Friends and Enemies

by Charlie Plaine, Chairman

30th March 2015

GOWRON: This is a dark day, not only for the Klingon Empire, but for the Alpha Quadrant itself.
SISKO: So what are we going to do about it?
GOWRON: I will do what must be done. Fall back. Pull my forces out of Cardassian space, fortify the Klingon Empire and prepare for a fight to the death.
SISKO: Maybe there's a better way.
(Sisko offers a PADD.)
GOWRON: The Khitomer Accords? The treaty between the Federation and the Klingon Empire is dead.
SISKO: But we can bring it back to life again. This is the most fortified position between here and the Klingon Empire. There will be a Starfleet task force will be here soon. If you could bring your fleet here.
GOWRON: Then we could stand united against the Dominion. And if we do...
"BASHIR": We might have a chance.
(Gowron puts his thumbprint on the Accords.)
GOWRON: Think of it. Five years ago no one had ever heard of Bajor or Deep Space Nine, and now all our hopes rest here. Where the tides of fortune take us, no man can know.
SISKO: They're tricky, those tides.

Deep Space Nine: a Cardassian-built station in Bajoran space, administered by the Federation, guarding the crossroads between two quadrants. The station is a hub of business, travel, and exploration and home - sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary - to species from all across the galaxy, and will become a key location in the war versus The Dominion. These stories are more inspired the cards in Strange Bedfellows, which we are proud to announce is coming next Friday, April 10th, 2015! Strange Bedfellows is the fifteenth virtual expansion released by The Continuing Committee, and the thirty-third overall. Like its predecessor, it will bring forty-five (45) new cards to Second Edition, and will be legal one week after its release - on Friday, April 17th, 2015.

Strange Bedfellows is an expansion that explores affiliations and the benefits one can get from working with others. You will find cards that reward you for adding extra affiliations to your deck, and cards that make it just a little easier to do so. But it's not all hand-holding, diplomacy, and cultural celebration - we also explore the omnipresent threat of The Dominion. But before we get too deeply into mechanics, I'd like to introduce you to the people that helped bring you Strange Bedfellows:

Charles Plaine [MidnightLich], Lead Designer
Designer Profile: Charles Plaine
Balance of Terror is my fourteenth Second Edition design, and my seventh as a lead. Much like with the previous "Phase II" projects, I took the role of Lead Designer for this expansion because I felt it was important to make sure this expansion continued to execute well on the "Phase II" ideas. I did some design, but spent most of the time providing guidance to the team on the overall vision.

John Corbett [KillerB], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: John Corbett
John joined the project, his second full expansion and his third overall, because he was interested in exploring the Phase II identities of the Dominion. John produced a lot of good, solid cards starting from the story, but also created some of the expansions most powerful, mechanically-based cards. John's work was vital to creating design space for the Dominion (and each of its signature species) for years to come.

Richard New [The Guardian], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Richard New
Richard is one of the more prolific designers on the Second Edition team, and he brought a lot of energy and a lot of ideas to his work on Strange Bedfellows. This project makes his fifth foray into design, and Richard made key contributions to the affiliation-related themes of the expansion. Richard has a keen eye for detail and always looks to make our cards get the most bang for their buck, so to speak. He continues to have a bright future within design, and I'm sure this is not the last we will see of his work.

The designers tend to get all of the credit as we introduce new expansions, and I think that's really not the way it aught to be. Design is important, but I would be completely and selfishly remiss if I failed to mention the hard work of the dozens of volunteers that work on Second Edition. Kudos to all of our play testers, rules guys, creative team members, our Art team, and the man that keeps us all on track: Second Edition Brand Manager, Nick Yankovic (nickyank). All of our volunteers do so much work and all deserve significant recognition for making this game thrive.

If you appreciate the hard work of all of our volunteers and enjoy having this website available as a hub for our community, we encourage you to make a donation to our operating costs today. Without the support of our community, this site wouldn't exist!

