The Next Generation: Monumental Reasons

by Charlie Plaine, First Edition Design Consultant

9th April 2012

Long, long ago in the days of Blaze of Glory, Decipher gave us The Big Picture. The completion of both a planet mission and a space mission became the standard in First Edition decks - and became a bedrock principle of Second Edition. When The Next Generation releases on Friday, April 13, First Edition mission selection will be shaken up again with the arrival of You Are a Monument. This card will impact First Edition decks for quite some time and will almost certainly shake up play for years to come.

But as much as You Are a Monument will affect players and deck construction, it opens up a lot of avenues for present and future design. The decision to include such a monumental (ha!) card wasn't made lightly, and here are five reasons how and why First Edition design will benefit from its existence:

5. A new weapon against the Delta Quadrant powerhouses.
You Are a Monument is the next front in the ongoing war against the power of the Delta Quadrant. For lack of a better term, The Continuing Committee has been waging war on the power of the Delta Quadrant. Our weapons have been variable-power cards, banning cards, and errata and while they have slowed down Hirogen, Vidiian, and Voyager decks it hasn't been enough. YAaM will force them to invest their resources in a journey to the Alpha Quadrant, or slow them down by requiring more points - further leveling the playing field.

How does this help design? Well, if the playing field is level, then it's fair to grant new tools and weapons to all sides. TCC hasn't been willing to give new tools to any of the Delta Quadrant decks but if You Are a Monument levels the playing field as much as we hope it will, it's fair game again. And as far as The Continuing Committee is concerned, new opportunities for new cards are always welcome.

4. The Gamma Quadrant can become the center of new decks.
Have you ever built a deck using Deep Space 9 and Gamma Quadrant missions? If you did, did it do well? Or how about the Dominon? The Gamma Quadrant was a huge part of the mythos of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and we'd like to tap into that design space. But without You Are a Monument, we'd always run the risk of creating another Delta Quadrant situation of isolation. With YAaM out, we're free to develop interesting opportunities in the GQ knowing that any deck that uses them will still want to be grounded in the AQ. And given that our second block is going to be based around Deep Space Nine, that's a good thing!

3. The Mirror Quadrant can get space missions.
At the risk of repeating ourselves from the previous point, one advantage of block design is the ability to plan ahead. Our third block is going to be focused - in part - on the Mirror Quadrant. Breaking it down simply, we have been unable to expand the Mirror Quadrant's mission selection because it simply made them too powerful. Adding just planet missions limited this somewhat, but we couldn't envision never creating some of the iconic space missions in the Mirror Quadrant. As long as You Are a Monument is in the game, there will be a natural check against making the Mirror Quadrant decks too powerful, giving Design the options and opportunities it needs (and the community wants).

2. The Alpha Quadrant becomes the focus.
Let's face it - all of the action of Star Trek is centered in and around the Alpha Quadrant. Voyager wants to get back to it, the Borg and the Dominion want to conquer it, and the Federation is sworn to protect it (even as the Klingons and Romulans try to control it and the Ferengi try to buy it). The Alpha Quadrant is the center of Star Trek and You Are a Monument makes it an important part of every First Edition deck. You're free to ignore the Alpha Quadrant, but at a cost - and that is a great translation of the spirit of the shows.

1. Interaction, interaction, interaction.
One of the biggest problems with Delta Quadrant decks was their isolation; DQ players could sit and avoid any threat of Klingon armada or Romulan disruption. The onus was entirely on the AQ player to bring ways to travel if they wanted to compete with DQ decks. This also threatened to be true for GQ or MQ decks if Design wanted to expand their power.

With the addition of You Are a Monument, every deck has the responsibility to find a way to get to the Alpha Quadrant (or to score the required extra points). This will increase the opportunities for interaction and that's one of the fundamental goals of Design. More importantly, interaction is the fundamental point of any game; otherwise, players just happen to be playing solitaire at the same time instead of competing. Requiring players to travel to the Alpha Quadrant increases every deck's chance of interacting with another and that makes for fun (and dynamic) game play.

You Are a Monument is designed to shake up the game. But in doing so, it will shake loose even more design space for current and future design teams to explore. Any card that can do that is a winner, even if it is a Referee card.