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By BCSWowbagger (James Heaney)
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#584126
^ This strikes me as a pretty plausible reconstruction.
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By nobthehobbit (Daniel Pareja)
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#584137
dragoncymru wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 3:11 am I think the original purpose of this thread has somewhat been derailed... :?
Long story short, as noted, First Edition has had a format with an extensive ban list (likely dating back to the late Decipher days), and has had a format with extensive rules changes (dating back to the early CC days), and neither worked.

Official Tournament Format isn't perfect, but it's worked better than either of those options.
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#584181
BCSWowbagger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:02 pm
Armus wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 6:46 pm
Fritzinger wrote: Sun Aug 28, 2022 7:40 am I think that might have been the format they used for the last worlds before 2e?
Nope. Worlds 2002 was Open.

It had ALL the bullshit.
Not ALL the bullshit! People forget this now, but there was a ban list at 2002 Worlds: Barzan Wormhole, Ooby Dooby, Revolving Door, Rogue Borg Mercenaries, Vic Fontaine, and partly Caretaker's Array. (Decipher banned the use of its report-with-crew function specifically, which was effectively errata.)

...but, yeah, MOST of the bullshit. :P
Yep, this is what I was referring to. I suppose not quite the birthplace of revised, but perhaps an ancestor.

Glad to see my sense of 1e history was not totally of the mark.
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By stressedoutatumc (stressedoutatumc)
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#584558
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 11:36 am I’m trying to analyse the game state as I see it from a fresh eye. I think (and this is my opinion only) that there are a few things ‘wrong’ at the moment.

I could be completely off-base with this however and I’m asking for opinions on what I have found/think. If I’m wrong – please let me know!
In short, I think you are very wrong.

Having just finished Nationals this weekend, Day 1 was 6 rounds and ran for 9 or so hours. After 7 more rounds today also lasting around 9 hours, the game doesn’t need to be any longer.

The fallacy in your thoughts is that you want to play house rules instead of OTF, which is cool, but it’s the difference between playing basketball with your friends and then wanting the NBA to follow your rules because you like them better. I’m not dismissing your opinion, but a lot of games function this way. Magic has modern, and also vintage, for example. Get your play group to play that way and have fun with it. It does narrow the current volume of competitive decks, but it’s not a bad thing. They way professionals play any game is not the way amateurs play it, and that’s ok. The high-level play I saw from Nationals this weekend is the closest this game has to that kind of pro level play, IMO, and the OTF format is driving high level innovation and tactics rather than dumbing it down so it is more accessible. It’s never a good thing to make the highest level of play more casual. Every sport and every game needs a mountain to climb for those that want to, and it’s fine to also have a format that isn’t that. This is true in all games and sports. There are different divisions of play.

Finally, we have to stop trying to turn game x into game y. 1e and 2e are different games. Trek and Magic are different games. Call of Duty and Battlefield were different games until squeaky wheels got battlefield to change and 2042 is evidence of the colossally terrible idea that is.

My offering is to design and outline a format of trek that is as you described and play it. Get others to play it, prove it’s actually better and keeps the competitive edge sharp. I personally don’t think it will, but come with evidence I’m wrong.
 
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#584564
Thanks for your input.

By 'round' do you mean a game? So 6 rounds in 9 hours is an hour and a half a game?

That seems fine.

As a matter of interest how many player turns roughly each? And how long roughly on average does the seed phase take and a player turn take?

Thanks for your help
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By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
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#584586
Having watch the game go from being 30 turns in less than 30 minutes to 4 turns in over an hour I can say that I rather see the first one over the second one.
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#584596
Smiley wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 9:42 am Having watch the game go from being 30 turns in less than 30 minutes to 4 turns in over an hour I can say that I rather see the first one over the second one.
I'd agree that the pendulum of turns vs plays has swung to far to the realm of "I'm gonna go get some lunch, let me know if you need to flip a dilemma"
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By PantsOfTheTalShiar (Jason Tang)
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#584947
dragoncymru wrote: Sat Aug 27, 2022 11:36 am I’m trying to analyse the game state as I see it from a fresh eye. I think (and this is my opinion only) that there are a few things ‘wrong’ at the moment.

I could be completely off-base with this however and I’m asking for opinions on what I have found/think. If I’m wrong – please let me know!

My views are based on assumptions that I’ve gathered from reading through articles, decks, forum posts and game reports.
Thanks for asking! I will respond from the perspective of someone who has played STCCG and M:TG both at the "kitchen table" and then at tournaments for several years. I've also played kitchen table games of SWCCG in the 90s, and can compare that to modern competitive SWCCG thanks to the abundant video coverage of that game.

So from that perspective, I will say that the current state of STCCG is completely normal for a CCG with large and continually expanding card pool, that is played competitively, with players around the world sharing (and stealing ;) ) strategies.
1. The game is over too quickly – lots of evidence and views seem to concur with this. A 10 turn game is a long one...
You have to base your expectations of the game on what the game actually is. STCCG is not a game about derping around in Star Trek land, it is a game about solving missions. That is the victory condition. You don't get awarded points by a panel of judges based on how Trekkily you can Star Trek.

That's not to say that you can't do wacky, creative, or thematic things in the game, but if you want to win games, then those wacky, creative, and thematic things have to be performed as a means to solve missions (or delay your opponent from doing so), and not just for their own sake.

