[Psylocke]

(I'm so sorry in advance for being so verbose)

Hi all!

I'm Psylocke. I'm new here. (I mean I've been wandering around the site a bit this past couple weeks but now I'm introducing myself.)

My brother has been telling me to check out this site for the past couple years. It took me a while to finally do so because I've got ADHD and it's basically impossible to do something I'm not in the mood for and I also can't force myself to be in the mood for something.
But, the isolating was apparently the impetus I needed to finally check this site out.

Despite my brother telling me otherwise, I still assumed this site was just going to be a little fan site run by one or two people that just wanted to make a few fantasy cards for a game they missed.
I never could have imagined that a game could actually get better AFTER it "died"!

Anyway, my brother and I used to play 1e. (aside from 2 cards from DS9, we have a complete set of everything from Premiere through The Dominion. (and a little bit of stuff from the rest of the expansions))
Although, I had barely used any concepts introduced in First Contact (and beyond).
For example, until just last week when I built some decks for the first time in probably 20+ years, I had never previously used any objectives, or the Borg (or Bajorans, Cardassians, or Dominion either), or Terok Nor/DS9, or the gamma quadrant, etc.

And so, the point of this post, in addition to introducing myself, is that I would like to get a "warp-speed" introduction to how the game plays now.
I don't mean the rules. I've read them already (both the short and long versions) and I understand everything.
What I mean is: how has the game changed since I played it casually back when I was a teenager?

1- I read that the game is apparently SIGNIFICANTLY fewer turns than it used to be.
Was it a gradual shift or was it (relatively) sudden? Were there some key cards, concepts, and/or systems etc. that especially contributed to it that I should know about?

2- Are there some cards, concepts, or systems that basically nobody uses anymore?
-Does anybody still use Terek Nor/DS9? (FWIW I have no clue if serious players ever used it (or any of the following cards). When I was younger I was pretty bad at, well, all games in general and I basically only played this with my brother and my friend.)
-Are Headquarters (like The Great Link or Office of the President) still used regularly?
-IIRC I saw someone mention that Events aren't really played anymore? That feels fairly drastic. Are there a couple main ways that people get extra card draws nowadays? Or is drawing extra cards not even a concern anymore?

3- Are there some "new" concepts that are fairly popular that I should know about?
-This is just a silly example but like are shipless decks all the rage nowadays? If so, what key card(s) enabled it's existence as a viable deck type?

I know there's some starter decks (and just tons of decklists in general) but, with the possible exception of if there's maybe a stereotypical deck or two that would help me quickly understand how the current game "flows", I really prefer not to use decklists.
If you're familiar with Magic:tg concepts, I'm definitely what's known as a Jenny/Johnny. I like to figure stuff out for myself and experiment. It's just that I'm currently 30 or 40+ expansions behind and I'd never be able to catch up otherwise without a primer on what I've missed.

Thank y'all in advance for any input you've got!

[Spectre9]

This actually mirrors my thinking when I first stumbled back into the game onto this website.

I can read rules. Assimilating a metagame through decklists I cannot.

Basically the idea these days is to use a lot of seed cards which let you either download things before the first turn or let you have extra free plays or draw lots of cards right from the first turn of the game. This is why the game is so fast now. Turn 6 is about the latest the game will go in a speed solver race.

People do still use the Nors with their sites but the rules around "walking" your personnel around the sites and reporting personnel are a bit clunky. Actually just recently a new card has been introduced to make this much better Primary Turbolift.

Headquarters are rarely used. You just don't need them for the free plays in most of the good meta decks. Time locations with Protect the Timeline and incidents like The Final Frontier have all the power.

Events are still played but wasting your card play for the turn when there are so few turns slows you down so if they're not being seeded or special downloaded they don't see much play.

There is a lot of card draw in the game these days. Some might say too much. Handshake Duck Blind Cafe des Artistes Study Divergent History are some off the top of my head.

Not really sure about new concepts. There's a bunch of different quadrants now. and time locations see a lot of play. So you free play stuff at a time location then you "time travel" to the location on the Spaceline.

