Weekly 1E Roundup - 3 JULY 2019

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

3rd July 2019

Welcome to the Wednesday 1E Roundup, a weekly column looking back at the past week in the world of First Edition as well as a preview of the week ahead. If you've got an event coming up and you'd like to be featured in this column, feel free to contact me at cplaine@gmail.com or on the forums via PM to MidnightLich.

The Big News

We're looking for information about who is playing First Edition, how they are playing it, and how we can best serve those player's needs. To that end, Cristoffer Wiker (Smiley) and I have worked together to put together a market research survey for all of you to fill out. The survey, which is detailed in this article, will help us understand who's playing and what you care about. In turn, this will help us make plans for the next five years - and beyond. Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey, and share this with everyone in your orbit that plays or collects First Edtion.

The Top Ten

It's been a few weeks since we've had a Top Ten list, and even though The Cage has been out for a few weeks and is tournament legal, it's still on my mind. I thought I'd go back through our design archives and share the Top Ten cards I wish we hadn't had to cut from The Cage. Please note that these aren't final titles and concepts, and if these cards come back in the future, they will likely be different.

10) The Telepathic Pitcher Plant. This space monster, from Voyager's "Bliss", was a cool card that targeted missions worth more than 30 points. Originally, this was designed to lean into our low point mission themes (that ended up being cut from The Cage), but this stuck around because it was a cool new card. It ended up being cut because of concerns about making a mission worth negative points, and it was the only self-controlling card that wasn't original series themed.

9) The monster hunting card. A big priority for me was to give "off-color" affiliations cards that would help them use the new strategies in The Cage. While we made several, only Qol made it to print. One of these, for Hirogen, was stolen by The Gift and became Hirogen Hunt: Coordinated Effort. The other was a Dominon card that helped them get around You Are a Monument by hunting cards. It had problems and the flavor was off, so it hit the cutting room floor.

8) I Love You. Miramanee's special download was in the expansion for most of its life, but was ultimately cut for being a little too powerful. It was an event that played on the table and allowed random selections from gender-related dilemmas to be made the opponent's choice. We cut it to give it more time to be developed. I get accused of intentionally seeding broken links, which I do, but in this case, the card named here just needed more time.

7) Examine Energy Barrier. Based on the Galactic Barrier from "Where No Man Has Gone Before," we'd made a cool mission that represented this story. The intention was that the missions would always be seeded last, putting it on the end of the spaceline. Unfortunately, there were problems getting the rules to simply support the concept, so we tabled the mission.

6) & 5) Ambassador Sarek and Amanda Grason. Though we have movie versions of both of these personnel, putting versions of Spock's parents into The Cage was something we really wanted to do. And they were in the file for some time, tied to a cool Objective that didn't quite make the cut either (see #4 below). But one of the biggest problems with the expansion was how many personnel wanted to be in the few spots, so this famous duo didn't quite make the cut.

4) UFP: Admissions Conference. Oh man, this one hurt. I loved this card, which captured the story of "Journey to Babel" and the concept of admitting a new species/planet to the Federation. As originally designed, this objective played on Babel (which made it into the final product as Arbitrate Negotiations) and let your diplomats invite a new species to join the Federation. I'm really hopefully we'll get this back someday.

3) Boss Kirk. Before we had the skill-dense Captain Kirk we see in the final version of The Cage, we had a version of gangster Kirk from "A Piece of the Action." He was a dual-affiliation Federation/Non-Aligned personnel and would hint at future gangster-based mechanics. Ultimately, this version of Kirk felt out-of-place and was dropped in favor of the one we got.

2) The E.C.S. Horizon. Once we put The Book in the file, and Sigma Iota II, we thought it would be a lot of fun to also add in the ship that brought the former to the latter. Not only would it be a cool way to put a Starfleet card into our expansion, it would be a fun mechanical link to this famous story. But power concerns, both with getting The Book into play without solving a mission, and with the general power of the 22nd-century decks, led us to cut this card.

1) Space Hippies. Before The Cage even hit testers, we had a really cool cycle of cards that made up the space hippies from "The Way to Eden." Dr. Sevrin, Adam, Irina Galliulin, the Aurora, and the philosophy of "One" were all a big part of the cycle a new deck. But we had way, way, way too any cards and these guys went out the window. I really hope we'll get back them someday, complete with Harry's [redacted], Riker's [redacted], and more.

This Day in Trek

Today is actor Kurtwood Smith's seventy-sixth birthday! Though he's probably most famous for playing Red Forman on That 70's Show, Mr. Smith has played three different roles in the universe of Star Trek. In Star Trek 6, he played the role of the Federation President. He played the villainous Annorax in Voyager's two-part episode "Year of Hell," and the mysterious Thrax in the DS9 episode "Things Past." Happy birthday!

Tournament Reports

West Fargo, North Dakota was the site of the final Regional of 2019, where eight (8) players battled it out over three (3) rounds. At the end, James Heaney (BCSWowbagger) emerged victorious and undefeated playing an Original Series Federation deck that seeded a whopping twenty-seven (27) dilemmas. As James said in his tournament report, "Though this build was untested, I hoped it would hold its own, win me enough games to keep my rating more or less intact, and give everyone a good time." Clearly it held its own, and then some.

