changmas posted...
Councilor La'Shan - The rules of this game took me way too long to even somewhat comprehend. Evaluating this card kind of requires me to know about how long it will take me to get to 7 influence (so as to now whether this is more of an early, mid, or late-game card). And whether the 8/3/4/3 statline is particularly good. I am assuming that this is an early-mid game searcher with relatively good stats, particularly the 8 and the 4. If that's the case, this is a good support card for the Drakh archetype, especially so in the mirror (where you can draw a card for free without paying the influence cost). If I understand the rules correctly, sponsor = play from hand, so you can only activate that effect once? If it can be activated once every turn, this card is probably broken just for generating insane advantage. I'm not sure whether the last effect (avoiding being neutralized when leading a fleet) is particularly relevant - I'm assuming that's just the cherry on top of being a well-statted searcher.
Sorry, I should have supplied some info to spare you some trouble.
Babylon 5 is a pretty weird game. You start with 4 influence. Each influence counts as 1 power, but you can get power from other sources. You win when you have 20 power. But influence is your "mana."
You can very easily "build" influence to 10. If you devote your ambassador (or another inner circle char) to the turn, and spend 3 influence, you gain a whole new influence. But once you have 10, you can no longer do that.
Most early games consist of playing a cheap character, promoting them to your inner circle so you can take 2 actions per turn, and building to 10. Because B5 lets you pick 3 starting cards, some decks are designed to focus exclusively on these early turns and getting a turn or so ahead, while others pick long-term options for their deck's plan. But casually speaking, the plan looks like:
Turn 1 - Build to 5
Turn 2 - Play your dude
Turn 3 - Promote them
Turn 4 - Double build to 7
Turn 5 - Double build to 9
Turn 6 - Build to 10 and have 7 leftover.
There are some specific scenarios where your deck might choose to not do this, which I won't get into, but not very many. In my experience with the game, almost unilaterally, everyone's first objective was just straight "build to 10," and it's almost seen as a nuisance factor if not for the fact that some decks can speed up the process or forego the cheap character for potential upside, plus you'll be drawing cards at the same time.
Past turn 7, then you have to
*do*
things to gain influence. Usually this means winning a conflict, and winning a conflict usually means having dudes on board. The two things that makes the game interesting, or maybe just cumbersome, is that there are four different stats you could potentially fight with, and Babylon 5 is not designed to be a 1v1 game. You will typically be sitting at a table with three opponents, and if all three of them collectively decide that all they want to do is deny your efforts, they will typically succeed at that even if your deck is very streamlined and focused on that one thing it does. Of course, they aren't getting ahead either if they're just playing defense, so typically they're also doing things on that turn as well.
Oh yeah, did I mention that turns aren't "one player goes and takes their whole turn, then the other player goes?" Yeah, everyone plays at the same time, taking one ACTION, and it's only when everyone sequentially agrees that they're done that the turn ends and we start anew.
But even being at 10 influence and getting guys on the board is still kinda early game. When you (or at least somebody) manages to get to like 12, I'd call that midgame, and 15 is endgame because at that point someone might plop down a card that gets them 5 (non-influence) power. Also, while you get one card at the end of every turn, you also can buy an extra one with every 3 influence you have leftover at the end of a turn, so trying to initially spend 4 or 7 are common breakpoints.
Okay, that might be enough to get you up to speed. Now, as for the card itself.
The Drakh are a super annoying game mechanic where you replace your ambassador with the Drakh guy. He becomes your new leader. A typical ambassador has a stat line of about 5 diplomacy and a few other stat points, usually in leadership. To get a card of the same quality as your ambassador alone would usually cost 7-9 influence. So to get a dude who has an additional 3 dip, and 10 total other stats (including some in psi, which is super rare,) is absolutely bonkers. Playing him also gives you access to the other Drakh, who are also ridiculously overstatted and/or overpowered.
The downside is that you can no longer win a standard victory. Instead of merely winning the game, you have to win by TEN. But here's the thing: if someone else gets to 20 power, but you're sitting on 25...
they don't win the game, either.
Drakh are basically a guarantee that you can't readily win the game, because your cards are so strong the entire table turns against you, but they also mostly ensure that you will gain an early-to-mid game advantage such that nobody else can win, either, unless they're also aiming for another must-win-by-10 win con. So eventually, you usually just kinda win by attrition. People's decks cap out, unable to get past your total without doing things that you are completely able to deny them. There was one guy in my local group who would
always
play Drakh because he preferred long drawn-out games to ones where someone wins, but the thing is a four-way game of Babylon 5 already could have a runtime of 1-2 hours, so when he dropped his Drakh ambassador, we always knew we were in for an incredibly long slog that would culminate in our gameplans being overruled.