[MidnightLich]

Hi all!

The next 1E expansion, Cold Front, is heading your way very soon. Spoilers should be here before Christmas, but let's give everyone a little bit of an early gift and start the Q&A off early! Please use this thread to ask your questions about Cold Front. Here are the members of the design team:

Dan Hamman [SirDan]
James Heaney [BCSWowbagger]
Michael Moskop [comicbookhero]

The team will be answering your questions as they can. Thanks!

-crp

[Se7enofMine]

No question just yet BUT .. super excited for this

[MidnightLich]

No question just yet BUT .. super excited for this

As is the ancient tradition, you are hereby sent to the corner! But here's something you can look at while you're there:

Jonathan Archer (Cold Front)
36.jpg (518.97 KiB) Viewed 2171 times

-crp

[jjh]

Not a question, but I just wanted to publicly spotlight the volunteer work of Martin Felber (Enabran on the Boards) for this upcoming expansion. The time-of-year/holidays found "hobby time" in short supply for the Art Team, but Martin came through with a TON of awesome images for Cold Front. The cards look great! My thanks to Martin for all he did and does for TCC.

Volunteers like Martin are what make the virtual expansions as great as they are.

Seconded. The art proofs I've seen are spectacular. Really great, professional work. -Dan

This is true. I had no idea Martin had done so much on this one, but he (and everyone in Art) absolutely rocked it as usual. -James

Oh, and I'll say this about the actual card gametext: a couple of them are going to make people's brains melt. In a good way. I think.

Actually, I'll roll that statement into a question for the designers: What card is going to melt the most 1E brains?

There is the obvious answer (that James references below) but I think the TOS themed card has a potential to create some odd scenarios. Also, the card that pays off on Holographic Skin is... a lot to process. The hidden agenda event may make for some interesting game-time dilemma decisions as well. -Dan

[kingmj4891]

Do we get any new time locations?

The one we get is one I had plans for back in Shades of Gray development, but it got pushed back several times. I was hoping to be able to make Art create a "new template" with it, but Charlie came up with such a good one in Terran Empire, it got beat to the punch. Still, I'm glad it finally made it. Should help develop a few decks, and leaves the door open to another bad idea that has been bouncing around my head and testing file. -Dan

Anything in the set that is not Star Trek Enterprise?

Plenty. Third set in the block should have some non-theme fun, and I think we got a good amount in. Call it more than 20% by property logos alone. - Dan
One of the non-Enterprise cards is actually the card I designed as my Design-A-Card prize for winning the 2014 Gencon Cool Tournament. I am so excited that it will finally see the light of day. -Michael

What card was the most fun to develop?

The Temporal Cold War theme was work, but fun. Also in general terms, the broken links. Satisfying to close. -Dan

What card was a nightmare to develop?

The Dissident subtheme. So much so that most of it was cut. There are a few leftovers - cards we felt needed to be made "now or never" but the play engine and scry engine needed more work and set space than we had. -Dan

Thanks for all you guys do.

[Maelwys]

Last set the 2E guys tried to break me with crazy numbers of keywords and skills on their cards.

Why are you trying to break me by adding so darn many new X-related cards? That's a lot of new traits I need to add...

I will keep making old lore relevant and adding keywords until the deckbuilder gains sentience. Then I'll ask it to make me an Iconian Gateway no-ship deck. -Dan

[Faithful Reader]

Questions from Bob:

You're having a wild weekend. A wild What Happens in Vegas style weekend. Who do you bring with you?

You're going to commit a crime? Who do you bring along?

You have a deep secret you want to share with someone. Who do you share it with?

You've reached the end of your natural life and want to have someone there by your side. Who is it?

Who is your secret crush?

My answer is the same for all those questions: a monkey. -Michael

Last set the 2E guys tried to break me with crazy numbers of keywords and skills on their cards.

Why are you trying to break me by adding so darn many new X-related cards? That's a lot of new traits I need to add...

