April 2025 First Edition Game Changes Update

by Paddy Tye, Department of First Edition

7th April 2025

Happy April everyone - and with European Continentals being held early this year (on Saturday 3rd May) this is the final game changes update before then!

Today's regularly scheduled card pool changes (bans, unbans, errata, and watchlist amendments) consist of errata to correct (and unban) a card from Premiere Remastered, a fix to a compatibility issue, removal of some cheap bonus points, and Tox Uthat is getting placed back on the ban list ahead of European Continetals.

When Premiere Remastered was released, it was a massive undertaking. And inevitably something slipped through a gap in the net. And that slip was Gaps in Normal Space. In trying to ensure wording was comprehensive around what happened if the event was destroyed while your ship was there, one of the original restrictions (needing to be placed between two missions) got lost and wasn't spotted until it was too late. While the Playtesting, Rules, Balance and Creative teams rushed to issue a corrected version, we didn't use all the tools we had available and temporarily ban it, to prevent it being abused at a tournament. And unfortunately exactly that scenario happened at Austrian Nationals in February - apologies to all the players who experienced torment trying to cross the spaceline because of that card. However, it is now fixed and comes back off the ban list.

The recent TNG-only tournament in February, highlighted the compatibility issue within Scientific Diplomacy (potentially incompatible with the outpost). As such, Balance jumped it up the list to receive corrected text to ensure the effected cards can mix as planned!

For years, cards like What Does God Need With A Starship? and Space-Time Portal allowed you to report the Phoenix directly in space and undocked so you could instantly score points for being in orbit. But not any more - now you need any Zefram Cochrane to staff that ship and make it take off properly to earn those points!

Lastly, I get the blame for this next change. Since Premiere Remastered, I've been having fun blowing up opponent's outposts with Tox Uthat and Supernova. Unfortunately my opponent's didn't find it fun; in my most recent tournament they felt they had no option but to concede. I fed this back to the 1E Exec team and the 1E Balance team, who have decided to take that option off the table and keep European Continentals Supernova-free. So Tox Uthat is banned in Modern while the department considers it further. Please note: you are still able to use Supernova with Bashir Founder though!

More discussion and decisions around the future of Tox Uthat and Supernova will follow in the coming months.

Today's changes in detail:

Errata

Gaps in Normal Space
Updated gametext restoring the requirement to place this between two missions.

Insert in spaceline between two missions as a span 4 [1E-S] location. When a ship moves to here, randomly kills a personnel aboard. If nullified, cards here relocate to adjacent location if possible (your choice).

Scientific Diplomacy
Updated gametext to remove compatibility issues with outposts.

Seeds or plays on Veytan. Your Dr. Reyga, T'Pan, and each of your [1E-TNG] personnel with "metaphasic shield" in lore may play for free to your ship or outpost here (once each turn), and while [1E-TNG], are compatible with your cards. When you solve this mission, you may place a [1E-TNG] SCIENCE personnel from your discard pile in your point area (worth points equal to INTEGRITY).

Phoenix (and VP)
Adds requirement of staffing the ship to launch it and earn bonus points.

May take off (score points) once and land once.

Modern Ban List

Tox Uthat

Added to ban list.

Gaps in Normal Space

Removed from ban list, following errata.

Watchlist

Gaps in Normal Space

Added to watchlist, following errata and removal from ban list.

Tox Uthat

Removed from watchlist as moved to ban list.

Coming Soon

Work continues behind the scenes on more errata and the next First Edition expansion Dramatis Personae will be with you very soon.

With Monday 5th May being a public holiday in many countries, next month's update is instead scheduled for Tuesday 6th May 2025.

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