[runabout]

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.

Sorry, I meant to say "I don't think we counted the dilemmas, but I don't think there were 12." There were only 3 missions, so not enough to play a game.

[BCSWowbagger]

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?

The game's bigger complexity definitely has both upsides and downsides! It became a serious drag in the late 90s, because Decipher kept adding and changing things so fast nothing was stable and the rules were unclear. But I tend to think that, after a decade of stability and more careful growth under the CC, the big changes since 1995 have been mostly for the best.

Anyway: treaties still generally can't be seeded, but there are ways around that. Some cards, like Facilitate Peace Talks or Sherman's Peak, allow you to get a specific treaty on the table during the seed phase (in both those cases, for free!). Open Diplomatic Relations makes ANY treaty seedable (but at the cost of an extra seed slot). And some treaties, like this one, seed themselves!

The one you see in the Rulebook is a download chain: the Baj/Fed Treaty is technically seedable, but this player used Reshape the Quadrant to download Here By Invitation to download the treaty... which is a pretty standard deck type these days.

[bosskamiura]

I think the best piece of advice I could offer is to always keep things simple.

Never try to do too much. In high level play - solid traditional solvers will get you further than trick decks.

TK

[Armus]

I think the best piece of advice I could offer is to always keep things simple.

Never try to do too much. In high level play - solid traditional solvers will get you further than trick decks.

TK

That's probably true today. Back in the broken days of 1e, my turn 1 double Q-Bypass was a pretty solid trick.

[frakkingoff]

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).

You'll also find that rare cards will have those skills (along with other basic skills) - hence, especially with older cards, the rare cards WILL be more powerful (your one rare personnel can be as strong as three common personnel).

I looked at the card lists for other expansions, and it seems that the missions there are also mostly rare cards.

That's actually not such a terrible thing, as you rarely need more than one copy of each mission. I'd rather the rare cards be the ones that I only need a single copy of. Of course, Decipher learned from this business "mistake" and later made many strong cards both rare and only useful when you have multiple (i.e., Guardian of Forever).

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.

It was a great short-term decision for the people who made that decision - Decipher wanted you to buy more cards. If they make the rare cards the strong ones, then that entices you to buy more of them (since you only get one or two rare cards per pack).

It was a poor decision for players - and Decipher later doubled down on it, by making Rare* cards - cards that were marked as "rare," but were actually MORE rare than rare (and you only got either a single Rare* or a single Rare in a pack).

That kind of nonsense helped kill the game, as well as most other CCGs. So from a long-term standpoint, it probably hurt Decipher. But they did make a killing in the beginning, and were able to ride the momentum for years.

[Armus]

It was a poor decision for players - and Decipher later doubled down on it, by making Rare* cards - cards that were marked as "rare," but were actually MORE rare than rare (and you only got either a single Rare* or a single Rare in a pack).

IIRC, the only set with actual R* cards was Trouble with Tribbles, which had some packs with a 'Rare' 1,000 Tribbles card in an uncommon slot. You usually averaged about 3 of those per box, but it was IN ADDITION TO the 30 rares you got in the rare slots.

I think what you're thinking of is the R+ cards. For the later sets, there were two levels of Rare: R and R+. R occurred three times per sheet and R+ occurred twice per sheet.

Where Decipher really ramped it up was on the collectors. Dual affiliation cards in later sets were always R+ and only one version of each border color occurred per sheet. This increased the collectability of these cards without affecting gameplay. For example, Icheb and Icheb are the same for Gameplay purposes, so if you're looking to build a deck, either one will do. But if you want a complete set (which, as collectors, is kind of how people roles that cared about this stuff), you need to buy more boxes because you could get two Yellow Ichebs and no Blue Ichebs (or vice versa).

[frakkingoff]

Yeah, it was R+, my bad.

I can't believe I blew so much money on those cards back in the day...

[runabout]

Thank you again, all of you, for your comments and suggestions.

-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.

