MC Banhammer Posted:

Could someone explain to me why Stray Bullet is too powerful? As compared to just another element of strategy?

Honestly I reserved my opinion until I’d played it out for several weeks. I can absolutely do too much damage with it.

Prior to Stray Bullet you could destroy exposed scoops. Sometimes you had to work through Shield first, but most of the time people wanted to save their Shields until late in the week. So you plink Shields and then blow up scoops, but the person is still left with a good portion of their scoop earning effort preserved.

Stray Bullet is a very multi-functional card that always breaks even. You pay 4 scoops for a Stray Bullet. Using it *always* eliminates the 4 scoops your opponent paid for their card, there is no defense. They cannot plan ahead to Switcharoo scoops, their Switcharoo is gone. They cannot rebuild at half scoop, their Modest Improvements are gone. They cannot retaliate, all their destruction is gone.

It also eliminated the main reason for buying cards. Why does one pay 4 scoops for a Modest Improvement? That card purchase is a 2 scoop sacrifice, but it has always meant that those scoops are safe. Now they are not safe.

There is no reason to buy much of anything except The bumhole and Stray Bullet early in the week. I used 12 visits worth of scoops and wiped far more scoops than I earned from the board. I shouldn’t be able to take out 2 or 3 people who have earned as many if not more scoops than I did. That kind of thing is just going to make people decide there is no reason to bother playing.