News:

This week's Deck is by Stephen Kittel!  Offense, in Depth is the name.It's the modern Shadows variation of the old Sakai strategy (See Sakai Support's Sheridan Mighty...)  Stephen includes some analysis about the choice of race for a Shadows Sakai deck - if you have any questions email him or me.  The other decks I recieved I was rather impressed with.  I'm sure there are many who would want to see them (and will probably disagree with my choice).  They are:  We Live for the One, by David Sharpe, and some others but my link's working too slow to put the others up right now.  (I will update possibly tomorrow.)

About last week's deck of the week, the winner was Vorlons Supreme, although I didn't recieve all that many votes.  Oh well - I appreciate the votes I did get!  Thank you!  Some of you put a lot of thought into your answer. :)

I imagine most of you have seen the nice full-page add in Scyre about the Great War expansion.. for those of you who haven't done the math yet, 350 cards puts us 2 cards away from a 1000 card set.  Ouch.  Umm.. anyone know how many of the homeworlds are going to be released?  I thought I remembered the announcement saying all of the homeworlds and 3? Non-aligned worlds.. please email me if you have any more detailed or current info.  Thanks!

How many of you watched TNT's new B5 movie, "Thirdspace"?  If you don't know about it, it's basicly Babylon 5's rendition of Event Horizon.  It's a big episode for some characters - Vir gains the distinction of the only ambassador tempted to (and accepting) evil, Lyta turns a little more psycho, and there's one construction guy who I thought was pretty cool.  Card possibilities, you ask??  Here's some I thought of during commercial breaks:

Ancient Artifact - Diplomacy Conflict - Any player may be supported in this conflict.   If this conflict resolves, the winner gains 2 influence and this card becomes a Global Enhancement which each turn initiates a military conflict against the winner with 25 automatic support.  If the conflict is successful, that player loses 1 influence.  If the conflict fails, discard this enhancement.  Every turn this enhancement is in play any character may attack any other supporting character.
(It's a nasty Narn card, yes, but where were the Narn in this movie?  The only real thing they did was attack other people... Hmm... The Narn help the Humans win!)
Dr. Trent - Human Character D:2 I:2 - INX(? - I can't get TNT's site up..). If a military attack occurs in a conflict Dr. Trent is participating in she is discarded after the conflict resolves.
One Mistake - Won Aftermath - For the purposes of this resolution treat this conflict as if the original winner had lost.  No player is treated as the winner.  Retroactively change all previous aftermaths for these conditions - if the card is now unplayable, it is discarded.
 

What a mistake!  I had the name of the file wrong, I guess.  *sigh*   I'll check /all/ the links from now on when I upload - instead of a couple just to make sure it's in general working.  I'm very sorry Steve - and in one viewer's words, "Not very objective voting if you ask me..."  Oh well.  The deck is up now.  Now what should I do?  I couldn't update since Monday, and I'll have to goto my grandmother's funeral, which may mean I'm not back 'till next monday.  We'll see - you can vote until then - if you feel like it, you can vote on what I should do.  Mark, Steve - you like suspense, don't you? ;)

Thank you, all of you who sent me email concerning the link problem - don't complain about the archive page yet, please?

In light of my inability to update until mondays recently, I'm going to continue to update on mondays until such a time as that I feel compelled to update on a different day.

Also, Jason wanted to update his tourney announcement:  The entry fee is $5 and will be at 2 PM.

Dave Hewitt allusion of the update:  The makers of B5:CCG don't play the way most of these decks are constructed on this website.  They play with decks upwards of 200 cards each or attempt to re-enact an episode or season in a game.  IMHO, the game is fun both ways -- you just can't have a focused deck w/ that many cards - which keeps you from analysing the strategic advantage of cards/positions/strategies.  (Bah!  Analysing the strategic advantage of stragegies!)

This was an interesting week for deck submissions, although Stephen Kittel's idea sort of died - forutnately?.  The idea was to use New Priorities to cycle through the locations.. then Carpe Diem the New Priorities.  Kosh denies that combo existance, and that's it.  It's for the better.

This week I can't decide between the decks.  There are two - both Minbari decks, one, "Crush the Humans!...," is based on military (obviously.)  The other has a fairly selfexplainatory name as well: Vorlons Supreme.  I'm sleep deprived and can't concentrate on it very well.  I'll put it up to a vote.  Email me with either the subject heading: b5vote: Crow or b5vote: Stephens I will post the results around Thursday.  Don't cheat.

There's a review of last week's deck up by Stephen Kittel.  Thanks Stephen!

