I recently read the Epic Tournament Rules and got it into my head that the old damage deck had been officially de-legitimized. But looking around at more recent documents, I get the impression that this is not so. From my (brief&lazy) research, it appears FFG was planning on deprecating the old deck, but then reversed course for reasons people debated about in several threads but offered not proof, and from there it was just arguing back and forth.

I'm actually not so much concerned with the sophistic arguments about why (looks like a hairy subject)... I just want to confirm that the old damage deck will remain valid in the foreseeable future, in both in casual play and tournaments. If so, it looks like FFG just didn't update one of their docs.

Wow, I clicked the post button and it did nothing. Clicked again, apparently it happily posted twice. Sorry, folks!

The old damage deck is still valid. FFG did a U-turn when people pointed out it was bull to force them to buy a new cure set just for a damage deck.

100 point standard tournament games can use either deck. Epic tournaments have their own rules requiring the newer deck.

Huh... I'm curious why Epic tournaments won't let small&large ships use the older deck, when any other tournament doesn't care. It seems to me like an oversight by FFG, not an intentional difference.

23 minutes ago, Wazat said:

Huh... I'm curious why Epic tournaments won't let small&large ships use the older deck, when any other tournament doesn't care. It seems to me like an oversight by FFG, not an intentional difference.

I suspect it isn't an oversight at all. I believe they want to switch all tournaments to the new deck, but thought since the old core set is still on store shelves and it doesn't take many additional expansions to reach 100 points, that it was too much to require purchasing a 2nd core set. Where as someone filling out a 300 point list almost certainly has both core sets already, and obviously has the disposable income to purchase the new core set regardless.

I believe they want to avoid telling newcomers to the game who buy the old core set and a few expansions, who show up to their first tournament, that they are disqualified because their damage deck they got is the wrong one.

While I was/am not for banning the "old deck" wholesale I certainly do think FFG could/should phase it out. First thing is that they should simply stop printing the old deck and include the updated deck both core boxes. On the tournament side of things they could have required the use of the new deck at the highest levels of play and then worked things down over time although most "local" tournaments should continue to allow either deck to be used. Taken together these steps should really cut down any possibly of that "newcomer" showing up at a tournament and accidentally using the old deck; if that were to happen I'd hope a higher level tournament would have someone with a spare DD to loan out.

Epic is another beast and when those epic ships already have their own DD for them it would be a bit easier to require the newer DD for everything else.