Design Spotlight: First Edition Starfleet

by Charlie Plaine, Chairman

21st August 2018

"When Zefram Cochrane made his legendary warp flight ninety years ago, and drew the attention of our new friends, the Vulcans. We realized that we weren't alone in the galaxy. Today we're about to cross a new threshold. For nearly a century, we've waded ankle-deep in the ocean of space. Now it's finally time to swim. The warp five engine wouldn't be a reality without men like Doctor Cochrane and Henry Archer, who worked so hard to develop it. So it's only fitting that Henry's son, Jonathan Archer, will command the first starship powered by that engine." - Admiral Maxwell Forrest, "Broken Bow"

Overview
Starfleet, as an affiliation, represents the crew, characters, locations, and events from the series Star Trek: Enterprise, taking place a century before the events of the original series. This puts the affiliation in a unique place as a direct predecessor of a different affiliation - the Federation. It was an unusual and daring choice by Decipher, and one that could be hotly debated today. In any case, Starfleet has been one of the most developed affiliations in recent years, becoming the affiliation with one of the strongest identities in spite of its young age.

At a Glance
Here's a quick look at the Starfleet Affiliation:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Starfleet
Nouns	87 Cards (5 Facilities, 73 Personnel, 9 Ships)
Missions	19 (Plus missions)
First Appearance	Enterprise Collection (2006)
Recent Appearance	Cold Front (2018)
Signature Skill	OFFICER (34.2%)
Attack Restriction	STANDARD (Anyone but )
Appears In	Enterprise
Doesn't Appear In	TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and Movies

Strengths
Starfleet is weird. Most affiliations in First Edition transcend era; Klingons are no matter if they are , , or . Same for Bajorans, Cardassians, Ferengi, and Romulans. If we had the source material, so too would affiliations like Dominion or Hirogen be era-independent. Starfleet however, ceases to exist as an affiliation as of 2161 when the Federation is born. (Note: The Vulcan affiliation also has the same problem.) This makes the affiliation reliant on a single era, the 22nd-century ( ), which makes almost all Starfleet cards have two unique identifiers - their affiliation, and the era icon. This is redundant, but can be a huge strength; not only can take advantage of affiliation-references, but they can use any generic card as well.

Here's an interesting fact: Enterprise Collection was released for First Edition four years after the game had been discontinued. Starfleet was coming to Second Edition, featuring a lot of backwards compatible cards, but they needed some extra support to be playable in 1E. Thus, the Enterprise Collection gave us high powered versions of the main characters, a few 1E-required support cards, the titular ship, and a facility where they could report. This made Starfleet a complete package, as long as players were willing to pick up the 2E expansion To Boldly Go for support cards.

The advantage of having so few native 1E cards, at least for Starfleet players, was that the personnel were Delta Quadrant level in power. The main characters had monster skills and attributes, the support characters had tons of keywords, and Enterprise herself could compete with the strongest ships in the game; at least she could, before errata.

I haven't crunched the numbers, so the following is an educated guess. However, I'd bet dollars to donuts that we've spent more design and development time on Starfleet than any other affiliation. And, justified or not, that time and energy has given the affiliation quite a lot of options, many of them powerful. I try and keep these articles a bit timeless, and avoid meta discussions. However, as of the writing of this article, there is no question Starfleet is the new hotness. 22nd Century decks, including Starfleet, have a great track record right now.

Weaknesses
It's actually tough to pin down weaknesses for the Starfleet affiliation. They have strong personnel, a nice selection of play options, and a large pool of available source material. Ironically, I am finding the biggest weakness of Starfleet is how much attention we've paid to Starfleet. It's counterintuitive, but allow me to explain. We've had three expansions where was a major focus: Straight and Steady in 2010 brought the affiliation "up to code," so to speak. The Terran Empire fully realized the Imperial Starfleet side of things, and Broken Bow gave even more tools to the affiliation.

All told, that's a lot of time spent on one affiliation. And on paper, it's been great for Starfleet. But in practice, I think we've done as much to muddy the waters as we did to define the affiliation. Starfleet can be complex to figure out which pieces work together, and which ones don't. For example, can you play MACOs along side Earth? You can, but it's not as easy as you think. How do you pair up Mirror Starfleet, that want to end their turn with no hand, with Alpha Quadrant decks that need cards in hand? It's a buffet, but you have to figure out the path between the items.

If complexity is their biggest weakness, then loneliness is their second. Starfleet can only work with themselves, and they only have treaty options for Klingons, and Vulcans. Now that's more options than some affiliations, but less than most

Looking Ahead
If Starfleet has a wealth of options, where can we take them? Fortunately, I think there's plenty of room for the affiliation to grow and evolve. Starfleet is in an excellent state of play, so they don't need more power. However, there is a lot of value in providing cleaner demarcation between the themes they do have. We should help players figure out how to build and use the various decks, be it Crown the Emperor, No-Hand Mirror Starfleet, MACOs, or Apocryphal Starfleet Holograms.

In particular, I would love to see content related to the founding of the Federation. It was a big storyline towards the end of the series, and was a momentous occasion in Star Trek history. How cool would it be to see decks based around the Starfleet affiliation turning into the Federation affiliation? I've had some time to think about this, and I'm looking forward to giving it a shot sometime in the future. Although, given how much time Starfleet has had in the spotlight lately, that might be the far future.

Conclusion
Starfleet is an affiliation with a completely unique story of their development. Added to the game years after it's official end, the Enterprise Collection made the affiliation playable. But with such a small set of cards, there were chances aplenty to develop the affiliation. What would the history of the game be like if they had been a Federation sub-flavor? In any case, Starfleet is here to stay, and they've made their mark on the game.

Discuss this article in this thread.

Back to Archive index