This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#568640
Hello everyone,

Once again, I find myself traveling tomorrow and begging your forgiveness for posting the Friday question early. As it tomorrow is also the last day of 2021, New Year's Eve, I thought it would be a good thing to ask you a few questions about First Edition over the last 365 days. We'd really like to know what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you wished for in 2021:

What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?

And finally, we released four expansions in 2021: Dogs of War, Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered, The Trial Never Ended, and Second Star to the Right. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on those:

What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?

Thanks for reading and for taking the time to answer. We've got some big things coming, and I hope that you'll stick with us as we head into 2022. And I hope that, whatever your plan are for ringing in the new year, you are able to execute them safely.

I'll see you all in 2022!

-crp
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#568865
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
The design, development, and release of The Trial Never Ended. Revamping the [Q] mechanic was a tall order and one with a lot of potential pitfalls, and I'm happy that it went well and - so far - has been received well.
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
Not being able to release both Second Star to the Right and Paradise Lost in the same year. Splitting this one expansion into two was the right call, but it ended up taking a lot more time to get SSttR to a releasable state, and PL is also taking a lot longer than I wanted it to. I'm disappointed we only put out two "standard size" expansions last year.
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
A number of non-design projects have been on the back burner for entirely too long. The fact that they're still there fills me with regret.
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
The Trial Never Ended
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered, but only because we didn't support the release with events and celebration as much as I wanted to. Stupid COVID.
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat was your favorite 2021 1E card?
Q-Flash
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pmWhat was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Alliance with the Son'a, but only because of how big of a PITA it was to get finished.

-crp
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First Edition Creative Manager
By KazonPADD (Paddy Tye)
 - First Edition Creative Manager
 -  
1E European Continental Runner-Up 2023
1E The Neutral Zone Regional Champion 2023
#568870
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pm What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Biggest success? Dogs of War for re-energising DS9 decks.
Biggest failure? Not banning The Devil from the DoW release tournament!
Wish we’d done? Progressed further with Project Babylon…
Favourite Expansion? Second Star to the Right (have spent most of 2021 working on it!)
Least favourite Expansion? OTSD:R (just because it didn’t add anything new)
Favourite card? Staging Ground (trying to break the “free play” mould.
Least favourite card? Make Us Go (I just don’t like the re-worded version and think it could be clearer).
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By Ensign Q
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#568889
What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
-game is still alive and in decent shape
What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
rework of qflash. face up/face down sidedeck? thats not even practical in lackey.
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
-more cleanup of rules and terms. (obv)
What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
im not very hot on either set. dogs probably the best.
What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
-
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
Mortal Quinn
What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Terrorist Explosion
Last edited by Ensign Q on Wed Jan 05, 2022 6:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
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By Ausgang (Gerald Sieber)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#568904
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pm What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
Unloading Miracle Worker.
What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
Second Star To The Right. Easily the most disappointing and uninspiring expansion created during the virtual era from my point of view.
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
One of biggest concerns is how to keep the game alive in the face of its players' diaspora. My biggest wish would be a (user-friendly, convenient) solution for online play like GEMP for SWCCG, but more like The Iron Throne for AGOT LCG, or Doomtown Online. Of course, that is too tall of an order to ask, but other than a better alternative to Lackey I don't have something specific in mind.
What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
No clear front-runner. Probably Dogs of War is one step ahead of OTSD Remastered, mostly for not taking the chance to finally add a hard cap on STP.
What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
Guess I've covered that.
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
Alliance with the Son'a
What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Vic Fontaine who represents pars pro toto the growing tendency in design to purposelessly insert star power; in this example by designing a practically dysfunctional card for the heck of a joke. Deliberately designing junk when time and space is limited leaves me in bewilderment.
 
By HsuDoNihm
 - Alpha Quadrant
 -  
#568922
I am so excited and thankful for all of the hard work everyone has put in. The only thing that I hope for in the coming year is to find a few more people that are up for pick-up games and willing to help me deck test before tournaments :)

Happy NY everyone!
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First Edition Art Manager
By jjh (Johnny Holeva)
 - First Edition Art Manager
 -  
#568954
What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
The people. 1E Volunteers who guide, design, and create, along with the players who continue playing the game are the biggest success for 1E.

What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
The Release of Dogs of War was a failure. It managed to make me stop playing 1E. Because of the lack of using OTF tools, along with a lack of vision for how the cards would be played, the release tournaments were ruined for me. To this day I feel that Staging Ground/Treaties/The Devil was and is a massive blind spot for 1E Leadership, Balance, Rules, and Design in the OTF format.

What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
Use the OTF toolbox proactively. OTF was designed for progressive thinking.

What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
1. Second Star to the Right - Love the new deck building themes and the Nouns.
2. The Trial Never Ended - I feel like this was missing a Page 2, I wanted more.
3. Official Tournament Sealed Deck Remastered - Looks great and will be a help for Local OP for years/decades(?) to come.

