[IzzyFrozen]

Hi all. I'm pretty much brand new to this game, and come from more of a Magic: The Gathering background. A friend of mine collects Trek 1e cards and has started to get me into it. I've read through the glossary and core rules on the main page, and I think I've got a pretty firm grasp on it all, but I have a question that I couldn't find the answer to there.

Can you have multiples of a card out and does that allow the effect of those cards to happen multiple times? In Magic, this kind of thing is allowed with a few exceptions.

So, for example: If I have 2 drones on a ship, and each one has a separate Cortical Node Implant on them with a Borg Data Node present on that ship, can I use the effect (Draw a card, may not be converted to download) of both node implants on the same turn?

If through regular draws or Borg Queen downloads I get 2 We Are The Borg on the field, do I have access to the second effect (extra draw) twice?

Hopefully those examples clear up exactly what I'm asking. The rules are pretty clear when it comes to personas not working like that, and it seems like multiple instances of Equipment and Interrupt cards work that way, I just wasn't sure about Events and Incidents as listed in the examples.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Slayer07]

Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe;

The first answer I think is no, the card specifically says it's a once each turn effect. So no matter how many Cortical Node Implants are on drones it's still a once per turn effect.

As for We Are The Borg I do believe those stack, so if you have two of those you can draw two cards. In fact if you also have The Traveler: Transcendence with it you can actually draw three cards per turn. And if you have Borg Queen in play all three of those card draws could be converted to downloads too if you want.

[BCSWowbagger]

First: welcome! So many new players are people who actually played back in the '90s and just need to get up to speed; being an actual honest-to-God new player is very cool, and if there's anything you can tell us about challenges you faced learning the game, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love the feedback. Here's one thing:

The "core rulebook" on the main page is a butt. There's a new one, it's been approved, and we are just waiting for it to be officially announced and replaced on the homepage:

https://www.trekcc.org/op/1e_rulebook/

Okay, now for your actual question:

The main thing you're looking for is the cumulative rule. The cumulative rule has some tricky parts once you get into the really fine mechanics of action-response timing, but the gist of it is very simple: Multiple copies of the same card have the same effect on the same target at the same time only if they are marked "cumulative". You can read all the fine print at the link, but it's a straightforward enough concept.

So let's consider the situation where you have played two copies of We Are The Borg. They are having the same effect (providing an additional end-of-turn card draw or free report) on the same target (you, the player) at the same time (continuously). The card is not marked "cumulative." Therefore, the second copy of We Are The Borg has no effect on you.

Now let's take a look at Cortical Node Implant. Here, we can skip worrying about what is targeted and at what time (which is great; the cumulative rule gives me a headache), because the timing of Cortical Node Implant is expressly given by the card: The first power, "transferring data," is limited to "once each turn" means that, regardless of how many copies you have in play, you may use the ability only once for each of your turns, on your turn (here's the full rule).

The second ability, "regulating implants," is "once every turn." According to the each vs. every rule, this means it can be used once on your turn and once on your opponent's turn. Ordinarily, this would again be limited to just once every turn, regardless of how many copies you have in play... except Cortical Node Implant expressly says you can do it once every turn "for each of your Borg with a Cortical Node Implant." The "golden rule" of the game (like all CCGs) is that specific text on a card overrides a more general rule, so that gets around the usual once-every-turn limitation.

...man, I didn't think that would take so many words to explain. It's amazing how quickly all this becomes internalized and intuitive. I hope this was clear, at least!

[IzzyFrozen]

Awesome! I didn't know about the Traveler, thanks for that!

That rules breakdown for cumulative and every/each was exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! It makes perfect sense, too. It's funny how often the answer to "What does a card mean" typically turns out to be "Exactly what it says. You're overthinking it," in these kinds of games.

Also, hot dang that rule book is snazzy! I like that it has an icons legend. That's probably the first of those I've seen for this game and it's the new sliced bread. Most of the rules for 1e I've been able to find prior to finding this site were terrible pdf scans.

As far as being a new player, I found the game really hard to wrap my head around my first time playing because I hadn't read the rules and my friend (who has played/collected since the 90's) gave me an explanation how to play while playing and I found it to be frustrating. Learning it that way is, it's a given it would have been frustrating.

Coming from MTG, those cards are kind of purposely vague. "Counter creature spells" or "Counter instant spell", meaning stop any 1 kind of card play of a certain type from happening. Whereas this game is very granular. "This card is immune to Kevin Uxbridge." Uxbridge is just 1 card from 1 of the many sets that are out. It's really interesting, and it makes a good amount of sense too. It has to be very granular because the universe the game is based from is huge, but a lot of the fan base are so into it they know the rosters of all the ships anyway. I'm over here starting up DS9 with the wife for the first time goin "Awesome! Miles O'Brien is in this!"

I read the rule books I could find, and grabbed LackeyCCG and just started looking at cards and having read the rules it just clicked. It's the things you'd like to see in Star Trek (or what you think of when you think of Trek), but in card game form. I primarily stick to ToS and TNG myself because when I think of Trek it's the "Seeking new life, new civilizations" line and how it felt like they were exploring. Those are mission cards. Or how the crew run into some crazy calamity trying to help a new species and they have to outwit their circumstances to survive. Dilemmas. It's clearly a labor of love from the makers of the game, through and through. It's very granular because the rules have to be able to accommodate all the people and events in Trek, and also all the crazy political stuff, wormholes, holograms, alternative universes, time traveling, and whatever the heck Q feels like this week, and make it work. It's honestly pretty great.


Other than that, the biggest issue was the icon legend, but that's sorted. I like Star Trek quite a bit, but I don't instantly recognize the iconography. I've just gotten to the part in DS9 where Quark is sent out to do the wine deal with some Dominion members, but I wouldn't know what the Dominion icon would look like, or even that the icon I was looking at was Dominion simply because I haven't seen the episode where it's shown yet. That's not really the game's fault because you've basically got to have some commitment to Trek to be checking into the game this late, so I can't really fault it for me not doing all the homework, ha ha ha.

Thanks again!!

[frakkingoff]

I'm not sure it's cool that the Ferengi are described as a "big-eared" species in the Ferengi affiliation Icon Legend of the rulebook...

[SudenKapala]

The "core rulebook" on the main page is a butt. There's a new one, it's been approved, and we are just waiting for it to be officially announced and replaced on the homepage

Is there a topic about that wonderful new Rulebook (no irony intended whatsoever; it's really amazing to a newcomer like me) somewhere?

[BCSWowbagger]

No objection to restarting this one!

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=22907&p=247649

What's wrong with "big-eared"?

[SudenKapala]

No objection to restarting this one!

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=22907&p=247649

Bookmarked for future reference -- or wait, let's see if I can move the next issue there.