[Faithful Reader]

It's Wednesday! We're more than halfway through the week. Since we are over the hump, let's look at a question!

Last Week: Just for Fun
6-26-24 Signs of Life
6-19-24 Control my Life: Sooner or Later
6-12-24 Items Vs. Interrupts
6-5-24 Meanwhile, Back in the Delta Quadrant
5-29-24 There's Always Tomorrow
5-22-24 Sell Me on Ferengi
5-15-24 Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
5-8-24 Continuing Mission Draft Results
5-1-24 Tell me a (Vidiian) Story
4-24-24 Pick of the Tribbles
4-17-24 Eastward, Ho!
4-10-24 Hanging Around For a Bit
4-3-24 Ferengi. In the Delta Quadrant?
3-27-24 Extra Continues
3-20-24 Out of Continues
3-13-24 Continuing Mission Draft
3-6-24 Mission XXVI
2-28-24 People Vs. Places
2-21-24 Worst of 2024
2-14-24 2 Protect
2-7-24 PPS or SSP?
1-31-24 Four!
1-24-24 Hello, Old Friend
1-17-24 A Unique Preposition
1-10-24 A Certified Genius
1-3-24 Close Every Door to Me!

If you have been paying attention to board meetings/front pages/the universe, you know we are on the cusp of getting a new set with a new affiliation, the first to the community in years and the first for us in near decades!

Looking back, what is your favorite affiliation added to the game? Thus far, there have been four added to the game proper. Yeah, the Borg had attemptability icons in the first set and there were a couple Ferengi in Call to Arms, but they didn't really land until their proper debuts.

Let us know in the thread below and poll above your favorite addition to the game. Remember, revoting is allowed. Also, vote quickly as this will expire within forty-eight hours of posting.

[GooeyChewie]

Either Borg or Dominion.

Ferengi got tied to the “cards beneath Ferenginar” mechanic. All too often that meant they had to jump through an extra hoop just to do things other affiliations could just straight up do.

Starfleet started off with a “do space first” theme. It would have been interesting, except we got Necessary Execution two months later and that pushed everybody to do space first anyway. Fortunately that meta shift did not completely shut them down, but Starfleet did lose a hefty chunk of their flavor.

I think the lesson from those two is that any new affiliations should not be too strongly tied to one central mechanic or idea. Borg and Dominion definitely had their themes and their own signature deck types (assimilation and infiltration), but those concepts were not so prevalent that you had to go that way. You had options, including the option to ignore the tricks and just do missions.

[Fritzinger]

They’re all fantastic in terms of how well they compete with all the other affiliations, there’s no disadvantage for a late start.

[boromirofborg]

Dominion for me, in part because it worked, and in part by default.


Ferengi - they do seem to be the affiliation that's the weakest in both games right now. Their themes in 2E never quite clicked for me.

Starfleet - fine. Bland. Nothing really says I want to play them or not play them.

Borg - so here's where I'm going to be a little controversial possibly. I loved the Borg in 1E. I loved how they were different. I loved how they felt like the Borg in pretty much every respect. And the 2E version was for me so dissapointing it's a large part of why I was uninterested in the game. Assimilating people didn't need to be as complicates as in 1E, but it doesn't even change the affiliation to . There ar about 3-4 times I think that Decipher learned a mostly-correct lesson from 1E, but went way too far in over-correcting in 2E, and Borg are high on that list.



So why did Dominion work where the others didn't? It gave a few unique themes, executed them well, tied in to major story points, and was balanced (or imbalanced) enough that it's a strong affiliation.