[runabout]

New member here This is my first post.

I've bought a lot of Star Trek CCG (1st edition) for next to nothing to try out this game. I was attracted to the idea of the game. I like that you don't have to engage in combat to win, as in so many card games, and we wanted a game that captured the feel of Star Trek.

The cards I bought are mostly commons and uncommons with a handful of rares, all from the white border edition. With the cards I have I've been able to make these 3 Introductory player decks.

Federation: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15505
Romulan: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15508
Klingon: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15507

We substituted other missions, though, since we don't have a lot of the missions listed there, which are from later sets, and we made some other minor adjustments to use some of the uncommon and rare cards we have.

We've played a few games. The rules are quite simple, really, but have some questions about strategy.

1. It takes a long time to get going because you can play only 1 card a turn. It takes long time before you have a ship with crew ready. In our first games we both sent out our ships as quickly as a few people were on board, but then we got into trouble with dilemmas we could not face and kept us stuck or which killed some crew. So we'd have to build up yet again, and start the slow process again of getting ships ready with more people. Is there a way around this? What is the best strategy to take in the beginning?
2. It is very difficult to properly prepare for dilemmas, because you have no idea what they will be. This adds a lot of randomness to the game, perhaps more than we would like. A few times one of us won simply because we encountered a series of dilemmas that had no effect on us (like a female love interest on a all-male team, or a dilemma that does nothing if you have medical present against a team that has one). Is there some strategy we are missing here? Or is this entirely up to luck?
3. What set would you recommend us to get if we wanted to get more cards, but not very many? I'm only interested in printed/official sets.

[runabout]

A few more questions:

1. We rarely have more than 2 ships per player in play for the duration of the game, and have played several games where one or both players had just a single ship with all his personnel that soled missions. Is this normal?
2. Most of the time we beam everyone from a ship down to the planet. There is little advantage in keeping crew on board, especially not if the opponent's ships are not within range, and more advantage in having as many and diverse skills as possible to face the dilemma. When you load a single ship with all your personnel it is very easy to overcome every dilemma that you face, and when you chose your missions carefully, you can win at least one mission every turn, which makes the game rather short and really disadvantages the other player if he has an unlucky draw and has difficulty getting a ship out. Are we playing this correctly, or is there a different way of doing this?

[runabout]

1 more question

Can you make good decks with common and uncommon cards only (or at least mostly) or do you need rare cards to play an exciting game?

[OKCoyote]

1 more question

Can you make good decks with common and uncommon cards only (or at least mostly) or do you need rare cards to play an exciting game?

Don't have time to address your other questions right now (about to take the kids on a beach day) but let me answer this one real quick:

ALL cards from Decipher era, as well as virtual sets the CC has produced, are freely printable. So cost is really no longer a barrier to entry, as you can print, sleeve, and build whatever deck you like.

Welcome to the site!

[Mr.Sloan]

A few more questions:

1. We rarely have more than 2 ships per player in play for the duration of the game, and have played several games where one or both players had just a single ship with all his personnel that soled missions. Is this normal?
2. Most of the time we beam everyone from a ship down to the planet. There is little advantage in keeping crew on board, especially not if the opponent's ships are not within range, and more advantage in having as many and diverse skills as possible to face the dilemma. When you load a single ship with all your personnel it is very easy to overcome every dilemma that you face, and when you chose your missions carefully, you can win at least one mission every turn, which makes the game rather short and really disadvantages the other player if he has an unlucky draw and has difficulty getting a ship out. Are we playing this correctly, or is there a different way of doing this?

*** Rather 4 ships to be more mobile on the spaceline and have some defence against battle decks. But if you only have a few personnel in play, 2 ships might be the right ratio to it.

*** There are 2-3 dilemmas where you benefit from having someone aboard e.g. a transporter skill guy for "now would be a good time" (dilemma). Also landing and let walk out 1 guy at a time is a nice strategy too. this one guy at a time approach is called red shirting. both redshirting and attempting with everyone are valid strategies

[Mr.Sloan]

New member here This is my first post.

I've bought a lot of Star Trek CCG (1st edition) for next to nothing to try out this game. I was attracted to the idea of the game. I like that you don't have to engage in combat to win, as in so many card games, and we wanted a game that captured the feel of Star Trek.