The Affiliation Angle
I think the affiliation definition in Second Edition is one of the strengths of this version of the game. Back in 2002, when Second Edition debuted, each affiliation had a specific identity complete with a flavor and set of mechanics they cared about. One of the goals behind Phase II design was to bring the game back to these roots, where being Bajoran meant something more than having a brownish-purple frame. Not only is it thematic, but it makes for a much better game. When each affiliation has strengths and weaknesses, the choice of which affiliation you play matters; if you want access to capturing, you need to look at Cardassian, Romulan, or Dominion.

However, one of the core tenets about Star Trek and Second Edition alike is cooperation. The shows aren't just about our heroes working to solve problems, it's often about doing it while overcoming adversity and seeing eye-to-eye with people you might have once called enemies. In case you aren't aware, in Second Edition, you can include up to three headquarters missions in your decks and all personnel can mix and cooperate freely. You can mix Starfleet with Klingon with Maquis, all in the same deck. Thus, affiliation diversity has always been a key component of Second Edition and might be a strange idea for an expansion's theme.

Well, in Strange Bedfellows, it all started with Mouth of the Wormhole (Deep Space 9) - a sub-affiliation that already allowed multiple affiliations to report out of a single headquarters. This was the natural place to begin when looking for affiliation identities - multiple affiliations. We considered it a bonus that this theme would also benefit Mouth of the Wormhole (Terok Nor) - a nice bit of synergy. We decided that (the station) would be #1 in promoting multiple affiliation play, and (the station) would be #2. But we knew that there would always be other ways for any deck to get multiple affiliations into play. Almost any deck can include Non-Aligned personnel, and almost any deck can use two or three headquarters to get into multiple affiliations. Thus we decided that some kinds of multiple-affiliation play would be a global ability - open to anyone. Common Purpose is one such card.

Common Purpose allows you to trade extra personnel for extra counters, as long as you have personnel of multiple affiliations in play. For the cost of one counter, and stopping any number of your personnel, you get to spend an additional counter for each different affiliation you stopped. If you use this card in a Starfleet deck, and stop a personnel and a personnel, you'll net yourself one extra counter. In a Maquis deck, you might be able to get a total four (4) counters. If you play Klingon/Romulan, you can get three (3) counters. But in a Mouth of the Wormhole deck, you can easily get up to a full turn's worth of seven (7) counters!

Since we decided to make affiliations matter - or at least, to making having lots of different affiliations in play matter - we wanted to create some new cards that would allow players to get some extra affiliations into play. Loren III (Combined Discovery) is one such card. This mission, from TNG's "The Chase," follows the basic premise of the episode: once you get an Archaeology Commander aboard his or her ship, you can "recruit" other Archaeology Commanders to join you. And yes, all four Commanders from "The Chase" - Ocett, Jean-Luc Picard, Nu'Daq and Galathon - can attempt this mission, and trigger its game text. We can't wait to see players put together decks based around "The Chase" - especially since Loren III isn't the only card from that episode in Strange Bedfellows.

Station Keeping
So Strange Bedfellows has a theme of "affiliations matter," and it originated from defining Deep Space 9 in Phase II. And while we've made multiple generic cards that any deck can use, these cards will always work best in a DS9 (or TN) deck. But that felt like cheating Deep Space 9 out of a proper theme, and we decided to tackle that problem in two ways. First, we turned up the volume of the "affiliations matter" theme to eleven within this sub-affiliation by giving them extra cards that reward you for having different affiliations. One such card is a new version of Lwaxana Troi (Extraordinary Ambassador) sporting her very own icon (and fresh off of her First Edition debut in last year's 20th Anniversary Collection. This version of Mrs. Troi shares the idea of cost reduction with her counterpart, but on a smaller scale. Her cost starts at 3, and reduces by one (1) for each non- personnel you have in play when you play her. If you play her for three (3), you're overpaying slightly; if you have just one other affiliation in play, you're getting her at cost. However, as soon as you dip into a third affiliation, you start getting a great deal with this personnel. Not to mention that she is a new species that you can take to school.

While multiple-affiliations is a big component of DS9's identity, the primary pair of affiliations for that sub-affiliation has been and will always be and - a combination that we have reinforced further in Strange Bedfellows. Rase Norvan is a good example of these mechanical and flavorful decisions, allowing you to take a card from your discard pile when you play him. Access to the discard pile is very much a Bajoran ability, so isn't out of place on this personnel; however, restricting the card you can recover to being makes him most useful in a deck including Mouth of the Wormhole (Deep Space 9). You'll see lots of other cross-affiliation tricks in Strange Bedfellows as well.

