Public Playtesting Wanted - TNG-Only Card Pool

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

23rd April 2020

In 2019, the Department of First Edition gauged public interest in participating in public testing opportunities. We thought that including all of you in our efforts to test new formats, new card pools, rules changes, potential errata, or ban pardons would give you all the opportunity to directly contribute to the game's future. Additionally, we'd also get valuable data for our use informing future decisions. Fortunately for us, most of you were interested in the idea. Today, I'm happy to announce the first of these initiatives: we want you to test a new, TNG-only card pool!

Goals & Methodology
The goal of this test is to determine if defining a card pool only by a physical property of the card - property logo, in this case - is a successful way to define a card pool. Right now, we have to define limited card pools by expansions or lists, like we do with the Block Legal Card Pool. The Department of First Edition has hypothesized that a card pool defined by the Star Trek: The Next Generation property logo will be an easier way to create a fun, functional, and smaller pool of cards than the Complete pool. But we need to test the hypothesis, and that's where we want your help.

To do this, we're asking for your help in two aspects. First, we want you to build decks and do theory crafting on possible decks using the defined card pool (see below for the exact definition.) There will be a lot of staple cards that won't be available, and we want to know which ones you absolutely can't replace, or which ones have different options. For example, you won't be able to use Regenerate, but maybe you can pull Res-Q or A Second Chance at Life out of the binders. We've started a thread on the Deck Designs (1E) board specifically to discuss decks and options in this card pool. If you're looking for advice, or want to get help, or just want to discuss the shortcomings and advantages of the card pool, that will be a central place for discussion.

The second piece will be playing games using these decks. Even though we're still going to be self-isolating and social distancing for awhile, if you do get the chance to play with TNG-only card pool decks, we want to hear about it! And to make this a little easier, I've scheduled an online tournament for June to give you a chance to play your creations against others. And I'll be offering fabulous prizes for participants as well, with opportunities to win more with provided decklists and tournament reports. Aside from the card pool, this will be a standard, month-long OTF Constructed tournament. I'd really appreciate it if you would participate if able. But if not, that's okay too - even kitchen table games with this card pool will be helpful!

Our goal is to find out how high the barriers to participation of this format may be, its strengths and weaknesses, and its level of fun and competitiveness. Keep some of these things in mind as you're deck building and/or playing games, because we'll want to hear about them.

TNG-Property Logo Only Card Pool
With that out of the way, let's officially define the pool of available cards for this format. As you might have guessed, you are limited to cards that have the Star Trek: The Next Generation property logo printed on them. Any card that has multiple printings is legal in this card pool as long as any printing of the card features the appropriate property logo. If you're playing online, We strongly encourage you to stick to ST: TNG cards, but if you're playing with physical cards and you can only find your Voyager copies of Starfleet Type II Phaser, you're okay.

Obviously, while this restriction provides a smaller but sizeable pool of cards - one thousand and forty (1,040) as of today - it's not sufficient on its own. Since missions do not have a property logo, this card pool also includes all missions printed in the game. We're curious to see if anyone can cook up some Gamma, Delta, or Mirror Quadrant shenanigans!

That means the final card pool is defined as follows:

• Any card with a Star Trek: The Next Generation property logo.
• Any version of a card that has a printing with the Star Trek: The Next Generation property logo.
• Any mission.

We hope that you'll join us on this adventure. It's not only going to help us decide if this card pool has a viable path forward, but will inform future public playtesting opportunities. To that end, we'll be posting a survey later in this testing period that will ask you about your participation (or your lack thereof, because that's important to know too). But for now, we wanted to let you know this is happening and give you the chance to start working on decks for the June tournament. We hope you'll join us in this grand experiment!

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