What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
Dogs of War. I LOVE DS9, and the Season 7 "Dogs of War" Arc is a triumph of serialized Star Trek storytelling. Unfortunately the Release of Dogs of War was filled with NPEs and lack of proactive balancing, and it killed my desire to play 1E (I'm still re-charging those batteries) So much work went into this expansion, but it landed with a NPE thud, half-baked. Should have been sent to the OTF Oven to make more of the cards more fun to play.

What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
Spock Son of Sarek from Second Star to the Right - Just look at that card. I love it - the image, the affiliation, the lore, the new icon, the skills, the attributes. Too much fun? Maybe. More please.

What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Treaty: Alpha Quadrant Alliance
Staging Ground
I Want the Cardassians Exterminated!
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#569045
What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
Continuing despite COVID and the uphill battle. ;). After that, fixing the nerfing of Q-Flash by the 2-dilemma rule.

What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
Nothing really comes to mind for me as a big failure, but I will somewhat agree that unloading Miracle Worker was a negative for me, as it made the card a little less special, and while it may be a net-good for the game, didn't feel great for me.
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
Given how digital is more of the play for the last year, something to enhance digital play.

What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
The Trial Never Ended - fixing the biggest issue with Q-Flash, where you could only have 2. (Something that it was never designed around.)

What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
The Trial Never Ended. ;). Only 9 new cards when there's a lot of potential with Q still untapped. I would have preferred to see more here over revisiting TMP yet.
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
- Speacedoor, because I love the design space of dual-sided cards, and it was a great thing seeing a favorite car restored to it's beauty.

Setting that aside for a moment, my favorite *new* design would be

Staging Ground. - I like cards like this that let you radically define your deck.

What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Spock, Son of Sarek.

This isn't entirely fair. I like the card. I don't like how the special skill to allow it to work with other Sha Kaa Ree icon cards takes up so much useful space in the text box and how that's repeated Caitlin Dar shown in the preview. Feels like to me a special skill that's repeated on both cards we've seen with the icon is a waste of the room on the card.
 
By Se7enofMine (ChadC)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#569086
No specifics here. All i will say is that i am happy the game is still being played, new cards are still being made, the game is alive, the forums are good, we have a discord that we can use. These are all great things for the game.

Is everything perfect? Of course not. Nothing is. But it isnt doom and gloom either.

Biggest thanks to those, both behind the scenes and in front, that continue to make this game possible for us to nerd out on.
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#569089
What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
I think the game itself feels healthy, active, and so much fun to play. The community is vibrant and, though we do not always agree, it feels very active. I also think the push to get more content on YouTube has been great and the fact you are creating a coordinating position speaks wonders to the growth and health of the game.

The Second Star Movie Klingons are top notch and quite a bit of fun to play.

What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
Failure is a bit harsh, but I think the Q rework and the [Fed] end of Second Star were underwhelming. Very exciting in principle, great to see new cards, but I just don't think they are impactful enough to play.

What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
I hate to keep banging this drum, but cards that let [DL] interrupt dilemma just hurts the game. Someone on the CC admitted this was never the intention and the fact that people think it's ok to exploit this and call it "meta" is a cancer to any game, especially one where dilemma is arguably (or at least should be) the more important part of deckbuilding. I hope this is on the books for the next coming year and that change is simply taking away the "suspends play" speed of the [DL]. It would honestly fix pretty much everything that is problematic without changing the spirit of the [DL]
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First Edition Rules Master
By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Community Contributor
#570294
MidnightLich wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:07 pm What do you think was the biggest success for 1E in 2021?
We crowned a new world champion. :)

Seriously, though, the state of the game right now seems to me to be literally the best it's ever been. Worlds featured a wide range of speed solvers, aggro, and midrange decks. I wish [OS] [Fed] hadn't been quite so prevalent, but there were a lot of colors represented -- and they mostly played quite different, too. We've come a long, long way from the "Which [1E-TNG] Deck Will Win Worlds?" meta of 2013. (In fairness, 2013's meta had a whole three decks: Continuing Mission, Bajoran Resistance Cell, and Borg. Borg won Worlds.)
What do you think was the biggest failure for 1E in 2021?
Covid continued. That was a strong negative headwind for the community and especially for organized play. As I expressed to you privately, it makes me worry about the future -- when this all settles down, how many pre-pandemic playgroups will just be gone? How will we recover? The Worlds meta in 2021 was more fun and diverse than it was in 2013... but it was also quite a bit smaller. That scares me.

I guess that's not really a failure of the game, though, just a bad circumstance. So let's find one that is technically in our power:

I'm starting to come around to the idea that the (extremely difficult) task of replacing Lackey with a new piece of software needs to be a higher priority than it is. A long-distance friend of mine is trying to get me into Netrunner, and it turns out Netrunner (like so many other discontinued games) has a slick, rules-enforcing online play application. It makes me almost embarrassed to try introducing my friend to Trek, because Lackey sucks.

