Redemption

by Paddy Tye, First Edition Creative Manager

29th June 2018

“Today I am a Warrior. I must show you my heart. I travel the river of blood. The battle is mine. I crave only the blood of the enemy. The bile of the vanquished flows over my hands.” - Worf ("The Icarus Factor")

Klingons love a good ceremony, and today truly is a day to celebrate – the release of Coming of Age. It’s no tenth anniversary of Worf’s Age of Ascension, but it was does mark a special day for anyone who likes playing TNG Klingon decks. I was one such individual, having had a lot of fun playing a Klingon Death Yell deck at Worlds and UK Nationals in 2013, but the errata to Attention All Hands really hurt that deck.

The TNG Klingon decks relied on multiple copies of B’Somgh and Zegov, but post-errata that lack of diversity in the range of universal Klingons made building a TNG Klingon deck much more problematic. Attention All Hands now only granted free plays to non-duplicated universal personnel, so B’Somgh and Zegov could no longer fulfil the universal component of TNG Klingon decks on their own. Players had to find other ways to boost TNG Klingons – free plays at The Great Hall on Qo’noS, using the I.K.S. T’Ong to “report with crew”, or supplementing with Non-Aligned universals reporting to a matching Non-Aligned outpost.

Sins of the Father

When Decipher released Premiere back in 1994, the common, easy-to-find, universal personnel were frequently very limited, sometimes with just one skill… and for Klingons that skill was very often Honor! In fact Decipher produced 4 universal Klingons who all had just Honor as their only skill! When The Next Generation came out in 2012, it included some new universal Klingon personnel, and to compensate for sins of the past, they were much more heavily skilled. The original starter deck included 2 copies each of B’Somgh, Zegov and Losta, but the rest of the new Klingons mainly consisted of unique personnel. Combined with fancy tricks like Officer Exchange Program (to download an I.K.S. Pagh personnel to hand) and Equipment Replicator (to let the ENGINEER combo of B’Somgh and Zegov gain skills like SCIENCE and MEDICAL more easily), this initially seemed sufficient for their needs.

However (and as already mentioned) the change to Attention All Hands left Klingons with a shortage of high quality universal personnel. But don’t worry, Coming of Age has the solution!

To start with, there are 2 Klingon personnel reprinted in Coming of Age – Divok and J’Ddan – the only Decipher era universal Klingon personnel with more than 1 skill (and neither of their 2 skills is Honor)! In addition, Dokar from The Sky’s the Limit adds another universal Klingon with some handy skills. But given our target of 9 non-duplicated universals, that still leaves 3 spots to fill…

First up is Larg. No longer a “Piece of Baktag” like his Second Edition version, however he is a captain and squadron commander for the House of Duras – so will be especially useful to anyone wanting to play an Illegitimate Leader of the Empire deck. As designers, we now had the freedom to base him on the 2E version, or make a new version. With some of his 2E skills being covered already elsewhere in the starter deck (Biology and Treachery) we decided to find an alternate source of SCIENCE and make his skills broadly what you might expect from a squadron commander.

Qup’ta notably includes the words “High Council” in his lore, so will find a home in either TNG decks or more general Klingon decks based around The Great Hall. He’s also the first universal Klingon to feature 2 personnel types, where one of those isn’t SECURITY! His combination of SCIENCE and ENGINEER will fill a particular skill gap for Great Hall Klingons, especially with B’amara now supplying them with a source of MEDICAL. His other skills of Diplomacy and Archaeology were suitable for a “senior advisor” role. It’s also worth noting that one unique personnel who was dropped from the deck was Koroth – however between Qup’ta and the reprint of Divok, his skills have been covered!

A Matter of Honor

The last new addition is Vol’Jin, another universal source of MEDICAL but with more skills than either Vekma or Divok. His I.K.S. Pagh colleague B’Somgh covers a lot of classic “Science skills” (Biology, Physics, Exobiology and Astrophysics) but Vol’Jin helps to round out the "reserve sources" of these skills – between Vol’Jin, Zegov and Dokar they have B’Somgh’s skill set covered. However his most useful feature might well be that “Became romantically involved with Vekma” line... Time for the Klingons to break out the Love Café? Especially given Vekma is a mission specialist and both can be downloaded using Officer Exchange Program.

One other big change in the deck is removal of Cloaked Mission, the Romulan Homeworld. One complication in the starters was explaining to new players about where they could seed an outpost, and having them exclude that mission was an additional and unnecessary complication, so we swapped it out for a reprint of the ever-popular Reported Activity – with 2 Honor in the requirements it’s perfect for Klingons!

Heart of Glory has also been dropped from the deck. Players were finding this much tougher to use than other bonus point cards in the Starters – costing a card play if used on Duras (the only personnel you can download with a dilemma) and his special skill only works under specific circumstances. So we looked for an easier way for Klingons to score 5 points. We didn’t have to look far…. The Klingon Death Yell has been a fun and interactive part of the game that we are really happy to add to these starter decks. We want you and your friends being the ones loudly disrupting your local store with Death Yells once one of your personnel has died. It’ll create a buzz and bring attention to the game which is exactly what we want to recruit players!

The last change you’ll notice is the Batris has been dropped and a second I.K.S. K’Vort was added. In testing, Klingons often had the misfortune to draw their one universal ship, meaning they didn’t have a way to download a second ship. Adding another universal option brought the deck in line with the other starters.

The Big Goodbye

I really hope you’ve enjoyed the release of Coming of Age over the last week. I’d just like to say a big thank you to everyone involved in the production of this set. From my partner in crime Alan, to Charlie keeping us on track, the playtesters, the rules team, the creative team, the proofreaders, the amazing work the Art team did, and our Communications Director for the spoilers and social media buzz!

Hopefully you will all find this update to the Klingon starter deck (and the other three) useful when teaching new and returning players!

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Decklist

Print Decklist • Copy Deck

This deck is legal in the following Card Pools:

• Complete
• Virtual

This deck is legal in the following Rules Sets:

• Modern
• Open
• X-list
• Revised
• Warp Speed

This deck is currently eligible for the following family or families of achievements:

• Klingon Player
• Temporal Mechanics Give Me a Headache
• Uncommon Quality
• Common Problems
• The Continuing Mission
• We Don't Need Your Help, Q
• Good Casting: Armstrong (Korris)

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