Discuss all of your questions, concerns, comments and ideas about Second Edition.
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#532507
I'm puzzling through a few problems in Bridge Crew Format and so I thought I'd live up to my promise that this is a work in progress, and throw out some crazy talk to see what people think.

Disclaimer: none of this affects the current v13 rules of the format. This is brainstorming.

But first, some observations:

1) It's possible to do a big first play/draw turn and then just execute orders for the rest of the game
- there actually is a lot of kill prevention available when you have space for lots of verbs (freed up by guaranteeing your perfect crew and having far fewer personnel to guarantee draws), so less need to replenish
- the first play/draw turn can be quite slow if you're drawing or playing lots, and TATV/Miracle Working can make for a lot of decision time

2) Having an entire different "type of turn" just for that one first turn seems weird
- a waste of cognitive overhead, especially for people unfamiliar with the full game
- even more confusing when (as in the latest version) you also get to draw a card in your Execute Orders turn

3) Big crews with star power are actually really good.
- I thought it would be all Investigate Destruction and Investigate Alien Probe, but turns out that using big missions and starting with your choice of personnel and ship worth 30+ counters is very strong
- possibly too good, towards the opposite end of the spectrum from "crew's dead, your turn". Two attempts and win also seems bad.

4) Defensive cards like Uninvited and Sightly Awkward are good
- When the perfect setup with big attributes or micro teaming or stop prevention is possible, you need to go beyond your normal defensive capabilities
- if you don't draw them and your opponent sails through, that's a bad time

5) Timing is still a little slower than I'd like.
- I'm playing with this deck: https://www.trekcc.org/decklists/index. ... d87e5ce695
- it maybe wouldn't be so bad, but I still have 1 attempt solves. 1-sided and slow is not a good time. Neither is winning because you go first.

I'm thinking about two options (maybe both) as possible solutions, and they're pretty extreme on the scale of changes I've made in recent versions:

NO PLAY/DRAW
1) Let any card with a cost be seeded, as long as it fits in under your bridge crew cost.
- yikes, combos could be nasty. More bans ahead, probably
- but it would guarantee your Unexpected Difficulties

2) Make the game only execute orders, with a draw step where you draw a static number of cards every turn ... from a draw deck made up only of interrupts
- no weird different type of turn for the sake of one turn per game

This option makes a lot of card text in the game (anything that affects cost) meaningless, so it carries a big drawback for one of the big design goals, which was, "minimal cards that don't work the way they read".

1 MISSION GAME
It would fix game length. Slipstream tries this (or makes it possible), and it's a struggle because of cards that reference complete/incomplete missions (e.g. NecEx, Wolf 359) and because of cards that let you blow through a single mission (e.g. grandpa McCoy). Also planet and space dilemmas become even harder to justify.

Maybe that could be fixed by doing a Bo3 format? If games go short enough that you could play Bo3 in tournaments then Spikes out there would not overwhelmingly go for the cards I mentioned above, meaning less newbies being roflstomped. If you win at your first mission, you have to bring a different mission. And cards that reference missions completed could refer to your missions from previous games in the round.

YOUR THOUGHTS HERE
please jump in with ideas you have.
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Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
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2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#532508
I really liked the choice between your play and draw turn and your execute orders turn. It really kept the feeling of 2E in the game. I don’t know about the other folks who played in your test tournament, but I did do a couple of supply turns, once I knew what type of dilemmas I might face. Making a deck only interrupts feels like a much bigger step away from this game than I would be comfortable with.
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Shipping Manager
By SirDan (Dan Hamman)
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ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
#532536
Spent some time looking at starting crews today. My first idea using Cadets didn't really pan out - there are 10 personnel and they all would be much less than the 23 counters, even including the 7-cost ship. And it needs a second mission, so that means real personnel, and I ended up with a random mishmash of cadets and doctors that didn't feel like it stuck with the theme.

Then I thought one of the early teams would work well, so I started looking at the Equinox crew, and it looked like a great set, but then there's no HQ for them.

So, I started looking at Defiant Matching commanders, but a few of them rely on Captain in the Bridge to report, so no Maquis or Dominion. So I turned to the Enterprise-D matching commanders... but the Enterprise-D doesn't do much in this format. Gaining points is great when trying to get to 100, but solving missions for their point values is enough, so I shelved that idea.