At least six (6) players, including James, piloted Federation decks during the tournament, including runner-up Jason Tang (Pants o.t. Tal Shiar) and 3rd place player phaserihardlyknowher, returning to the game after a several year hiatus. Rounding out the top 4 was Matthew Hayes (karonofborg13), who was also playing . Ben Johnson (mindmage), Ian Parmenter (Peers), Thomas Ohnstad (TMax1985), and Austen Norman made up the rest of the field; Thomas played a Klingon deck, and Ben's affiliation isn't known at this time. I hope that everyone in attendance had fun!

Meanwhile, if you played in any events, scheduled or unscheduled, formal or casual, let us know! We'd love to feature your events in this column! Send me an email or a private message, and I'll be happy to advertise your event or games to the world in a future column. My contact information is at the bottom of every column each week.

Upcoming Championships

Haimhausen, Germany German National Championships Kaiserfest 2019 Saturday, 6 July OTF Complete Constructed

Indianapolis, Indiana, USA American National Championship GenCon 2019 Friday, 2 August OTF Complete Constructed

Upcoming Tournaments

Online Friday, 5 July The Cage Release Tournament OTF Complete Constructed

Haimhausen, Germany Kaiserfest 2019 Side Event Friday, 5 July OTF Warp Speed Limited

Haimhaused, Germany Sunday, 7 July OTF Limited Draft

Livonia, Michigan, USA Sunday, 7 July OTF Legacy Constructed

Tournament Previews

The big news this weekend is Kaiserfest 2019, hosted by Johannes Klarhauser (Kaiser), from whom the event gets its name. The main event there will be the German National Championship on Saturday, July 6th. The 2nd ranked player in the world, Meinhard S. Rohr (Mogh, Son Of Worf), with a 2009 rating, will no-doubt be a favorite to win the OTF Complete Constructed event, but the rest of the field will be no cakewalk either. Including Meinhard, there are ten (10) players pre-registered for this epic event of four (4) rounds of 1E and BBQ! Sounds awesome! Will anyone be able to dethrone Meinhard?

The German National at Kaiserfest is preceded by a Warp Speed Sealed event on Friday, complete with pizza, and succeeded by a Rainbow draft event on Sunday. It looks like many of the main event attendees will be joining these side events, with five (5) players and six (6) players pre-registered respectively. Johannes looks to be putting on a great weekend!

On Sunday, Jon Carter (pfti) will be hosting an OTF Legacy tournament at RIW Hobbies in Livonia, Michigan. Four (4) players, including David Bowling (tomek), a multi-time World Champion, are pre-registered for this event. OTF Legacy is the format that continues to allow the use of backwards compatible cards, except for the two that were originally banned - the original Qol and Standard Orbit.

Looking ahead, we've got the American National Championship in about a month at GenCon, in Indianapolis, Indiana. So far, only one player - Robin Honeycutt - is pre-registered to play First Edition on the field of Lucas Oil Stadium! But no doubt there will be more, as we're running quite a few events at the con. Don't worry if they say they are sold out; we can almost always accommodate more players than listed.

Short Takes (In Other News)

• Ceti Eel and Memory Wipe are banned in OTF tournaments. As announced on Monday, the cards Ceti Eel and Memory Wipe were added to the OTF Ban List. Details are outlined in the article, but essentially both cards were key pieces in degenerate decks.


• The World Championships are in Vienna, Austria from August 8th - 11th. Players can participate in all four (4) days of events for just 50 euro, with tons of events and side events for 1E players to enjoy.


• Matt Zinno (commdecker) shares an deck. His article gives the deck and explains how it was built, giving you a jumping off point for trying out the new cards in The Cage.


• I'm hosting office hours this Saturday, July 6th, at 10 AM Pacific. I'll be hosting my next office hours this weekend, at 10 AM Pacific time on Saturday, July 6th. During the hour, I'll take any questions that pop up while I work on First Edition. Join me if you're free!


• What do you want to see in sets #2 and #3 of the OS block? Discovery suxs started a discussion thread on this very topic, and it looks like a universal MEDICAL personnel is high on several people's lists. What do you want?


• What card makes you smile when you play it? And which are just the worst? Remaining as prolific as ever, Discovery suxs asks players to weigh in on the cards that make them smile and the cards that are just the worst. What cards fall where for you?

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That's all for this week's roundup of First Edition news and events. For more news, you can follow The Continuing Committee on Facebook, Twitter, or bookmark our front page. News about upcoming First Edition projects can be found in the most recent Project Status Update from March 2019. My next office hours will be on Saturday, July 6th at 10 AM Pacific. If you've got an event coming up and you'd like to be featured in this column, or if you have comments about this column's content, feel free to contact me at cplaine@gmail.com or on the forums via PM to MidnightLich. Until next week, may you expand your power in the universe and live long and prosper.

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