There's an HTML version of the Narn vs. Centauri article.

Jason Krish sent me the following factoid which concerns all of the (I must say) wonderful players in Canada.

Saturday, August 1.  This coincides with a party at the store: Edmonton, AB, CANADA

Warp 1 Comics and Games.
Pre-register at store or email me at jkrish@nl2k.ab.ca
Constructed deck(Shadow cards allowed). Bring 3 decks.  First register, first choice.
Standard tournament rules(90min rounds).
Entry fee:  TBA  Prizes:  Determined by # of players(more the better!)
(update: entry fee = $5, and it will begin @ 2pm.)
 

If anyone wants to email what they think are important rulings made on the usenet - or just official rulings in general, I'd love it.. 'Last time I checked up on it everyone was giving their obligatory 2 or 3 cents opinion on John Hart's offer to 'facilitate' a trade of an Signed Morden for an Unsigned Morden.

Zya!  Link page will be updated this week - I need to get off my ass and install my modem in the new computer.

'Sorry about the unannounced break there.  My computer is still battling it out...  (The gods of computers are foiling my every step.)  So it will still be a bit before I get going like I used to.  In fact, I may never do so - I don't have as much time as I did earlier this summer, which is why it's taking me so long to get my computer up and running and why I may drop doing the almost daily updates of the usenet.  I know this will dissapoint many, but I'll continue the deck of the week portion as long as I can - we'll see once college starts up again.

Steve Crow's first contribution to the Deck of the Week is a Centauri deck, the favorite race of so many good people.  How can you go wrong?  The deck is an updated version of the KiP decks of Premier - it even manages to retain some of its old size.

Also Sith Lord sent this to me a bit ago and I realized I hadn't gotten it up - it's the article on how to beat the Narn war strategy as the Centauri.  Enjoy!

Dave Hewitt Leak of the Update:  New Londo!  (Wow.. three new ambassadors for Great War: New Sheridan (3 part replacement series),  Enlightened G'Kar, and a reformed Londo.)  This Londo's sponsor text will make it so that the centauri faction's shadow marks are purged and it can't get any more.. Don't worry, they know about the fact that currently any player can replace... my guess the card will have "may only be brought into play by the Centauri player" or something along those lines.
 

Working all weekend means that you don't get much done on your computer.. oh well.  This time is had some appreciable benefit to you.  Dave Hewitt came into where I worked today.  (Stop laughing, Dave.)  Anyway, since he knew who I was I feel very little compunction in sharing one of the bits of Great War knowledge he shared.  In any case, it's not set in stone.  The new Lyta for the Great War expansion!  (Pimped out - w/o the pesky Vorlon Enhancement)  Cerca 17 Psi w/ text that allows any player to modify the Psi by +/- 1 by expending influence to show her lack of bone structure.  Estimated date of release is in October - I hope UIUC has some good card stores around.  Speaking of which, any Kansas City or Urbana-Champaign players, please email me.  (I may drop some more hints that he told me if I don't get told not to and you keep visiting the page.. although it will all be common knowledge soon enough anyway.)

David Nickels is back!!!!  Expect a MAJOR update from the guru of the Ultimate B5 Website on Monday (the 29th)

Those of you who have sent me links.. I can't fix the links page at the moment, so it will be a couple of days before I can get those up.  Here they are for general use, however:

Travis Gauci's B5 website:  http://www.crosswinds.net/melbourne/~hawk/hawkb5.htm
Nick Cole's B5 website (searching for players in New Zealand): http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~colefam/B5CCG.htm
In response to the players' grumblings about the Narn's war movements against the Centauri, "Sith Lord" gave me a response for you.  (Hopefully he'll write the article on the subject he promised, so this is just a summary.)
I have formulated 3 responses to this aggresive Narn Strategy: First, and not very good, is to prepare for war.  Structure your starting hand around it.  This takes away from a theme though, so I don't use it.  The second way helps prevent it all together.  This only works, however, if they try to use a conflict to raise tensions and then  declare war once tensions are at 5.  Put 'For My People' in your starting hand.  If they put out the conflict, you can immediatly neutralize G'Kar b/4 he can sponser a fleet.  This can be countered 2 ways: 1.  They use 'Building  Infrastructure" to put a fleet out.  A distinct possibility.  2.  They can somehow unneutralize G'Kar.  The best  strategy I've found is keep a 'Not ment to be' in your starting hand.  I found this is the best way to counter the  Narn-War opening strategy.  They can not stop you from preventing it unless they are lucky enough to get a 'Not  meant to be' of there own in a draw.  I keep one in my starting hand almost all the time.
We've got a revised edition of Kill Them All And Let G'Quan Sort Them Out which includes Shadows cards..

