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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
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Community Contributor
#560398
TNG block is great for new players for the reasons people listed and for one more:

It combines very well with the first three sets (premiere, AU, and Q) of the game, which are by far the most prevalent cards in people's existing collections. You can start newbies on the TNG starters, then get a cheap-o box of premiere and the newbies can mod the decks with physical, nostalgic cards from 1995.

One of my favorite tournaments ever was a sealed tournament that used TNG starters and sealed premiere boosters.
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By rabyte
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#560439
Wow, so many good ideas. I was expecting some feedback but this was a lot in a short period of time, thanks!
I guess I will focus on TNG then first.
BCSWowbagger wrote: DS9 Block got the worst reputation, because its power level was so much lower than the TNG Block with which it was paired (and gamers hate lower power levels), but, taken on its own terms, DS9 was actually one of the best blocks, and really the only one that was designed, soup to nuts, for the Block environment. (TNG's Block play was artificially grafted on to "Life From Lifelessness Block," which was not actually a block, so there were some truly bizarre cards in the pool.)
That is interesting. Would it make more sense in general to only have one "active" block instead of two (where one does not know the future pairing in the designing phase?)
Are advanced players actually meeting up saying: let's play only DS9 block today... challenge accepted to figure out how it can work?
AllenGould wrote: I think a limited-pool entry point doesn't necessarily need to be "simple". [...] So I think you can have a block with Mirror (or another quadrant), or one with Tribbles, or one with Time Locations, or Tactics or Flashes or whatever... but you shouldn't have one with all of those things.

Positioning Block as "newbie mode for newbies" is bad, because it signals to enfranchised players that "this isn't for you". Rather, Block should be "OK, you know how to use all these cards - but can you make it work with this subset?"
I agree to all of what you said. It would be great to focus on different things. New players could learn the game step by step and advanced players should not see the block format as something only for newbies, it needs to be played (be it on rl or virtually).
But
AllenGould wrote:And I'd agree that we need a very newbie product, but I think a playable deck (whether a theme deck a la our current starters or TWT, or the rigged starters from DS9) is a better first step. If we've got them hooked enough that they're trying to build a deck, we need to show enough meat to reel them in.
Not sure about that. Starter Decks sure, but we are talking about like 200 cards. The next step would be all the 5000 (?) cards? But I agree it has to be interesting enough. I remember watching the team-covenant Youtube video where they are trying/playtestingt 2E (with Starter Decks) and the bottom line was a.f.a.i.r. that the game was quite solitary, boring, retro...etc. That should definitively not happen :)
edgeofhearing wrote: It (TNG) combines very well with the first three sets (premiere, AU, and Q) of the game, which are by far the most prevalent cards in people's existing collections.
Are they? From another thread here where people were discussing their favorite expansions, the result pretty much was FC/BoG. But that's worth another thread probably ;)
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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
 -  
Community Contributor
#560441
rabyte wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 7:38 am
edgeofhearing wrote: It (TNG) combines very well with the first three sets (premiere, AU, and Q) of the game, which are by far the most prevalent cards in people's existing collections.
Are they? From another thread here where people were discussing their favorite expansions, the result pretty much was FC/BoG. But that's worth another thread probably ;)
For sure, PAQ expansions aren't necessarily people's favorite expansions, but they are by far the most commonly owned and the easiest to purchase. Both FC and BoG are well-regarded, but the product availability out there has mostly dried up. And if you grouped all the people who own trek cards in a big circle and threw a brick something non-harmful at them, odds are high that anyone you hit only owns cards from premiere.
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