Paradise Lost, Paradise Found

by Charlie Plaine, Director of First Edition

12th August 2022

"I've done far worse than kill you, ...I've hurt you. And I wish to go on ...hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me. As you left her. Marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, ...buried alive. Buried alive!"
- Khan, The Wrath of Khan

"Sha Ka Ree. ...'The Source'. ...'Heaven.' ...'Eden.' ...'Call it what you will. The Klingons call it 'Qui'Tu.' To the Romulans, it's 'Vorta Vor.' The Andorian word is, ...is unpronounceable. Still every culture shares this common dream of a place from which creation sprang. For us, that place will soon be a reality."
- Sybok, The Final Frontier

40 years ago, in the summer of 1982, The Wrath of Khan was released in theaters. Khan, an enemy of the crew of the Starship Enterprise from TOS' "Space Seed," returned as one of the best villains in Star Trek history. 7 years later, in 1989, we met Sybok and his followers in The Final Frontier. And then, in the spring of 2002, Decipher released The Motion Pictures, bringing Khan, Sybok, and their adventures to First Edition. Today, we celebrate Khan, Sybok, and TMP with the release of Paradise Lost, a new, 36-card virtual expansion. Paradise Lost is the 2nd of 2 expansions based on the classic film era, and we can't wait to share it with you after a long time working on these cards. Paradise Lost will be released on Friday, August 26th and legal one week later, on Friday, September 2nd. Over the next 2 weeks, there will be spoilers on this website (and on social media), along with articles, discussions, and tips on strategy.

Meet the Team
However, before we jump into spoilers and card discussions, I want to take the time to introduce the design team. But, even though design is the most visible and public-facing role, there are dozens of different volunteers - testers, rules experts, creative team members, artists, and proofreaders - all worked on these cards for months to make them the best they can be. Please join me in thanking all of the volunteers for all that they have done (and that they'll continue to do) to keep the game alive. We all owe you a great debt.

With that said, I'd like to introduce the four (4) member design team for Paradise Lost. If these names look familiar, it's because most of this expansion was designed together with Second Star to the Right, and thus this is the same team.

Paddy Tye [KazonPADD], Lead Designer
Designer Profile: Paddy Tye
Paddy's been a regular among First Edition design teams lately, and Paradise Lost is at the end of a busy few years for him. He is a hard worker and talented designer that guided the team to many interesting places during his work on this expansion. I always appreciate working with Paddy on a project he's managing, because he is quick to respond to my questions and always works with me to address issues.

Derrick Marsh [HoodieDM], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Derrick Marsh
This is the 3rd expansion for Derek, following from his work on Dogs of War, Second Star to the Right, and now Paradise Lost. In working with Paddy, Derrick has been able to pivot between ears and tasks with the skill of a much more experienced card designer. I appreciate Derrick's sense of what is good in the modern and current game, and what isn't.

Niall Matthew [sexecutioner], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Niall Matthew
Aside from being a regular colleague of Paddy, Niall was a no-brainier to include on this project because of his love of, and experience with, Khan. There wasn't much of the Khan stuff left in last year's Second Star to the Right, but you'll really see his hand shine through in this expansion. Niall is always looking for cracks in designs and angles to push in his design work.

Allen Gould [AllenGould], Assistant Designer
Designer Profile: Allen Gould
Prior to these 2 classic films expansions, Allen hadn't been on a design team since 2018's Metamorphosis, but that break didn't dull his skill nor his insights. He is detail oriented and a traditionalist designer, which is a great counterbalance to a team with designers with more modern sensibilities. Allen is never afraid to ask "why are we doing this?" or "why isn't this being done like this?" and it always results in better, higher-quality cards.

Two Sides of the Same Coin
Let's start off with a thought exercise. I'm going to give you the description of a deck, and I want you to tell me which faction or deck I'm describing. Here's the text:

The deck is mostly a deck with a limited supply of native personnel available. The deck wants to be interactive, as there is a way to "recruit" additional personnel - either yours or your opponents - to your side.

Did you guess Khan? Or maybe Sybok? The truth is, either one of those would be correct. As designed by Decipher, the Khan-deck and the Sybok-deck ended up very similar to each other. There are differences - Ceti Eel puts a pretty stiff penalty on the personnel you grab, and gives you a way to score a lot of bonus points. Sybok decks using Release This Pain don't really change the personnel you grab in any significant way, but this comes with potential compatibility issues and not a lot of other mechanical themes. This truth was one of the more challenging aspects of designing these cards - how would the design team make these two very similar decks with very similar mechanics play differently?

Originally, the designers tried to just give these decks more of the same. But during testing, it became clear that something wasn't working. Side-by-side, it was almost always better to use Release This Pain to grab personnel than Ceti Eel, because the latter imposes penalties but the former does not. Especially since the primary use of Khan and Ceti Eel was with Invasive Transporters and a personnel denial deck, which was distinctly miserable to play against. There was some experimentation with new mechanics for one or both of these factions, but those felt like throwing away what we had instead of making it work. Remember, we were working on this at the same time as both Second Star to the Right and The Motion Pictures Remastered. We had new tools for decks in general, but also wanted to reprint Decipher's work around the same time - throwing away Ceti Eel or Release This Pain felt wrong. So the design team and I decided to split the expansion in 2 and use extra time to make Khan and Sybok feel better to play.