Recent B5 rec.games.trading-cards.misc summary:

• War!  What the Hell is is Good For?  The merits of going to war are discussed - apparently some people haven't been winning with it while others are.  Here's a quote and a good example of how to make war decks - this way of making a war deck is particularly effective for the Narn.
Yes.  I tend to use a 45-60 card Minbari deck, starting with Lennier, Total War and Minbar. 3 of every Minbari fleet in the deck, 3 each of Border Raid, Limited Strike and Gunboat Diplomacy, half a dozen other Military conflicts, 3 Declarations of War, 3 Acts of War, 3 Concentrated Efforts, Finish the War, a spare Total War, Imperialism, a few tension raising cards, 2 Fleet repair bases, a spare planet or two, 4-5 cheap Minbari characters, plus Mary Ann Cramer and Rathenn and not a lot else. (heisenberg@talvi.demon.co.uk)
• General Rule for targetting one's self with conflicts: If a conflict gives something to the initiator or the target, depending on win/loss, you cannot target yourself.   This may change, however.
• John Hart's proposed errata for Maintaining the Peace: Replace the last two lines with:  Count each consecutive turn since this agenda entered play and since the last Military conflict (that was not started by this agenda) resolved as +1 power.  (there are some suggestions to change the "this agenda" and I'm about to send one to change the "and" part - that would cause some grief later)
• How do we make a Shadow Minbari deck?  The best way seems to be Servants of the Order - use the two Vorlon marks to search for Evidence of Shadows (although I don't think that works for some reason.. I can't find the ruling I'm looking for in the old news - 'anyone remember what exactly was said about searching for cards w/o a vorlon mark on them?)

Computer assembly is going well - I'm getting this page up, arn't I?  It will be a few days before I get it all going like it was before (only better).  It should be nice.  In the mean time you'll have to live with my less freqent updates.

This week's deck is a Minbari diplomacy deck with some (a couple) shadows cards thrown in.  These decks are still competative!  At least, they would seem to be.. you can judge that ;)

Recent B5 rec.games.trading-cards.misc summary:

• Last week's DotW author has a nice idea for the Narns - use the military for big diplomacy conflicts that can use it.
• For "target a player" cards, in general - you can't target your faction with conflict cards, with the exception of Euphrates Treaty.  All other cards should use the phrases "a player" or "another player" those mean exactly what they say.  "a player" = "any player" while "another player" = " not you."  Dave Green asked about targetting individual cards in your faction.  Generally, you can't do anything to intentionally harm (cause damage/discard to) your faction.  FI seems ok, 'though.  That's open for a lot of interpretation.
• On the subject of AoR.. David Conner speaks about how a) the card isn't broken - there's lots of strategies against it,  and b) it crowds out other B5 strategies.  David Green and Bruce Mason comment that the other agendas are useful to catch the win if there's a player playing AoR.. or to get a higher ranking at the end of the game.
• Misdirected Force works for all types of marks at once.  (you can lose multiple types of marks)
• The five ability for Fast Learner is not a cap.. its text just doesn't give you any more of that ability.
• AoR and Ranger Strike Team problems: Does, say, increasing B5 influence from 18 to 20 w/ RST work towards AoR's ability? Is the 18 then counted as power?  John Hart says "No."  Doug expands with the brief, and IMHO inadequate explaination that this temporary influence is indirectly being used to end the game.  He puts more emphasis on the fact that it's being counted as power, but when you look at the argument, the temporary influence is not.  The line ends with John Hart's consent to the following paragraph by David Spitzley:>You know, I was just going to post a rebuttal to this idea, but I think the heart of the problem is that the Ranger's ability occurs during the action phase, but the game ends after the Resolution phase.  This effectively means that the Ranger Strike Team's boost must be ignored in ANY trigger or calculation which examines Babylon 5's Influence to calculate power, because otherwise it is possible that additional increases to B5's influence may make what appears to be a legal use of the boost illegal after the fact.
• On Conflicting Intrests, the if the character is somehow discarded, you can't influence the character anymore.  The characer is lost to you.
• You can't just purge influence without a card.
• The White Star fleet's "can not be enhanced" text means that it can not be targeted by an enhancement specifically.  A broader enhancement will work for it, however.
• "your enhancements" refers to enhancements which target your faction or a card in your faction.  A global enhancment is not one of "your enhancements."

