One Giant Leap Across The Spaceline

by Mark, Staff Writer

21st November 2016

When I look at cards from a new set, I always look at if there's anything with applications beyond the theme of the set.

Today's card is the Incident UFP: One Small Step.

"Plays on table. Your personnel may attempt non-homeworld missions." The only Fed missions that this cuts out are Ferenginar, and Mirror Bajor. This gives the new Mirror Starfleet lots of options, just make sure you don't accidentally try and use it on Mirror Bajor. That would be embarrassing.

"While all your personnel are [1E-AU] and the same affiliation, each of your personnel (and ships) are CUNNING (or RANGE) +1."

Here, the card is shaping up to be useful in a variety of decks, not just Starfleet and Mirror Starfleet. AU Fed has loads of options, , , Barash-icon and holograms (notably the 2e Revised Voyager bunch), some pretty decent Admirals for the Office. Klingons and Romulans aren't short of options, either.

Now for the second half of the card. "OR"

"Seeds or plays on a time location." This function's going to see the most use, then.

"Any ship may move between this time location and another time location in the same quadrant with a matching year by using 4 RANGE."

4 Range isn't over-the-top to move from one mission to another, it's pretty great if the missions are well spread out on the spaceline. It's even better if your ships have better Range thanks to the first half of the card.

All right, what else did it say? Matching year, same quadrant. Let's take a look at that.

1986: Earth (Cetacean Institute)

2063: Earth (Montana Missile Complex)

2154: Earth (22nd-Century San Francisco), Qu'Vat (Augment Research Facility), Romulus (Drone Control Room)

2155: Mirror Earth (22nd-Century Japan), Mirror Spatial Interphase (Vintaak Drydock Station)

2267: Mirror Halkan Planet (Halkan Council), AQ Sherman's Planet (Sherman's Peak)

2268: AQ Spatial Interphase (Vintaak Disappearance Site)

2293: Khitomer (Camp Khitomer)

? : The Celestial Temple

The obvious intent of the card is to use the 2155 Time Locations from this set, and if the missions land right, it could be a nice way to skip across the quadrant. Especially if you're facing another Mirror deck.

But, like I said, let's look at other options.

The two 2267 time locations don't work, because they're in different quadrants. I find it kind of disappointing that Vintaak's B-side is a different year to Sherman's Peak, but it's not unfair: they were in different seasons. I wonder if this opens up down-the-road design space for TOS to have season-based deck options.

I want The Celestial Temple's "infinity" to incorporate all the other years (like Computer Skill x3 includes Computer Skill x2), like it seemed to in episodes of DS9 - but I suspect it doesn't, and I'm not confident it would count as "matching" even if it did.

The three 2154 locations do work. Starfleet's home can synergise nicely with the Augments and the Starfleet/Klingon Treaty. Or you could do plain Starfleet, and solve Qu'Vat with UFPOSS or Seat Of Starfleet, and get the CUNNING and RANGE bonuses. Qu'Vat and Romulus could be a good base for a Klingon/Romulan Treaty deck. You could probably work out something nice with an AU Klingon-only deck, and again get some use out of both halves of UFPOSS.

I think this card has possibilities for adding a little something to these deck types. I think it'll be fun to make a deck around using this card, but I don't think it's so clutch as to be the dominant feature in such a deck. That's a great balance, some nice subtlety.

And this card can only get better as time goes on.

Let me know what you think. One great step, or one mis-step?

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