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Premiere Remastered: Rules Supplement

by James Heaney, Rules Manager (1E)

24th January 2025

Hello, Star Trek players, and welcome to that best of all days: the release day of a new expansion pack. Well... "new" and "expansion" are both dubious here, because today is the release of Premiere Remastered, a top-to-bottom overhaul of all 363 cards in the game's original 1994 release!

If you just want to read the supplement, here it is: the Premiere Remastered Rules Supplement.

Rollout Plan

Ordinarily, a rules supplement for a new expansion is effective immediately, and all rules documents are updated immediately alongside thesupplement. Not this time! The Premiere Remastered rules supplement becomes legal the same day as the new cards: Friday, January 31. The updated Rulebook will also launch on that date. The updated Glossary and Revisions Database entries can't easily be batch-updated, so those changes will roll out incrementally throughout the week.

What's in the Supplement

This is a very long rules supplement, almost certainly the longest of the Virtual Era, and probably since First Contact in 1997. Most of that is what I call "plumbing": entries no longer needed (thus deleted), examples that needed to be updated, and fixes for old exceptions.

Many of the other changes are minor touch-ups or clarifications in light of new gametext, which I hope is mostly self-explanatory. However, there are some notable changes players will want to know about. I'm going to walk you through those, noting changes in bold blue text as usual.

Changes to General Rules / Cards Outside Premiere

"Using" Equipment

Federation PADD

In Premiere Remastered, we have updated the traditional Equipment templates to follow new wording. In particular, we have gotten rid of the phrase "Federation use only" (or "Klingon and Non-Aligned use only" or whatever). Of course, many cards outside Premiere still use that templating, but we wanted to make sure that Premiere equipment worked the same as other equipment throughout the game. (Having Premiere equipment work slightly differently would be very confusing!) This led to a broader debate within Rules about the whole concept of "using" equipment, and I'll spare you the details, but the upshot is this:

When an equipment card says "[Affiliation] use only," that means that the card's gametext can only be activated by a personnel who has that affiliation. However, the equipment can be used for other purposes by any of your personnel present.

This is a reversal of a very old Decipher-era ruling that was reinforced several times in the Virtual Era. For example, according to the old rule, if your [Kli] crew had a [Rom] Romulan Disruptor it could not give that equipment away for points at Kressari Rendezvous, or run cargo with it on Bok'Nor, blow up a Bajoran Shrine with it, overcome Oh No!, or protect someone from Denevan Neural Parasites. Now, you can!

In Trek logic: even untrained personnel can use alien equipment for basic and simple purposes, like selling a gun on the black market, or using the gun to protect one person with one gun from some parasites. However, enhancing an entire team with a single weapon means you've turned the single weapon into a force multiplier: you're laying down cover fire, exploiting advantages, even training your comrades in small-arms tactics based around the weapon. Pulling that off requires training, or at least affinity or familiarity, and that is why many equipment cards can only reach their full potential in the presence of a member of a specific affiliation.

As a side effect, this reverses a fairly recent we issued about the interaction between Stone Knives and Bearskins, Vidiian Harvester, and Organ Theft. We ruled a few months ago (under the old rule) that Stone Knives and Bearskins prevented Organ Theft. We now reverse that ruling: since you can now use an equipment without activating its gametext, you can use a Vidiian Harvester for Organ Theft even while its gametext is suspended.

Espionage Cards

Espionage: Klingon on Federation

There has, for a long time, been a lot of muddle about how Espionage cards work in Modern. If they allow you to attempt an opponent's mission, why don't they overcome Modern's rule against mission theft? After all, specific gametext overrides a general rule! For several years, our answer was that Espionage cards were (basically) an exception to that golden rule, and the mission theft rule trumped Espionage's gametext. That was confusing and strange. Then, in 2020, we adopted the current ruling: Espionage cards allow you to attempt an opponent's mission, but the mission theft rule prevents you from solving the mission. This was confusing, too. It worked, but it introduced an unnatural chasm between "missions you can attempt" and "missions you can solve," and it seems most players were too confused by it to take advantage of the tactical opportunities it opened up. We were determined to make this easier with the re-templating of Espionage cards.

The new Espionage cards are much clearer: they simply add a mission icon to a mission during your mission attempts there. (The icon goes away afterward.) This really gets at the heart of what Espionage cards are trying to do -- allow you to attempt missions from other affiliations -- without implicating the mission theft rule at all. They don't make your opponent's non-stealable missions stealable (but can be played on opponent's stealable missions).

