Announcing A Less Perfect Union

by Ross Fertel, Director of Second Edition

15th May 2019

The Continuing Committee is proud to announce the next set. A Less Perfect Union will release May 24, 2019 and be legal a week later on May 31, 2019. You'll see spoilers here and around the internet up until the set releases, including below. This set is based on two themes. The first is one you helped out with Will of the Collective. You designed Hawk, a personnel based off a popular character. He's all ready to go along with eight other personnel that shouldn't be too much of a challenge to recognize. The second is based around the Terra Prime movement seen in the last few episodes of Enterprise. This group of humans is working to keep alien influence off Earth, as foretold in the eponymous novel. We saw in the show that they didn't succeed, but you have the opportunity to rewrite history.

John “KillerB” Corbett and Ben “bhosp” Hosp designed the Terra Prime faction. They were designed almost entirely from scratch and have some really great tricks. John and Ben are very experienced designers who have seen a lot of factions and sub factions as well as having a good amount of experience with Starfleet. There's a lot to love with this latest group added to the name.

Nathan “Gooeychewie” Miracle and Lucas “edgeofhearing” Thompson designed the popular personnel. Lucas led the design of Hawk, making him a natural choice to work on this part of the set. I joined in and we have some great personnel that work in various decks. With just nine cards, they fit in a multitude of decks.

Looking at the contents themselves, Terra Prime is represented by Starfleet Dissidents. Up until months ago, there were none. Errata gave us two more and you'll be getting quite a few more with this set. Since they are all Starfleet affiliation, you could simply play them at Earth and be done with it.

Or you could use a card specifically and specially designed for them, the Orpheus Mining Facility.

This is the first dual sided card in the game. What led to this groundbreaking mechanic? For one, people have been clamoring for a double-sided Genesis Planet for years. Not just that, but look at Explore Extradimensional World and realize just how useful the mechanic can be. The bookkeeping gets so much easier.

Of course, a new mechanic needs framework to support it. There was a lot of work that Rules had to do to make this work. The nitty gritty may seem pretty simple on when you look at it, but it wasn't. Rules really went above and beyond to make this work, even to the point of getting the set early to work on it alone.

Speaking of the rules, here they are!

Double-sided missions count as one of your 5 different missions. If the mission had different titles on each side, both sides must be different from your other missions. If either side of the mission is a headquarters mission, that mission does not count towards your minimum of 2 non-headquarters mission.

Some missions have two sides: a front side and a reverse side. The reverse side of a mission shares collector info with the front side of the mission, with the addition of an asterisk (*).

Double-sided missions begin play front-side up, and may flip over during the course of the game. Only the face-up side is considered to be in play. When a mission flips over, all cards to, at, or beneath that mission remain unless the mission states otherwise.

You may not flip a mission if doing so results in commanding a mission you could not otherwise command. For example, you cannot flip a mission from a non-headquarters side to a headquarters side if you command Unicomplex, Root of the Hive Mind, which states that you may not command another headquarters mission.

One thing that may not be obvious at first glance is that you can't start with the Mars side face up. The asterisk in the collectors information is your indication that Luna needs to start the game face up. You can reap the benefits of Mars once you solve a mission. Although uniqueness till applies, so even though all cards at Luna automatically go to Mars, if a Mars is ever made, you won't be able to flip Luna because the resultant state would be illegal with you commanding two copies of Mars.

It seems pretty simple at first glance to flip this mission as soon as you can to start reaping the rewards of Mars. You could, but note that once you do, you won't be able to play cards of Luna. Homicidal Expedient, for example, is a great way to deal with meddlesome events but requires you to have Luna in play. If you flip Mars, you lose the ability to play this powerful card. This card is as potent at endgame as it is at the start.

A Less Perfect Union Releases on May 24. We would like to thank the Rules Team, the Creative Team, the Art Team, the Writing Team and the Programming Team for their work on the set.

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