There's also a large playgroup in the Twin Cities. It's potentially a little bit further, but we play quite a bit up here (~monthly), we have generally had good relations with the smaller playgroups in the Dakotas (who sometimes come down to visit us, especially during Regionals season) and we'd love to have you join us if you ever get the chance!
WHAT'S CHANGED (in brief):
* You can print all the cards now, for free. Virtual cards, traditional cards, all of it -- it's all legal for tournaments. No more watching a friend buy his way to wins with 30 copies of a rare nobody else in your group can afford; deck construction today is entirely about skill.
* In the 2000s, Voyager /
dominated everything with their crazy-good affiliations and (especially) their ability to play lots of personnel really really fast. In the modern era, there have been a couple errata to slow down Voyager, but (more importantly) everyone else in the game now has access to tools that let them play (almost) as fast as Voyager does. Check out, for example,
Continuing Mission and the
cards it downloads or
Reshape the Quadrant and the
cards it downloads.
* There are two new affiliations: Decipher added
Enterprise-era Starfleet
in 2003 or something, and the CC added Vulcans
just six months ago!
* There is a
ban list now. Decipher was never quite willing to impose one, but the CC did. The goal is to eventually issue errata to every card on the ban list that preserves what made them good but fixes what made them abusive.
* Speaking of which, there's been quite a bit of errata. Check it out:
https://www.trekcc.org/op/1eed_hires.pdf
* There were a few other major rules changes,
described here.
* Other than that, basically the same game. No new card types, and only a handful of new icons, most of which are self-explanatory. The basic structure of the game has changed FAR less in the 16 years between 2002 and 2018 than it did in the 5 years between 1997 and 2002!
* (Do look up "self-controlling dilemmas" and "Botany Bay icon", though.)
*
cards were really important in 2002, but are steadily becoming less important as things get fixed... and they're also easier to access than ever, thanks to
Tribunal of Q and
Q's Tent: Civil War.
* The current rulebook is terrible. Use the one in my signature instead.
* Obviously, the dilemma combos have changed a lot since 2000, and there are lots of new and important cards, but you'll only learn about all that by studying decklists and card lists, so I'll leave you to it.
* In 1995, the pace of the game was often quite slow. Unless somebody managed to play Red Alert! or The Traveler, it could run 20 or 30 turns or more, each of list lasted a few minutes, adding up to a long, slow game. By 2002, the pace of the game was insanely fast. People routinely won in 1-2 turns. (But the turns took half an hour.) Today, the pace of the game is between those two extremes: it is possible to win in as little as 6 turns, and I'd say about half of all games are over by turn 9. That's still a little fast for my taste, but better than the cheese-fests of 2002.
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"We pledge our loyalty to the Glossary from now until death."
"Then receive this reward from the Glossary. May it keep you strong."
~Iron Prime