That was interesting in and of itself, but, because we didn't want Espionage cards to work differently from one another across the game, we rewrote all the rulings on Espionage so that all Espionage cards now work exactly like the Premiere Remastered Espionage cards. All Espionage cards now allow you to attempt other missions as if there were a new affiliation icon on that mission. Surprisingly, we were able to pull this off without doing violence to the gametext on the existing Espionage template.

There are some interesting side effects to attempting a mission "as if" it had a new affiliation icon: the mission will be more vulnerable to Linguistic Legerdemain. If Captain Kang is at a [FED] mission where Espionage: Klingon on Federation has been played, his ship will be WEAPONS +2, because Espionage turns the mission into a [KLI] mission during the attempt. Kir'Shara players, take note!

As a consequence of this change, you can now solve an opponent's Samaritan Snare, even in Modern. Also, Treaty: Federation/Romulan/Klingon now prevents you from even attempting an opponent's mission.

Incoming Message

As you can see from our work on Equipment and Espionage, we really tried to make the new templates clearer than the old templates, but we also strove to keep them functionally identical. We strove to do the same with Incoming Message, but fell short. The Premiere Remastered Incoming Message cards work slightly differently from all other Incoming Message cards: Premiere Remastered Incoming Message cards target any of your facilities, and discards upon arrival at the facility's location. Other Incoming Message cards target only outposts, and discard only once you dock there. We hope to eventually update all the Incoming Messages to match the new Premiere Remastered template, but we don't know when that will be able to happen. For now, follow the gametext of the card you are using.

Combo Dilemmas

The same is true for Combo Dilemmas. Most Combo Dilemmas still work the same as their Premiere counterparts, but there are three differences:

Once again, we hope to reconcile these differences soon, but, for now, follow the gametext of the card you are using. There are some tweaks in the supplemental to make sure everything continues working normally in the interim.

To head off the question you Munchkins are already thinking: yes, Combo Dilemmas are still legally copies of their "original" dilemmas, even when their gametext varies slightly (the copy rule has always had an exception for this), so you still cannot seed 2x Radioactive Garbage Scow + 2x Male's Love Interest & Garbage Scow.

Inorganics

The game has several "grouping characteristics." A hand weapon is a card that calls itself a "hand weapon," plus phasers, disruptors, blade weapons, and tommyguns. A "romantic partner" a card that says it is a "romantic partner," plus husbands, mates, mistresses, brides, and so on.

Today, we're adding a new one, which is used several times in Premiere Remastered and which we wish we had thought of back when we revised Ceti Eel and Clone Machine: "inorganic."

An inorganic is any personnel whose lore identifies them as inorganic, plus all androids and holograms.

Simple enough to understand, but it makes the wording of several cards a lot easier. (Even some oddballs, like Hypospray.)

Before you ask: inorganic is not a species, so The Artificial Intelligence's legal species is still "humanoid," even though he is inorganic. We'll probably fix him eventually, but, for now, that's where it stands.

"full RANGE"

This term, previously appearing on Quantum Slipstream Drive, has been generalized and clarified:

full RANGE -  full RANGE means a card's printed RANGE plus enhancements (but not reductions). A card does not have its "full RANGE" available if its RANGE is reduced below full RANGE (for example, by Space Amoeba or damage) or if it has used any RANGE this turn.

"End of Battle"

It was not entirely clear when cards that triggered "at the end of a battle" were supposed to go off. This caused problems for Assimilate Species, and big problems for Klingon Right of Vengeance, a Premiere card. It probably caused other issues we didn't know about. We resolved it by adding a new step to both Ship Battle and Personnel Battle: "End of Battle." This step happens after Determine Winner and before Resolution. It's when cards like Straight and Steady, Multivector Assault Mode, and Assimilate Species hit their triggers. (Klingon Rite of Vengeance, by contrast, activates "just after" the battle, not at "end of battle.")

Discarding Dilemmas

Previously, in Modern, the rule was that dilemmas are placed out-of-play instead of being discarded. This made the text "discard dilemma" a bit puzzling in Modern. Shouldn't that specific text override the general rule? Shouldn't a "discard dilemma" dilemma therefore end up in the discard pile after all?

We tweaked this to solve this and other problems (some involving Temporal Causality Loop): dilemmas now discard to your discard pile. Any dilemma in your discard pile is then immediately removed from the game.

This has no practical impact on 99.9% of players. It used to be that you removed dilemmas from the game without touching the discard pile along the way. Now you remove them from the game while theoretically touching the discard pile for a split second on the way out.

