This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#583919
As someone getting back in to the game, I'd be really interested in everyone's top 10 cards for bringing theme to a deck?

I also think that this would be a great list for newer players to get into the game? So please 'pin' if possible?

So, your top 10 'theme' cards - Objectives, Incidents, Events and Interrupts for each Affiliation? Let's include Warp Core Cards too so it's an inclusive list, together with 'why' the card goes in?

And what about 'THE' most thematic Mission (or 2) for each Affiliation too?

Really looking forward to everyone's suggestions and then perhaps we can compile it all together?
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By ShipNerd
 - Beta Quadrant
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#584027
Missions
Save stranded crew
Evade Borg vessel
are both thematic and powerfull.

to name a few thmed bonus points:

[Kli]
Officer Exchange Program.

[Car]
Labor Camp
Maybe one the best themed way for a constant income of bonus points.

[1E-Fer]
Ferengi Military Operations

10cards x17 affiliaton could be 170 cards maybe thats why noone responded so far... also the sad truth is affiliation-themed cards for points are rare, which is why i give better bonus point options in multiplayer.
 
By StuartL
 - Alpha Quadrant
 -  
#584042
You also have the issue of which show do you like the best. A thematic Fed DS9 deck will look very different from a Fed VOY deck.
Sure, you could run a Federation All-Stars deck with Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway, but (IMHO) that is less thematic than building around one show, or even around one or two episodes.
Maybe focusing on one deck/theme at a time would get more constructive responses?
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#584045
Thanks for the replies guys.

Yes I guess the question WAS too open ended and thanks for the links to the article series - this was what I was after anyway.

Surprising that there are so few recent ones though - most are 4 years + old. Is there a reason for this?

I think one thing that I was after was the greater theming of Affiliation decks as it seems that although the Federation are the 'mission solvers', other Affiliations have to be as well as that is how you get points.

Are there cards (Objectives?) that score points in a major way so that different Affiliations can win the game without having to do perhaps more than 1 Mission?

So Klingons win by battles? Romulans win by subterfuge and setting up plots? Cardassians win by capturing Personnel?

Thanks for your help and I'll check out those articles
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By Enabran
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
2E Austrian National Second Runner-Up 2022
#584046
If you play by OTF Rules you have to obey the following victory conditions:

The game continues until one player wins the game by having at least one hundred (100) points (except as modified below).

Each player who has not completed (or placed a Objective on) at least two (2) missions, including one Planet mission and one Space mission, must score an additional 40 points to win.
Each player who has not completed (or placed a Objective on) at least one (1) mission in the Alpha Quadrant must score an additional 40 points to win, unless neither player seeded any Alpha Quadrant missions.
If any player has more bonus points than non-bonus points, the excess bonus points do not count toward winning.
If, at any time, both players' draw decks are empty, or if both players simultaneously achieve victory conditions, the player with the most points is the winner.

So, you need a real huuuuge Mission, if you want to win with 1 Mission. I just can think of one such a big Mission, but that one is forbidden in OTF.
If you play open, then your opponent will definitely have In the zone or The big picture for you.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#584047
Enabran wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 2:45 am If you play by OTF Rules you have to obey the following victory conditions:

The game continues until one player wins the game by having at least one hundred (100) points (except as modified below).

Each player who has not completed (or placed a Objective on) at least two (2) missions, including one Planet mission and one Space mission, must score an additional 40 points to win.
Each player who has not completed (or placed a Objective on) at least one (1) mission in the Alpha Quadrant must score an additional 40 points to win, unless neither player seeded any Alpha Quadrant missions.
If any player has more bonus points than non-bonus points, the excess bonus points do not count toward winning.
If, at any time, both players' draw decks are empty, or if both players simultaneously achieve victory conditions, the player with the most points is the winner.

So, you need a real huuuuge Mission, if you want to win with 1 Mission. I just can think of one such a big Mission, but that one is forbidden in OTF.
If you play open, then your opponent will definitely have In the zone or The big picture for you.
Thanks for the reply - yes I think I knew this.

It kinda proves my point sadly. ALL Affiliations are shoehorned into completing Missions as fast as possible. I would have thought that nearly 30 years from creation of this game, there would be other more diverse ways to win - even if just in a 'friendly' environment where you're not competing in tournaments.

