The Name of the Game

by Kevin Jaeger, Staff Writer

6th December 2014

When Charlie put out a call to the design team to pitch some ideas for what was going to become the 20th Anniversary Collection, it was made clear that the theme of the set was going to be lost cards from prior sets. Not actual lost cards, but cards that could be mistaken for being cards that came out in a particular set. I pitched a handful of ideas, and after the long process of design, two of them have made the final cut - one of them is today's card: Second Edition.

When In a Mirror, Darkly came out, Decipher started a tradition where previously named sets within the Star Trek: CCG: Second Edition game were given treatment as a title for a card...... except that the base set which was called "Second Edition" was not included. I can't speak for Brad or any of the Decipher designers at the time as to why the base set was left out. I wasn't in playtesting at the time, so I dont know if there was a proferred card that simply didn't make it through playtesting with the title or not. I just know that, for the last X number of years, there has been a missing piece of this tradition. It's been something that has bothered me slightly for a long time. I've never been accused of being an anal retentive completist collector type....but if you're going to have a tradition it should be done right.

Second Edition, the card that is, will finally give players a little grease and reason to include different copies of different personas of the same personnel. Keep in mind, though, everyone - you can still only have a total of three copies of any card NAME in your deck. There's been an occasional snafu at a few tournaments where players have accidentally included three copies of say Bariel Antos version A, then another copy or two of Bariel Antos version B. You can't do that per the rules. You can only have a total of three copies of any Bariel Antos (or Leonard McCoy or James T. Kirk or Jean Luc Picard). Second Edition, the card, allows you to stay within the rules yet more reliably find a particular version of a personnel that you are playing.

For example, you are playing Borg and early in the game you want to try and hit a mission with your mission team just so you can interlink a portion of your deck away to get a couple Hoss Drones aka Harvest Drones in your discard pile to bring back into play using the "drone swap" ability of Borg Queen (Guardian of the Hive).  After you make an assimilation run on your opponent, you now have a bunch of assimilated dudes and dudettes who can get still get stopped AND can't have that stop prevented by Unyielding. With Second Edition, again the card, you can search out your singleton copy of Borg Queen (Perfectionist). Now the rules for Second Edition, the game, dont allow for a player to "persona swap" like the First Edition rules allow. So how you, ultimately, get that new persona into play is entirely up to you to figure out. But some popular methods are to: 1. solo attempt Survey New World so they go to the bottom of the deck, 2. use Necessary Evil, the card, to kill that personnel, 3. bounce them back to hand with Pavel Chekov, 4. kill them with Yelgrun.  

Lets be real for a moment though, we all know that the biggest use of Second Edition, again the card, will be to search out additional copies of Chakotay to power Revised Chakotay. Its gonna happen. Get ready for it. 

The other thing we need to be real about for a moment is that - while Second Edition, the card, was designed as a "lost card" from In a Mirror, Darkly - Charlie made it clear during initial design meetings that we will adhere to our current design philosophies and technologies. Hence, an appearance of the newer keyword Recall. I'm not sure if this card will get recalled much (outside of more Chakotay downloads), but it's there if you want it. I say play Bariel Antos (Opaka's Protector), use him to download Second Edition into the discard pile then play it out of the discard pile next turn to download Bariel Antos (Petty Thief) and get the card draw. Two cards in hand for two counters spent. Play with Odo (Efficient Overseer) to later kill Bariel and put mirror Bariel into play on a subsequent turn. The mirror Bariel can then be used to fetch out the old Bariel, using a copy of a mirror Odo that you have in hand.........and I've gone Cross-eyed. 

So, use the deckbuilder and the set links to find personnel and see all the personna versions. I'm sure someone will come up with something. After all, there's approximately a half billion Kira Nerys' to go through, I'm sure someone will find something powerful.

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