Should we tell him about our Fiendish Plan (TM)?

[BCSWowbagger]

Well, this is neat. Finally, a Q&A thread where I can't be sent to the corner!
I'm sending you to the corner. You should be using the magical color powers you have been granted! -Michael

(I JUST got out of the moderator job, and editing your posts gives me flashbacks, so, if it's all the same to you, I'm just going to post my answers to your questions in the regular fashion.)

Do we get any new time locations?

Yes, but not the one you think. No, not the other one you think, either.

Anything in the set that is not Star Trek Enterprise?

There was a decision a while ago to start putting more non-Block cards in Block, with a target of around 5% of each set being targeted at non-Block players. (I just pulled that specific number out of my butt, but the point is we're supposed to put a few non-Block cards in every set now.)

Unfortunately, there were then several sets in a row that had to accomplish a huuuuuge amount of stuff (like, say, introducing the entire Vulcan affiliation). There was no room for anything else in those sets, so, despite the decision to include more non-Block stuff, it has kept getting cut.

One of Cold Front's jobs was to hit its non-Block "quota" and make up for at least a little bit of that lost ground from other recent sets.

We accomplished this.

I see 5 nouns without an Enterprise property logo.

I see some verbs and functions on verbs that are either specifically built for non-Enterprise decks or at least that non-Enterprise decks are going to love.

I see a personnel with a Voyager property logo, which I don't think we've had in Block since The Maquis. Though good luck trying to guess who it is, because this personnel is not one of our designated "non-Block love" cards.

What card was the most fun to develop?

The irony of the card made me laugh very hard. True, it was 3:30 AM and I had just spent four hours going through tester feedback again and again to try and fix something and I was more than a little woozy, so it probably isn't that funny, but I still think it is.

17V managed to hold onto its identity during the transition from an card, and I'm proud of that, and it has an absurdly obscure joke written into its gametext... but actual development on it was a bit of a rules grind. I think the real fun will come when it hits the table.

So I think the one that was actually most fun to develop was 16V, which came together pretty smoothly, fixed a broken link, and then shaped a huge proportion of the rest of the set. I spent hours with this card in one tab, 20V in another tab, and a giant spreadsheet on the other half of the screen showing six different interconnected skill matrices on it. (One of those eventually got cut and another had its knees cut out from under it... but I have an article telling the complete story of 16V coming out on the second or third day of spoilers, so more on that soon.)

What card was a nightmare to develop?

All the huge development nightmares got killed off or pushed off. (RIP You Might Want To Thank Me; may we see you again someday.) The playtesters worked very hard to expose problems, with considerable success! My thanks to all of them for seeing this set through, despite the difficulties. All ya'll testers out there know what I'm talking about when I say that I appreciate your hard work on the (which we eventually cut) every single day.

Of the cards that survived? I'd have to say 18V. It was the very first card we started out with -- Niall sent it our way -- and it seemed like an obvious, natural thing to do, with just a couple bumps we could smooth out. Problem was, every time we smoothed out one bump, another would pop right up -- often a bigger one, which divided the testers. Then we'd wrack our brains trying to fix the new problem without bringing back the old one, and we'd end up with a ten line card! So 18V changed significantly almost every single week, right up to the very end. I believe it was both the first card in the file and the last one locked. I'm still nervous about it, tbqh.

Actually, I'll roll that statement into a question for the designers: What card is going to melt the most 1E brains?

If, by brain-melting, you mean players screaming "You finally, really did it, you maniacs! DAMN YOU!", then I think the clear answer is the card that specifically names Continuing Mission.

If, by brain-melting, you mean players realizing they have a whole new paradigm for playing the game and have to go lie down for a while with a cold compress while they figure out the rules implications, then I'd have to go with the card whose story we stole from Discommendation at the absolute last second. I mean, no, wait, 25V was always a conversion... yeah...

