This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
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By Takket
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#551352
How do you decide how many personnel, that can report from free using one of your engines, do you include?

I've sort of defaulted to 8, figuring if the average games goes about 8 turns, carrying any more than that doesn't really help you. Carrying less could leave you with a wasted resource.

Is this what you do? I find a common problem is if i have three free reports and three card draws a turn, i'm depending on luck to get me at least 1 card that can go to all three free reports. i suppose when this happens is when i need to burn a card play on kivas of masaka to refresh and make sure i have the cards i need? I.E. maybe i don't need more than 8 free reports, i just need more card draws?
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#553289
Takket wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 10:42 pm How do you decide how many personnel, that can report from free using one of your engines, do you include?

I've sort of defaulted to 8, figuring if the average games goes about 8 turns, carrying any more than that doesn't really help you. Carrying less could leave you with a wasted resource.

Is this what you do? I find a common problem is if i have three free reports and three card draws a turn, i'm depending on luck to get me at least 1 card that can go to all three free reports. i suppose when this happens is when i need to burn a card play on kivas of masaka to refresh and make sure i have the cards i need? I.E. maybe i don't need more than 8 free reports, i just need more card draws?
I'm not sure I'm 100% tracking your question/confusion. For my free reports, I always aim to make 90%-100% of my personnel able to free report. Why would you do it any other way?
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#553300
He is not asking percentage of personnel that are free, he is asking how many free report-able people per engine. For instance, how many ❖ [1E-TNG] for Attention All Hands, and how many [1E-TNG] [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise people for Finest Crew in the Fleet, etc.
Last edited by Professor Scott on Thu May 06, 2021 11:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#553306
Professor Scott wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 11:12 am He is not asking percentage of personnel that are free, he is asking how many free report-able people per engine. For instance, how many ❖ [1E-TNG] for Attention All Hands, and how many [1E-TNG] [Fed] U.S.S. Enterprise people for Finest Crew in the Fleet, etc.
Oooooooh, yeah that makes more sense.
Last edited by stressedoutatumc on Thu May 06, 2021 12:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#553310
Ensign Q wrote: Thu May 06, 2021 1:09 pm 6-9 seems a decent number
:shifty: Remove the dash and it gets better. :shifty:
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By PantsOfTheTalShiar (Jason Tang)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#553319
I think more in terms of proportions than of absolute numbers. So for example, let's say I have a deck with free report engines A, B, and C, and where I plan to play a card draw Event as my normal card play most turns. If we assume perfect distribution, that implies a deck that looks approximately like this:

25% free report A
25% free report B
25% free report C
25% normal card play (card draw Event)

Now of course you're not going to get a perfect distribution when you shuffle, so it's good to adjust these proportions to reduce the likelihood of a really bad draw. Taking the example of the card draw Event, it's much better to draw too much card draw than too little. So I might bump that percentage up to 30-35% or so. On the other hand, report engine C might have lower quality personnel than A and B, so I might be comfortable with fewer C personnel.

For my decks, I shoot for 40-60 cards, so from that you can determine an absolute number of personnel based on your proportions.
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#553321
^ I'm pretty similar to Pants. Typically, when I make a deck -- and I'm not just slapping it together:

1. I first select my free play engines.

2. Then I put every single personnel who fits any of the free play engines into the deck.

3. Then I check the skill matrix.

4. Then I check how many people are in my smallest free play engine. So, if I'm using Bajoran Resistance Cell in a [1E-DS9] deck with no AU cards, that's usually ~11.

5. Then I cut all my other free play engines down to that size. So if I have three free play engines, I'll end up with 11+11+11 = 33 personnel. Add some other events/interrupts/whatnot, then add 1 ship for every 10 cards in the deck, and voila, 40-card deck, more or less.
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 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#553347
I don't.

Either:

I put every free person I can into the deck, then make cuts and substitutions until the skill matrix looks good, adding a few card play peeps as needed to make it work and then I call it good.

OR

I am building around some kind of strategy and who goes in furthers that or they don't and then they better be worth a card play.

Tldr: I do things differently than everyone it seems but it works for me
 
By HoodieDM
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#553594
Everyone plays differently. Usually your biggest obstacle is just getting all those free to play engine cards to the same location to do whatever it is you want to do (mainly attempt missions).

I see lots of people maybe do 3-4 free report engines, but really only focus on 2 (plus a normal card play) and every other turn they get that extra free play out. But they're mainly using it for some sort of draw engine. Like BRC/Son'a Observatory/Duck Blind/Process Ore. So every turn they for sure have 3 card plays (2 for free) and then every other turn they're getting that extra 1-2 free plays to hit that total of 3-4. Most competitive decks you at LEAST want 3 card plays per turn. Extra is extra depending on what you can get.
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