Remastering a Classic

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

28th June 2021

For the better part of the last twenty years (20), I've attended GenCon and run events for Decipher and subsequently the Continuing Committee. These events have run the gamut from small, three (3) or four (4) person side events to forty (40) person World Championships. But one of the most consistently popular events over the years has always been the 1E Official Tournament Series Deck (OTSD) sealed event. Largely considered by many players to be the best way to play 1E sealed, these events frequently drew up to sixteen (16) players - and why not? For most of that time, the OTSD boxes were available for $2. But over the years, the supply of those beautiful little boxes ran out, and prices climbed. It was back in 2016 or 2017 when we realized that we'd need to do something to preserve the fun of this format for the future. And thus, the idea of a virtual reprint of the fixed cards from those beautiful boxes was born.

Today, five (5) years later, we're finally releasing Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered. If you're unfamiliar, a "remastered" expansion is one where we go back through the original cards and "touch them up" to modern standards - along with new, high-resolution images. Our last such project was Enterprise Collection Remastered in 2018, but today OTSD Remastered joins the ranks. We'll be showing off these cards in all their glory over the next week ahead of the release on Monday, July 5th. As these are already existing cards, this is being treated like an errata and they will be legal immediately on that date.

But first, I must thank the absolutely herculean efforts of our First Edition Art and Rules teams. Jörn Engström (admiral-mogh) put in a lot of hours to recreate the original Decipher images and then Johnny Holeva (jjh) built the cards anew. As Johnny said, "without Jörn, there is no remaster." Thanks to them, you'll soon have clean, crisp, printable versions of the original staple cards like Spacedoor and Unscientific Method. At the same time the Art team was hard at work, our Rules team - led by James Heaney (BCSwowbagger) went through each card with a fine-toothed comb. The OTSD was released in 1998, and quite a lot has changed in the game over the years. After all, of the 20 cards in the original expansion, fourteen (14) of them - 70% - had entries in the glossary. Thanks to the hard work of our Rules volunteers, we've eliminated five (5) of those entries and significantly reduced the length of four (4) more. Now, most of the cards do exactly what they say to do, and it's been done with only extremely minor functional changes - with one exception (which you'll see later this week.)

What's In the Cards?
It was important for us to keep the spirit, intent, and gameplay of these cards as much as possible. Words may be different on the cards, but they largely work the same as they always have (with the possible exception of some odd corner cases). Spacedoor still lets you flip it to download a ship, nullify a Static Warp Bubble, and mirror an opponent's Red Alert!. But now, it spells out much more clearly how that works - and the glossary entry will be dropping from one hundred and twenty-four (124) words to just nine (9). This is what we are calling a "clarifying errata," much like the other ones we've done earlier this year. The function of the card is the same in 99% of games, but the wording is more clear for new and existing players alike.

Another category of changes is what we call minor changes, i.e. fixing mistakes. In general, these are the types of things we wouldn't do on their own - but while we were remaking the cards anyway, we pulled the trigger. One example is changing the title from Armus - Sticky Situation (with the hyphen) to the more standard Armus: Sticky Situation. Would we have bothered making this change if we weren't already working on the card? Probably not. After all, the glossary makes a "hyphen" and a "colon" in a title equivalent. Another example in this category is correcting lore references. Now, when you read through Suna's lore, you'll know he's referring to "William T. Riker" (a card that exists) instead of "William Riker" (a card that does not exist). And, while we were under the hood, Suna picked up a clear gender (male) and species (Tilonian).

The final category of improvements we've made are "quality of life" changes, things designed to make the game easier to play and understand. Not only does this help lower the barrier of entry for new and returning players, but it reduces the cognitive load for experience players. A great example of this is the updated wording on Establish Relations. With the addition of two words to the game text - "you may" - the card practically functions the same. But now, there aren't mandatory actions that can cause problems if forgotten in tournament play. And someone that doesn't know otherwise wouldn't be required to reveal their entire deck to an opponent for not having (or choosing not to download) a personnel. Now that it's optional, it's much easier to avoid tournament and memory issues for all players.

Even though we don't have new cards for you to look at, we hope you'll take the time over the next week to appreciate the hard work of our volunteers as we reveal cards from Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered. If you're interested in giving these cards a spin, consider signing up to play in Jon Carter's (pfti) Online OTSD Regional which will be using the newly updated cards. You can experience 1E as it was originally meant to be played in this Open event, and get a chance to pick up some shiny virtual Regional foils! And as the world begins to open up again, maybe you can pick up a box or two of white-bordered Premiere and some Alternate Universe, print out a few copies of OTSD Remastered, and have an old fashioned, in-person event. In any case, we hope you enjoy this new remastered expansion. It'll be available for download (and immediately legal) one week from today on Monday, July 5th.

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