Weekly 1E Roundup - 1 APRIL 2020

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

1st April 2020

Welcome to the Weekly 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 have questions, comments, or suggestions for content, you can contact me at cplaine@gmail.com or on the forums via PM to MidnightLich. I'm happy to write about your tournaments, get togethers, or other 1E-related goings-on. But for now, let's get into the column and see what's been going on in the world of First Edition!

The Big News

We've been continuing to release spoilers and content previewing The Neutral Zone, the fifty-four (54) card virtual expansion releasing this Friday, April 3rd. Since my last column, we've seen an article from Maggie Geppert (jadziadax8) about the new Android deck possibilities, and another about no-hand Starfleet from set designer Paddy Tye (KazonPADD). Daniel Matteson (OKCoyote) has an article today about one of the most fun cards in the expansion.

And of course, there have been spoilers on this site and on our Facebook page, including a new one for you in this column - Tricyanate Poisoning. This is a cool dilemma that works really well in a deck with The Squire's Rules, but can be very powerful when seeded normally. If you're a fan of interactive spacelines and/or dilemmas with unusual requirements, this dilemma will be right up your alley. Check it out, along with all of the other cards in The Neutral Zone, when it releases this Friday.

This Day in Trek

Twenty-nine (29) years ago today, in the spring of 1991, one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired - "The Nth Degree." Featuring Barclay, one of the few recurring characters on this show, and he spent the episode augmented and enhanced by a strange alien probe. In game, this episode is only lightly represented; no doubt Cytherians is the best known card sourced from this classic. If you have the chance, check it out; for fun, I found the old preview on YouTube:

Tournament Reports

We didn't have any tournaments to report on last weekend, but an online tournament from earlier in the month did finish up. In The Dojo's March OTF Complete Constructed tournament, Pope (princedetenebres) played a Maquis / Enterprise-E / Terran Empire deck that sounds impressive. While the decklist isn't available, he wrote a detailed tournament report outlining his deck and his games. He played a similar, if not identical deck, in February, which you can read about in that tournament report. It must be working for him, because he's now won two tournaments with it. Could this be the new streak?

The Dojo's tournament drew six players, with the aforementioned Pope winning the day. Niall Matthew (sexecutioner) and Christian Hoffmann (Ensign Q) took 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Nobody has posted their decks, but according to Pope's report, Niall was playing Borg. Sebastian Kirstein (Caretaker's Guest) came in 4th, Greg Dillon (Latok) claimed 5th with a deck, and Mathew McCalpin (Keiimaster) rounded out the field with a deck of his own.

In these uncertain times, I want to hear about you having any chance to play Trek! Did you play online? Tell me about it! Play with family? Send me pictures! I'm happy to cover tournaments and casual games in this column - you just have to let me know. You can find my contact information at the bottom of every column, and you're welcome to email me, PM me, or just post on the forums. So if you're out there, playing 1E in any way, shape, or form, tell us about it!

Tournament Previews

In spite of a global pandemic and efforts to physically distance ourselves, we've got two (2) online tournaments kicking off this weekend, with two more next weekend.

First up is the Online Regional, an OTF Complete Constructed event with seventeen (17) registered players. While that's not the biggest online event, it's certainly up there - and there's still time to pre-register if you want to join in. We looked at several of the top rated players that are pre-registed last week, but of note are the fact that eleven (11) of those pre-registered are in the Top 11 players in the world. This is going to be a tough field! And remember, The Neutral Zone nor any potential errata or bans on Monday, will not affect this tournament.

Monday will see the April event for The Dojo begin, another OTF Complete Constructed event. As of the time of this writing, only two players are pre-registered: Niall Matthew (sexecutioner) and Mathew McCalpin (Keiimaster). But there are still several days for one more player to jump in and sanction this event, so if you're interested, please do!

If you have upcoming events, get togethers, or anything else scheduled that's 1E related, let me know. I'd love to feature you and your friends in this column. I typically only see them if they're scheduled in our tournament software, so if you're not using that, please let me know!

Short Treks (In Other News)

• The Board of Directors held the March 2020 meeting last weekend. Each month, the Board of Directors meets and goes over department reports. There wasn't a lot of new business or First Edition news, but you're welcome to watch the replay or read the minutes.


• I've returned to holding regular office hours - for now, weekly. In last week's stream, I was joined by Maggie and Dan Hamman (SirDan) and we talked a bit about the power of the Borg and decks. This week's stream will be Thurday, 2 April, at 3 PM Pacific and I'll show off and tell stories about The Neutral Zone.


• The Neutral Zone has prompted a flurry of activity on the Rules Questions forum. If you don't know, this forum is a great place to ask rules questions. Right now, players are asking about android rules, Temporal Benefactor rules, Hard-Working, Happy Androids, and The Squire's Rules. Check it out!


