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A Brief History of Time Travel

by Matthew Zinno, Department of Temporal Investigations

29th March 2017

Temporal Conduit

For years, time travel in ST:CCG has been easy. Too easy. All it takes is a Temporal Vortex to allow any time travel you want while it's in play on your time location. It has a countdown of 3, except it really doesn't. With Temporal Vortex sporting a [Ref] icon, it can be rather freely obtained from your deck or even your discard pile, and can be cycled away (for later re-retrieval) before its countdown expires.  

With so many modern deck types (including an entire affiliation, in two quadrants) based on reporting at a time location, CC Design has been releasing several new time-travel cards over the years, in the aim that something could eventually replace the versatility of Temporal Vortex. There was Out of Time, which requires a temporal agent. There was Protect The Timeline, allowing any ship to travel but giving particular benefit to timeline natives. Still, its limitation of one trip (per ship) per turn has proved to not be convenient enough. I know; I've tried it in my own [OS] decks, and there's almost always a turn somewhere in the game where I have my ships on the spaceline, and report people to the time location because I want them this turn. PTT doesn't give me enough travel, so I break out the [Ref] Temporal Vortex to allow me a return trip.  

Now the Broken Bow set gives us Temporal Conduit, and I think that its two-trip limit will be just what is needed for decks based on a time location. There's a cost to each trip, but it's a quite acceptable one: placing a card beneath the draw deck.  (Even no-hand Starfleet should be able to do this, with Watch Dog emptying to your hand at the start of the turn.) It won't replace Protect the Timeline in the decks which will still want its free reports, but since it also provides [AU] reporting and seeding, it can replace the STP/TMW/AUD that such decks would probably have been stocking.  

I'm looking forward to a trip through the Conduit. How about you?
 


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