Why are you trying to break me by adding so darn many new X-related cards? That's a lot of new traits I need to add...

I think this is specifically my fault. Like, I personally told Dan, "Don't worry about making [REDACTED]-related a thing; it's going to be fine because of [REDACTED], which is coming out in [REDACTED]." Please direct all complaint cards to my home address:

DAN HAMMAN'S HOUSE
1234 Sensible Street
San Diego (??), California
91505

@FaithfulReader: I started planning my answers to your questions in June, when I finally realized you post them for every set. Long have I labored over the answers! I've been looking forward to this for a long time... so I'm going to savor the moment. I will return later with your answers.

[HoodieDM]

Does at least one Smurf finally show up?

Dan/James, what color are Smurfs? Who are our favorite aliens in Enterprise that are that same color. I assumed it was implied lmao...my bad!! I can ask riddles too


Answer:

Andorian

~D

Yes, well. That makes sense. I thought we were talking about vertically challenged, not hue shifted. Then the answer is... kinda? Not really? In general, this is the last chance for taking a swing at 22nd century themes. There are two things we steered clear of though, as they would be the core of the next 22 set. Kinda like the DS9 block held off from Dominion War stories, we held back from 1) Founding the Federation and 2) the Xindi war. There are hooks, but this was not the set to tackle either, so we kept ourselves from locking too much down that we'd regret later. -Dan

[BCSWowbagger]

You're having a wild weekend. A wild What Happens in Vegas style weekend. Who do you bring with you?

Vegas? The gang from 3V prefers Risa, mistakenly.

You're going to commit a crime? Who do you bring along?

There's a card (22V) that we dug out of the cut file from, I think, 2011. It had a 3-digit Utopia Planitia number, which is nuts to me.

Everybody in that. Gives me a better chance of pulling off the caper alive.

You have a deep secret you want to share with someone. Who do you share it with?

28V. The secret (which I would whisper very quietly) is, "Hey, this is as close as we are ever going to be able to get to fixing this broken link because [REDACTED], so I hope you're happy." I don't think 28V would be happy, but then I'd order 28V not to tell anyone so it'd probably be fine.

You've reached the end of your natural life and want to have someone there by your side. Who is it?

31V, 36V, 42V, or 43V, for the obvious reason.

Who is your secret crush?

49V. People say that, when you hire an escort, you shouldn't allow yourself to develop feelings for her. But, what can I say? I'm a fool, and I'm in love. Plus, you may think she's just an escort, but she can kick the butt of everyone in the set.

Should we tell him about our Fiendish Plan (TM)?

Yes.

How many "temporal agent" personnel can we expect?

54 > X > 0

How many different affiliations show up in this set?

You get one guess, and I'll tell you whether it's high or low.

Can the Suliban be played as a mini-affiliation now?

Alas, no. Nobody wanted to watch "Detained" that many times, least of all me. One research-oriented rewatch was enough.

I had completely forgotten the weird abandoned Tandaran arc Enterprise teased in Season 1.

Does at least one Smurf finally show up?

I... what? No?

This would definitely reach beyond the CC's legal boundaries, so I think I must have misunderstood the question.

[Iron Prime]

Is the number of Temporal Agents in the set a prime number?

To start, yes. But I haven't done the math on the downstream temporal ripples of any action you may take that changes the number from a prime to something else. -Dan

[Pazuzu]

Chef Riker finally?

How many ships are included? Based on James' answer I guess that 49V is still a personnel. Taking into account at least one Time Location that does not leave much room for ships.

Will we see the first future Time Location?

Not this time. The story we pulled the concept from was set in 2151, but the TL is not actually from that year. -James

Besides Romulans and maybe Vulcan Dissents, are there any new deck types?
Ooh that is a juicy question. I would say there are more. Two by my count, but I could see someone make the case for three. -Michael

How many deck archetypes will see some support in this set?
I'd say two, but again, an argument could be made for more. -Michael

Any new Tactics?

