[Iron Prime]

Was there any sort of evolution that lead to Battle of Narendra III? As both AND (not ) as well as 40 points it sorta leaps out and demands attention IMHO. Was the decision to make it both planet and space gameplay driven, story driven, or both?

That's certainly a linchpin mission. Worthy of further exploration, perhaps even something to do with timeline disruption. We knew we had to make the mission so we could make the time location, but didn't have the set space to explore that TNG episode. I think we went with something bold, knowing that it may be a future cornerstone. 40 points means interaction, Planet/Space makes for interesting dilemma possibilities. And lots of room for a future set to explore. And art did an amazing job. -Dan
And because capture mechanics are pretty damn sweet, it's good to give a bit of risk when it comes to playing as them.
This mission is incredible, there's so much going on in the gametext and the image. worthy of designers in the future using it for TNG related things

[winterflames]

Niall and Paddy are joining Section 31 tonight (9:30pm Pacific).

Do you have any questions for them? What are they?

Good thing you asked a question here, otherwise you'd be heading to Suplex City....

So, the podcast page isn't updated, you have no link in your post... And no one else seems to want to link it in their sigs... How do I find this conversation/spoiler? And if you say YouTube you have to tell me now, I don't have 30 minutes to an hour of desk time for a YouTube thing. I do have 30 minutes of commute with no internet though. MP3s are my friends.

Edit: This new mission is totally going in my All Dual Fed Deck. Was it hard finding the right weapons balance for the requirements?

[Iron Prime]

Google Hangouts - so basically youtube?

That question mark makes this qualify as a question, but It's not directly a Broken Bow question. Let me think about this while I polish my steel chair...

The podcast is updated though. I listened this morning.

I too love .mp3s as my commute is when I listen to these things.

retconned question to alleviate my steel chair allergy:
How hard during the Section 31 podcast was it to NOT spoil things? (i.e. let mechanics or names slip?) Did the play test names help with that (such as ghost of miley cyrus?)

[winterflames]

Google Hangouts - so basically youtube.

The podcast is updated though. I listened this morning.

I too love .mp3s as my commute is when I listen to these things.

I meant the TrekCC podcast page. But no worries, I forgot I had been subscribed to Section 31 in PodcastAddict on my old phone. Redownloaded and resubscribed.

Tell us a story about the most difficult card that eventually made the cut!

The latest Facebook spoiler [hidden]Xindi Test Strike[/hidden] started off as a completely different card with another card which downloaded it. Sadly, you'll have to wait for the full story after another card in this set is announced. All I can say right now was that there were a lot of disagreements about it

[Redgar]

?)Can we have a spoiler?
Of sorts. The set does not contain Chef Riker, but does contain someone cooking...
I'm surprised nobody asked the Chef Riker question yet

How did you folks manage to fit Neelix into a 22nd Century set?

If that spotted rodent asshole can squeeze himself into the minds of Trek fans and make us despair, then anything's possible

More seriously, any Delta Quadrant references in this set? Actually yes. The lore of 1 Klingon mentions he's the Ancestor of a personnel

The fun thing with Paddy and Dan, is that one of them always tells the truth, the others always lies. I'll let you two anwser this...
Everything I say is a lie
You're not meant to tell them that you twat!
EDIT: But then again, was the above red comment Paddy or Dan?
But if everything I say is a lie then my last statement was a lie which means I must always tell the truth.... BOOM (head explodes)
Good point -Dan

Labyrinth-Two-Door-Riddle.jpg (42.8 KiB) Viewed 2659 times

[frakkingoff]

The artwork on Battle of Narendra III gives off a strong "Rescue!" vibe to me - that great early 90s Macintosh "Star Trek" shareware game that has sadly fallen into obscurity.

Was "Rescue!" a deliberate influence on the artwork of this card, or am I just seeing things?

Someone from art! Please answer!

[Tyberius_Deangelo]

The artwork on Battle of Narendra III gives off a strong "Rescue!" vibe to me - that great early 90s Macintosh "Star Trek" shareware game that has sadly fallen into obscurity.

Was "Rescue!" a deliberate influence on the artwork of this card, or am I just seeing things?

I was about to ask if the Romulan ships depicted on Battle of Narendra III came from the game Star Trek Armada?
Think we need an Art team Q&A! Creative passed an instruction to add ships, possibly D'deridex being closest (of the established Romulan ships) to the correct timeframe, but it was down to Art themselves to finalise what went on there and they did a bloody fantastic job as always!

[Pazuzu]

Are there any non-Entprise logo cards (except Missions)?
Our mandate for this set was to be 100% Enterprise. Other sets in this block won't be similarly constrained though...

