We aren't playing magic, and your argument assumed facts not in evidence.

I mean, the parallel to MTG is fair enough, but the bolded part--yeah, that.

I feel the biggest danger from Reiken isn't that Ibkilled a ship and it still gets to shoot me. The biggest threat is that I killed those one or two ships but they are still in my way and now I can't avoid ramming them and now I go nowwhere and get shot to hell.

We aren't playing magic, and your argument assumed facts not in evidence.

And we aren't playing magic.. what? I know. But I was using the magic example to describe a truism about mediocre effects. We could have been talking about Starcraft or Halo 3 or literally any game where you have to make a choice between various components of differing power levels.

I'll concede the magic parallel. But your argument hinges on the assumption that Rieekan is a mediocre or bad card and that goes to the heart of the debate.