Hindsight: Rules of Acquisition

by Jason Drake, First Edition Assistant Designer

29th May 2014

Welcome to Hindsight, the weekly series where we take a look back at previous expansions for the Star Trek: Customizable Card Games with a fresh eye. Our goal is to examine the decisions made in each of these expansions using modern eyes and design sensibilities in order to learn from those decisions. As mentioned in the announcement article, this is not an attempt to create a new game. Instead, we're looking to better understand the game and how it can be improved in the modern era by studying its history.

With the fourth expansion centered on the Deep Space Nine television series, Decipher introduced the last of the alpha-quadrant affiliations in the Ferengi. Thematically, the Ferengi are a unique faction among those represented in the game to this point. Not only are they more focused on commerce and trade (as opposed to exploration, science, and conquest), but in the Deep Space Nine series they are neither an adversary nor an ally to the Federation. This created a very broad opportunity for designers to let the Ferengi do things a little differently. They would be irritants to all and friends of none.

Rules of Acquisition (First Edition)
Released in December 1999
130 Cards (40 Common, 40 Uncommon, 50 Rare)

Card Types Introduced
None

Mechanics Introduced
Rules of Acquisition icon, Cargo Runs

Affiliation Introduced (in full):
Ferengi

Lessons Learned
1. Missions matter: Don't neglect winning conditions.
No matter how many tricks, powers, and quality personnel you give the Ferengi, they can't win a game without scoring 100 points. And the only way to do that involves solving misssions.

Rules gave the Ferengi five missions with the appropriate icon, supplemented by three others from Deep Space Nine and Uncover DNA Clues from The Dominion.

Looking at the available suite, we see four mission worth 40 points (if one counts the maximum possible for Purchase Moon). But two of these are tricky dual-icon (space/planet) missions; Purchase Moon requires a hefty additional cost to get the points; and all four have "exotic" requirements-- that is to say, they require skills or conditions that are of little or no value in passing dilemmas. Gunrunning, for example, needs 2 Greed and 2 Smuggling, skills which other decks can leave out altogether without any danger of being stonewalled.

Two others are worth just 25 points. There are a pair of universal (and therefore susceptible to theft) missions worth 30 points, and even these require the low-priority skills of Greed, Acquisition, Smuggling, Stellar Cartography and Transporter Skill (which did not appear on any wall dilemmas at that point in the game).

Although the Ferengi had all these skills available, they were not so heavily loaded with skill dots that it was easy to include them along with necessary dilemma-busting skills. Quite the contrary: The RoA Ferengi were heavy on CIVILIAN, V.I.P., Music, Youth and (often highly situational) special skills. The end result was that you could build a Ferengi deck that drew well, reported well, and managed to deploy a few tricks-- but you couldn't win with it.

On that note, kudos to the design team of The Next Generation for giving the Ferengi quality missions with point values and skill requirements on par with other affiliations.

Corollary: Don't make one faction/affiliation pay resources to do something that another faction/affiliation can do for free.
The Ferengi had access to other missions with Establish Trade Route and Bribery. The former required three Acquisition; use of the latter required a seed card and a Latinum discard just to make a mission attemptable for two turns. All of this might have been reasonable if the Ferengi were a notch above other affiliations in terms of personnel quality; and, more importantly, if the Ferengi weren't already burdened with a lot of card-intenstive mechanics to make their other abilities work.

2. Downloading is not a panacea.
The Ferengi personnel in Rules included an astonishing sixteen special download icons. Other apparent strengths of the affiliation include the ability to convert Gold-pressed Latinum into useful equipment, use of The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition to access needed Rules cards, and a pair of high-volume downloads available on Ferengi Conference.

Experienced players know that a download from the hand is really just half a download (i.e., a free play); and an interrupt downloaded from hand is a completely wasted resource. Building a strategy with even a portion of the available downloads can quickly lead to a vastly bloated deck, where the cards that initiate the download are never drawn; and even recycling strategies simply produce more download targets that are of no value in the hand. It's no exaggeration to say that a Ferengi player could make use of a 50-card Q's Tent if such were available.

