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Strategy Articles
Ready... Fight!
by Charlie Plaine, Chairman
29th June 2015
It all started back in 2011. The World Championship Trek league was entering its fourth year and Brad DeFruiter (Brad) and I were discussing options for League Promo cards. We had made new cards for two previous years but we were looking for something different to try. I don't remember who pitched the original idea, but it was suggested that we theme our league promos and release them year after year, all as part as the theme. After some discussion, we settled on the Voyager episode "Tsunkatse" as our theme. We didn't have the theme fully developed at that time, but we knew who the first card had to be:
If you're not a wrestling fan, then you might not know the origin of this card. The Pendari Champion was played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, a major superstar in the WWE at the time; he would go on to have a massive Hollywood career. Most major stars in the wrestling world have a signature move they use to win matches or get the crowd excited, and The Rock's signature move was the "Rock Bottom." That was literally the origin of this card's text - a joke that The Rock should interact with the bottom of player's decks. But even though that ability originated as an in-joke wrestling reference, it would define all the Tsunkatse cards to come.
It was during the development of Lineage that we first tried to fully develop the Tsunkatse theme. Since we hadn't done it with The Pendari Champion, but were planning on continuing the theme for future league promos, we wanted to take some time to develop the cards so they would, eventually, make sense. Here's the very first draft of the Blue Match and Red Match events, pitched back in December 2011:
![[Evt]](/images/icons/event.gif "[Evt]"){kind=icon}
2 tsunkatse: blue match
Each players reveals the bottom three cards of their deck. The owner of the cards that have the highest total combined Strength scores 5 points. Destroy this event.
4 tsunkatse: red match
Each players reveals the bottom three cards of their deck. The owner of the cards that have the highest total combined Strength scores 5 points. Each other player discards those cards. Each player shuffles their deck. Destroy this event.
To go along with these cards, Penk and his ship (given the playtest title of "Wrestlemania") allowed you to download, retrieve, and protect your Tsunkatse events. But these cards went through multiple revisions, changing form and effect repeatedly. We tested them far enough to have a sense of what the mechanic would do, and then put them on the shelf for a later expansion. We planned to release Hajur, Seven of Nine, Penk and his ship as promos, and then print the events in a future expansion. But eventually, people tired of the Tsunkatse promos as league promos and we realized that Lower Decks, with its Delta Quadrant flavor, would be a great place to finally finish these cards.
I looked up the old Tsunkatse cards in our cut file (nothing ever gets deleted) and decided, given how rough they were and how "dated" they felt, to start over. I let the Lower Decks team brainstorm ideas, and they generated lots of them. Here's a partial list of things we considered for the Tsunkatse events:
- A 1 v 1 combat flavor
- Draw cards from the bottom of your deck
- A Holoprogram
- An Assault card that benefits having Strength >= 8
We put some first drafts together, but again they never felt right. They were walls of text and weren't capturing the flavor we were asking for. I wasn't quite ready to give up though, so I decided to rewatch the episode and see if I could get some inspiration. Fortunately, I found that inspiration. Let me quote for you a post I made on the design forums:
Tsunkatse was all about money.
Penk kidnapped fighters rather than having to pay them. Sure, he paid them in food and some creature comforts for champions, but that was a drop in the bucket. He repeatedly talks about ratings and money and prioritizes getting his audience - and thus more sales - up.
The Norcadian government acts shocked to hear that Penk is kidnapping people, but a huge portion of their income is derived from Tsunkatse matches; so much so, they turn a blind eye. Again, legality and morality is set aside for money.
So it's all about money. But what does that mean in 2E terms?
Money is a resource. In 2E, we have a lot of resources: points, counters, cards. It seems to be that if we're going to capture the feel of Tsunkatse, it has to be all about money (resources).
Penk has a line that I think will help us create the red/blue matches: "If three billion people paid to see you hurt, imagine how many will pay to see you die."
That gives us this:
Tsunkatse personnel card about the bottom of your deck
Tsunkatse verbs are all about "money"
Red Matches make more than Blue Matches
Mark Morris (BaronMorrath) took that idea and posted the following:
Tsunkatse - Red
Plays in your core. At the start of your turn, you may have each player reveal the bottom card of their deck. The player that reveals the highest total strength scores 5 points. In case of a tie, no points are scored.
Tsunkatse - Blue
Plays in your core. At the start of your turn, you may have each player reveal the bottom card of their deck. If you reveal a higher total strength than each opponent, the first card you play this turn is cost -2. Each player places the revealed cards on the bottom their deck.
They would go through just a few more tweaks, but that's how the final version of the Tsunkatse events were born. The ideas behind Target of Opportunity and Feykaab came later as ways to develop the mechanic and help it more naturally fit into some specific decks. I'm looking forward to trying a Terok Nor Tsunkatse Capture deck. I really like the idea of Jem'Hadar battling in a Tsunkatse Arena while Cardassians run around and capture your key people. It might not be a competitive deck, but I for one think it will be fun! You can check out my first draft below - comments are welcome.
Discuss this article in this thread.
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