Gritty

by Kevin Jaeger, Creative Consultant

25th August 2010

Preparation and perseverance.  I'm gonna tell you a little story.  Its a story that many of you are familiar with but I'm gonna tell it to you anyway.  It's the story of a dashing, intelligent, and most of all, humble man :) who succeeds and triumphs against the odds.  If you haven't guessed it already - the story is about when I won worlds.  Worlds is coming up here soon and as I write this, it's the two year anniversary of my victory.  Granted, you're reading this a couple weeks after that anniversary but for right now, its an anniversary.  So yes, I'm reveling in nostalgia here.

Before worlds that year I had several things coincide in my life - the bar exam and professional bowling.  I was both studying for the bar exam full time and I was bowling in a professional simulation league - basically, I was competing in league where I was bowling on professional conditions in a highly competitive one-on-one atmosphere against the best bowlers in the area.   These two challenges gave me one thing - the ability to focus intently on one goal under very difficult, very stressful conditions.  Preparation, if you will.

As the story goes the world was being attacked by Euroborg.  It was desperate times.  Almost everyone felt an impending sense of doom that Euroborg was going to show at worlds and dominate.  There was supposedly no answer.  Meanwhile, back at Starfleet headquarters (my home), Admiral Forrest (Caleb Grace) and I were conversing over whether or not my plan to go into the Delphic Expanse (aka take my mot/worf deck to gencon) was going to successfully destroy the Xindi super weapon (you can guess this one) and of course, all the sphere worshipers, space pirates, and Damar look-alikes as well along the way.

Long story short, I fought my way through insectoid traps, avoided goval and came face to face with the Xindi super weapon.  I utilized my new found ability to focus and slogged my way through eight rounds of day one and a total of eleven more games during day two.  I persevered.  I've openly said since that tournament that I really felt I was operating at peak performance.

With this new set, we get to see the Enterprise crew during the period immediately following the Xindi-reptilian strike that nearly destroyed the ship. It was a critical point in which the survival of the ship, crew and all of humanity rested on the preparation and perseverance of one small crew.   Now their challenge is make an impact on Second Edition.   Some may disagree with my opinion, but I'm going to make a bold prediction - this new Starfleet strategy will make a huge impact on worlds.  All you need to do is either play with Delphic Expanse missions OR take ANY mission in the game and make it Delphic Expanse with Spatial Reconfiguration.

It starts with the new Enterprise. What you do get from the ship is a lot of what Voyager does for you.  You can report people directly to your ship in the Delphic Expanse which means 1. you shouldn't get destaffed 2. with a modest amount of range enhancement you can readily do three missions in one turn and/or at least play people, finish up a mission and move onto the next regardless of mission span and 3. you don't need extraneous cards. You should have deck slots free to play interesting or meta tech cards like Exocomp, Helping Hand, Power to the Shields or Slightly Awkward.  So there's one big meta-favoring point.

The next meta-favoring point is {censored} who's ability is the bomb.  There's been a lot of people clamoring for a stone cold way to beat the current meta powerhouse Klingon slaughter deck without losing speed.  {censored} gets the job done by {censored}.  Seriously though, its kinda like having a {censored} that can't be cancelled, destroyed, prevented or  otherwise "nuked". {censored} is exactly what Voyager and the delta Klingons would love to have if it wasn't against their flavor to have them.  So no having to worry about {censored} or {censored} or Neil Timmons pinning you to the floor while Ben Hosp steals your wallet.  Ok, so maybe you will still have to worry about the last one but you'll see that he is really that good at making players take a risk if they want to play a battle oriented deck.  You can't Grav-Trap or Koroth a personnel's ability nor can you Kruge him reliably.  He pretty much has to die to get out of the way.  So it looks like Starfleet might be moving away from space first.

The third meta-favoring point is {censored}.  Wow.  This ability makes the previous personnel's ability look pathetic.  This is the much more utilitarian ability that will actually win you more games.  Doesn't hurt that it goes hand in hand with {censored}'s ability to really kick the slaughter deck right in the targs.

The next point in favor of this deck taking worlds is the ability to mix and match.  This has been a huge stumbling block to decks like Ferengi Reyga, past Ferengi, Equinox, Vastly Outnumbered DS9, etc.  Those deck types hurt themselves by severely hampering your ability to mix and match the new people and verbs with existing people and verbs.  You need both the lynchpin, be it Reyga, Vastly Outnumbered, etc  AND you need several slots worth of verbs such as rules or search cards.  For this deck type, the ship is the only card you really need to have to make it all work.  Outside of the ship (and probably some Delphic Expanse missions), you can really do what you want.  You can either go with {censored} from this set or {censored} from a previous one.  You can stick with super awesome Trip Tucker, or go with utilitarian Trip Tucker. You can use T'pol from In a Mirror, Darkly for her skills or use the new T'pol for hers.  If you really want to get crazy, you make a deck that is predominantly MACO oriented with a splash of {censored} and {censored} for their bomb abilities.  It really is up to you.  When all you need to play with are missions and the ship which you need to play with anyway, the sky is the limit.

The last meta point going for you is the ability to take any mission you want and make it work with the deck just by playing with a couple copies of Spatial Reconfiguration (or not).  Microteam madness getting you down?  Slap it on Transport Crash Survivor.  Need a high point mission with easier requirements, find it and throw it in.  Feel like being a bit more interactive yourself?  Slide Aid Legendary Civilization in and report your people to the ship in orbit right after you put people from the ship under your deck.  The really fun thing you can do with this card in your deck is essentially have two completely different versions of essentially the same core idea.  One no nonsense tournament version running premium personnel combinations, missions and meta tech and a totally fun version running four Neutral Zone missions or four planets.  This is all assuming that either of those latter ideas don't actually find a way to become tournament worthy.  I can easily forsee a tight skill set occurring with the Genesis planet plus the bonus of taking its undesirable span of four out of the equation.

What does this all add up to?  I'm not going to tell you exactly quite yet.  I've said this will make a big splash but there is much more to go over.  You will just have to keep an eye out for my Second Annual Worlds meta-analysis and prediction show. What I can tell you is that a starfleet deck with the damaged Enterprise will be the first deck i'm building on release day.

Wait a minute.  Spatial Reconfiguration looks an awful lot like Work of the Guardians...

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