First Edition Rules Updated, Part II

by First Edition Rules Committee

4th December 2008

In Part I, the First Edition director introduced the first rules update in five years, and provided a bit of background information. Here in Part II, the members of the rules committee provide some elaboration on the updated rules.

One of the first things we decided to do as part of this update was to change how the conversion rules document (CVRD) works. Instead of using this as the latest current rulings document (CRD), it will now be a specialized document. The CVRD is now going to govern the use of First Edition-compatible cards in a First Edition game. The rules in this document apply to First Edition-compatible cards only. The cards referenced in this document will only apply to First Edition-compatible cards, unless specifically stated otherwise. This means there will be four rules documents for First Edition: the rulebook, the glossary, the CRD, and the CVRD. One advantage to this change is that if you are not using First Edition-compatible cards, you can ignore this last document and not have the associated rulings in the way. If you are using First Edition-compatible cards and have a question about how they work in First Edition, you can go to the CVRD and not have to filter through all those pages to get there.

Cost

What is cost? It took us months to answer this question. We all know what the cost number on a Second Edition card is, but how do you define that in gameplay terms? Also, you do not pay a specific cost in First Edition, so what do you do about cards like Jeffrey Pierce? First Edition cards do not have a cost, so how does that affect Good Shepherd or Warrior’s Resolve? Speaking of Good Shepherd, does "cost less than one" include personnel with no cost? After nearly six months of debate, we arrived at this ruling:

Most Second Edition cards have a cost printed in the top left corner, before the card's title. You do not pay this cost in First Edition, and you may not use any effect that requires you to pay this cost or that would modify this cost. An effect requiring a cost may not target a card with no printed cost. (Example: A personnel with no cost may not be downloaded as a personnel who costs one or less.) If a card's cost is examined, and the target card has no printed cost, treat that card's cost as an undefined attribute (see "Undefined Attributes" in the glossary).

This defines cost and clarifies that you do not pay costs, so each special skill like that on Jeffery Pierce is irrelevant. This also means that zero-cost personnel are not free plays, since cost is not part of playing the card. If a card asks you to select another card based on its cost, you must choose a card with a printed cost. If you cannot, there is no valid target. Basically, Good Shepherd can only download a Voyager-icon personnel with a cost of zero or one. (Note that this only applies to choices, not random selections.) If you are supposed to randomly select a card and examine its cost, you randomly select from all eligible cards (cost or no cost). If the selected card has no printed cost, the cost is an undefined attribute (treat it like zero, but you cannot modify it in any way).

Note: While we do have a Commander for Good Shepherd, there is no ship (yet).

Engage Cloak

This is the ruling that seems the most redundant. Isn’t the only way to remove a ship from Engage Cloak to decloak it? No. Way back when Second Edition first came out, a card called Nelvana Trap was introduced to the game. This card allowed you to place a ship from your Engage Cloak to a mission where an opponent’s ship just stopped in order to battle. This worked fine in Second Edition, but in First Edition, the ship was flipped face down. Either the ship got to fire while cloaked, or the ship was cloaked so it could not fire. With this ruling, the ship decloaks after it is removed from Engage Cloak, but before it is placed somewhere else. This leaves the ship decloaked when Nelvana Trap’s battle begins (or lets the Valdore actually be of assistance).

Malcolm Reed

What to do about Malcolm Reed? “Order - Place this personnel on the bottom of your deck to reveal the top card of an opponent's dilemma pile. If that dilemma costs 3 or less, place it beneath your non-headquarters mission.” This one sentence creates so many conversion issues that it gives me a headache just thinking about it. There is no dilemma pile in First Edition. The closest thing is the stack of dilemmas under each mission. If we made these the same, we would still have the cost issue. Even with the cost issue resolved, it is still a peek at a dilemma (almost a scan) and a slim chance to move the dilemma to a different one of your missions. So, even if we ironed out the conversion issues, the ability is far too powerful (almost a Kirk without the once per game icon). We debated this for some time, and the solution we came up with was to simply delete the special skill. This was our last resort for the card (short of deleting the First Edition-compatible icon). We decided that we had to do this, but also decided that this should be the only situation where this happens. There are no other First Edition-compatible cards that are this messed up, and there will not be any more (since the Rules Committee can now verify a card before it becomes First Edition-compatible). This was a difficult choice, but it was the right choice.

Missions

One of the things that popped up with backwards-compatible cards was that some missions have different card titles but still represent the same spaceline location. This was not a big issue until Dangerous Missions decided that one Vulcan was not good enough. If two planets Vulcan could exist together on the spaceline, pure concentration of logic and emotionlessness would disrupt the very fabric of the space/time continuum (or at least confuse a few players). To solve this, the Rules Committee came up with this entry:

Missions - Some Second Edition missions represent the same location as an existing First Edition mission. For example, Deliver Ancient Artifacts and Observe Ritual both occur at Vulcan. Thus, you may not include both versions in your mission selection, and if one player seeds Deliver Ancient Artifacts and the other seeds Observe Ritual, they both overlap each other because they are duplicates of Vulcan. When you attempt such a mission, you use the requirements (or any alternate requirements in gametext) printed on your mission card. If you solve such a mission, you score the points on your mission card. Both players may make use of gametext (other than alternate requirements) printed on the mission card regardless of which version they seeded.