I've been around long enough to know it was just 'get 100 to win' when the CCG was created.

With the addendums/caveats you've listed above, it's now more restricted than ever, so playstyles are thus restricted.

And checking out the strategy articles written by Maggie over 4 years ago, it seems like draw decks are almost entirely composed of Personnel too - no room for Events, Interrupts, Objectives and so forth - all of which give theme and flavour to decks. A huge shame.
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By Enabran
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
2E Austrian National Second Runner-Up 2022
#584048
It's because TrekCC sped up the game so much :(
Some people say "If you haven't won in round 6, then you're doing something wrong."

And that's a shame, because in the good old times, where you have 20, 30 or more turns, you could waste a turn playing something else than ships and personnel. Now there is no time to play a Antimatter pod, and fly to somewhere, leave it behind and fly back.

But the "build your deck to win in turn 6" is not my opinion. I tend to build Decks of 100 cards and more and include "fun".
 
By StuartL
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#584049
A lot of the theme cards seem to be in the seed phase and 1st turn downloads. Choosing two or three Objectives/Events and building your deck around them can help you play to a specific theme much more easily.

However, it seems that the tournament winning decks focus more on using their seeds to get the most efficient combos set up early, so there does appear to be some trade-off between theming your deck and tuning it for high-level play. I'm not saying you can't do both, just that a lot of the decks I see listed tend to skew mainly one way or the other.

Personally, I am more in favour of themed, super-casual decks than tournament decks, so I do stock my draw deck with inefficient, but fun cards. Recently I have been having fun with a Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order deck based on the DS9 episode 'The Die is Cast.' It misses out on some of the better [Car] [1E-Rom] personnel as I've strictly limited myself to the two Intelligence groups in the deck.
Does it win every game? No, far from it. Does it fit my view that the deck is telling that particular story? Yes!

It probably helps that I make the decks for my friends to use too. It's much easier to balance things that way.

I agree on the game lacking varied ways to win beyond completing missions, well except for locking your opponent out by destroying their facility that is. There are ways of getting bonus points, but you're kind of capped at 50 in the OTF rules. There are probably some options you could build around to get a deck that goes for 50 points of missions and 50 bonus points, but missions are still going to be key.

At the end of the day, theming a deck is really up to you. The CC have made a lot of cards that open up different possibilities, it's just a question of what theme you want and how much you want to restrict yourself in the process of card selection.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#584054
Enabran wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:32 am It's because TrekCC sped up the game so much :(
Some people say "If you haven't won in round 6, then you're doing something wrong."

And that's a shame, because in the good old times, where you have 20, 30 or more turns, you could waste a turn playing something else than ships and personnel. Now there is no time to play a Antimatter pod, and fly to somewhere, leave it behind and fly back.

But the "build your deck to win in turn 6" is not my opinion. I tend to build Decks of 100 cards and more and include "fun".
That's a huge shame and should IMHO be addressed - it does nothing to attract players to the game, only for 'pro' players at tourneys.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
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#584055
StuartL wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:38 am A lot of the theme cards seem to be in the seed phase and 1st turn downloads. Choosing two or three Objectives/Events and building your deck around them can help you play to a specific theme much more easily.

However, it seems that the tournament winning decks focus more on using their seeds to get the most efficient combos set up early, so there does appear to be some trade-off between theming your deck and tuning it for high-level play. I'm not saying you can't do both, just that a lot of the decks I see listed tend to skew mainly one way or the other.

Personally, I am more in favour of themed, super-casual decks than tournament decks, so I do stock my draw deck with inefficient, but fun cards. Recently I have been having fun with a Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order deck based on the DS9 episode 'The Die is Cast.' It misses out on some of the better [Car] [1E-Rom] personnel as I've strictly limited myself to the two Intelligence groups in the deck.
Does it win every game? No, far from it. Does it fit my view that the deck is telling that particular story? Yes!

It probably helps that I make the decks for my friends to use too. It's much easier to balance things that way.

I agree on the game lacking varied ways to win beyond completing missions, well except for locking your opponent out by destroying their facility that is. There are ways of getting bonus points, but you're kind of capped at 50 in the OTF rules. There are probably some options you could build around to get a deck that goes for 50 points of missions and 50 bonus points, but missions are still going to be key.