 

Good Stuff
1. Necessary tools to work the rules.
Having just criticized the bloated well of download targets, this may seem like a contradiction. But the Rules mechanic required just a few too many steps and, more importantly, did not mesh well with all of the other downloads available. The basic design is good: A Ferengi player could seed the First Rule of Acquisition; he could then use the downloads to acquire both a Nagus and either The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition or his Scepter. The biggest weakness of this combination is a result of current game speed and rules clarifications that disallow reporting after the download (the latter counts as "executing orders"). But all of the necessary tools are there to access the Rules cards without getting lucky on a draw.

 

2. Quark's Bar is a fun place to be.
The representative site card for Deep Space Nine's social hub was a solid hit in multiple ways. The free report made it easy for players to use popular main characters like Quark, Rom, and Leeta. Playing Dabo required a relatively simple end-of-turn wager action, and the rewards had good game balance. Finally, the ever-present Morn gave the best benefit of all by simply doing what he did best-- sitting in Quark's Bar.

3. Some improvement in "magic bullets".
Although we still lacked Q the Referee, and Decipher remained steadfast against errata or bans, the new counter cards did a better job of addresssing problems without creating new ones. Specifically, both Quark's Isolinear Rods and Writ of Accountability had the added functionality of a personnel download that was complementary to the intended purpose of the counter (you could download the Bynars, for example, to counter multiple copies of Computer Crash); and both were useful without being so powerful or generic that they changed the structure of the game or became an auto-include for every deck (like Defend Homeworld).

Expansion Stories
phoenixhawk sent in this story about DecipherCon:

I remember that Rules of Acquisition's debut coincided with Decipher's first ever convention, Deciphercon 1999. The con was held in Virginia Beach, near Decipher's Norfolk offices, and it was a fun time. While there was no chase card in the set, people were excited about the set's release for the debut of the Ferengi and for the chance to get some of those brand new cards autographed by some of the actors at the event. I ran tournaments as well as played a few things, including winning a set of 4 Clan BattleMechs since FASA was at the show because they and Decipher were in talks to merge or something at the time. I got both a Nog and Leeta card autographed at the show and it was a great time spent focused on Decipher's games. Another highlight of that show was an OTSD tournament I ran where something like 8 of the 10 people were all from Michigan (as was I) and we joked we didn't have to go all the way to Virginia to play each other. RoA had some fun cards and the convention release made it even more fun. I really liked the Phased Cloaking Device and of course, as a starship fan, the U.S.S. Sao Paulo.

Thanks for the story! We'd like to feature stories from players about First Edition expansions. If you'd like to submit stories, you can do so via email (cplaine@gmail.com) or private message (to MidnightLich). We're looking for players to share stories or memories tied into the release (or nearly after) of specific expansions, from stories about finding and opening product, to stories about games played in release tournaments. The next few articles for First Edition will be on The Trouble With Tribbles, Mirror, Mirror and Voyager.

Conclusion
With the possible exception of First Contact and the Borg, Rules of Acquisition was the expansion most heavily focused on a single new affiliation. In addition to personnel and ships, it included eight Events (Rules cards), six Equipment, and a scattering of Interrupts, Facilities, and Incidents that were very specific to the Ferengi affiliation. And unlike The Dominion, the Ferengi had no treaties.

As such, the primary success of the expansion at the time of its release could be judged by the ability to play the Ferengi affiliation. In that regard it was mildly disappointing. Despite functional mechanics, the Ferengi were competitively weak owing to a lack of dilemma-busting skills and a dismal mission selection.

In the long run, however, the individual cards were just fine. Twenty of the Ferengi personnel from the expansion can be included in a Next-Generation-only Continuing Mission deck. The Dabo girls work well with Bajoran decks. And the Rules themselves may not be popular now, but creative players may include them from time to time; and future designers have plenty of options for development.

Editor's Note - Thanks Jason! Next week, original Make it So winner and Second Edition designer Keith Morris (Foreman) will write about the debut of Voyager in 2E's Captain's Log! Thanks for reading!

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