Report:
I played this format today and had a very fun & interesting time. Thanks to ShipNerd for organizing the event.
The MP format is quite a radical spin on the normal game -- but, within its context, it works pretty well. My notes:
There are a handful of similarities with Warp Speed:
(1) As in Warp Speed, you ignore a lot of icons (quadrants, hologram,
, basically anything that keeps you from playing nouns at your outpost).
(2) As in Warp Speed, you have two normal card plays.
(3) Similar to Warp Speed, you draw two at end of turn. (Which is like "drawing up" but not identical.)
After that, the departures are large.
(4) The spaceline is very rigidly defined (I'll come back to that).
(5) Only dual-icon dilemmas are allowed.
(6) Dilemmas are spit out at random from a dilemma pile, similar to 2E's. (You can encounter the same dilemma twice at a given mission.) All missions have 4 dilemmas to be faced, except the outpost missions, which have 5. In effect, it was a LOT like requiring all players to use
The Squire's Rules, and that did indeed speed things along.
(7) Each affiliation has (a) a restriction, (b) a power, and (c) a bonus point mechanic. This is all coded to the affiliation's mechanical and story-based flavor. I played
. My restriction: no attacking
. My power: my Attack Ships could, once per game per opponent, decloak a ship. Also, twice per game, my invasive transporters could beam through opponent's shields. My points: 5 bonus points per personnel battle I won. I only know the three that were in our game, but they were indeed flavorful and shaped the game massively.
(8) The win condition is interesting. When any player reaches 85 points, or when time is called, it triggers the endgame. In the endgame, each player gets 2 more full turns (except the player who went first and the player who hit 85 points; they only get 1 full turn). The player with the most points at the end of the endgame wins.
(9) Mission stealing is completely forbidden.
(10) All decks are preconstructed, so any problems this format might have in a constructed format are solved straight off the bat.
(11) There is no real "seed phase," only a Mission Phase. There are no Doorways. Dilemmas are picked later, during an attempt, from a dilemma pile. You are required to seed your only facility (an outpost) at a specific mission, so it's not really a "phase."
(12) There are no affiliation attack restrictions and no leader requirement. Exception: the Federation can only attack if it is attacked first (as its restriction), and has (as its power) the ability to cancel battles twice per game if
Diplomacy > opponent's Treachery present.
(13) Each deck gets 8 predetermined cards at the start of the game. It is a mixture of Ships, Personnel, and maybe Events/Interrupts if you pick the right deck. All these cards are played automatically at the end of the seed phase, so you start with a substantial jumpstart. I had two ships + 5 personnel in play before my first turn started!
(14) Your cards may not initiate battle (or use abilities) (or get bonus points) at an opponent's outpost mission. They are safe zones.
(15) Okay, back to the spaceline, because this was the part of the format I personally found the most elegant, and it's the reason everything else worked.
There is a single "hub" card (not considered any player's mission) at the center of the spaceline --normally an unattemptable mission. In our game, it was
Diplomatic Conference. (I got the impression the "hub" card can vary based on which decks are involved.)
From the "hub", each player "controls" one spoke, or "spacearm." Each spacearm has a
❖ Space mission on the far end, and is rigidly constructed from there:
❖ SPACE
==> YOUR OUTPOST MISSION (a
mission of your choice)
==> A planet mission owned by the opponent on your right.
==> A space mission owned by the opponent on your right.
==> A planet mission owned by the opponent on your left.
==> CENTRAL HUB (shared by all)
So my spacearm ended up looking like this:
❖ Space
==>
Reopen Trade Discussions (
Outpost) (4 span)
==>
Upgrade Munitions (owned by
player Preston) (4 span)
==>
Warped Space (owned by
) (5 span, uggggh)
==>
Investigate Massacre (owned by
player Chris) (3 span).
So there's only one mission I can attempt on my arm: Reopen Trade Discussions. I have three other missions, but one of them is at the near end of Preston's
spacearm (18 span from my outpost), and my others are in the middle part of Chris's
spacearm (21 and 24 span from my outpost, respectively).
That jumpstart including a ship suddenly looked a lot less gamebreaking when I started staring down
that supply line.
But the long supply lines ended up being the centerpiece of the game.
They made ships and ferrying ability very very important. I had like 6 or 7 ships out by the end and still didn't feel like I had enough. (I also didn't have enough personnel, because I kept playing ships, so I was struggling with dilemmas.) Realizing you don't have enough SECURITY to pass
Dangerous Liaisons or
Eminian Distintegration Chamber is barely even a roadbump when you're 3 or maybe 6 RANGE from your outpost. It looks VERY different when you're 18 span from home.
The spaceline shape also forced interaction. There was nothing for it: we all HAD to go visit our opponent's territory, and our opponents generally HAD to come visit us. And all of us got points from interacting with opponents. (Klingons scored by having their own Honor personnel die in ship battle, and Feds scored by stopping SCIENCE in enemy territory for a full turn and surviving.) So we ended up having a very interactive game -- which turned out to be quite a delight when playing Trek with 3 players instead of the usual 2! We
all at some point tried to get the other two sides to fight and leave us alone for a minute so we could go solve -- and, if we happened to be behind, the leaders were usually willing to let us take that breather and catch up!
In the end, I won at time, 39-34-5. (Preston, who was playing only his second game since 1996, came in second, and would have tied me if he'd found a way to get one more Honor personnel to die in Glorious Battle.) I was a couple of turns away from getting my second mission solved, but I just didn't have time to ferry my Eris with Diplomacy (to combat The Clown: Guillotine) alllllll the way out to
Expand Karemman Operation before time was called and the endgame expired.
It was a very neat format, and gave me a lot of ideas for what a more generalized (i.e. not entirely preconstructed) "Commander format" for Trek might look like. If you happen to get a chance to play with ShipNerd and 1 or 2 other friends, it's a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
I can answer other questions about our game if there are any.