Finally, Another Kira

by Lucas Thompson, Designer

7th November 2020

I generally prefer a more bottom-up approach for Trek card design. I like to start with a gameplay idea to explore, or a gameplay problem to solve, and see where it takes me in terms of making cards. That's not how Kira Nerys, Fifth Columnist (the 20th persona of Kira, and the first in 6 years) started out though.

While solo-testing decks (often beginner decks), I like to let Trek episodes play in the background. It gets me in the mood. Anyways, this particular time I was watching Necessary Evil, which I hadn't seen in a long time. In this episode an old murder case (from his days of working for the Cardassians on Terok Nor) resurfaces, a case that involved Kira. SPOILERS (for a 27-year-old episode): Kira did it. She killed a Bajoran collaborator. She did what she had to. And she effectively hid it from Odo for years.

Anyways, playing in to the theme of interaction, I wanted to riff off premiere's N'Vek. N'Vek was a decent card most of the time, but in the Romulan mirror-match he really shined. Especially in those days, when duplicated missions counted as the same location, a Romulan player teching in N'Vek could wreak havoc on an opponent who happened to be playing the same affiliation. This Kira could do the same for a Bajoran player - though, and this is probably for the best, not quite as potent as those old days, since your Bajor isn't exactly your opponent's Bajor.

When the costing pass came for this set, just prior to playtesting, I was shocked when her costing came out as much higher than N'Vek! But, it turned out to be my mistake; going all the way back to my initial pitch to the team, I'd left off the icon from her ability. Ooops! No wonder, that would be a much more powerful ability. I let the team know but they were in favor of trying her out without the icon and seeing what happened. It certainly would be more interactive!

I was optimistic, but I put her in a Bajoran Artifact Assault deck (not even a full-on-murder-everyone deck like this one by Sean O'Reilly). It was... unpleasant. She went back to her pre-pitch version (which was actually a suggested change from at least one playtester too), where she's something you'd want to be able to use on card in your own deck (maybe on a free Brin, but not a free Kira). However, in a Bajoran mirror-match, she really has a chance to shine against those treacherous collaborators.

Discuss this article in this thread.