Then of course there is battle Borg. They just chase you down and assimilate you or blow you up.

Ships are still very much a core component of the game. Every deck needs ships to move around.

I had to learn by stealing decklists and learning how they played in practice either by goldfishing myself in Lackey or by playing test games with others. Lackey is an online CCG program that allows you to move the cards around on a virtual table, you still need to communicate over Discord or Skype what you're doing.

You can certainly build decklists yourself. You just need to find the right type cards to seed which sets up the deck. These are the play engine type cards such as Continuing Mission , Reshape the Quadrant and Emblem of the Alliance.

Good Luck.

[jadziadax8]

Welcome to the site! I wrote a series of articles a couple of years ago analyzing beginner-friendly decks for all the affiliations. They were part of a larger article series called the Spotlight Series. Check out the ones entitles "So, I'm a New/Old Player, ________ Edition"

[Psylocke]

Oh my gods- thank you both SO much!

[Armus]

Welcome to the site! I wrote a series of articles a couple of years ago analyzing beginner-friendly decks for all the affiliations. They were part of a larger article series called the Spotlight Series. Check out the ones entitles "So, I'm a New/Old Player, ________ Edition"

That was a good series. We should probably perma-link those somewhere so new players don't have to go dumpster diving through the article archives.

[jadziadax8]

Welcome to the site! I wrote a series of articles a couple of years ago analyzing beginner-friendly decks for all the affiliations. They were part of a larger article series called the Spotlight Series. Check out the ones entitles "So, I'm a New/Old Player, ________ Edition"

That was a good series. We should probably perma-link those somewhere so new players don't have to go dumpster diving through the article archives.

I plan to link to them in the F.A.Q., whenever I get time to work on that...

[BCSWowbagger]

Welcome! I felt the same way when I discovered the CC! (And look at me now!)

1- I read that the game is apparently SIGNIFICANTLY fewer turns than it used to be.
Was it a gradual shift or was it (relatively) sudden? Were there some key cards, concepts, and/or systems etc. that especially contributed to it that I should know about?

Funny story.

The game accelerated very rapidly after Voyager came out, cheese decks proliferated, and the Holy Hexany combo made it so turns lasted 20+ minutes but there might only be one total turn in the game. That was a pretty abrupt shift. The game persisted in this mostly-broken, -dominant state for a decade or so.

Then the CC came along, and introduced several formats designed to tamp down the cheese, culminating in the OTF Rules and the Ban List. (If you're read the Rulebook, it uses OTF rules.) That abruptly lengthened the game. The aim was always for a game where both players got a seed phase and an average of 10 turns apiece and finished in 75 minutes, and it never quite got there.

That was 2010.

Since then, there has been a gradual, slow, but very steady increase in game speed. Each time a new set comes out, there's demand for it to be "competitive" with existing top decks, this often ends up introducing cards that are a bit more powerful than cards that came before, and so there's a gradual process of one-upsmanship that has pushed the game into a long-term pattern of escalation.

The CC also banned In The Zone, for very good reasons (it was the right call, IMO), but the fear of accidentally scoring more than 50 points was a key throttle on the midgame. Finally, the CC has been reducing our reliance on cards, another very good thing, but that means fewer players use Q's Tent: Civil War, which was another really helpful speed throttler for a few years.

Over the past decade, the game has lost turns instead of gained them. It's not as degenerate as it was at the end of the Decipher Era (with its one-turn wins), but it has made normal card plays absurdly overvalued (making many events too expensive to play) and has made mid-game and late-game strategies (like pretty much all artifacts) all but unplayable.

2- Are there some cards, concepts, or systems that basically nobody uses anymore?
-Does anybody still use Terek Nor/DS9? (FWIW I have no clue if serious players ever used it (or any of the following cards). When I was younger I was pretty bad at, well, all games in general and I basically only played this with my brother and my friend.)
-Are Headquarters (like The Great Link or Office of the President) still used regularly?
-IIRC I saw someone mention that Events aren't really played anymore? That feels fairly drastic. Are there a couple main ways that people get extra card draws nowadays? Or is drawing extra cards not even a concern anymore?

