I was think about a few of the "issues" we have witnessed within the first 4.5 months of this wonderful game and came upon a thought: Were OP scoring rules taken into account during play testing?

Stick with me here as this may be a long winded post as I get to how this question arose.

I was looking at some of the more common Upgrades we see as well as many that almost never see play. Ever since Wave 1, Cloaked Mines have been a tourney staple and many people are also touting the effectiveness of Barrage of Fire.

Some upgrades we hardly ever see played; especially "ganker" cards (cards that specifically cause the disable or discard of an opponent's card). Many people state the ganker cards are worthless as they are too situational in nature and that it's almost always better to just shoot a ship (that is not cloaked and has no active shields) than worry about disabling an Upgrade on said ship.

Surprisingly, many of these cards are "discard" cards. So I then went out and looked at all of the current Discard cards. Below is the list except for Elite Talents. Almost all of the Elite Talents are Discard cards.

Klingon Boarding Party (Klingon/NeghVah Expansion)
Selok (Romulan/R.I.S. Vo Expansion)
Toman'Torax (Dominion/5th Wing Patrol Ship Expansion)
Varel (Romulan/RIS Apnex)
Red Shirt (Federation/TDW-Month 2 participation prise)
Leonard McCoy (Federation/USS Enterprise Expansion)
Glinn Telle (Dominion/Kraxon Expansion)
Nyota Uhuru (Federation/USS Enterprise Expansion)
Romulan Pilot (Romulan/LE P.W.B. Aj'Rmr Pack)
Miles O'Brien (Federation/Starter)
Janice Rand (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion)
Bochra/Klag/Parem/Follower of Khan

Projected Stasis Field (Klingon/IKS GrOth Expansion)
Muon Feedback Wave (Romulan/RIS Apnex Expansion)
Cloaked Mines (Romulan/I.R.W. Praetus Expansion)
Interphase Generator (Romulan/RIS Apnex Expansion)
Nullifier Core (Romulan/LE P.W.B. Aj'Rmr Pack)
Positron Beam (Federation/USS Excelsior Expansion)
Ultritium Explosives (Romulan/R.I.S. Vo Expansion)

Antimatter Mines (Federation/Starter)
Barrage of Fire (Klingon/LE Ch'Tang Pack)
Secondary Torpedo Launcher (Federation/LE USS Sutherland Pack)


So, some of the biggies are in there: Antimatter Mines, Cloaked Mines, Barrage of Fire, Interphase Generator. These discards can severely change the way a game is played out. Part of be began to think: Would these Upgrades be used as frequently if discarded cards were scored to the opponent at the end of the game?

Then I looked thru the other cards and noted some of them may see more play, but others got progressively worse (looking at you, Redshirt). In non-OP play, it really makes no difference. Scoring does not occur so it really does not matter what happens to a discarded card because you win or lose by virtue of the scenerio - complete the mission parameters or destroy all the opponent's ships.

With the gank cards, you are giving up points to get points. Some of them may be worth it, others may not (would you really give up 5 points for discarding Toman'Torax unless you are running the upcoming Shroud? Probably not).

So, how different do you all think the meta would be if discard cards were scored to the opponent?

I don't think we'd see them anymore.....for the most part players seem to be avoiding them because they are contingent on what your opponent is playing.

If you're playing the USS Thugit, 'gankers' are gold. If you're playing against a upgrade light fleet (say the D7 swarm) they aren't......people seem to prefer to have upgrades that are less situational.

There would be some shift.....some of the eek out on points Cloaked mine builds we saw would probably get some tweaking but they would still function in a similar fashion, I would think......with only a few changes.


I could be completely off, but that would be my first thought.

I think the game hasn't quite evolved yet -- it's still more of a point-and-shoot philosophy. Part of that is the limited mobility of the ships: 'I better hit on my first pass because it's going to take a while to turn around.'

At a somewhat recent OP4 event, I ganked Sulu off the Enterprise (it is easier for the Dominion to do so than other factions). My opponent was caught off-guard and didn't know what to make of it at first. He told me later that loosing Sulu was a stunner and it was quite something to not be able to rely on the helmsman. (Granted, my opponent still beat my Dominion pure swarm squad and the tournament, but being thrown for a loop was unsettling for a bit.)

As people see the effectiveness, they'll come around. Or maybe it will take being able to gank a captain; then we'd see it all the time.

I think the discard cards will be more valuable as build move towards a two ship fleet. With 2 ships you need a lot more on each ship. At 3 ships you start running only the ship and a Captain with maybe 1 upgrade. At 4 ships you are going with only ships, usually.