The cards I bought are mostly commons and uncommons with a handful of rares, all from the white border edition. With the cards I have I've been able to make these 3 Introductory player decks.

Federation: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15505
Romulan: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15508
Klingon: https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=15507

We substituted other missions, though, since we don't have a lot of the missions listed there, which are from later sets, and we made some other minor adjustments to use some of the uncommon and rare cards we have.

We've played a few games. The rules are quite simple, really, but have some questions about strategy.

1. It takes a long time to get going because you can play only 1 card a turn. It takes long time before you have a ship with crew ready. In our first games we both sent out our ships as quickly as a few people were on board, but then we got into trouble with dilemmas we could not face and kept us stuck or which killed some crew. So we'd have to build up yet again, and start the slow process again of getting ships ready with more people. Is there a way around this? What is the best strategy to take in the beginning?
2. It is very difficult to properly prepare for dilemmas, because you have no idea what they will be. This adds a lot of randomness to the game, perhaps more than we would like. A few times one of us won simply because we encountered a series of dilemmas that had no effect on us (like a female love interest on a all-male team, or a dilemma that does nothing if you have medical present against a team that has one). Is there some strategy we are missing here? Or is this entirely up to luck?
3. What set would you recommend us to get if we wanted to get more cards, but not very many? I'm only interested in printed/official sets.

*** Drawing and playing as much as possible is one of the most important factors that determines between win and lose. Cards include Duck Blind for more draws, Headquarters for more plays, or themed cards like Continuing Mission and its download to get both draws and free plays.

*** There are dilemmas that are popular. Use them to make sure you always have an effect. Also it takes a bit of the randomness out. Consider what would be the worst dilemma now? Or the most likely one? out of the common dilemmas that are used (there is a statistic somewhere). then you can make good decisions when deciding how to attempt a mission next.

*** If I remember correctly you may print anything and there are deck creators and a way to play online with them (lackey). Once you like the deck you might want to print it.

EDIT: The ratio of ships in your deck is good. Keep in mind, there are ways to download things. (taking stuff out of your deck when you need it). e.g. seeding spacedoor on your outpost allows you to get get a ship instead of your normal card play, so you always have the amount you need.

The seedlimit is 30 (+6 missions +6 sites). So you can seed some usefull play/draw cards and more dilemmas.

[frakkingoff]

-The game in its original form was pretty slow, which is what you're experiencing. For quick, easier games using the older cards, Decipher introduced "Warp Speed" rules as a variant. See them here:

https://www.trekcc.org/op/1e_warpspeedrules.pdf

-If you want to use the original Premiere cards to speed up your deck, you're going to want to use Red Alert to get cards from your hand and into play faster, and cards like The Traveler: Transcendence and Kivas Fajo - Collector to get cards into your hands faster.

-Future sets introduced faster play styles - cards were stronger (so you needed fewer in play to be just as effective), some allowed free reports (so you get to play them in addition to your once-per-turn normal card play), and some "downloaded" other cards (lets you go through your deck and pick that card out specifically and put it into play). The "virtual card" era of the Continuing Committee has continued the tradition of fast play styles (cards that enable multiple free card plays and downloads).

-There's a strategy to dilemma seeding - you can combo them effectively to make sure they land and present a credible threat/obstacle to your opponent. Simple example from Premiere: Female's Love Interest + Matriarchal Society. This reduces the "luck" that your opponent breezes through his missions while you're still stuck.

-On the other hand, there's also a strategy to mission attempting. You guys are using supercrews to blow past them. That's one effective strategy - but if your opponent is having more luck, consider reducing the size of your "supercrew." Instead of waiting 10 turns to attempt a mission with 10 away team members, settle for 8 and get it done in 8 turns. Then it becomes more of a race - will your opponent also be willing to take the risk of failing a mission attempt in order to get it done even faster than you?

You might also try "redshirting," as described above. Beam one guy down and have him attempt by himself. He'll probably fail (likely even die, hence the term), but it'll let you see what the first dilemma is. Maybe he dies but the dilemma goes away - or maybe it stays but you know how to deal with it in the future because you've seen it. Or maybe you realize you can't get past it even with the rest of your crew - but since everyone else stayed on the ship, they're not "stopped" after the failed mission attempt, leaving them free to attempt the mission next door instead.

