To Contain, or not to Contain?

 

I come with 4 Contain and a built-in Damage Control Officer

Let's talk about the Contain defense token.

In its natural state, it stops the default crit effect. In other words, you take a facedown damage card instead of a faceup. 

That's not all bad. A facedown is better than a faceup, right!?

Sure. Maarek doing 4 facedown instead of 2 faceup and 2 facedown is scant mercy. Chances are you're soon dying anyway but it's better than nothing.

Compared to the other defense token it's not all that impressive, is it? 

Brace is definitely better - it reduces damage. By a little or a lot. Evade sure got better and is now a pretty good defense token. Salvo lets you SHOOT BACK at whoever attacked you. How strong is that!? Even redirect is better. At least as long as you have shields. Scatter is so OP it's not even worth comparing.

You could add DCO, I hear you say. Sure you can. Maybe you'll stop a HIE from triggering - if it wasn't acced the one time you needed it. Five points for that. No thanks. I'd rather spend my officer and the same 5 to make my redirects soak damage...

I wish they had added an alternate use for the Contain in 1.5.

Outright canceling a die with a CRIT icon would probably be too strong. How about Contain being able to either stop the default crit or reduce total damage by 1 instead if there were no crits in the attack pool?

Just an idea I had. I'm sure a good brainstorming session could have come up with similar ideas. Not too powerful. Just enough to make contain suck less.