This post is a continuation from another thread in which a veteran player referred to Death Ray as a 'taboo' card for non-tournament play, a statement I disagree with very strongly.

No card should be considered taboo for non-tournament play. The use of certain cards WITHOUT NOTICE leads to very short, very crappy, very "foregone conclusion" type matches. The answer is to have two metas, or 'levels of play', which I believe can only be termed "A-DECK" and "B-DECK". Any other terminology leads to instant, massive, impenetrable confusion.

I don't know why there aren't more A-Deck matches. They are not taboo. They are fun, fun, fun. Omior Gilded Sage vs. Clave Gone Rogue is a great matchup. But either deck vs. my Violent Spaghetti (Thrass Violent Demonstrations/Spaghettification combo) is a terrible matchup and a waste of both players time. Does that mean I should throw out my Violent Spaghetti and never play it again? NO!

The wonderful, simple, easy to understand solution lies in that little title bar that appears when you set up a match. It should contain the letter A or the letter B.

The obvious next question is, what makes an A or a B deck? The answer is a little vague, BUT THAT'S OK! The idea here is not to set hard and fast rules but to make sure we all get more good, close matches and less matches that are decided by deck-strength rather than good play. Following is a list of cards that do not appear in any deck in my B-deck file. Your list may difer. You may tell me I'm completely out of step on the use of certain cards. I may move a deck from my B to my A file or vice versa as a result. That's all fine. The important thing is that we try to level our matches to observe two rich and varied metas.

Why? Because it's more fun that way.

Here are my A deck cards: Gone Rogue, Sabotage, Death Ray, Shrieker, Underground Resistance, Remote Informant, Gilded Sage, Isolation

I can see that there is a distinction between top-tier decks and more casual ones. I can agree that A vs. B is a reasonable terminology for them. I don't usually label my games that way, but I don't hesitate to answer any questions my opponent has about my deck either, so if another player wants to talk about it, we can work it out.

Personally, I like to build new decks, test them until they work (ie, win) a reasonable percentage of the time, and then retire them. So depending where I am on the development curve of the deck I'm piloting, the strength will vary substantially, even though the best cards in the deck may be there from the beginning.

I guess I'm mostly down with jivesamba -- if people are looking for something specific to be in or out of their game, they should speak up and have a conversation before they start. Using "A or B?" as shorthand to mean top-tier vs. more casual is perfectly reasonable.

I also like to have a little chat about deck strength before a match. Whatever it takes to avoid the realization that you or your opponent never had a chance.

It's also a good point about specific cards not making an A deck. I would however disagree in two cases: Gone Rogue and Death Ray. Both cards can totally win a match single-handedly. Specifically, there are two situations where you can pretty much hit the showers: giving up a sweep on the first vote and losing more than 10 or so bp's of materiel prior to the first vote.

ex.1 Death Ray: Say you're heading to the SC with some voters and you're playing against an entropy opponent. You give up a vote to build a second scout so you have two voter shuttles together. Your opponent has the edge and plays DR. You lose both scouts and all your voters, and the game is over. There is no other single card that can do that, and when it happens you are finished.

ex.2 Gone Rogue: Say you and your opponent both end up with six votes on t6. You are playing against Clave with weapon mods so you need to bolster your position in the middle to avoid being blocked out of the chamber. You vote 1-1-4 as a result and win the Peacekeeper. Your Clave opponent votes 2-2-2 knowing that he will either win the PK and have position or lose the PK and take it away with GR. You have effectively given up a sweep. If you don't have a debuff to get your PK back, you're finished. What's worse even if you have a debuff you have to stall to move your two ships out of the SC. You have numbers but you can't move bc your scout may leave alone and get caught out. So you keep both ships in the SC, lose the first to GR and then quite possibly lose the second one on the following turn. You were already cooked after you lost the PK and the effective sweep but GR has once again made the match completely pointless.

I don't think I've been hit with Gone Rogue the way you describe, and I don't have any, so I can't argue with your portrayal of how powerful it can be. However, there are other cards that could generate the same effect: Sabotage, which was also on your list, would let the player win or neutralize the PK. Both of those, of course, require that the War be declared. Time Bomb is cheaper and would almost as powerful, since the PK winner doesn't know about the effect until a turn later and will have limited opportunity to use the explode power beneficially. Entropic Burst also costs 6 tech and would be able to remove an unmodified PK from the game.

More than Gone Rogue, I've seen Engine Upgrade swing games both for and against me. Early on, a fast cruiser can give control over a large area of the board, or else a player has to actually risk losing those 10+ BPs you discuss. Later, putting a cruiser in an unexpected place can swing the game-ending HW battles. There's a reason Engine Tweak and Energy Boost were nerfed. Having enemy ships where they're not expected is as bad as not having friendly ships where they are expected.