The Making of a Non-Unique

by Lucas Thompson, Ambassador

22nd August 2020

In addition to working on complex cards like the Harbinger dilemmas, I also really enjoy working on personnel like Leodis. He's not a complicated personnel at first glance, but a lot went in to making him.

First: why did he get made? Well, initially this set had a whole cycle of Past Romulans, which had effects only if you commanded some number of other Past Romulans. Later in the life of the expansion those requirements loosened (before eventually they were cut altogether), but the first iteration required you to only have Past Romulans in play. That was a very tough restriction with the available Past Romulan personnel pool, so another non-unique was needed; preferably, one that came without restriction or complication.

And, because I have a soft spot for Reman-focused Romulan decks, Leodis became that non-unique. There were a couple Remans who showed up in Enterprise, which opened the opportunity for a Past Romulan non-unique who also happened to be a Reman. He was a 2-cost 6-5-8 (Jem'hadar stats) from the start, since we didn't want him to boost Shock Troops quite as much as a 1-coster would, and he had to pull more weight with his skills than a 1-coster could. However the particular skills he had churned around a whole lot.

Initially, his skills were based on what Past Romulans (including the other cards in the set) needed, though one skill pretty much had to be Security from a story perspective. Honor was also on the first version, because most of the unique Romulans we were looking at were jerks, and he presented the opportunity to widen the skill base a little bit at least. In testing Leodis kept being used in traditional Romulan decks, where having skills like Medical, Navigation, Intelligence, and Leadership on a two cost 8-strength guy was too good.

So, when he lost his fellow Romulan cards, we focused on honing the rest of the skills. The honor was kept since it would also fill out the Reman skill pool a bit. Remans already have one geology, but a second would be helpful as Supervise Dilithium Mine (an important Reman mission requires a double dose. As a result, he absolutely could not have leadership, can't be getting all of that in one place. Anthropology filled the final spot, as it would be a new to Remans, but very redundant in a traditional Romulan deck.

His security stayed not only for story reasons but also for balance reasons. Within the pool of Remans, he would be the third security (including the other 2-cost 8-strength guy), and it makes including him more of a deck-building puzzle. After all, when we want to make sure that, even if some Reman deck-building difficulty is reduced by Leodis, there's still a compelling tension when you're working on the deck. Enjoy!

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