Finally, we come to the second way we gave an identity to DS9 decks based on the station - the Gamma Quadrant. With its built in Span reduction for "going through the wormhole," decks based on the station are the perfect place to promote going to the Gamma Quadrant. Not only have we provided new Gamma Quadrant missions, but we've also created new cards to encourage players to do so - like the new Coil Spanner. Coil Spanner is a non-Hand Weapon equipment that grants skills to a subset of your personnel, much like the original base set's equipment. However, Coil Spanner and its counterpart grant two skills, but only a specific type of mission. Still, getting two extra skills is a significant bonus, and a great reason to go to the Gamma Quadrant. And you'll notice that this equipment isn't limited to , and that's by design. They aren't the only ones that get cards that reward them for going to the Gamma Quadrant (although they do get, in my opinion, the best one). We expect to see quite a few affiliations risk venturing into the Gamma Quadrant, and can't wait to see the results. But they won't necessarily like what they find there...

The Dominion Will Prevail
When you think of decks that go into multiple affiliations, The Dominion is probably one of the last choices most people would make. Why would we choose "affiliations matter" as an expansion theme if it was a theme that didn't matter to one of our focus headquarters? Well, as illustrated above, it's a key theme for Deep Space 9 - it was easy to extend to give non-DS9 players something to do. And it's not as if the Dominion can't pair up with other affiliations - using (and soon, ) cards in a Commodity deck, or as part of a Terok Nor deck. But ultimately, we knew that "multiple affiliations" wasn't going to be a strength of the Dominion, and that they would instead need a different set of tricks. Fortunately, we found a theme for one of Trek's most notable bad guys - they want to make you suffer. They will deprive you of your life, your liberty, and if need be, everything you own. They are patient and viscious - they will destroy you even if takes them centuries. This is the feel we've injected into the Dominion, and many of their cards in Strange Bedfellows.

You may have heard rumors, so let's put them to rest. Yes, there is a new headquarters mission for the Dominion in this expansion, and it was designed to capture this viscious feeling. Take a look at Founders' Homeworld (Contingent Refuge):

The Dominion is patient, and they can destroy you simply by running their empire. For the low cost of forsaking allies (no Non-Aligned cards and no pairing up), you can cause the opponent to lose points each time you solve a mission. Player's can no longer guarantee an easy 100-point mission win, and must plan accordingly. After all, even the threat of the Dominion is enough to change how the game is played.

This new headquarters won't fit in every Dominion deck, but it does capture the new feeling of the Dominion draining your resources. We've set up the entire Dominion, from the Founders to the Jem'Hadar, and from the Vorta to the trading Dosi and Karrema, to work to deprive you of resouces over the course of the game. Founders will infiltrate you and drain your attributes; the Vorta will scheme and plot and waste your time. The Karrema and Dosi will distract you with trade negotiations and end up taxing your resources. And finally, the Jem'Hadar... well, they will drain you of your personnel. Violently. Virak'kara, for example, is a fan of hand weapons. So much so, that he gets a +2 attribute bonus for each one that he has with him, all the way up to 10-10-10. Give him a few Disruptors or a Kar'takin or two, and that's one lethal Jem'Hadar!

The Dominion get plenty of tricks to slow you down, drain away your resources, and give them time to gain full control of the galaxy. They are a slow, methodical and vicious affiliation and have the weapons to make the game more difficult for the opponent each and every step of the way. But how much, and what type, of disruption to include in your deck is an important decision Dominion players will have to make when building their decks. Include too much, and risk being ineffective; too little, and your opponents might just speed past you. We're eager to see what kinds of decks emerge with the release of these new cards.

Friends In Low/High Places
Strange Bedfellows gives an identity to the sub-affiliation and the affiliation, all while exploring the Gamma Quadrant and the benefits for having a variety of affiliations in play. This expansion and it's forty-five (45) cards will introduce new deck types and give new tools to existing decks, shaking up the game as the Road to Worlds continues. Our entire team is proud of this expansion, and can't wait to release it to you on Friday, April 10th!

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