However, a little-known wrinkle in Modern rules was that you could get dilemmas into your discard pile (yes, in Modern!) by stocking them in your draw deck and discarding them with cards like Process Ore. Under the new rule, you can't do that anymore: all dilemmas you discard to your discard pile are immediately removed from the game. I'm genuinely not sure whether anyone on Earth even realized that was a rule, but that rule has now changed, so I'm legally obligated to tell you about it.

We also slightly tweaked the rule that allows you to retrieve dilemmas from outside the game in Modern. (This is allowed if, and only if, a card like Temporal Causality Loop or Scanner Interference instructs you to reseed cards from your discard pile. That's not new, but we've slightly reworded it.)

Individual Premiere Cards With Notable Rulings

Anti-Time Anomaly

The new wording of this card affects all personnel "in play," even those in play "for uniqueness only." (Yes, that includes your Temporal Benefactor. No, it does not include your Contender for Assert Authority.) The new Glossary entry explains how this works in certain edge cases:

Since most cards in your point area (like Kova Tholl) or under other cards (like Assert Authority) are not in play, they are unaffected, but Duranja targets and Temporal Benefactors are in play "for uniqueness only" and so, as the card says, they are affected. (You lose the Duranja points; see worth points for details.)
For Hero of the Empire, the player who initiated this action is the player who played Anti-Time Anomaly. As established by Q-Flash's gametext, this is typically the opponent of the player who owns Anti-Time Anomaly.

Atmospheric Ionization and Distortion Field

Since these cards now clearly prevent all beaming "to" or "from" the planet, Atmospheric Ionization and Distortion Field now clearly prohibit beaming "site-to-site" on a planet (like from a landed ship to the planet surface).

Time Travel Pod, Temporal Rift, and [Univ] Universal Time Locations

Premiere Remastered introduces the concept of [Univ] universal time locations.

Universal time locations have no year and no corresponding spaceline location. They can be reached only by cards that directly send you to one (like Temporal Rift) or cards that allow time travel without requiring it be to a corresponding location or matching year (like Wormhole or Orb of Time). As [Univ] universal cards, they can be played in multiple.

Time Travel Pod and Temporal Rift both use this concept now. This means that the very old rule that there are "two kinds of time travel" in the game is obsolete. The game now has one kind of time travel, and it's time locations.

Time Travel Pod and Temporal Rift no longer provide any protection against Anti-Time Anomaly (just like other forms of time travel).

Supernova

The return of Tox Uthat from the ban list means we may see Supernova popping up a little more often. However, in the process of clarifying Supernova for Premiere Remastered, it ended up slightly (slightly!) toned down. The old version destroyed all features on the mission card except span and corresponding-spaceline-location status, and absolutely all cards played on or located at the mission. The new version retains a couple things:

It you're playing Kolinahr, I suggest that you start playing it on the Vulcan time location instead of on the Vulcan mission. This is perfectly legal (22nd Century ShiKahr is still Vulcan), but the time location can't get hit by a Supernova.

Birth of "Junior"

This isn't new, but what is new is that the game text and rules documents state it clearly: if your ship's RANGE becomes disabled while Birth of "Junior" is on that ship, the ship will not immediately explode. The card disabling your RANGE is reducing it to zero, not "Junior," and "Junior" doesn't care until end of turn. However, when your turn ends, Junior will attempt to reduce your RANGE, and, since your RANGE is already zero, your ship will explode. Good thing to remember if you've been hit with Loss of Orbital Stability.

Crystalline Entity

This dilemma does not kill Rogue Borg or Tribbles anymore.

Masaka Transformations

There was an extremely weird, ancient, and obscure ruling that, if you earned an artifact, and the artifact was in your hand when you got Masaka'd, and you later re-drew the same artifact, you could not treat it as earned unless you could prove it was the same physical copy of the artifact. How? We have no idea. We reversed this ruling. You can play a copy of an artifact you earned if you redraw one after a Masaka hits.

Rogue Borg

The Rogue Borg rules have been substantially tightened up in light of their new text. The short answer to your questions is: Rogue Borg cards now do what they say, and there are no special loaded rules for how to play them.

The slightly longer answer is that the interrupt can no longer be played in multiples (or in response to itself, or in response to a Rogue Borg battle), and Crosis no longer counts as a "member" of the Rogue Borg force.

We also added new rules to the [Self] rules to account for these "self-controlling personnel":

In personnel battle, a [Self] attacks all eligible crew or Away Teams, one after another, and the player whose turn it is decides in what order. A [Self] card stuns or mortally wounds its adversary when possible.

Persistence of Memory

Persistence of Memory "reverses" the effects of certain named cards, with the "reversed" effects defined in a long Glossary entry. Some of those effects have been updated for Premiere Remastered, as follows:

Thought Maker - Name a card type, then take all cards with that card type from your draw deck, shuffle them, and place them on top of deck.