I love me some Terok Nor/DS9. Go check out the expansion sets Emissary, Warp Pack: Emissary, and Crossover. They're unpopular because unwieldy, but still pretty good -- especially with the new Primary Turbolift site.

Headquarters are still quite popular. Not sure what's going on in Spectre9's meta that he doesn't see them anymore, but, 'round these parts, homeworlds (and Strategema, typically accessed from a Q's Tent: Civil War using Tribunal of Q) are a key part of defense against battle decks, which dovetails nicely with HQ decks. You'll usually want to pair up an HQ with at least one additional free play engine, but there's plenty on offer, from Group Therapy to Full Complement of Shuttles to Reshape The Quadrant / Combined Task Force to Continuing Mission / Legitimate Leader of the Empire (the last two pairs there add property logo restrictions to your deck, though, so watch out for that).

3- Are there some "new" concepts that are fairly popular that I should know about?
-This is just a silly example but like are shipless decks all the rage nowadays? If so, what key card(s) enabled it's existence as a viable deck type?

The hawt tech of the late 2010s was/is "bugouts" and "bugins". You can't play most and so forth during mission attempts, but you can use icons, because they suspend play.

Bugouts are when you use a to abruptly end a mission attempt because you're facing a dilemma you don't want to deal with, using Anastasia Komananov's of Smoke Bomb or Daniels' of Out of Time. You bump into a Cytherians with a crew of 20 aboard, DL Smoke Bomb, and, boom, attempt ends; the dilemma reseeds to be encountered again by somebody else.

Bugins are when you use a to pull a key card into an attempt at the last second, after you've seen a dilemma and are about to fail it, like V'Tal grabbing Vulcan Mindmeld to get just the right skills when all else fails.

This has been a part of the game since the Decipher era -- just look at The Trouble With Tribbles -- but the CC has significantly extended it, and it's become a very key part of strategy in the past five years.

Again, welcome!

[karonofborg13]

Pyslocke,

Welcome. You’re located in one of the still (more) active locations for First Edition and amongst a group of good people/players... Lore (Kris Sonsteby- Organized Play director), BCSWowbagger (he who you’ve already heard from above, James Heaney- Rules guru), Justin Kauffman, Pants of the Tal Shiar (Jason Tang), Robert Peterson, Commander Joe (Joe Kallstrom), Mindmage (Ben Johnson- my “bro”), Iron Prime (Dan Van Kampen), as well as a few others. When society gets back to some semblance of normalcy, I highly recommend getting together with them.

I, myself, am Matthew Hayes, located up in West Fargo, North Dakota.

[SudenKapala]

Hello, Psy! Nothing much that I can add to the above, except to join the chorus in welcoming you back. Great to have you here!

And if, at times, you don't feel like playing the game or working on your decks -- as you describe in your OP/original post -- do feel free to check out the other discussions on the boards, e.g. in The Buzz, to socialize with us in that manner.

And thank you for being "verbose", I love hearing about people's history with the game, their collections, interests and exploits. Makes it even easier to connect.

[Iron Prime]

Welcome aboard!
It looks like BCSWowbagger has given you the history lesson and KaronofBorg13 has given you the good news that you are located in a great area for 1E!

I will simply add that many Andoria get togethers happen at the FFG Event Center, if you are familiar with it. And I would also mention that if you just can't wait you can download Lackey or Tabletop Simulator for some online play.

[BCSWowbagger]

And I would also mention that if you just can't wait you can download Lackey or Tabletop Simulator for some online play.

This is probably a good idea, as I very much doubt there will be physical tournaments in our area again until at least June, possibly August.

[Iron Prime]

This is probably a good idea, as I very much doubt there will be physical tournaments in our any area again until at least June, possibly August.