I've been thinking more about this comment, and have some questions related to this.

Would you say that the strategy to dilemma seeding is one of the main strategies of the game? Overcoming each dilemma and accomplishing the missions seems very straightforward in a way. You have various strategies to do this, as you pointed out, but they are mainly required because of the way dilemmas can be seeded.

The reason I am asking this is because I noticed that in many deck lists personnel and ships are the vast majority of the cards, with sometimes just 5 or so events and interrupts. I get the impression that most players do not bother about including cards that make the opponent's life difficult, and not even many cards that could help you. All those are included in the seed phase, and once that is set up, you focus on personnel and ships. Is that a fair assessment?

[BCSWowbagger]

Would you say that the strategy to dilemma seeding is one of the main strategies of the game?

YES.

Dilemma seeding is big-time major gameplay.

The reason I am asking this is because I noticed that in many deck lists personnel and ships are the vast majority of the cards, with sometimes just 5 or so events and interrupts. I get the impression that most players do not bother about including cards that make the opponent's life difficult, and not even many cards that could help you. All those are included in the seed phase, and once that is set up, you focus on personnel and ships. Is that a fair assessment?

That's true in the current state of the game. It's where the strategies have shifted over time. I know the Continuing Committee is trying to steer the game back to make more use of Events / Interrupts / Incidents and so forth, but personnel solve missions, and that's the whole game, so they're always going to be critically important. Every time you play an Event, you need to ask yourself: "Is this going to get me closer to winning the game than the personnel I could have played instead?"

Another thing worth noting is that a lot of personnel can download events these days. Like Sam Lavelle downloads Lower Decks. So you don't actually need to put Lower Decks in your draw deck; you can set Lower Decks aside in your Q's Tent, and then download it as soon as you play Sam Lavelle.

Choosing the right mix of personnel to download the right set of Events and Interrupts (and other cards) has also become a significant area of strategy in the game.

[frakkingoff]

runabout, keep mind that the questions you're asking will have different answers depending on which "era" of the game you're talking about. Currently, you're playing in the first, original era (called "PAQ", for "Premiere / Alternate Universe / Q-Continuum").

There are merits to playing a core deck of personnel/ships and only a few "helper" events/interrupts, without any cards to explicitly interfere with your opponents. I mentioned The Traveler: Transcendence, Red Alert, and Kivas Fajo - Collector as examples.

There are also merits to playing an "interference" deck which deliberately stalls out your opponent. If you and your opponent are both playing relatively slow decks, you might gain a significant advantage by spending your card plays on Static Warp Bubble or Telepathic Alien Kidnappers (a card that is much stronger with only Premiere cards, when there were only six possible cards to choose from). Or Atmospheric Ionization - in combination with the right dilemmas you choose, this can be devastating to a slow Premiere deck.

Your deck becomes "top-heavy" with cards that aren't really helping you, but once your opponent is totally stalled, the slowness of your own deck isn't a problem anymore, as you have all the time in the world. Can your opponent really have any chance of recovering once you've used a well-placed Supernova?

What's he going to do if you build up hand full of interference cards while you wait out an Anti-Time Anomaly you've played? Any personnel he plays are going to be killed before he can play any missions - so that's three turns you can spend drawing and playing interference cards, while he sits there doing nothing but build up his hand.

I think many of the common/uncommon interrupts/events from the PAQ era weren't worth playing back in the day (later on, cards that downloaded them made them stronger, as they were easier to get into play). Life-Form Scan is certainly an example of one of these.

Also, keep in mind that the ratio of personnel/equipment to ships/events/interrupts is going to be significantly higher if you don't have rare cards and you're just using Premiere. This is because the common/uncommon personnel are so weak, you have to have a large number of them for them to be effective enough to complete dilemmas/missions.

Would you say that the strategy to dilemma seeding is one of the main strategies of the game? Overcoming each dilemma and accomplishing the missions seems very straightforward in a way. You have various strategies to do this, as you pointed out, but they are mainly required because of the way dilemmas can be seeded.

