Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Other Useless Card

Okay, so I wasn't hallucinating and there was another "useless" card. Except that it isn't useless. Maybe. It depends on which version you're looking at.

In the Seven Seas expansion, there is a card called Ice Floe, but the text doesn't match the image, which is why I couldn't find it earlier today.

The text says:

Ice Floe: UCN: UCN: 18 Any Ship loose one Power Stone to enter this terrain. (Artwork: Pennington, Text: Philbarfly, Design: Cath)

But here is the image:
More confusing is that the title of the window, and in the URL itself, says Artic Sea, which is not listed on the page. A mix-up, perhaps?

So losing a Power Stone to enter terrain isn't bad. On the other hand, reducing Rivers and Lakes bonuses to zero is just silly. They get reduced to zero when a Shield is on any Terrain other than Rivers and Lakes.

I suppose it could be useful, and I'd have to check every card, if there were some other card that allowed R&L bonuses to be applied to combat, but didn't change the terrain (e.g., the Overlord card would change the terrain to R&L).

Yes, I feel better. Thank you to jackalwere for pointing this out on the earlier thread today.

3 comments:

Jackalwere said...

This had to be a mix-up. The thumbnail of the image on Phil's site has the "loose one power stone" text. That plus the artwork suggests that this was to count as Seven Seas terrain, but you lose a power stone when entering with a ship. It makes sense and is strategically useful in a Seven Seas game.

An alternate reality might be that early in the Seven Seas development, the card was originally called Artic Sea and the card creator meant to say Rivers and Lakes bonuses were reversed, not lost, but made a mistake in the text. However, since similar text exists for Lost Desert Terrain, Artic Sea was dropped for Ice Floe instead, with the intention of using the "loose one stone" text, but was not updated completely. I could be wrong, though.

Like you said, the card as it stands now is useless. Counting it as Seven Seas and losing a power stone should be the correct text to make the card useful...

aiglefou said...

Hi,

The thumbnail of the image on Phil's website is called IceSmall.jpg, and you can find the big version in this way, which is called IceBig.jpg (the same address, but with the good filename). This big version is the good version of the card.

Probably, as you mentioned, Phil wanted to create "Arctic Sea" at the beginning, and he changed it to "Ice Floe" in a second time. And maybe he doesn't change the webpage of this card with the new version.

You can ask to Phil by sending an email to be sure, but the confirmation of this is that you can find the good version of the card "Ice Floe" in the pdf documents that Phil have done (available on the webpage of "The Seven Seas" on Phil's website, see the #3 pdf document).
Regards,

(x, why?) said...

aiglefou -- your comment is now visible on this thread.