FTFY

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

Welcome from Yet Another Minnesotan! We've got a good group in the Twin Cities, and I look forward to getting back to our monthly tournaments. A lot of us are Johnnies, too. If you're interested in Draft or Sealed Deck, we also have options there: I've got a cube, and I know that there's some OTSD boxes and Voyager Starters floating around. We can also lend you a deck to play constructed, but it sounds like you're eager to build your own deck, so I'll give my take on your questions.

1- I read that the game is apparently SIGNIFICANTLY fewer turns than it used to be.
Compared to Premiere, yes. Premiere was play one card, draw one card each turn. Decipher gradually added ways to play more cards per turn: Headquarters, Doorways and Interrupts that download cards like Going to the Top, and eventually Incident-based free plays like Home Away From Home and The Kazon Collective. The CC continues to produce similar cards.

At some point, averaging 3 personnel per turn became the standard for what constitutes a playable deck, and I think that still applies. Personnel per turn has increased threefold since Premiere, but mission requirements have stayed the same, and dilemma requirements have really only doubled (Compare Hologram Ruse to today's highest attribute wall: Founder Secret.) So you can see how this would result in fewer turns.

This is not something that concerns me a great deal, though. Turns per game is down, but cards played per game is up. I'll often have a game that's fun, close, with plenty of interesting decision points, and lasts about an hour. I'll forget what turn the game ended, so I reconstruct it in my head, and conclude that it ended on one player's 7th turn. That is "enough turns" for a fun game, IMO. I wouldn't play this game if I didn't find it fun.

2- Are there some cards, concepts, or systems that basically nobody uses anymore?
Deep Space 9 is used quite a bit, but the Terok Nor side is used less. When the CC revisited DS9 material, the Cardassian Terok Nor deck turned out to be a bit underpowered and had a few weaknesses. Headquarters are still used, but players add other play engines to hit 3 personnel/turn or more.

I think "Events aren't played anymore," is kind of true but also kind of hyperbole. I'm sure there are members of the community that played lots of random Events at the kitchen table back in the Decipher era, and long for those days. But I think the key difference is that getting connected with the CC is like getting connected with an LGS: even though most of the "tournaments" are much more casual than an FNM, you still end up with more refined decks and strategies than the kitchen table. When I look at the 1997 World Champion deck, or the decks played in a recent throwback tournament, I don't see significantly more Events than now. No matter the card pool, the game really is about the personnel. They are your most versatile cards, and they are the cards you NEED to win the game. If you do play Events, they usually give you card draws -- so you can draw into the personnel you need.

As far as concepts that nobody uses, I'll mention stocking Q's Tent in your draw deck. It's ironic that I'm bringing this up, since I'm the one guy who stocks Q's Tent in almost all of my decks, but I'm the exception. With more plays per turn, you need more draws per turn, and thus "draw no cards this turn" becomes a bigger drawback. Almost every deck seeds Q's Tent, though, as a place to store downloadable cards without clogging up the draw deck.

3- Are there some "new" concepts that are fairly popular that I should know about?
The big one is that there has been movement toward subdividing affiliations according to property. This creates more decktypes and prevents every Federation deck from having access to all of the best Fed cards. Some of this subdivision happened during the Decipher era; TOS cards had icons, Voyager cards mostly had , and Enterprise cards were a different affiliation. That leaves just TNG and DS9. The CC created icons for those, and respectively. Instead of mass errata, the CC made seed cards that would grant those icons to the appropriate personnel and ships: Continuing Mission and Reshape the Quadrant. I don't have time right now for an Intro to Continuing Mission, but if you have any questions, just ask and someone can fill you in.

You can still play cross-property decks, but there are certain benefits that you only have access to if you limit yourself to a particular property.

That's all I have for now. Feel free to keep asking questions, and don't worry about being verbose. We have plenty of verbose people here.

[SudenKapala]

Hey Pants,
Great answer.
What are LGS / FNM?
And what do you stock Q's Tent in draw decks for?

[AllenGould]

What are LGS / FNM?

LGS is Local Gaming Store (if you like your store it can be your FLGS - Friendly Local Gaming Store).

FNM is Friday Night Magic, which is Magic's program to get stores to host tournaments every week.