Static Warp Bubble - At the end of each of their turns, this card's controller must discard a card (their choice).

Kivas Fajo: Collector - Opponent must choose a player to draw three cards. Discard event. [also update card title to use colon]

The Traveler: Transcendence - End of each turn, the player not targeted by this card must draw a card. (Static Warp Bubbles are still nullified.)

Supernova: Remove from mission (discard event). Everything previously destroyed there remains destroyed except Mission card, (which is restored (including converting back to a  [P], if applicable) and may be attempted unless already solved).

Anti-Time Anomaly: Plays on table. At the start of each turn, you may remove a damage marker from one ship at any Devron System. When countdown expires, all players reveal their draw decks and take turns placing all of their revealed personnel into play, anywhere. This is not a card play or download. (Uniqueness and reporting restrictions are therefore ignored.)

Facility Cards

Nothing changed on the Premiere Remastered Outposts. Nothing. Not even the stuff you'd expect to change, like the word "Build" being changed to "Play."

That is because we are still working on something special for Premiere outposts: some very interesting Alternate Image Outposts. Because of roadblocks, they were not finished in time for this set. We hope to bring them to you later in this anniversary year. These AIs will not replace the outposts published today, but will, hopefully, provide an option for players who find them attractive. More on this later.

Temporal Causality Loop

This card got its own article.

...and I think the rest of this month's mega-RRD is plumbing, which you can safely ignore or skim past! If you have questions, please ask away on the forum!

Valedictory Postlude

This has been the Rules Committee's most difficult assignment ever. (You probably noticed that we haven't released a rules update since July!) It has also been, in many ways, our most rewarding assignment. Premiere was and is a wonderful, visionary set, but there were a lot of small issues that had cropped up over the years, simply because Decipher did not know (and could not possibly have known!) how the game would evolve mechanics for species, gender, timing, consistency. An annoyingly large part of the Rules Committee's job was to keep that "PAQ cruft" under control and manageable for players, but there were a lot of Premiere cards where players just had to tell novices, "Don't worry about Energy Vortex (or whatever); it's just special." Hopefully, if we did a good job here, that part of our job is over now, and players' lives will improve proportionately.

Before I close out, I really do need to do some thank-yous. First and foremost, the Rules Committee worked overtime on this for months and months. We were reviewing cards all summer, with lively discussions and more than a few outright debates, never letting the pace slack, because our deadline was always looming. I so want to name and thank each of them individually that I was tempted to unilaterally end the decades-old policy of keeping R.C. members secret just for this article, but know that there are some volunteers out there in your communities who quietly, devotedly, slaved over these wordings for hours and weeks and months. I'm sure we made our share of mistakes, but I am proud to vouch that they have made the game a better place to play through their efforts.

Three others deserve special thanks and aren't behind the code of secrecy: the Rules Committee's special consultants on this project. Jarrod Cafaro (Takket) has been the (unofficial) Dilemma Resolution Guide's (official) maintainer for several years now, and offered some clutch notes. Chris Lund (DataNoh) is the Programming Team's rep on the 1E Rules Committee, and he has gone above and beyond the call of his programming duties to provide in-depth feedback and suggestions on a wide range of cards and rules, more than once improving the product. Lastly (but far from leastly), Franklin Kenter is a retired member of the 1E Department (and noted expert on Premiere Rules) who was graciously willing to inspect several versions of this set and provide detailed feedback. Many excellent ideas came from him. Some are very subtle: you might notice that dilemmas now consistently take the active voice, and follow a specific order for listing requirements. (Magic players apparently call this "wooberg order," but we're calling it "Kurlan order.") Other of his suggestions are more drastic: it was at his prompting that we continued hammering Espionage cards until we had forced them to fit into Modern in a more grokkable way.

You're going to be looking at the new cards all day, and the changes not discussed in this article are, we hope, self-explanatory. If not, Director Charlie Plaine has a pair of lovely articles up this morning tersely listing all changes: Part 1 | Part 2. Of course, I am available on the forums to answer questions about new wordings... although, as always, I may defer to the Rules Committee on tough ones!

See You... Out There

Thanks for reading! As always, please let us know if you see any errors, typos, or obsolete text in the rules documents. We are running behind on ordinary rules document maintenance, and we are trying to catch up over the next couple of months.

And be sure to tell us on the forums what you think of everything we've done this month. Hopefully you're happy, but, if not, we want to hear that, too. Until next month, we'll see you on the spaceline!


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