In time, you may learn to anticipate your opponent's dilemma setup, based on being able to peek the first one. In Premiere, there's also Scan and Full Planet Scan, which are super effective. The versions I linked to are errata'ed and are weaker - the versions you'll have will be the originals that are stronger.

-2 ships isn't abnormal if you're not worried about battle. Keep a few more in the deck, to make sure you're not screwed by having them all at the bottom, forcing you to wait to draw them.

You might change things up though - next time, surprise your opponent. Play a bunch of K'Vort klingon vessels, using the minimum number of personnel needed to staff them. Bring them to your opponent's outpost and blow it away. Without a way to report personnel to duty, your opponent may be stalled, giving you all the time in the world to slowly complete your missions and win.

The game after that, he'll probably be more prepared - and your small, 2-person meta environment will have been permanently altered, as now you each know there's a chance your opponent may bring bloodthirsty klingons or craftry romulans into battle against you.

-You don't need rare cards to make somewhat decent decks, though it's a bit harder with the oldest cards (back then, rarity is very much correlated with strength). What's most important is that you and your opponent have roughly equal levels of access to the strong cards. But the rare cards are the fun ones (especially the dilemmas and personnel). You can still get the oldest ones pretty cheap, or you can print them out.

-The availability of other sets is going to be a limiting factor for you. OTSD has some nice cards to supplement your collection if you can find it - a lot of those OTSD cards make great foundations for all kinds of decks. If not, a box of "Alternate Universe" will cheaply supplement your collection. Most don't like "Q-Continuum" very much, but it's probably still quite cheap.

Other cheap sets include "Trouble with Tribbles" and "Mirror, Mirror" which will have some strong cards - those will be TOS cards (Federation and Klingon) and DS9 cards from the TOS era, as well as cards from the mirror universe (TOS Mirror Universe and later DS9 Mirror Universe). That stuff might work well with your current Federation and Klingon cards, as either supplements or whole new deck styles.

A little bit more expensive, but still relatively cheap, are "Voyager" and "The Borg," the two delta-quadrant based expansions. They're pretty standalone (and work quite well together), feature much more powerful cards, and include the Federation Voyager personnel, Kazon, Vidiian, and Hirogen affiliations - and of course, the Borg affiliation, which is quite fun and plays very differently from the others.

The only problem is that they're based in the Delta Quadrant, which is a different spaceline from the Alpha Quadrant missions - so if your opponent plays Klingon or Federation or Romulan, they won't be anywhere near you or be able to interact with you. The Borg are a bit more forgiving - they can invade the Alpha Quadrant spaceline much more easily, so if you want the Borg but not the rest of the Delta Quadrant, you can just grab "The Borg" expansion without "Voyager."

If you're interested in all the above, I'd suggest taking it slow - start with OTSD/AU/Q-Continuum. Move on to the more advanced TOS/DS9 sets I mentioned, and then finally later on you can add Voyager and The Borg.

[runabout]

Thank you all, especially frakkingoff. This is very helpful advice. We'll try some of these things out.

From what you say it seems that the more interesting elements only come in the later sets. The rulebook we have says nothing about downloading and seeding is just about missions and artefacts, nothing else.

We've played 2 more games since I posted. What bugs us most about the game are the missions. We have all the common missions from the starter set, and 1 uncommon one, but none of the rares. This means we have 10 unique missions between the two us which is not even enough to create a normal spaceline. Also, some of the common ones are sometimes difficult to fulfil with the cards we have (we have only a few characters with Stellar Cartography or Exobiology but 2 missions that require these). It seems that the more interesting missions are all rare. I looked at the card lists for other expansions, and it seems that the missions there are also mostly rare cards. I don't know who though this would be a good idea to make something so central to the game be mostly rare. That was a really stupid decision.

[KazonPADD]

Thank you all, especially frakkingoff. This is very helpful advice. We'll try some of these things out.

From what you say it seems that the more interesting elements only come in the later sets. The rulebook we have says nothing about downloading and seeding is just about missions and artefacts, nothing else.

We've played 2 more games since I posted. What bugs us most about the game are the missions. We have all the common missions from the starter set, and 1 uncommon one, but none of the rares. This means we have 10 unique missions between the two us which is not even enough to create a normal spaceline. Also, some of the common ones are sometimes difficult to fulfil with the cards we have (we have only a few characters with Stellar Cartography or Exobiology but 2 missions that require these). It seems that the more interesting missions are all rare. I looked at the card lists for other expansions, and it seems that the missions there are also mostly rare cards. I don't know who though this would be a good idea to make something so central to the game be mostly rare. That was a really stupid decision.

