Influence Cards (Pt. 2)
August 11, 2018
Today we will be looking at the Red Bullying Influence Cards! These cards cost Friends to purchase, and tend to hurt other players.
This card and Nasty Rumors have gone under a significant change, which is that they now are not immediate effects. This card used to remove 4 Stats from an opponent. However, I didn’t like this very much since it discouraged players from stockpiling stats while it was out. In this change, playing this on another player can be somewhat planned around. It also is a direct counter to the Stats that Clubs provide at the end of each year. I think that this card will thus see more use as a way to stop an early club leader.
A short note, I had fun with this card’s flavor text. While thinking of changes for what I felt a mediocre card design, I thought of how cyber bullying is often a continuous form of bullying that is overlooked/ignored.
This was in a very early version of the game, and then was removed for the longest time. Bringing it back now, I feel like it has become a very well liked influence card. Thematically, this card is very funny, but it also is a way to bring Stud Gov President into the game if the event card isn’t in play.
This is a newer bullying card, but something that was inspired by the news of massive cheating group chats at Stuyvesant High School in New York. You can find an article to the scandal here: click me. Essentially, one of the Stuyvesant students created a massive group chat where he would send the answers from the test to other students who were taking the test later, or at the same time.
I liked the idea of having a card themed after this. While this card is relatively cheap, it also benefits your opponents if they don’t already have an A in the class. This way, it either helps the person behind in grades, or helps everyone.
This is another classic card that has surprisingly almost never seen any use. I don’t think it is actually that good of a card, but can be used to punish someone who over-extends in a certain subject.
This card was recently changed due to the rules on taking over clubs changing. I don’t especially like this change that much since the older version of hostile takeover was very elegant, but I think it’s necessary after the rule change and Stud Gov change in order to reduce redundancy. This card is now an investment-type card that gets better as more players lead clubs. We’ll see how this card goes in future play tests.
This card was in an earlier version of the game under the name “blackmail rival”. I like this new iteration however, since I feel like it really captures what extortion is really like. Giving a card to an opponent is extremely painful, but 2 Stress every turn is a huge handicap. Overall, I think at 9 Friends this is a very expensive but potentially very strong card- especially to stop a leader.
Nasty Rumors used to just take 4 Friends away from another player. I didn’t really like this effect all that much though since it seemed pretty insignificant. In this new iteration, the card is slightly nerfed by being delayed until the end of the target’s end of turn, but it also forces a response because it gives Stress that could cause a breakdown.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments, and make sure to subscribe if you like this content!