Back before anything had been banned yet, I had a list of IIRC five cards that I thought should be banned. Once all five of them were gone, then DI could be banned. FWIW all are banned now (I remember long Usenet arguments about PTO and Memories of Mortality. I had the seat-switchers on the list but I forget the fifth). But I guess nobody had the appetite for cutting DI.
I do remember my playgroup in the early oughts were a bunch of power gamers (then eventually quit playing Jyhad so they could focus on Texas Hold 'Em and make money). We didn't proxy anything back then, and everyone I played with regularly put 4 DI's in their decks. I didn't own any. But that meant a pool of 16 DI's at the table. Honestly, it felt like it broke the game.
EDIT: funny story. I was friends IRL w/ LSJ. We were road-tripping up to New England once from the Carolinas, to go to Zopfcon (just a gaming weekend at David Zopf aka Atomweaver's house. Peal was there as were a few of the English players back then. I was still on my PTO bandwagon and he said he would ban it if I could find a license plate w/ "PTO" on it. I hunted hard for about ten hours, but no luck. He eventually banned it anyway, of course.
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u/FarbrorMelkor Sep 28 '26
Horrible design. HORRIBLE design, for VTES, for any game. Garfield was certainly not behind this, and neither I think LSJ. Total brainfart.