At the end of the day, theming a deck is really up to you. The CC have made a lot of cards that open up different possibilities, it's just a question of what theme you want and how much you want to restrict yourself in the process of card selection.
There are cards that allow bonus points and 50/50 is ok, but some should allow 'tweaks' of this if themed correctly. You'd still have to do 2 Missions but have more room to play with Affiliations stuff.

Can the card search engine search for 'point cards'?

Looking at posted decks, there is an OBSCENE amount of seed cards on the table to set up the game and your deck. A gaming table would be cluttered from the start and the time it takes to set it all up completely daft. Again, this is the total opposite of getting new players into a game.

IMHO, there should be a rule of the amount of cards that can be placed on the table at the start of a game - Missions, Doorways, Faculties, Dilemmas not included. But say 5 Objectives/Incidents/Events?
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By ShipNerd
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#584056
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 5:14 am
Enabran wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 3:32 am It's because TrekCC sped up the game so much :(
Some people say "If you haven't won in round 6, then you're doing something wrong."

And that's a shame, because in the good old times, where you have 20, 30 or more turns, you could waste a turn playing something else than ships and personnel. Now there is no time to play a Antimatter pod, and fly to somewhere, leave it behind and fly back.

But the "build your deck to win in turn 6" is not my opinion. I tend to build Decks of 100 cards and more and include "fun".
That's a huge shame and should IMHO be addressed - it does nothing to attract players to the game, only for 'pro' players at tourneys.
Yep. Unfortunately pointing that out is usually ignored at best. Telling the trekcc to do: play 2-3 draw 3 for each affiliations (and no more, including [DL] as play/draw), since more than a decade, yet they release yet another draw engine in the current set.

To help you out a bit, using the trekcc card search engine, you can say:
"point value" > 1 (>0 does not work for some reason).
then you get a list of cards with a postive bonus point icon. (and all missions ;)

It does not show cards that allow bonus points via text thought.

When using lackey the free online tool you can search for "text" contains "points" to get the other cards, like [1E-Rom] "Always a chess game".
thx to Markus here, for providing and maintaining trekcc search engine and lackeys stccg plugin.

Still most trekcc cards with bonus points give you bonus points when solving missions like always a chess game. or bonus points without interacting with the opponent. A powerful card would be "quite an coincidence". you don´t find it if searching for OTF cards, as trekcc made the card too powerfull (plays on your personnel, redshirt with him, score 10 points) so it's banned, now. Maybe it will come back and then it requires actual interaction such as "plays on opponents personnel, if you´re using personnel you control to kill him, score points". Still, regular tournaments include up to 4 different quadrants and if no one brings e.g. wormholes its solitair. even if you bring cards crossing all 4 quadrants you are usually at a disadvantage because of the effort to go there.

Balanced Multiplayer format, has the quadrants connected in a specific way for interaction (seed phase for 4 players = 5 minutes total). If you don´t like to play online, i suggest you make your own rules for local friends, that suits all your tastes.
 
By StuartL
 - Alpha Quadrant
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#584058
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 5:28 am There are cards that allow bonus points and 50/50 is ok, but some should allow 'tweaks' of this if themed correctly. You'd still have to do 2 Missions but have more room to play with Affiliations stuff.
I think one of the issues with reducing mission completion would be dilemmas being worth less. If I know my opponent isn't going to be getting many points from missions, I should use some/all of those seed slots to speed my deck up.

Having been mulling this over a bit,
I think the problem might be the way missions are presented in the game. We look at all missions like they are the same thing and say, "Why can't my Romulans gain their points from espionage and subterfuge?"
Who is to say that they aren't? Mechanically, to complete a mission you simply check off a bunch of skill requirements, but that's not what the requirements represent. A mission calls for diplomacy and you can easily imagine Picard talking the locals into agreeing with the Federation. Treachery, and you can see those sneaky Romulans doing all sorts of dastardly things.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you approach it more like you would an RPG, missions don't need to be all the same.
I would still like to see more affiliation specific objectives to get bonus points though.
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 5:28 am Looking at posted decks, there is an OBSCENE amount of seed cards on the table to set up the game and your deck. A gaming table would be cluttered from the start and the time it takes to set it all up completely daft. Again, this is the total opposite of getting new players into a game.

