New Designer's Log: Reflections 2.Breen

by Kevin Jaeger, Staff Writer

12th June 2012

Almost a year ago, Chairmain Plaine sent me a message: if I wanted, I could join the design team to work on an as-of-then-unnamed set at the time code-named "Project Iron." After 0.63 seconds of thought I agreed. It was going... to be... awesome.

A while later I was informed that the design team was to consist of me, Charlie, and Richard New. Furthermore, the set was going to have certain design goals including a focus on species and a staunch determination to make both Ferengi and Dominion tournament-competitive. I can only assume that I was asked onto this team because of my familiarity with both. Seriously, what other crazy bastard has played a Ferengi/Dominion deck in the top 16 of Worlds besides me? Richard and Charlie are no slouches either when it comes to Dominion especially. We had our team.

The brainstorming began. Richard and I got to work pitching idea after idea. A few of these ideas are included in the set. However, some had to be removed for various reasons. A couple of weeks in, we realized that we had a dichotomy problem squared. One the one hand, some of what we had put forth was way, way too good. On the other, we had a few that were sucking hard. The second layer of the issue is that the Dominion affiliation is dichotomous: they have two sides that just don't work well together. You can infiltrate or go Jem'Hadar but doing both is difficult. It was decided that we would talk via Skype and solve this multi-layered problem.

After a few hours and lots of impassioned speech-making courtesy of an expensive college education, I was able to convince Charlie and Richard that what the Dominion needed was a cycle to tie the different parts together. Conveniently, the parts of the Dominion are species-based and this was to be a species-themed set. The pitch was simple: Breenflections 2.0.

Here he is, the man(?) of the hour:

Normally, this would be the part of the story where I wax endlessly about how awesome he is and all the ways you can use him, but not this time. I'll leave it to all of you in the message boards to brainstorm and share. Oh heck, I can't help it... one intentionally designed thought: you can use a mix of Alpha and Gamma Quadrant missions instead of having to rely on just Alpha Quadrant mission with Gelnon to sculpt a better personnel grouping. Dominion have a lot of tools at their disposal. They just needed a real team player to help bring it all together.

While Crom is more or less the same as where we started, he has evolved slightly. In the beginning, he started out as four cost, six skills, and four Integrity. Ultimately he morphed into his current form when Design decided it would be best to have each member of the Breen cycle have a different cost. So Crom dropped four skills, had Diplomacy added, and his Integrity increased so he would fit a three cost mold and be a more integral part of a mission solving team.

In case you didn't catch it, I said "the Breen cycle." Yes, Crom has a few friends in this set as well. I guess you'll just have to wait to see what we cooked up to help further our plan of pulling all the parts of the Dominion together.

Dominion haven't had much of presence in the tournament scene. It's a war that they've been losing. Now with more Breen, they should be stronger than ever.