[Iron Prime]

Were I.K.S. Raptor and Klingon Bounty always a pair? I see that the bounty has 'once per game' to avoid abuse - was the added to make sure it useful enough to not be consigned to the virtual binder?

Yeah, they pretty much went side by side from almost the start of development, even the scout feature on the ship

Fun fact: A couple of the ships in this set were partially fleshed out by throwing my Eaglemoss ships at the webcam during hangout meetings...

How many iterations before was dialed in? Are there plans to build on that, or is it another tool that can be tapped if future designers want?
It did go through a few iterations including different templates and specific consequences to scanning/peeking which differed on each card

The core idea was mostly as it ended up. But it started as a more diverse set of penalties; each dilemma different. That took up valuable card space, and instead of 7-line dilemma templates, Smiley wisely directed us to come up with a standard punishment. Once that was in place it was a matter of a new rule, a seeded helper card, squeezing the rule onto each dilemma, or a 2E style loaded keyword. I'm happy that rules gave us the loaded icon. -Dan

[Iron Prime]

How soon in the development cycle did Prisoner Archer come about? At any point was he a 'normal' Archer that was download as if captured? Personally I like him - but I can see others being concerned that he is "full" Klingon affiliation when he was actually a political prisoner. How much was this discussed? (thanks)

Not really discussed at all - I don't think any of us saw issue with this version of Archer, especially given the precedents already produced.

[winterflames]

Why did Escape Gulag get the icon?

Why shouldn't it have the icon? It's perfectly reasonable that Romulan prisoners could end up there too.

[frakkingoff]

Why did Escape Gulag get the icon?

Was it because Rura Penthe was known throughout the galaxy as the "Alien's Graveyard," where all the non-Klingon lifers were sent - including Romulans like Nero?

I'm glad you put a question mark at the end there

Thematically, it made sense. Klingons are sure to have a good few Romulan prisoners considering their Empires are next door to each other

Seems legit. -Dan

[jrch5618]

Resistance is futile, the 22nd century will be assimilated!



Alright, now that that is out of my system, is Four of Fifty a one-off or will there be more Borg on the way in future sets? Perhaps enough to make a whole sub-faction of them? They might not be able to stand on their own but there's... probably enough to do a stripped-down deck idea with them with a ship version of the Assimilated Transport, no?
From a Creative standpoint, just from the drones seen on screen in that episode, there certainly remains scope for more in future sets. A partially assimilated Phlox even maybe? Enough for a full sub-faction? Debatable...

With a Borg affiliated Phlox (which would be cool as fuck), an Archer of Borg and a few of the background Drones, there could totally be a viable Enterprise era faction

The design work in this set was to work with the rest of the wider Borg affiliation, rather than with a specific only deck in mind - not to say that couldn't happen though. If a deck ever becomes possible, I'm sure Locutus and the 2 existing TNG drones would be part of that card pool, but they were certainly never designed with that specific long-term goal in mind.

We looked across 22nd-era 1EC cards and found this drone with his silly (1) icon. And then there was parallel testing of some borg errata, so they found their way to be complimentary. I look forward to the extra bit we tacked on to the offloaded ability. But mostly I'm excited for an AU drone to combat this. -Dan
Ken buggered me up one time with that...

[jrch5618]

The article about MACO Training Camp appears to be incorrect - it said that you can't even play it if you have an Earth.

That's not what the card says. The card says the free report/relocation doesn't work if you have Earth, but not that you can't play the card itself. Which is correct?

You can seed it but it is less functional with your Earth next door. -Dan
My bad, I was on space drugs or something when writing that.

Also, are there going to be any facilities in the set? I love me a good facility - something equivalent to Seat of Starfleet that plays at the time locations?

The number of doorways exceeds the number of facilities. -Dan
Facilities at Time Locations have proved problematic recently! My bad!
Early on we agreed we'd need a Starfleet Outpost for a Starter deck (back before the future of Starter decks got debated) and we actually pushed that one forward into the "plus size" Terran Empire expansion.

[jrch5618]

One more question - will there be any kind of competitive deck style possible that ignores time locations and just uses a Starfleet Outpost or Klingon Outpost to play directly to spaceline, or is most of the engines built around the time locations and there's no support for ignoring 2154?

Time Locations play a big part. We are stepping away from the complexity of the last block by eliminating multiple quadrants, but only one step at a time. I'm hoping that the next block will be back to outposts on the spaceline. -Dan
Tbh I'm fine with Time Locations. As Dan said above, it's the multiple Quadrants which make the complexity