IMHO, there should be a rule of the amount of cards that can be placed on the table at the start of a game - Missions, Doorways, Faculties, Dilemmas not included. But say 5 Objectives/Incidents/Events?
I totally agree with you. I have little memos stuck in my deck boxes listing seed cards and what they do. A fair few of them amount to "Download card X and then ignore this card for the rest of the game."

As a recent returnee myself, I started with just the PAQ cards (Premier, Alternate Universe and Q Continuum sets) for my first few games. After that I started adding new cards but stuck purely to TNG cards. Now I'm working on DS9 decks. I find that this simplifies things enough that the game is fun and flavorful. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I just opened the floodgates and permitted every era of Trek.
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#584063
I think one of the issues with reducing mission completion would be dilemmas being worth less. If I know my opponent isn't going to be getting many points from missions, I should use some/all of those seed slots to speed my deck up.

Yes that's a good point

Having been mulling this over a bit,
I think the problem might be the way missions are presented in the game. We look at all missions like they are the same thing and say, "Why can't my Romulans gain their points from espionage and subterfuge?"
Who is to say that they aren't? Mechanically, to complete a mission you simply check off a bunch of skill requirements, but that's not what the requirements represent. A mission calls for diplomacy and you can easily imagine Picard talking the locals into agreeing with the Federation. Treachery, and you can see those sneaky Romulans doing all sorts of dastardly things.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you approach it more like you would an RPG, missions don't need to be all the same.

Another good point and of course this is true

I would still like to see more affiliation specific objectives to get bonus points though.

Agreed

As a recent returnee myself, I started with just the PAQ cards (Premier, Alternate Universe and Q Continuum sets) for my first few games. After that I started adding new cards but stuck purely to TNG cards. Now I'm working on DS9 decks. I find that this simplifies things enough that the game is fun and flavorful. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I just opened the floodgates and permitted every era of Trek.

That's almost exactly how I have approached it too

I think part of the 'each Mission just being a set of requirements' and thus completing a Federation Mission feels exactly the same as completing a Romulan Mission, is the fact that a Dilemma is (almost ) universal - they can be placed at ANY Mission (Space and Planet distinction aside). There is no thematic connection between a Mission and the Dilemmas beneath it.

Wouldn't it be lovely if Dilemmas were themed in some way? I can see how to do it but not in a clean way and it's a bit 'after the horse has bolted' really - this should have been a thing from the start.

The issue is of course that once Dilemmas are restricted by theme, they can't always be seeded to an Opponent's Missions, so a 'Romulan' only Dilemma become redundant if your Opponent shows up and is playing Klingon!

However, if we take out Dilemma seeding and adopt a more 2e approach and have a Dilemma deck it can be done. It would have to be agreed by both players before the game however - as would the non-seeding of Dilemmas

Implementation: Dilemma side-deck via Doorway atop deck (similar to Dyson Sphere Doorway). Stock 30 Dilemmas minimum here. When a Mission is first attempted draw X cards from the Dilemma deck where X = Points of Mission/5 So a 30 point Mission draws 6 cards. Place Dilemmas that cannot be played due to Space/Planet restrictions face up beneath Dilemma deck (so you shuffle deck when you have gone through it once). Place Dilemmas that CAN be seeded beneath the Mission in an order of your choice.

Could be fun...or could be disaster - but any thoughts would be appreciated. :D

I'm going to think of some other tweaks to the game and ask for opinions on how they would affect it
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By winterflames (Derek Marlar)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#584078
Ok. The complaint that the CC is speeding up the game to 6 turns is ridiculous. When the CC took control of the game if you didn't win by turn 3, you weren't competitive. I can't actually verify this. I wasn't there. This is why we have OTF and it's limitations. To slow the game down. To prevent "First Turn Download My Deck and Win" decks.

That said, my decks do All The Things! My last tournament deck took the [EE] crew into the past to save the whales, help Dr. Cochrane launch the Phoenix, over to the Briar Patch to do some Metaphasic Particles stuff, and into the Nexus with the good Dr. I also had the option of completing the Genesis planet and converting it to a space mission. I had a blast and didn't win because my opponents played Tuned Decks For Tournament Play.
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