[Faithful Reader]

This past weekend, Orlando had an interesting Sealed event. You brought in a virtual starter of your choice along with three sealed sets of Decipher product. What would be your choice? Presume that you have a full selection of Decipher sets to choose from.

[Jono]

This past weekend, Orlando had an interesting Sealed event. You brought in a virtual starter of your choice along with three sealed sets of Decipher product. What would be your choice? Presume that you have a full selection of Decipher sets to choose from.

We’ve done this format a few times.

With I’ve used three packs of These Are The Voyages
With three packs of Captain’s Log
With three pack of Strange New Worlds

For I try to use at 1-2 Reflections 2.0 packs and either Second Edition or What You Leave Behind. The latter has lots of Non-Aligned personnel while you can add some interesting dilemmas with Reflections.

I don’t recommend at the moment. Their virtual starter has ship problems that needs to be addressed.

[T-Ricks]

I haven't picked a favorite yet of the trekcc.org starters. I will say which one I don't like and it's Ferengi. The ship is too hard to staff.

Using the Decipher starter decks, I would eliminate Klingons right off the bat. Their missions require cunning and those thick foreheads don't allow for as much brain power as the missions call for.

Borg would be next to bite the dust - too easy to stop them with the starter deck dilemmas.

Dominion and TNG are both okay and fairly evenly matched, depending on what you draw in your booster packs. The Dominion deck could use more personnel though.

My top pick would be DS-9 because of the HQ range, but the Romulan deck is very close with the mission set included and the Reman Mines.

Every deck, except Klingon (usually), can win though. If you are lucky and get any good pulls with 2x skill personnel from your booster packs, your odds of winning go up quite a bit. Kamala kicks but in this format.

[Cmdr Xym]

The virtual starters are long overdue for an update. Like Rick said, the Klingon and Ferengi ones are terrible when they should really all be equally good. A lot of cards have come out since these decks were created.

[Faithful Reader]

I don’t recommend at the moment. Their virtual starter has ship problems that needs to be addressed.

I haven't picked a favorite yet of the trekcc.org starters. I will say which one I don't like and it's Ferengi. The ship is too hard to staff.

Every deck, except Klingon (usually), can win though.

The virtual starters are long overdue for an update,

Heard.

[Linkan]

When I started to do the virtual starters, the only cards that where printable, except for V an VP, where non-unique personnel and ships as well as missions and errata cards. As I remember I started making the starters even before Virtual Format was a thing (I fought for a long time before that format was put into the tournament rules). Many of the decks are made in January 2011, 8 years ago!

I have been a bit passive in this community the last couple of years, but I want to get into things again.

Should future virtual starters still have "virtual format" as its standard?

The virtual starters were made with playability for new players in mind. I didn't even think about using them in any kind of sealed deck kind of tournament. I still think new players should be the focus of starters, but perhaps they should take sealed deck into account.

[Jono]

When I started to do the virtual starters, the only cards that where printable, except for V an VP, where non-unique personnel and ships as well as missions and errata cards. As I remember I started making the starters even before Virtual Format was a thing (I fought for a long time before that format was put into the tournament rules). Many of the decks are made in January 2011, 8 years ago!

I have been a bit passive in this community the last couple of years, but I want to get into things again.

Should future virtual starters still have "virtual format" as its standard?

The virtual starters were made with playability for new players in mind. I didn't even think about using them in any kind of sealed deck kind of tournament. I still think new players should be the focus of starters, but perhaps they should take sealed deck into account.

I completely agree new players should be able to use the cards. That’s why there should be no complex interactions required to use the decks. They should all be straightforward but maybe with slight affiliation “feel” (Bajorans get stuff from discard pile, Cardassians discard things etc). This is already the case with Equinox which manipulates Neutogenic cards.

The major issue we had were a few things lacking. You had to take Locutus out of the Borg deck when errataed cards weren’t allowed in virtual format. That took a Diplomacy and Leadership personnel away from the Borg and hurt that deck against some dilemmas.

