[Orbin]

Hello all,

over the years we've had cards created for the Core/Main Cast Members where they were represented by a different affiliations than the primary affiliation for their shows / .

Today's question is:
Do you like having cards where a core/main cast member has a different affiliation than expected? Do you feel like there is a line/requirement on what should count as being a different than expected affiliation, and if so, what is it?

My answer:
I like having versions of mains with different affiliations. Adding Picard to my TNG deck makes me smile.

I feel that the line on what counts as being of an affiliation has been a bit blurry when it comes to certain cards. Often a "worked with / integrated into / advanced the goal of" the affiliation has been a means of determining this, but it's not always been clear cut. When working on A Private Little War we had originally proposed Baroner be a version of Captain Kirk as he was the liaison to the Klingons (worked with), but as you can see we ended up making him / instead. Concerns were raised that he was working contrary to the Klingons and was more of an Infiltrator than a affiliated personnel.

-James M

[AllenGould]

My take:



If I wanted to play with the hoomans, I'd play Fed. If I'm sleeving up a different affiliations, I want to *play* a different affiliation, not just Human Cosplay.

[Keiimaster]

My take:



If I wanted to play with the hoomans, I'd play Fed. If I'm sleeving up a different affiliations, I want to *play* a different affiliation, not just Human Cosplay.

But the hooman Captain Picard, is a great addition to your deck, and the look on his face is priceless.

[nobthehobbit]

IMO there's nothing wrong with having a few personnel cross affiliations. After all, that happened on occasion in Trek. But the crossover characters shouldn't be the focus, and it should be completely viable to play a deck without them.

[Rachmaninoff]

I'm not a huge fan of them, and often the affiliation icon is really a stretch... would Data and Picard really help the Romulans with their Strategic Diversion? Would Jodmos actually initiate battle against a ship? Shouldn't Prisoner Archer be stuck on Rura Penthe rather than out solving missions? His lore says he has a life sentence there. Unless it's more like Broken Slave Archer who's willingly using his skills and attributes in service of the Empire which is... really dark compared to what we've seen in any of the shows (not even touching The Trois). For many of these personnel, an infiltration icon is more appropriate.

I'd rather affiliations be able to rely primarily on "native" personnel (adding story to briefly-seen characters like Kitrik or Boheeka is fine with me), and have other mechanisms to recreate the story moments represented by these kinds of cards.

[Takket]

honestly i feel like the mains have been beaten to death. I'd rather see some fresh faces. Decipher knew what fans showed up to see and they gave it to them. I really don't ever need a Ferengi Jadzia playing tongo or a Chekov through some nonsense lol

[patrick]

I like the "wrong affiliation" cards, and I'd like to see more. Not just for main characters either. I also like things like Romulan Klingons (Kell, Sisters of Duras) and pre-commandeered ships a lot (Naprem).

I don't mind stretching logic to create more. "What-if" scenarios are fine with me as well.

(I never play Federation, so I basically ignore those cards.)

[AllenGould]

IMO there's nothing wrong with having a few personnel cross affiliations. After all, that happened on occasion in Trek.

Very on occasion. Worf is pretty much it.

Everyone else is on loan, which is a treaty thing.

[Keiimaster]

IMO there's nothing wrong with having a few personnel cross affiliations. After all, that happened on occasion in Trek.

Very on occasion. Worf is pretty much it.

Everyone else is on loan, which is a treaty thing.

Oh and:
Michael Eddington
Cal Hudson
Thomas Riker
Tom Paris twice
Chokotay twice
B'Elanna Torres
Seven of Nine
Seska
etc...

Granted most of those are to and/or from but also to and to . I am sure there are plenty more examples.

[BCSWowbagger]

I tend to dislike these cards. I'd rather have genuine personnel from the actual affiliation than off-brand humans included at a stretch.

However, I recognize that some people like star power, so I will only raise a stink about them if the design is abusing multi-affiliation cards when it needs to be an infiltrator. (Baroner is a good example of a card I would HATE if he were .)

Also... I can't be too specific about this, but I was doing some work on a certain affiliation/faction/team with very very few usable images / memorable characters. (I will leave aside the question of WHY we would have an affiliation/faction/team based largely on unmemorable characters, but it was Decipher's choice.) When working on this affiliation/faction/team, I found that, since there was just no star power to be found within the affiliation/faction/team, bringing some star power in from a different affiliation/faction/team worked really well, and greatly improved my play experience with them (just because I finally had a few characters I actually recognized!). So it can be a good thing to bring in off-color star power if there's just nobody else around. Yet I think that's the exception, not the rule.

[lotjx2]

It's fine by me. Klingon Picard makes sense since he had an official title and was helping a faction in the Klingon Empire. Same goes for most the cards. The prisoner cards are a bit iffy but I understand needing some help with the other affiliations due to most of the shows focusing on the Federation.

[jjh]

I love to see one or two off-affiliation Mains in every expansion. They're delightfully quirky and make for memorable gaming interactions.

Keep on keeping on.

[Armus]

I think like most things, there isn't one answer. Some of the "off-color star power" cards made sense thematically, some were necessary for gameplay balance, and others were just kind of WTF?

Examples off the top of my head:

;
Janeway - great addition for both theme and gameplay

:
Phlox - not a huge fan of the but I get that he's the best Medical for a deck so I'll let it slide on gameplay necessity.

:
Prisoner Archer
Prisoner McCoy
Prisoner Martia - sensing a theme? (though this one isn't AS egregious)
Arik Soong - shouldn't have been

[GooeyChewie]

In my opinion, there is a subtle but real difference between "star power" and "off-color main characters*."

"Star power," to me, means characters, ships and moments (events, interrupts, missions, etc.) which are important to that affiliation. For example, I consider Kang, Koloth and Kor to be star power for Klingons. They were main characters only for a small handful of episodes, but within those episodes they were iconic. I consider star power to be very important to every affiliation, though we need to measure that star power within the context of each affiliation individually.

"Off-color main characters" usually do bring star power with them, because usually it's a pretty significant moment when a main character supports another affiliation. But by no means are these cards the only way (or even necessarily the best way) to highlight star power within an affiliation. Picard might be one of the biggest stars of Trek, but Brunt is a bigger star to the Ferengi.

Star power is extremely important to all affiliations. And it can take on vastly different forms for different affiliations. Borg, for example, get a form of star power in having a lack of unique personnel. Off-color main characters, on the other hand, are not generally important to overall affiliations. They may be important to specific strategies within an affiliation (such as the "Prisoner" personnel), but the overall affiliation should not rely on them.



*Some main characters really have two affiliation homes. For example, I don't consider Worf or Sisko "off-color."

[Smiley]

I don’t really understand the word star power in the context but after reading the posts here I think I at least have some sort of grasp of what the regular faces seem to think.

Having mains in off colour is a good thing for multiple reasons (many already given). The need for the Face of the shows to show up on cards are one of the best and simplest way to attract players to the game.
And many affiliations have few good images to work with (if any) and that makes the mains good use for both gameplay and story.
Out of a game design angle it’s good to have as if we have treaties you can hide things you don’t want two affiliation to have access to when combined on the same persona in both colours.
We should not make dual affiliation cards or too many NA version though as they need to be a little under the power curve to balance out that they can be in any deck.