By using the Soul Hunter you may affect the card in any way it may have previously been affected, including replacement.  The original card is not in play anymore (even it was brought to your hand), and is not targeted by the Soul Hunter.  Thus you may replace  permanently a Soul Hunter'ed character or SH a Zathras and replace him indefinitely with one of your own in hand (although "under no circumstances can you place someone elses cards in your hand."  You can't SH Mr. Morden or any other character who can only come into play by replacement.
• Nice new recursive card combo: Taralenn & Commercial Telepaths. Credits to Ambassador V'lnar. Although it doesn't work - use __ as __ doesn't mean you have the second, as was mentioned a bit ago. And with Taralenn & Fast Learner - you aren't considered to be "using" Psi.
• Reminder: to figure complicated modifiers, do the infamous order of operations backwards (or at least somewhat so) w/ basic addition and subtraction before multiplication and division.
• It is not possible to play Enhil'zha if the humans are not being played.
• I think we covered this a while ago, but as a reminder: you need to meet the requirements of an agenda to play it as a hidden agenda.  No cheating.
• Forces Collide can target enhancements from conflicts.  The cost is 0+1 per Vorlon mark required to play the conflict.
• If Consumed by Shadows is played on you, and you don't have any character besides your ambassador with shadow marks, you must discard one of your non-ambassador characters with 0 shadow marks.. although, there's no official word on that one yet.

 

Perhaps I should stop labling the news items?  All the subject headings are the same... oh well.

I've got a response from Wes Brown about the commentaries on his deck, We are the Darkness. It takes a little while to scroll down that far. Also, the first commentary is up for Not Without a Fight by Stephen Kittel.

There isn't really any usenet news.. they're just wondering what the use is for the White Star fleet.. (lead it - although they haven't figured that out yet)  Also there's speculation on how to stop the Narns from declaring war 1st or second turn.

This week's deck is a megalith of 106 cards designed by David Conner.  There haven't been too many really big decks posted here yet.. I think this is number two, but that's just off the top of my head.  As always, comments are welcome, although I get pissed off if they aren't at least constructively critical - and I know that large decks are often the most contentious.  Oh, and please don't assume people have 3 of a particular rare Shadows card - especially a decent rare shadows card.. you just can't with that number of cards.

Speaking of commentaries, the commentaries for We Are the Darkness are up.  Kinda late - oh well.

I was reading over my last summary:  here's a clairification.. I mentioned Calling the Shots in reference to the apparent usefulness of the card in relation to Zathras' - I forgot to include the clause "in the action phase" in there - it doesn't work for Zathras', and it doesn't work for aftermaths or conflicts.  You just get that first action.

Recent B5 rec.games.trading-cards.misc summary:

• There's lots of dicussion about the merits of replacing versions of the same character - whether this growth would be better illustrated by using events, enhancements, and aftermaths to have the character grow.
• Every time you are allowed to rotate a card you do not control, it is stated so on the card - if it doesn't say something like that (ie, A Final Statement), you may only rotate your own cards.
• Reminder: for cards that say "Use __A__ as __B__," A overwrites B - you can't add them.
• John Hart's message: "Which leads me to note that I may have screwed up a ruling on contested/uncontested in the past: p.39 notes "...uncontested (all participants in the conflict must have supported the conflict)..." so NOTHING that adds points to support/opposition affects contestedness."  Translation: If a character or fleet rotated to oppose the conflict, the conflict is contested.  This is the only way a conflict can be contested.  Automatic opposition is not "contestedness" - nor are groups' actions.  Only fleets and charaters (and planets that are targeted).
• Of course, you may attack participants of a conflict which was You Are Not Readied
• Unfortuantely, a previous ruling I mentioned is wrong: You can only bring out Cmdr. Ivanova by replacing Susan.. I personally think this is a cop-out from Precedence after pressure about this.. but.. well.. I'll let John Hart explain it:

four possible ways to do character-switching:
1. The Narn Assistant way: either or both may be in play.  May replaceor sponsor.
2. The Kosh way: anyone may play the replacement into their own faction, and the old one goes permanently away.
3. The way we aren't using yet: must replace if young version in play, may sponsor otherwise.
4. Morden/Ivanova/Mollari way: Must replace, no other choice.

It would not be unreasonable to interpret Commander Ivanova the other way but it would lead to a silly result: you could then sponsor Susan Ivanova after Commander Ivanova was in play.

If we ever use method #3 we will be very explicit about it.