Now I'm looking at Khan's folks and the Think Tank out of DS9, and I think I might roll with two 50-point missions and a 31-point crew.

Anyway, random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon. Looking forward to trying a game.
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#532575
Whoops, sent this in a PM by accident. Better here for discussion.
SirDan wrote: Sat Oct 24, 2020 8:24 pm Spent some time looking at starting crews today. My first idea using Cadets didn't really pan out - there are 10 personnel and they all would be much less than the 23 counters, even including the 7-cost ship. And it needs a second mission, so that means real personnel, and I ended up with a random mishmash of cadets and doctors that didn't feel like it stuck with the theme.
I guess the way cadets could be good would be to do 4 cadets and 3 crazy expensive people to go with them ... Lore, Data, Reg maybe? And a mission with few skill requirements to go with. Stick all the other cadets in your deck, should you run out you still have access to play a bunch of them in a supply turn.

That might feel about as cadet-ish as a normal deck.
Then I thought one of the early teams would work well, so I started looking at the Equinox crew, and it looked like a great set, but then there's no HQ for them.
We'll get there :).
So, I started looking at Defiant Matching commanders, but a few of them rely on Captain in the Bridge to report, so no Maquis or Dominion. So I turned to the Enterprise-D matching commanders... but the Enterprise-D doesn't do much in this format. Gaining points is great when trying to get to 100, but solving missions for their point values is enough, so I shelved that idea.
If you're looking for a DS9 theme, I highly recommend the Salvaged Attack Ship.
Now I'm looking at Khan's folks and the Think Tank out of DS9, and I think I might roll with two 50-point missions and a 31-point crew.
Awesome, I look forward to hearing about it :).
Anyway, random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon. Looking forward to trying a game.
glhf!
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#532579
I'm feeling better about the supply vs orders turn issue, part of my problem with the long first supply turn might be the ability to draw loads of cards with TATV and then having to decide on 3 to go under. I feel like Miracle Working is a more Meaningful Choice than TATV because there's a lot of cool ships with < 4 staffing icons. But that can also be on the watch list.

Still pondering the single mission game:

- pro: I feel good about Bo3 sideboard rules where you have to start a new game with a new mission when you solve
- pro: (obviously) 1 mission to win is quick
- pro: quite a few piles can keep the opponent out for long enough to make a decent game of it: 4,56 turns. And in those games, 2 missions just takes too long.
- con: I think those piles would lean towards chula or bounce, things we often don't like.
- con: feels like a high stakes thing, you could lose in one attempt if you throw your dilemmas wrong. That would suck.
- con: you'd lose your progress on mission 1 if you lose the first race and everything resets. And you'd see fewer comebacks where player 1 solves first but then struggles while player 2 chips away at their first mission and then solves it and another one at the death.
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Shipping Manager
By SirDan (Dan Hamman)
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ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
#532608
Had an interesting game this evening. Looking forward to trying another deck. Half the fun of this format is finding that team of 7 personnel and ship that match a pair of missions.

Some questions:
We are going to combine BCF with Hall of Fame's ban list. Any warnings?
Does Starship Defiant look at the personnel you have as part of the starting crew to allow you to play it? Same question for U.S.S. Enterprise, Beutiful Lady.
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#532644
Subject: BCF crazy talk
SirDan wrote: Mon Oct 26, 2020 3:10 am Had an interesting game this evening. Looking forward to trying another deck.
Awesome! Are you paying with the v13 rules? Seeded ritual etc?
Half the fun of this format is finding that team of 7 personnel and ship that match a pair of missions.
Yup :).
We are going to combine BCF with Hall of Fame's ban list. Any warnings?
There were all sorts of awkward combos in the playtest tournament, this sounds like a good way of defusing some of them. Others will remain because they are broken in different ways than you'd expect in standard.

Very keen to hear how this experiment goes.
Does Starship Defiant look at the personnel you have as part of the starting crew to allow you to play it? Same question for U.S.S. Enterprise, Beutiful Lady.
As the rules are written right now, it's somewhere between "I only explicitly mentioned that you can't do this for personnel", and "no", because the game hasn't started so you don't command anything.

Interested to hear what happens if you ignore that / what awesome things you want to do that this prevents :cheersL: .
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