A Guide to New and Returning Players

by Stephan Allhoff, Guest Writer

13th February 2014

Are you new to the game or have you recently return after years of absence? Are you overwhelmed by the aesthetic appeal and complexity of the new cards the Continuing Committee created for us? Are you as well a little bit confused due to the array of new cards, their rules and their opportunities?  Do not be afraid! That happens to most new or returning players, and this guide shall help you to re-orientate. 

Totally new and without Orientation?

First of all you should decide what type of game you want to play. There are basically two options here. First, the block format which is recommended to totally new players, because it comes along with pre-constructed starter decks and limits the pool of cards so it is easier to get into the game.

Pre-constructed starter decks of the current Block “Deep Space 9” can be found for various affiliations:

• Cardassian
• Federation/Bajoran

Though, you can also take the starter decks from the last block “The Next Generation”:

• Federation
• Ferengi
• Klingon
• Romulan

It is anticipated that there will be an additional starter for each the Dominion and the Maquis in the next two upcoming sets of the DS9 block, most likely expected in spring and fall of this year.

But Deck Building is also fun!

As a returning player you may not want to play the block format, because you know the basic rules of the game and you own a good number of cards yourself. Perhaps you want to create decks with beloved cards from the Decipher-era combined with some new cards created by the Continuing Committee. This feeling is totally natural and let me say that the virtual expansions gave the old cards a new life and made them more playable and competitive.

One good example would be the bridge crew from First Contact and the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. They got a really beautiful boutique styled set named Resistance is Futile which gave players some good cards to make that faction playable.

But that is only one example out of many! The Continuing Committee strives to give every affiliation, and even more important: its sub-factions, a bunch of new cards! Did you ever think that playing a Starfleet-only deck would be really nice, but recognized that it will just not work out due to the limitations of the existing cards? Well, that said, we got some nice new cards like Finally Ready to Swim, Erika Hernandez, or even a universal personal named McDermott. In particular, the Straight and Steady expansion did a lot to make Starfleet a playable deck type.

Rules, Ban List and Deck Helps

The follow up question usually is: 'what has changed since I last played the game?' The short answer is, not so much. You still need to solve missions in order to win the game. From my point of view the biggest difference is that nowadays decks are faster with downloads and free plays, and they are more focused on one strategy and, more often than not, tend to go for a two mission win.

When you are creating your deck you should keep in mind that you need some sort of free reports of personnel and some sort of drawing mechanism to gain access to more card than just the standard one. This should be obvious since when you are able to play more than one card each turn without drawing more cards, you will run out of cards in hand pretty quickly. 

The most commonly played rule set nowadays is OTF (Open Tournament Format) developed by the Continuing Committee. You can find the current rules and ban list here and here. OTF is good place for returning players to play as it requires less knowledge of powerful strategies.

Where to Start?

Before you spend time building a deck that is totally not competitive here are some generic helpers you may want to include in your deck:

• Duck Blind for everyone! A common way for Federation players to get this draw engine working early game is just to download these two Mission Specialists: Darian Wallace and Kathleen Tonell. Though, there are other ways to get it running. If you like playing in the Delta Quadrant you may still like Ancestral Vision. 

• Federation Flagship: Relaunched lets you download one of the two existing versions of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. Furthermore, you also can report one personnel for free each turn and do that directly to your ship - which is an ability sometimes underestimated. Combine this with Federation Flagship: Renewed and you also get a pretty good draw engine. The limitation of Federation personnel with the First Contact expansion icon is of course nasty, but you always have the possibility to add some non-aligned personnel or even a treaty to allow mixing with other affiliations. 
• Good old Deyos from Rules of Acquisition is not outdated and still a valid draw engine for Dominion players. Combining this with Assign Support Personnel and Dominion War Efforts will already get you a very good foundation for your deck. In case you are interested in playing Dominion you can read more about that faction in this five part article (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).
• Do you remember the good old days when you opened a booster of Alternate Universe with hopes high to pull a Future Enterprise, but just got another Ophidian Cane? Well, there is a card to make good use of all of the PAQ (Premiere, Alternate Universe, Q-Continuum) era cards now: Continuing Mission! Combined with Attention All Hands or one of the play engines for the different affiliations (like Finest Crew in the Fleet or Legitimate Leader of the Empire or Always a Chess Game or Mercenary Raiders) then you already have one of the strongest play engines right now.
• Slave girls like Navaar or D'Nesh from Orion don’t only look good, they also play for free to their home planet. Furthermore, they are non-aligned and may be a good addition to a lot of different decks. A similar strategy works as well for Bak’u and Son’a (with the help of their observatory) on their home planet. In case you think that it will be tough to get all those personnel from the rarest expansions, be calmed! All cards are tournament-legally printable as of February 3^rd 2014.
• Assign Mission Specialists is still very popular, not only because you can download two personnel and start the game with two of them, but also because you can score easy bonus points and this will get you closer to that two mission win. Make sure that your choice mission specialists fit to the missions you want to attempt.
• The good old Defend Homeworld is also still not outdated. Even the download chain with Anya and Salia is still a valid option (e.g. to get Duck Blind running)! Though, you can also use it to download the new Jean-Luc (who is not a matching commander of the Enterprise!) to get Nanoprobe Resuscitation running early.
• Mutation, Handshake, Isomagnetic Disintegrator, and Masaka Transformations combined with Obelisk of Masaka are all still good ways to get some new cards into hand. Kivas Fajo and The Traveler are also still a valid way to get extra card draws, but you should be careful since Mirror Image is now a card and thus easily to download via Q the Referee. These are just some of the countless possibilities for your deck. Have fun finding other great ways to draw cards! That is a basic but integral part of this game.