Yes, it is a significant strategy. Ultimately, the game is about getting 100 points, which is primarily done by completing dilemmas and missions.

Everything in you do and in your deck should either work towards doing that, or preventing your opponent from doing that. Choosing what to seed and how to seed it is the most direct way of preventing your opponent from doing what he needs to do to win.

[runabout]

Thank you all again for the detailed replies. You're all wonderful

Also, keep in mind that the ratio of personnel/equipment to ships/events/interrupts is going to be significantly higher if you don't have rare cards and you're just using Premiere. This is because the common/uncommon personnel are so weak, you have to have a large number of them for them to be effective enough to complete dilemmas/missions.

This has actually been our main frustration. Most personnel we have have only 1 skill, a few 2, and even fewer 3 (but one of these tends to be a useless one, as far as we can tell, like Music which is not required by any other card we have). I think we have 2 personnel with Leadership and 1 with Diplomacy but several missions/dilemmas/events that require them (sometimes more than one).

The slow card play is also difficult. We have implemented a house rule that lets you play any ship and personnel in the first round, provided you discard the rest of your hand when you are done and draw 7 new cards for round 2. It has made the games start a little faster.

So, in the light of this, I have a few more questions:

1. Are common/uncommon personnel of later sets more powerful, in terms of skills? Or do you really need the rare cards for that, of any set?

We'd like to have more powerful personnel because it would allow us to have more events in the decks. Right now, we are so dependent on bringing out personnel that you can't have a lot of other cards in your deck, and so a single Q-net or even Subspace Warp Rift played against you can almost assure your defeat, because you won't have a lot of cards in your deck to play counter or work around that.

2. If we were to get cards from other sets that have characters with a higher number of skills, what set would you recommend? We'd like to use the Premiere and (recently acquired) Alternate Universe cards we have in combination with them. I would like to play Federation, and my partner likes Romulan (for some reason ), but Klingon would be fine too. We don't want to get too many cards. The idea is to balance out the personnel we have, so we don't just have 1-skill or 2-skill personnel. We are not interested in competitive play: we'd make some decks that are equally balanced to play against each other. We'd also prefer printed/published cards over the print-it-yourself cards of the later expansions.

3. When was Downloading introduced? From what set onwards was this included? Also, are the cards that can be Downloaded generally part of the same set?

4. frakkingoff, you mentioned "Q-Continuum" wasn't very popular. Would you recommend getting some of those cards anyway to address the issues I've mentioned, since they are cheap? I noticed that Q's Tent is very popular and included in a lot of decks listed here. Is that the only/main card worth having from that set?

5. What other mechanisms that were later introduced would you recommend for us to try (and what sets would be good for that, if we wanted to use those in combination with the Premiere cards we already have)?

[BCSWowbagger]

1. Are common/uncommon personnel of later sets more powerful, in terms of skills? Or do you really need the rare cards for that, of any set?

Common/uncommon personnel consistently became stronger throughout the Decipher Era. This culminated in the uber-powerful Delta Quadrant personnel.

2. If we were to get cards from other sets that have characters with a higher number of skills, what set would you recommend?

My strong recommendation is to obtain copies of the virtual sets The Next Generation and Engage. Those two sets were specifically designed to "level up" Premiere/AU/Q-Cont cards and make them play quickly and smoothly. You get a good printer, a paper cutter, and a few copies of the high-res file... and you're golden.

You can both seed Attention All Hands
and Continuing Mission (which downloads either Finest Crew in the Fleet or Always A Chess Game), and BOOM. You're drawing two cards per turn and playing three. Sprinkle liberally with Kivas Fajo - Collector or Let's See What's Out There, and suddenly Premiere cards are just as good as Voyager cards.

Here, I even have sample decks for you! Here's a Fed deck that's mostly cards you already have. Here's a Klingon deck that's easy to play but has performed very well at various events. A Romulan one. A Non-Aligned one, if you want to go that way.