If you can get yourself a Starter Deck II or an OTSD, those contain 6 fixed missions each, most of which are universal.

[BCSWowbagger]

From what you say it seems that the more interesting elements only come in the later sets. The rulebook we have says nothing about downloading and seeding is just about missions and artefacts, nothing else.

It sounds like you're using a rulebook from Premiere! That's great; I love that old rulebook.

But it's not terribly useful now; the rules have changed a lot since 1995. You can find a more up-to-date rulebook here: http://ussexcelsior.com/stccg1e/ (full disclosure, I wrote it). There's a Streamlined version, which covers basic rules, and that's what I recommend to beginners.

On the other hand, if you're only playing with Premiere cards, and you're not printing cards out (it is game-legal to print any and all cards and play with them), the new rulebook is probably not necessary for you! Downloading and free plays and a whole lot more are all foreign concepts for those early cards, and even the fundamental rule controlling the size of your deck changed in 1997.

So if you're just playing with early cards, stick with early rules. But do be aware that the game has matured a great deal in the subsequent 20+ years, and it plays very differently now.

It seems that the more interesting missions are all rare. I looked at the card lists for other expansions, and it seems that the missions there are also mostly rare cards. I don't know who though this would be a good idea to make something so central to the game be mostly rare. That was a really stupid decision.

Yes, this was a HUGE error by Decipher and it really injured the game from about 1994 to 1996, when things started to settle out. Paddy's advice to get an OTSD or Starter Deck II is good, because those were both specifically designed to not have an idiotic mission selection.

[Boffo97]

I wonder what the odds were of getting an actual playable deck from a Premiere starter.

As in at least 6 missions, at least 12 dilemmas or so, and 1 outpost with enough matching personnel and a ship (or a treaty) that you could actually play without either adding cards or making special rules like lifting affiliation restrictions.

[runabout]

From what you say it seems that the more interesting elements only come in the later sets. The rulebook we have says nothing about downloading and seeding is just about missions and artefacts, nothing else.

It sounds like you're using a rulebook from Premiere! That's great; I love that old rulebook.

But it's not terribly useful now; the rules have changed a lot since 1995. You can find a more up-to-date rulebook here: http://ussexcelsior.com/stccg1e/ (full disclosure, I wrote it). There's a Streamlined version, which covers basic rules, and that's what I recommend to beginners.

Yes we only have Premiere cards (and a few from Alternate Universe, I believe, but I have not double checked this).

Thank you for the link to the other rule book. I can see the game is now much more complex!

I noticed in that new rule book that you can place a Treaty card during the seed phase. At least that is what is pictured here: http://ussexcelsior.com/stccg1e/rules_2 ... SSIONPHASE But there is nothing about this in the rules themselves. Can you just seed one of those treaty cards?

[runabout]

If you can get yourself a Starter Deck II or an OTSD, those contain 6 fixed missions each, most of which are universal.

Thanks. I will look into that.

[runabout]

I wonder what the odds were of getting an actual playable deck from a Premiere starter.

As in at least 6 missions, at least 12 dilemmas or so, and 1 outpost with enough matching personnel and a ship (or a treaty) that you could actually play without either adding cards or making special rules like lifting affiliation restrictions.

The person I play this with bought a sealed white border deck. It had only 3 missions and no outpost. I don't think we counted the missions, but I don't think there were 12. He got really annoyed by that since the box says that this is all you need to play, and when you get to section in the rule book about setting up it turns out this is not all you need to play!

[Boffo97]

It had only 3 missions and no outpost. I don't think we counted the missions, but I don't think there were 12. He got really annoyed by that since the box says that this is all you need to play, and when you get to section in the rule book about setting up it turns out this is not all you need to play!

1 player only needs 6 missions, but your point is still well taken.

I think we've all been there, especially those who got into the game by buying a starter deck. Personally, I was lucky enough to have a friend give me a few hundred cards, so making a deck wasn't really a concern... though it took me a while to make a deck where he didn't just snowplow me unless he deliberately tried not to.