• Spectre9 has started a few discussions about Borg decks. Forum user Spectre9 started two different threads about Borg, an affiliation he's found to be troubling in the modern game. First, he wanted to talk about overpowered Borg cards, and recently started a topic about Transwarp Network Gateway. If you're interested in Borg, check these threads out.


• Do regions need to be fixed? Last week's Friday Question was all about regions, and that discussion forum user boromirofborg to start another discussion about how regions might be fixed. It's generated some good discussion, so check it out if you're interested.


• Don't forget to join the discussion about The Neutral Zone! If you'd like to ask questions of the design team, they're still answering them in the Q&A thread. There's also an open discussion thread for various topics as new cards are revealed.


• Should the CC make new cards? Last week's Friday Question was all about making new cards, inspired by a discussion of characters I want to see in future seasons of Star Trek: Picard. So far, the majority are in favor of new cards - what do you think?

First Edition March Madness

It's the penultimate week of our 2020 First Edition March Madness tournament, and we're down to the final four (4) personnel. Three males - Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, and Mr. Spock - and Seven of Nine, the only female, and personnel left in the competition. She's also the lowest seed - 15 - to ever advance this far, and I'm eager to see if she can continue her streak of upsets. If you would like to see how we got here, you can check out the previous results: the first round, the Round of 32, the Sweet 16, and the Elite 8. Now, it's time to cull the field again and leave us with our two (2) championship personnel! Your votes will decide!

Click on the link below to open the poll - we're down to just one.

Bracket	Link to Poll
Final 4	Vote on the Final 4

To sweeten the pot, we'll be giving away six (6) random First Edition borderless promo cards - one each week - to a participant who votes in the polls. You'll need to enter your email address to win, and an email address is required - if you don't care about winning, then feel free to enter in something like "no@nope.com" instead. But if you do enter your email, you'll be entered each week into a drawing to win a gorgeous foil promo! Each poll you complete is an additional entry, so if you vote in each division this week, you'll get four (4) chances to win!

Last week's winner is Executive Officer Maggie Geppert (jadziadax8) - congrats, Maggie! She joins our previous winners Brian, Eirik, and Cristoffer and will be getting her very own borderless foil promo shipped to Chicago soon. To all of you that voted, whether you won or not, thank you for voting. Don't forget, we'll still have two more winners - remember to vote each week and you'll be eligible to win a borderless virtual promo of your own!

The Time Capsule

The CC has a long history of April Fools Day jokes, and even with COVID-19 running amok, we wanted to continue that tradition. I hope you had a chance to read at laugh at our Social Distancing Ban Announcement article, written by Jon Carter and Brian Skyes (Armus). I thought it would be fun, since this column lands on April 1st, to look back at the jokes of past years:

In 2019, now retired Errata Lead Matt Zinno (commdecker) announced a bunch of change to Ferengi. At the time, decks were getting strong looks from Errata, and there was a desire to poke at that bear a little by targeting the least problematic group of personnel ever.

2018 was one of my favorite pranks, where Lucas Thompson (edgeofhearing) created a neural network to generate 1E cards. The results (Commander Hand!) were epic. He also did the same for Second Edition cards.

Matt Zinno announced that 2017 would see Tribbles cards converted into First Edition. The article is complete with some examples, based on the corresponding Tribble powers, on 1E templates!

From 2013 through 2016, we took a break from doing April Fools Day jokes. But in 2012, we announced a schedule of Worlds tournaments all over the globe. Of course, if you read the first letter of each down the left side, it spelled out "Happy April Fools Day"!

2011 brought another of my favorite jokes, as Dan Hamman announced animated cards for online only play. And we don't mean cards from the animated series - these were moving cards! It's absolutely still a great joke and worth checking out.

In 2010, The Continuing Committee announced it had made a deal with CBS, Paramount, Decipher, and a fictional game company to produce new cards in stores. The announcement sounded legitimate, with business plans, new expansions, and the idea of introducing cards from the 2009 movie. It was a very controversial joke.

In 2009, we had a joke that wasn't really a joke, as we announced a new Tribbles. It would have been really funny, except it was true - April 1st, 2009 was the release date for More Tribbles, More Troubles, the first of many new Tribbles expansions.

And finally, in our first, and arguably our best joke, we announced that we would be adding GalaxyQuest as a new affiliation in Second Edition. (At the time, the CC wasn't supporting First Edition, so they didn't get to be part of the fun.) Brad DeFruiter (Brad), who volunteered for the CC after working for Decipher, designed and made all of the cards and images in that article.

I hope you enjoyed this look back at our historical April Fools Day jokes. Be wary of everything you read online today, but have a good laugh at any good jokes.

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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 2020. Join me tomorrow, Thursday, April 2nd, at 3 PM Pacific for the latest edition of my Office Hours. 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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