OTSD Remastered Releases Today

by Ross Fertel, Staff Writer

5th July 2021

With the advent of the internet, you have a big platform to spread your message, but nothing ever goes away. Things that make sense one day may quickly become outdated through no fault of their own. Take some of the Card Extras from the Decipher days, especially from the first few sets. There is no way the team would know about different spacelines or the myriad of affiliations that would come to be, especially for a series that had not yet debuted!

Today, we will look at some excerpts from the Official Tournament Sealed Deck card extras. Some have aged well while others have not. Please take everything with a grain of salt; these statements are to decades old and there were some things that no one would have seen coming. Apologies in advance to Richard Hallquis, Tom Landy, Scott E. Roszkowski, David Spunzo and especially Bill Martinson

From Armus: Sticky Situation: “As Soong-Type Androids become more and more common, Armus - Sticky Situation is an excellent way to pick them off, as their Strength tends to stick out like a sore thumb.” - High strength personnel will become more common in affiliations so having a one-off with high strength is not as common. It will still knock off a strong personnel, but the Klingons, Jem'Hadar and Hirogen will laugh at this.

“Decks based around Assign Mission Specialist[s] in great number will also have a tough time coping with this combination. More than likely, unless the deck is based around Diplomacy … “ - It might have been true back in the day that a Mission Specialist deck was based around Diplomacy, but there are so many more options on the table for other builds to have different featured skills in a deck relying on Assign Mission Specialists.

“Finally, this is the ultimate dilemma for thwarting your opponent's attempts to send down only one personnel to clear out the dilemmas (commonly called “red-shirting”), as it is only discarded when someone remains.” - Red Shirting was a thing to do back in the day but there are a lot more cards out there to keep it as a not great strategy. It has certainly decreased in usage and popularity. I would not be surprised to see someone trying it but would not expect it, certainly not with any frequency.

From Darmok: “Or just give the ship the Particle Scattering Device to make your opponent afraid to beam anywhere, just as a bluff!” – While never underestimating how good a bluff can be, it is a lot to invest in for only minimal reward. You have to plant a ship to continuously be in your opponent's area to keep the pressure on and while it is easier to staff the ship, the effort is not really equal to the rewards.

“But remember, once you pick the special function at reporting, that's what the ship will have for the rest of the game, so choose wisely.” - Thankfully, a lot of other selections are able to be reselected. Then again, that makes more sense on a personnel where you can retrain them as opposed to a ship where it is harder to change specialized equipment on the fly when you are on a ship in the far end of nowhere.

From Hide and Seek: “So what's a Q-Continuum card doing in the Star Trek Official Tournament Sealed Deck?” – Same thing one was doing in Fajo's Collection and Trouble With Tribbles: being awesome!

From Hippocratic Oath: “For example, seed Hippocratic Oath so it is encountered before a Tarellian Plague Ship. Chances are, you will take out your opponent's only MEDICAL and then the rest of the crew will be wiped out from the Tarellian Plague Ship.” - Given the proclivity of nastiness and the usefulness of equipment, the days of having one MEDICAL, let alone only one, are long gone.

“You can even be more nasty, sending the MEDICAL by Hippocratic Oath to Qualor II Rendezvous if you can.” - On one hand, the different quadrants have made this easier but those some quadrants also make this specific combo harder to pull off. There are a few more possibilities with Non-Aligned personnel in decks today, but if you can pull it off, this is still a potent combo.

From Husnok Outpost: “One of those surprises, thanks to the craftsmanship of Decipher's award-winning art department, is the Husnock Outpost.” – With all due respect to Deciphers Art Team, our CC Art Teams is awesome in and of themselves. Not only can they can pull images and make them look better than you remember, but they can do that with images we never saw on screen that Decipher made for a special occasion.

“Don't worry over the fact that it seeds only at Non-Aligned locations, because you'll get just such a mission in your 20-card premium pack (and more are available in DS9 and later expansions).” - Later expansions did indeed have more options for non-aligned missions for you to seed your Husnok Outpost at. There has been quite a boon of places for you to plant you flag and get set up, especially with verbs for groups of personnel out there.

“Its shields of 40 provide extra protection from roaming Klingon attack armadas. When protecting ships,.. And finally, this outpost does *not* say "seed one," so you can seed as many of them as you like.” -- just keep in mind that you can't build them later in the game.” – Ah, the days when I just worried about a Klignon armada instead of a Klingon, Kazon, Ferngi or Hirogen Armada.

From Make Us Go: “A "pain-in-the-neck" card to be sure, this card targets what may be, arguably, the most powerful personnel type in the game. Let's see; Geordi, Scotty, Roga Danar, Lore, Zephram Cochrane, Data, Rachel Garett, and Miles O'Brien. Yep, sounds pretty powerful to me.” – That is a pretty good collection of powerful personnel but there are so many more even when staying within the bounds of The Next Generation.

From Spacedoor: “The best use of the Door is for a Borg deck. If you don't want to stock too many Cubes, just download one then close the door behind it.” – This statement in general is a precursor to The Borg Are Coming from Engage. That would have a few more bells and whistles but the basic concept is the same and very story mode.

From Space-Time Portal: “In regular play, the ability to move an entire ship with crew from your hand to the spaceline, and vice versa, can be very powerful. -- especially since you can do it during your opponent's turn and at any spaceline (or timeline) location.” – A powerful play indeed since no one will ever complain about getting more personnel out for a single card play. With more spacelines in the mix, you can really wreck some havoc during the game.

Not from Abandon Ship! – True there was never a card extra for this card but, First Anthology previews aside, this is the first card that sported the Voyager logo. Got to appreciate histrionics.

The Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered releases today. It is more important than ever to thank the teams for their hard work on these cards; it may seem like a relatively minor face lift but there was a lot of work that went into these from Rules, Art, Creative, and Proofreading to get these cards in your hands. The first two went through a ton of work to wind up deleting several passages of rules documents and the extra light year duplicating the efforts of other teams, going beyond what anyone would reasonably expect to make them better. These are all set and ready to be printed. Happy downloading!

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