So with 2 ships (whether enough good stuff forces it or the Tourney Organizer makes it so), every card becomes more worthwhile.

With scenario play, those cards are really useful - so hopefully many OP events will start running scenarios to keep things interesting.

One reason the "Ganker" cards are not as possible is that if my opponent doesn't run something for me to disable, I'm out the points for that card.

Another reason, the restriction on some of those cards, IE you have to be uncloackedm then drop your shields, target a ship with no shields (not all of them are like that but you get what I'm saying)

As far as cards getting counted as points for your opponents when you discard them, I actually wouldn't mind that at all.

Well, if discards were scored by the opponents I'd have scored more than zero pts in at least half my losing matches.

Seriously though, I do think that we'd see a slight shift in the usage of some of those cards, but it would be more of a slight lean than any real movement. Players build their fleets to win. If winning means you forfeit 5-10 pts to your opponents, then its still a price that most would gladly pay.

I still wouldn't expect the gankers to see any more play than they are now. As others have said, its really not about the points that you might score, but rather the conditions (not cloaked and no shields) that must be met in order to use them. I've never come across a fleet where a crew ganker would be absolutely useless, just that when the usual conditions are met, its usually more efficient to just use the action, that the ganker would require, to activate Battle Stations or Target Lock. The target ship already has no shields and is not cloaked, why not just make the shot easier to destroy the ship out right? I score the ganked crew if I destroy the ship or I could waste the action to gank the crew and, if what you propose comes to pass, get a small fraction of what the ship is worth at the cost of a less reliable kill shot.

I haven't had a chance to use a ganker yet, but yeah, whenever I look at most of them it just seems like a lot of trouble.

However, I will at some point get around to using the ones that can ignore shields and cloaks, like Miles and the Jem'Hadar. Especially now with Flagships granting lots of extra actions per turn, we might start seeing those pop up more.

I wouldn't mind at all if discard points went to your opponent. And if your discard causes them to discard, you both get points!

At both where I play and where I judge, discarded cards are counted towards your fleet points. Reasoning is it was part of his build. Think about doing just a fleet of nothing but discarded cards, using them all and losing. The other player would get very little points.

I take 100 pts - what's left on the table (ships and all attached cards) = scored fleet points for that round.

Hmmmmmm. I just found this little bit of info on the General Rules FAQ over on BGG:

Discard Costs vs Fleet Points
•If a card is discarded by its own effect (rather than being discarded or destroyed by an opponent's effect) place that card under its current ship's card. If that ship survives, this card is also considered to be part of your “surviving fleet” when determining fleet points. These cards can not be separately targeted or destroyed in any way.


If I'm reading this correctly, it seems to imply that you DO get points for when you force the discard of an opponent's card. If your card is a discard, it goes under your ship card and is only scored if the ship is destroyed (as I've been playing to date).

Now, this really does not change the fact that most of the discard gankers need to be used on a ship that has no shields (and you cannot be cloaked and have to lower your shields) and it's usually more beneficial to just attack to destroy it. I can see a limited time when you may want to do this - when you have a very low attack total and are facing someone who has a very high defensive roll (Sulu, anyone?). Still, it does make an interesting corner case to where the extra 1 point for the crew could actually be of some use.

That is interesting. Hmmm.

The best place I can think to use crew gankers is immediately after the initial pass. With any luck you've taken out their shields, and everyone is out of each other's firing arcs. You can beam someone over to take out Scotty or other engineer-type crew who can undo some of the damage you just inflicted (of course, if it's Starfleet you're facing, you might have to worry about rear-arc shenanigans, but...).

That's all just theory of course, I haven't had a chance to use even a simple ganker like O'Brien.

I really don't see the scoring (or lack thereof) of discarded cards is the issue here. If you score a discarded card via a ganker, you're still more than likely giving your opponent the same, if not more, points because most gankers are discards as well. Even if you don't give up points and are able to score points, it won't matter if you don't win the match.

The problem here is that crew gankers just don't fit well into the meta. They eat up valuable actions, fleet points, and there is no guarantee you can ever use it in a game. And when you do use it, it needs to be a situation where everything falls into place and you can't just simply make an attack, which, in itself, is an undesirable position as it probably means you must keep within a certain (close) range rather than maneuvering to turn around as soon as possible. At this moment, the only gankers that I would even consider playing are the Dominion ones who can gank without shield or cloak requirements. And even then, they are so expensive that I can usually find other upgrades which will be more useful.