The Ferengi deck has a ship problem. There are not enough past Ferengi personnel to get the bonus for one of the ships.

Little tweaks like this would really help these decks.

I also think have a link to all the decks on the front page of the website would be VERY useful as having to go to Decklists > Public Decks > Virtual Starters is very cumbersome especially for new players who don’t know their way around the website.

All that said, you should know your work creating the decks years ago was and is still much appreciated as we run 1-2 tournaments a year with the virtual starters.

[OKCoyote]

When I started to do the virtual starters, the only cards that where printable, except for V an VP, where non-unique personnel and ships as well as missions and errata cards. As I remember I started making the starters even before Virtual Format was a thing (I fought for a long time before that format was put into the tournament rules). Many of the decks are made in January 2011, 8 years ago!

I have been a bit passive in this community the last couple of years, but I want to get into things again.

Should future virtual starters still have "virtual format" as its standard?

The virtual starters were made with playability for new players in mind. I didn't even think about using them in any kind of sealed deck kind of tournament. I still think new players should be the focus of starters, but perhaps they should take sealed deck into account.

Now that everything is printable, "virtual" format really isn't a thing, and with so many CC sets out there, Academy has become obsolete as well. Perhaps a series of new starters for each affiliation that feature *mostly* CC-era cards, but plug holes with older cards as necessary, would be appropriate.

[Linkan]

I completely agree new players should be able to use the cards. That’s why there should be no complex interactions required to use the decks. They should all be straightforward but maybe with slight affiliation “feel” (Bajorans get stuff from discard pile, Cardassians discard things etc). This is already the case with Equinox which manipulates Neutogenic cards.

One of the goals was that there should be at least one deck featuring engagements, at least one deck featuring capturing etc.

The major issue we had were a few things lacking. You had to take Locutus out of the Borg deck when errataed cards weren’t allowed in virtual format. That took a Diplomacy and Leadership personnel away from the Borg and hurt that deck against some dilemmas.

That deck predates virtual format. I tried to avoid errata cards when possible, but the amount of virtual borgs was not very high.

The Ferengi deck has a ship problem. There are not enough past Ferengi personnel to get the bonus for one of the ships.

That one was tough to make

All that said, you should know your work creating the decks years ago was and is still much appreciated as we run 1-2 tournaments a year with the virtual starters.

That is nice to hear. Thanks for the kind words.

Now that everything is printable, "virtual" format really isn't a thing, and with so many CC sets out there, Academy has become obsolete as well. Perhaps a series of new starters for each affiliation that feature *mostly* CC-era cards, but plug holes with older cards as necessary, would be appropriate.

I viewed "virtual" format a bit like "Modern format" in magic. But to make the analogy perfect, there needs to be a "virtual base set". I agree that the starters should use mainly V-cards. Some VPs and Decipher cards might be needed as well, but keeping it to a minimum.

I think I want to put my hands on making two new starters to begin with.

[T-Ricks]

I agree with Sean (Jono). The decks you created are appreciated. If I could make one suggestion for any modifications, it would be to not include personnel whose ability can't be used under sealed tournament conditions. For example, don't use someone who costs 4 to play because they can download something that isn't in the deck. Or, don't use a ship that is very difficult to staff. The cards in the deck should work as they are intended, all the while keeping in mind that there may not be any external support cards to enhance their value.

[Warrior50]

As one of the players in this event, I chose the Frengi V deck for this event and 3 packs of Strange New Worlds to add to my deck. After my first game I realized that I was hosed up by the ships in the deck, 3 copies of a unique ship hurt this deck and the fact that it only has one other ship, a NA ship, in the deck is bad as well. I did get a Frengi ship from my packs but that did not help the deck either.

I must agree with the comments above that the Virtual decks are way over due for an update.

As for a favorite I also have not picked one yet, but I did have success with the Enterprise V-deck and the DS 9 V-Deck in the past.

I find it interesting that the last deck updated was the Bajorian deck at the time of Return to Grace. Maybe next time I will try something different.