Sorry for all the confusion.  We should have been a little more careful.
 

Actually, at this point, my connection is getting kind of slow - I think I'll just upload this and finish the last 12 messages some other time.  Later!

I just got Steve Crow's new Zocalo article about "Neccesary Cards" - the cards you need, or think you need, for your decks.  Nice, but I'm looking forward more to next week's on Unrest. ;>

Recent rec.games.trading-cards.misc summary:

• Taking credits are resolved in initiative order.. so that the first one works, after that the target recieved no benefit - the other player did.. you can link the TCs, though.
• John Hart gave a strange answer to the question of Zathras' - basicly, it goes like this.. any time a player gains influence (he said during the conflict phase, but I don't think he meant that), go through the players in initiative order once and figure out the Zathras' stuff in that order.. Thus you can link Zathras'- if it's in the correct order.  Very crazy.. perhaps John wants to make Zathras' so confusing now that nobody wants to play with him? Also, Calling the Shots doesn't change the initiative order - it just gives the highest initiative player a chance to go first.
• For News of Galactic Import and Concentrated Effort, "play" should be read as "initiate" - it's not an errata, just an explaination of "play"  Thus, NoGI and CE apply to all sorts of conflicts - they needn't be initiated by cards.
• You may bring Commander Ivanova out w/o playing Susan Ivanova (bye-bye Susie!)
• No temporary influence gain affects initiative (or Power, I believe).  This most importantly applies to Mr. Morden, about whom I asked.
• With more characters to replace, the following ruling becomes more important: when moving an enhancement the target requirements do not have to be met unless specifically stated.. This was mentioned in respect to replaceing a  Latent Ivanova w/ C. Ivanova.  So - it might just be for replacing that this ruling is true, but I'd put it on all transfering.
• There's a new discussion group at dejanews.members.rec.rrrobert.babylon5ccg
• The World Championship B5 tourney will be held in Pomona, California.. there will be 8 seeds - 1 Aussie, 1 GB, 1 German, 1 at large european, (at least) 1 Canadian, and 3 other misc N. Americans.  Precedence is encouraging Zeta Squadron members and rangers to participate.. there's also a tourney at GenCon to determine (probably) the N. American players.. it's open to Zetas and anyone who's won a sanctioned tourney.  Good luck.
• Zathras' can not be sustained.. here's a listing of the rules about sustaining which were reposted during this conversation:

Sustaining can only be done if:
1. There was no cost for the action to be sustained other than rotating the card in question.
2. All necessary requirements for the initiator and the target are still fulfilled.
3. The action being sustained increases an ability of a character or fleet.
Also, there is no end of turn gap in the effect.  Any ability that is being aided is continuously aided, even if the card providing the aid has the phrase "until the end of the turn" on it.

I'm sorry I haven't updated the usenet more often.. (Truthfully, I am.. I have a lot of messages to sort through to find the applicable ones, then the ones with merit.. although I did stop to watch the US soccer game.. when I returned my connection was too slow to work with.)  If you haven't already noticed the incredibly broken Zathras' - I think most people did - go to the summaries now and study.

Also, Issue 2 of the Boom Today is out with an article by Lorne Kates, Shadows card listings and more!  Goto : http://geocities.datacellar.net/Area51/Shire/4988/

Recent rec.games.trading-cards.misc summary:

• The problems with Zathras' are:

1) Targetable build actions (Bring out Z 1st turn and target someone - sorry! No influence for you!)
2) Circular targeting (A targets B, B targets A - what happens?)
3) Branching targets (A and B target C....)
    The designers did not intend this.. it came as a compete surprise to John Hart, ("How bad is it?" etc..) They had intended for all the Zathras' to be mild annoyances. (paraphrased quote)
    The proposed errata (they claim that it isn't, but any rule change really is), is that build actions be declared to be different from gaining influence.  The argument is that they don't have to change the card and that other cards involve taking "gained" influence.  I think that it is only the card that needs to be changed - after all, all other cards which do similar effects are not so abusable and are generally one-time deals.  Very little abuse.
• Sick combo: News of Galatic Import & Force the Issue.  There's some talk of making NoGI unique, but it's misguided, IMHO.
• I'm not sure I put this one on - if Commander Ivanova replaces a Latent Telepath'ed Ivanova - her Psi is 3.
• Alliance is a continuously modifying enhancement?  I didn't know that one, but if Doug says so... (same as Covert Allies and Power Posturing - part of a repeat thread where many players confessed their ignorance to the official ruling but their concern over the power of the combo..)