I don't know how to address our failure to fix this. It seems to me that we literally don't have the resources for it. The website redesign is an even higher priority, and it is occupying the full energies of the Programming Team. We may just have to hope that some angel materializes out of the ether and (like the one guy who built GEMP) just decides to gift us with an open-source Trek application.
What was the thing you wish we'd done in 2021?
Ban list reduction.
What was your favorite 2021 1E expansion?
I really want to say it was The Trial Never Ended or even OTSD-R, because Rules worked hard on those and (if I may toot our own horn) did a terrific job. Certainly one of Rules' big successes in 2021 was figuring out how to do remasters effectively (including TMP-R, which is coming in 2022 but we did nearly all the work in 2021). And I'm extremely happy with how the revised Q-Flash came out: same mechanics you've loved since 1996, but spelled out so much clearer.

But expansions are mainly about Design, not Rules, and the best 2021 1E expansion was, hands-down, Dogs of War. We had no right to expect a set this good, and, the more I think about DoW, the more I'm impressed by it. The cards are fun. They're well-balanced. Each new "team" fits their "colors" really well, while simultaneously establishing themselves with their own distinctive mechanical flavor.

A classic complaint about 1E is that we have all these different colors and teams, but most of the decks play fundamentally the same way: stack free plays and draws, fly around, solve missions. You really can't say that about the teams in DoW. Whether it's no-facilities Honor Cardassian saboteurs, a new Dominion team that sacrifices a lot of raw power in exchange for negating a key Dominion weakness (starting in the Gamma Quadrant), or the how-has-nobody-thought-of-this-before-and-how-does-it-fit-so-perfectly simplicity of Staging Ground, you will build your DoW decks differently, and you will remember how much fun you had playing them.

On top of that -- because, yes, there's still more to praise--Dogs of War accomplished all this with elegant simplicity. The strategies with DoW cards are deep and complex... but the cards are clear and simple. Special skills are simple and to the point, there are no phantom icons like the ones added by Continuing Mission, there's very very little "let's find a random word in lore!" keyword searching. Did you notice how few Special Downloads there are, and how none of them can "bug in" or "bug out" during a mission attempt?

Many of the dilemmas are clear successors to older dilemmas, using straightforward, one-punch effects to challenge opponents and push the meta in one direction or another. There are no multi-step, multi-effect dilemmas, no kill-walls, none of the tricks Design has increasingly relied on to make "sufficiently powerful" dilemmas -- and yet all these dilemmas (except the still-underrated Terrorist Explosion) are seeing play, because they're good!

Yet the flavor shines through anyway. A major "Alpha Dominion needs to play nice with Cardies and Breen" mechanical theme is accomplished largely through some careful, deceptively simple nudges on nouns and a couple of verbs, some of which aren't even that wordy. Staging Ground's simplified report-with-crew (which saves so many headaches!) is that rare mechanic that perfectly blends story and color in just a couple of easily-understood sentences.

I love this set. A zillion kudos to @Smiley , @KazonPADD , @HoodieDM, and @Dukat .
What was your least favorite 2021 1E expansion?
I don't want to yuck anybody's yum, but I thought Second Star to the Right was boring, and missed a lot of the marks that Dogs of War met.

Now, part of that is because the Project Rogue team very deliberately took all the interesting cards out of 2S2R and moved them took the next set, in order to ease testing and get something released in 2021! So this should be graded on a curve! I've seen Paradise Lost (should be working on it right now, in fact!), and it is tackling some big challenges. I fully expect to feel much more warmly toward Paradise Lost when it comes out.

But, even taking that into account, I think 2S2R falls short. Its spin on [CF] [Fed] doesn't seem meaningfully different from every other version of [Fed] -- it's just Another Fed Team with A Well-Crafted Skill Matrix and Some Play / Draw / Attribute engines. The main attraction seems to be These Guys Have Different Pictures. There's no coherent theme to them or mechanic built around them, nothing in common across their nouns except admiralness. The main attempt to give them something "different" is Reserve Activation Clause, a card I don't mind, but also doesn't make me want to play them.

Ditto [CF] [Kli] . Their main mechanical distinguishing element (beyond "aha, but our cards have movie property logos!") seems to be "the game's easiest two-mission win" via GIVE ME GENESIS!, which doesn't feel at all on-brand for Red to me.

Still, I have to admit that I haven't seen 2S2R in action outside playtesting yet, so it's entirely possible I'm selling these cards short. It's also possible Design had a theme in mind for each faction in 2S2R that I simply failed to grok.

Also, this is by no means a terrible set. It's a pretty good example of longstanding Design practices that I've been a part of as well. (You could make lots of these same criticisms of The Cage, the last set I helped design.) It was just S2SR's own bad luck to come out the same year as the superlative Dogs of War, allowing me to draw this contrast.

Also also, these are by no means bad designers. Indeed, two of them also worked (very hard! I saw them!) on Dogs! (The others have fine resumes as well.) Which just shows that game design is hard, and sometimes it doesn't all come together. Or maybe it did come together, and S2SR just isn't a set for me.
What was your favorite 2021 1E card?
Staging Ground.
What was your least favorite 2021 1E card?
Make Us Go. Remasters are supposed to make cards better and clearer, not the opposite. That's on me, and I apologize.
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