Beware of Q

Next, you should be aware of some cards and dilemmas that are likely to see in matches.

• Access Denied from Blaze of Glory is still a good way to boost some dilemmas like: Ferengi Ingenuity and Dejaren. Be prepared and stock a good number of personnel with Computer Skill.

• Kobayashi Maru Scenario from All Good Things is a very rare card. But as it is already printable as a Virtual Promo, there is also a good chance to meet a couple of this nasty card.
• God, V’Ger, and In the Pale Moonlight are all pretty powerful and commonly encountered. In addition to these dilemmas you always should have a backup plan and some kind of protection against battle (either a stronger ship/fleet, a faster ship, or some other kind of avoiding battle). 

Where to play?

Now that you have created a deck with your beloved old cards and gave it some added power with the new cards. You are feeling pretty sure you can survive in an actual game, but you have no idea where to play, because all card shops stopped selling (and therefore supporting) Star Trek CCG many years ago. Well, there is an answer to your problem! Thanks to modern technology nowadays a lot of games take place with the help of Lackey, a program to play several CCG’s online. Though, we will stay focused on STCCG here.

• Download Lackey from www.lackeyccg.com and unzip it. You can move the folder to any place you like (e.g. c:program files) and create a shortcut.
• The next step is to correctly setup Lackey in order to work properly with STCCG. To do so, you need to select the “Plugin” tab and insert the following URL (http://lackeyccg-startrek1e.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/startrek1e/updatelist.txt) into the textbox named “Paste Auto Update URL” and simply click on “Install or Update from URL”. Then, you can load the STCCG plugin listed when you click “Load recent plugin”. 

Now Lackey is configured to work with Star Trek: CCG: First Edition. You can setup some basic information (e.g. Name, Email, and Skype account) on the “Preference” tab and then you need to load your deck.

Usually this is done by creating it either with Lackey itself (in the Deck Editor tab) or with CC’s online deck builder. If you used the online deck builder you can export a list of your deck from your deck overview page (you need to be registered on the forum to use this feature) and click on “Export to Lackey”. A download window will appear in your browser and you need to save the *.txt file to your computer. Then, you will need to copy this file to Lackey’s deck folder, which you can find in Lackey’s subfolder “plugins/startrek1e/decks/”. Once the file is there, you can select the “Deck Editor” tab in Lackey, click on “Browse” and load your exported deck. 

• Unfortunately, Lackey and the CC deck builder have a minor disconnect. So you should double and triple check if your deck is complete! Once you have loaded your deck, you need to prepare for the game. You will need to assign all cards to each of the deck tabs: Deck, Missions, Seed+Dil, QsTent, and Aside (and save this). Usually everything that does not belong to any of the first four deck types goes to “Aside”. Then, you need to click on “Load entire deck to you” and switch to the “Game” tab. There, you can assign the cards in the “Aside” to the tab to which they actual belong (there are many more tabs in the game than in the deck builder). For the “Q the Referee” side deck people often use “Ref Pile” and for sites and other stuff any other unused side deck tab. 
• Playing the game is quite easy. Click on the “Server” tab and select “Connect to the game matching server”, select the game you would like to join, and then press the “Join selected game” button at the bottom of the game list.  That is it! You are playing STCCG on Lackey now. Though, most players would like to talk to each other while the game is running and, therefore, we often use Skype.

Wow!

That was just a short overview of how to return to the game. In case you have more questions, you are always welcomed to contact the community via the forums. Also, check out the Online Tournament that starts March 1st as an option for your first tournament back in the game.

 

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