Virtual cards are THE BEST friend for PAQ-era cards.

...all that said, some people don't like virtual cards for whatever reason. If virtual cards just aren't something you'll play with, then your best bet for decent Feddies and Klingons and Romulans that have... you know, more than one skill... is going to be probably The Trouble with Tribbles or The Motion Pictures. TMP is incredibly expensive, but TwT is still pretty fair-priced.

3. When was Downloading introduced? From what set onwards was this included? Also, are the cards that can be Downloaded generally part of the same set?

First Contact, in 1997. Shortly after Q-Continuum. Cards that can be downloaded are USUALLY part of the same set, although that's become a little less true now that all cards are printable.

4. frakkingoff, you mentioned "Q-Continuum" wasn't very popular. Would you recommend getting some of those cards anyway to address the issues I've mentioned, since they are cheap? I noticed that Q's Tent is very popular and included in a lot of decks listed here. Is that the only/main card worth having from that set?

I hate to have somebody spend eight bucks on a box just to open up a zillion cards JUST to get Q's Tent... especially when we have a high-res printable version of the Tent. But... yeah, you should probably learn about Tents eventually.

5. What other mechanisms that were later introduced would you recommend for us to try (and what sets would be good for that, if we wanted to use those in combination with the Premiere cards we already have)?

First Contact really changed the game in some breathtaking ways, even WITHOUT considering the Borg. Take a look at this rules update from 1997, and it is a pretty big shift from the Premiere rulebook.

Beyond that, the game has changed a lot, and it's added a lot of odds and ends, but it hasn't made any fundamental changes to how the game is structured since the sweeping changes of 1997. The one thing I'd recommend looking into beyond downloading is "characteristics" -- cards that make use of text in a card's lore (or title). The STCCG has always had this, ever since Matriarchal Society and Engage Shuttle Operations made us look in the lore to find out which cards are female and which ones are shuttles, but it got more interesting in later years. Take Executive Authorization, for example. Nowadays, it's simply routine, as on Out Of Time or Taking Charge.

The sets The Dominion and Rules of Acquisition did quite a bit of this, as I recall.

I'd also recommend learning about Tactics, but those were all in Blaze of Glory, which sold out and is very difficult to obtain today. They were reprinted in the virtual set BaH!, though.

[nobthehobbit]

My strong recommendation is to obtain copies of the virtual sets The Next Generation and Engage. Those two sets were specifically designed to "level up" Premiere/AU/Q-Cont cards and make them play quickly and smoothly. You get a good printer, a paper cutter, and a few copies of the high-res file... and you're golden.

The Shades of Gray cards in Shades of Gray are specifically designed to make PAQ-era dilemmas more powerful, as well.

[Armus]

My strong recommendation is to obtain copies of the virtual sets The Next Generation and Engage. Those two sets were specifically designed to "level up" Premiere/AU/Q-Cont cards and make them play quickly and smoothly. You get a good printer, a paper cutter, and a few copies of the high-res file... and you're golden.

The Shades of Gray cards in Shades of Gray are specifically designed to make PAQ-era dilemmas more powerful, as well.

Indeed. In fact there's a lot of goodness in the Shades of Grey set for PAQ-era decks. Rishon, Armus Dilemmas,
Hotel Royale stuff. It doesn't get much more TNG-ish than that and can be a lot of fun!

Welcome to the game!

[Iron Prime]

4. frakkingoff, you mentioned "Q-Continuum" wasn't very popular. Would you recommend getting some of those cards anyway to address the issues I've mentioned, since they are cheap? I noticed that Q's Tent is very popular and included in a lot of decks listed here. Is that the only/main card worth having from that set?

There's more to Q-Continuum than just Q's Tent. Back in in the day they had a handful of cards that I remember being excited about. That said: 30-40% of what you pull is going to be cards - so unless you want the novelty of playing those just print what you need....