This is the long version of, “Remember how you stack the Mission II cards from Enhanced Premiere? Do that.” Basically, if a mission represents the same spaceline location, it is the same mission (almost like a persona). You stack the missions, and attempt using the requirements on the one that you seeded. You still get to use any special gametext on the opponent’s version of the mission, as long as it is printed on your side of the mission.

Mission Attempt

One of the most overlooked things introduced with backwards-compatible cards was stop prevention. Sure, First Edition already had plenty of cards that unstopped personnel, but never any cards that prevented someone from being stopped during a mission attempt. This created a repetitive loop where, if you prevented a stop, the personnel could encounter the same dilemma (and fail it) again. With this ruling, when you replace a dilemma beneath a mission, the mission attempt immediately ends. Most of the time this will not matter since dilemmas only tend to return when you have 'failed' them and they stopped everyone. However, if you decide to play with Benjamin Sisko, Bold Captain, and some 40 point missions, things change. Since Sisko cannot be stopped by dilemmas at a mission worth 40 or more points, this ruling becomes important. Instead of sticking Sisko in some sort of non-temporal causality loop where he encounters and fails the same dilemma repeatedly until the universe ends (or the TD calls time), the mission attempt ends when the failed dilemma returns beneath the mission. This leaves Sisko ready to take another action, or to join the next away team that shows up to try again. Just keep in mind that space dilemmas tend to stop the ship and crew. Also, Sisko hates Mission Debriefings.

Once Per Game Icon

The Once Per Game Icon was probably our easiest ruling. It had already been defined in an obscure article introducing the Genesis set, but had never made it to an official rules document. Not to mention, the name of the icon basically describes what the icon means. Did you notice that this icon is getting some attention in recent sets too?

Persona

When the designers finally revealed Genesis, I was very excited. A set that was fully First Edition as well as Second Edition? I’ll take 10! (and not just because First Edition decks usually need that many copies of a card). Once the excitement of the new foils wore off, I noticed something was wrong. While First Edition has a James T. Kirk, a Spock, and a U.S.S. Enterprise; the versions that were released in Genesis were not the proper personae. The First Edition Spock and Kirk are the Next Generation-era versions with no [Alternate Universe] icons. Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk are the movie era personas in First Edition. The First Edition U.S.S. Enterprise is the 1701-D; the 1701 is the Starship Enterprise. Since the cards have different titles, you could actually play both in a game of First Edition. To fix this, the Rules Committee decided to make a ruling about the personae of these cards (and the U.S.S. Enterprise-D from In A Mirror Darkly) declaring which persona they are. The card titles did not change at all, but the personae are now the correct versions (meaning you cannot have both in play, but you can persona swap at the beginning of your turn). The Second Edition U.S.S. Enterprise is also declared not the same persona as the First Edition U.S.S. Enterprise, so you cannot persona swap these. The card titles remain unchanged, so you still cannot have both in play at the same time. (If you need both, play the other versions.) Also, notice how the entry is based on the title only, so the ruling stands regardless of the subtitle (so any future versions are included in this ruling).

Starfleet

One of the last things we noticed was that Starfleet had never been officially declared an affiliation. We updated the appropriate entries and lists to make it 100% official. (No, this doesn’t mean that anyone who played Starfleet has been playing illegally.) We did not need to add Starfleet to the affiliation attack restrictions entry, since it is already covered. They can initiate a battle against any other affiliation as long as they have a leader.

The Original Series Icon

When it first came out, Brad told us the icon was the same as the icon. There were two problems with that. First, the icon was gold like the icon (even though it looks like the icon). Second, the personnel that have the icon and are First Edition-compatible are from the classic films. All of the Original Series-era personnel have upgrade text that make them not First Edition-compatible. This led us to make a compromise. The icon is both the and the icon, just not at the same time. When you report a personnel with the icon, you declare which icon the icon is. If you want to change the icon later, go ahead. Just keep in mind that if your personnel is staffing the HMS Bounty, Lt. Grant cannot save you. This ruling also works for non-personnel cards. If you want to use Final Cry to save a personnel, you can’t discard any icon cards to satisfy the cost (since the icon remains for the entire effect). You could still discard icon cards from your hand, though. As a side note, the personnel have the icon before they are reporting, so they report as if they have the icon you choose. This means that they are still free to the proper time location, and that they still qualify for Crew Reassignment.

My personal favorite combo that this rule allows: Play the Starship Enterprise and download Kirk as an personnel (the Enterprise is staffed). At the start of your next turn, persona swap the Starship Enterprise into play and declare Kirk's icon changes to the icon. The ship is still fully staffed!

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