders.  If you take any other actions, you are past your card play phase and can't play any more cards that turn.  Remember, all special downloads suspend play, and you can reveal a hidden agenda at any time.

The part of this rule that I'm going to address here is the ability to download cards before (or between) your card plays.  Prior to this specific entry in the CR, there was a lot of confusion about what was "executing orders".  In some cases you could not use a card for a download ability before your card play.  So just in case you were not totally aware of this, let me illustrate what you can do with a specific card, the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

The first ability, to place a Rule card beneath your deck to draw a card, is not one of the above actions.  So you cannot use that ability until you are done with your card plays.  This also applies to similar card-recycling effects, like Prepare the Prisoner or Q the Referee.

The second ability of the card, to place a Rule card under your deck to download a Rule card to hand, IS specifically allowed before you execute orders.  It's a download.  So you can use the Rules to exchange a Rule, and then play the new Rule that very turn.  Similarly, discarding Latinum to download a card would be specifically allowed before a card play.  This would allow you to download the Scepter of the Grand Nagus and use it for a free Rule card play that same turn.
 

Rom's forgotten rule of the month

Holograms?  What holograms?

If a ship has no non-holographic crew aboard, any intruders on board can erase all holograms associated with the ship.  Try this with Subspace Transporter, Invasive Beam In, Devidian Door or, simply, Luther Sloan.  The odd thing is that this rule only applies to ships, not outposts.
 

And the "yes, it's official" category,

The July current rulings mention that you can use Invasive Beam In to transport onto landed ships.  The landed ships rule only protects landed ships from cards that target ships, Invasive Beam In says nothing about ships specifically, only shields in general.  So this rule is nothing new, IBI has always played like that.  It's just that this question seemed to come up at a lot of tournaments, so it was worth noting in the Current Rulings.

Chris 'Rom' Brennan
Rom@wnohgb.com