How many personnel with 5 or more?

What is the highest printed attribute on a personnel?

How many conversations from Second Edition? Did you work close with the Discommendation team?

Did you create any new broken link?

Will there be a release kit? I am looking to host a release event one day tournament.

Thanks!

[Iron Prime]

How many cards had to be pushed/cut even though they were done or close to done?

There was a point in development where we needed to decide if one of the sets themes was working or not. When we decided it wasn't, cutting those cards left a lot of room for everything else we wanted to do. This is probably the first set I've worked on where I didn't ask/beg/plead for the set to be bigger than standard. We even added an extra noun or two at the end to help pad one of the verbs. -Dan

[soggy_amphibian]

How many cards have a hat in the image?

How many cards have a beard in the image?

How many non-Ship cards have ship exteriors in the image?

How many cards have an animal in the image?

[BCSWowbagger]

How many cards had to be pushed/cut even though they were done or close to done?

Cold Front was a blizzard of trial-and-error, with the cut file to show for it: there are 76 Project Wisdom cards in the cut file, the largest crop of cuts since Project Snape (aka The Sky's The Limit) started and abandoned a Reman theme.

Of the 76, of course, most are crap, but I see 28 that could plausibly see the light of day someday, including... oh, probably half a dozen dissident cards? Dan already mentioned how much he hated to lose the Scry. I was really fond of HQ: Terra Prime Forever. But dissidents will definitely be back at some point. Some other stuff got cut on the grounds of, "Hey, TOS Block is up next anyway."

How many cards have a hat in the image?

None!

Chef Riker finally?

How many cards have a beard in the image?

Nice try!

How many non-Ship cards have ship exteriors in the image?

3. Unless you want to count 10V / 24V.

How many cards have an animal in the image?

41. (NOTE: humanoids are animals. Just not ANIMALs.)

Will we see the first future Time Location?

Not this time.

How many personnel with 5 or more?

Only 4, which took some work.

What is the highest printed attribute on a personnel?

12, on 28V.

How many conversations from Second Edition? Did you work close with the Discommendation team?

3. Fun fact: we tried to get one of them converted on an Archive Portrait template, but no dice, I assume because the card type was wrong.

We ended up having very little contact with the Disco team, although they did (at least briefly) pick up one of the conversions from What You Leave Behind that we dropped. It turns out that the previous several sets have already converted nearly everything cares about, and we were laser-focused on fixing broken links rather than doing conversions.

Besides Romulans and maybe Vulcan Dissents, are there any new deck types?

There's several flavors of Romulan here, I think. Plus, you could blend them.

I think there's also two flavors of the Time Location deck. Debatable whether they're different enough to constitute different deck types, but you definitely could not blend them.

16V's second function creates a weird modification of an existing deck. 11V sends help to a deck that came out in 2015. And then we worked really hard to make sure every card in Straight and Steady is playable (except Mimetic Symbiot, now that I look).

Is the number of Temporal Agents in the set a prime number?

Dan said yes, but I don't think that's right. But I'm not sure whether he found one more than I did or missed one, since either way would make it prime.

You aren't counting 43V are you? -Dan

Aw, cripes, that's exactly it. You weren't kidding about forgetting what versions of cards actually make it to press! -James

Did you create any new broken links?

Actually... I don't think we did! Excellent!

At one point, we were willing to accept one new broken link, given how many we were closing, but it looks like we fixed that. And we cut the Tandaran. Maybe I missed one, but I think we might have zero broken links here!

Some folks will look at 15V and declare a broken link. I view it as not painting ourselves into a corner. -Dan

Oh, right. I'm glad we did that, but you're right; 15V is 100% going on jrch's list. Still... I think he's going to be pretty happy. -James

Heck, we don't have many downloads, period. I count 5 , two of which aren't even on personnel. This was a deliberate effort on our part. We didn't want to use downloads as a crutch, so tried to make a set with as few as we could.