I'm quite fond of 1E... I think a lot of you know that already.

People occasionally come up to me and ask me, "Do you plan on playing 2E? Do you think that you will be able to remain useful at the game in the 2E era?"

I'm really not sure if I will be able to. The game will change and a lot of players will be left behind. I'm planning to stay ahead of the curve by examining the similarities between the old and the new.

We know for a fact that dilemmas and skills will still exist in the new game. This is key.

A friend of mine, Dr. David Hyttenrauch is the master of skills and dilemmas. He recognized early in STCCG's history that some skills were better than others and
attempted to come up with a theory on how to exploit that fact.

He logged the dilemmas that existed at the time, and how they were called for on dilemmas. He looked at the probability of facing any particular dilemma and
therefore of requiring that skill. He examined the consequences of missing a skill and then looked at average deck sizes, number of personnel and tried to match the importance of any particular skill to the probability of drawing it.

These are the skills that I think will remain important in the new environment; an environment where only a few personnel can be played per turn and where
dilemmas will be played on the fly.

My suggestion to everyone wishing to keep on the ball is that you look at all the dilemmas in 2E and the relative frequency of the passing skills. Make sure you have at least 7 or 8 copies of every skill that you can't solve a mission without (like Diplomacy in 1E) figure out how many copies of that skill are needed.

Basically I'm trying to say that it's all 'bout the skillz.