The solution ended up being not one of mechanics, but of targets. If one of the decks focused on grabbing opponent's personnel, and the other on expanding the pool of your own personnel, design could encourage different play patterns for the 2 options. Starting with Paradise Lost, you will find encouragements for Khan players to go out and grab opponent's personnel with Ceti Eel. Likewise, Sybok players will be rewarded more for playing Release This Pain on their own personnel. Neither of these provisions are absolute - Sybok can still use A Passionate Vulcan to show up at an opponent's mission and recruit a key personnel. And a Khan deck might include a key personnel (like the recently unbanned Dixon Hill) and drop a Ceti Eel on them to ensure they don't lose them. But over the next two weeks, you'll see cards that encourage the 2 decks to target different groups - keeping them similar, but with different focuses.

Staying on the Spaceline
As we previously discussed with Second Star to the Right, we want decks to have the option of playing on the spaceline instead of using the Camp Khitomer time location. And to be clear, Camp Khitomer is always an option for both Khan and Sybok, just as it is for and decks. But we still wanted each deck to have a way to avoid time locations, and neither Sybok nor Khan decks could really use a headquarters. Thus, the options for Khan and Sybok both show up in Paradise Lost as new cards.

For Khan decks, you've got To Rule in Hell. This incident which seeds on Ceti Alpha V - Study Planetary Devastation from The Cage - starts by allowing you to seed Khan anywhere at that mission; it also allows your cards to report there. Now, to be fair, you could already do this (at least for Khan-related cards) with Cold Station 12. However, now a Khan player has options - you can use CS12, To Rule in Hell, or both! But the seeded card and the reporting are where the similarities of the 2 cards end. TRiH also grants the ability to trade 2 cards in hand (via discard) to bring Khan and any of your personnel with him back to Ceti Alpha V. Did you send them out to grab some opponent's personnel? Now you can get them back right away! And finally, To Rule in Hell allows the Khan player to relocate augments with Augment Aggression instead of downloading them. As you can see, just this one card gives Khan players good mobility for getting to an opponent and sticking some Ceti Eel's in their personnel's ears.

Sybok decks get something completely different - a facility. Paradise City, a new Outpost, seeds on Nimbus III - a new mission which we'll show you during the spoiler period. As an outpost, it gives you all the standard reporting functionality as any other outpost. However, this one allows you to seed J'Onn, giving you the ability to play an extra Release This Pain right on turn 1. The 2nd ability of Paradise City lets you download Sybok there in place of your normal card play. Between the seed of J'Onn and downloading Sybok, you're locked and loaded to start playing 2 Release This Pain a turn right away. And, if the worst happens and Sybok dies, you can replace him the next turn.

But you'll find the designers have given all the decks some new toys. Professor Scott - a new Scotty - can be used by any deck to extend the RANGE of a ship. He also happens to be this expansion's release promo, if you'd like to check out how to get a prize kit for a release event. There's also a few more personnel, some useful events for decks, new missions, and some new Federation and Klingon cards. And don't worry - we haven't slept on new toys for Khan and Sybok either!

During the 1st week of spoilers - Khan Week - you'll see some new Khan-related personnel, some new ways to get your augments to the opponent's personnel (or vice versa), and a new way to use personnel once you've hit them with Ceti Eel. Today's preview - Commander Chekov - gives some infiltration options to the Khan deck. He's also a personnel with "Khan" in lore, meaning he natively works with your Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Cold decks. Basically, this version of Ensign Chekov is already eeled for you (and he's not the only eeled personnel in Paradise Lost.

Sybok decks gets lots of love too, because they had much less of an identity than Khan decks. Our 2nd week of spoilers - Sybok Week - will focus on his galactic army of light. You'll get to see Sybok's new reporting engine, a way to reliably get Release This Pain into hand multiple times during a game, new personnel, new ships, and one of the coolest Objectives we've ever made. As a preview, today you can see Commander Uhura. As a card, she fits into any deck; but she's also got the icon, and thus is compatible with Sybok-and-friends right away. You'll also see a new version of the Starship Enterprise - "Chariot of God" - perfect for use in a Sybok deck.

Now that I've shown you a taste of Paradise Lost, we hope you're excited to see more. Every day between now and the release date of Friday, August 26th, there will be at least one new card to see here on this website. We've also got articles from authors scatter throughout, and I know there will be spoilers on social media as well. If you'd like to discuss what you're seeing, don't forget to visit the Gameplay (1E) forum. On that forum, will be a Q&A thread where the design team will be answering questions as you have them. After all of this build up, Paradise Lost will become legal on Friday, September 2nd. We hope you're as excited to see these cards and we are to show them to you! Now, don't be like Mr. Scott - go brush up on your Milton!

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