I have rarely felt that a game was too fast. Part of that might be my playgroup and how the best player usually seeds more dilemmas than average. But I think mentality has a lot to do with it.
2. All decks that are posted have this in mind and are as efficient as possible.
Yes, when people play a CCG competitively and share information, over time their decks become refined and efficient.
3. This leads to draw decks that are virtually all Personnel as they are the most efficient in terms of gaining ground. There is also a lot of ways they play for free. So most cards, indeed most card TYPES (Equipment, most Events, Interrupts?) are instant binder fodder or see play only in the most select of games.
Yes. Again, how do you win the game? Solve missions. How do you solve missions? With personnel. What's the main obstacle to solving missions? Dilemmas. How do you overcome dilemmas? With personnel. I know there are plenty of people here who want to make #AllCardTypesMatter, but the game's about the personnel, folks! You don't solve missions with Events and you don't overcome dilemmas with Objectives. There are a few Interrupts that will help you against dilemmas, but even the best of those Interrupts are far less versatile than even a mediocre personnel card.

This isn't a result of "the current state of the game." As far as I can tell, this is how the game has always been. When I asked how many personnel should be included in an OTSD sealed deck, the answer was "as many as you can." When I see competitive decks from the 90s posted, they are either 1) cheese that is no longer possible in the current game or 2) predominantly personnel, card draw, and ships.

STCCG is about the personnel in the same way that MTG is about the creatures and SWCCG is about the characters. Fortunately we have the Special Download mechanic as a way to bundle the less-important card types in with the most important card type. This is similar to cards like Reclamation Sage and Leia With Blaster Rifle in those other games.

There is one other factor that contributes to the high average rates of personnel in decks, and it really deserves more attention than the footnote I'm going to give it here. I do occasionally see decks that are less than half personnel posted here, but those are typically control decks. Since casual players typically hate playing against control decks, and the direction of STCCG is determined by people who are casual players at heart, those decks tend to get nerfed by bans and/or errata.
4. To maximise your drawing engine so that you can get all the Personnel cards you want out on Turns 0-2 (at most) there is a huge amount of Objectives/incidents/Events played on the table in the Seed Phase before play starts. This makes the game area cluttered and players having to refer to card X and card Y as they explain their set up to the opponent. This is a BAD thing for newer players
While the seed deck is one of 1E's unique strengths, I am actually going to agree with you on about the clutter problem because IMHO in recent years this problem has gotten worse much faster than any other problem. Some of this is Playtesting consistently underestimating new cards, prompting designers to add random extra abilities. Some of this is Design trying to patch up a faction or deck's inherent weaknesses when perhaps it would be better to compensate by emphasizing a different strength. Some of this is the result of Design wanting to rescue certain cards from the binder. And IMO some of this is actually the result of Design trying to push theme and flavor too hard.
5. Then you have the Dilemma Phase and seeding. So if play is over in about 6-8 turns, it seems that most of your game time is setting up the table and all your seed cards before the actual game happens in a complete blur (with lots more ‘refer to card X so I can do effect Y, then see card Z so I can do effect XX etc). And 15 mins later the game is over! This seems a BAD thing?
I will agree with BCSWowbagger that this is a gross exaggeration. In my experience I estimate the seed phase is usually over in about 10 minutes at most and the play phase usually takes at least 40 minutes.
A LOT of cards, mostly hugely thematic though, have been designed by the CC to speed up the game from where it was ‘play one, draw one’ – which I agree was way TOO slow. Decipher started this off way back when, and since then the CC has done a great job of doing ‘Continuing Mission’ type cards which lead to ‘Warp Core’ cards which basically move 1e to the ‘warp Drive’ rules of ‘play 2/draw 2’ which is probably balanced in terms of speed. They have also managed to get some starting Personnel and a Ship out in Turn 1 which was a real pain back in the day as you waited for your first Ship...
I have a feeling that there is now too many of these cards however that when combined together can give a draw/play engine that is out of control. BUT it’s necessary at the moment as you have to ‘keep up’ with the speed of the game, so....
One bit of historical context is that Voyager was really the set that accelerated the game to its current pace. The CC nerfed Voyager to some extent and then designed the Warp Cores and similar cards to bring everything up to that level. So "fixing" this problem would require a new draconian OTF rule OR a ton of errata and/or bans OR a new standalone format without all those sets. It's not impossible but it'd be a huge amount of work.
Here is a list (in no particular order) of proposals to tweak the game, together with my reasoning to suggest them. I would like to gather opinions on which are feasible, which would make no difference, which are too far out, and which would cripple the game:

1. Only a maximum of 4 copies of any 1 card can be brought to the game by a player. REASON: I have seen decks where players have 12 of the same Tactic or event in a side-deck or 6 in a draw deck. This seems like the card is unbalanced so it is being exploited.
When players stock more than 4 of a card it is almost always a non-personnel card, so this would actually discourage players from using non-personnel cards.

Also, when players use multiples of a card it's more for consistency and deck proportions than because a card is overpowered. If I'm building a Klingon deck, I may want to draw cards with War Council or Ancient Citadel or Let's See What's Out There. None of those three cards are really that much more powerful than the others, but for consistency I will want to use just one of them and not a mix.

So to illustrate what I mean about deck proportions, let me walk through how I would build a generic deck. Lets say that I want to play 2 personnel for free each turn, and I want roughly half of my normal card plays to be Ancient Citadel for draws, and the other half will be ships or extra personnel. That's playing 3 cards per turn, 2 of which are personnel, so therefore 2/3rds of my deck should be personnel. Half of the remaining third should be Ancient Citadel, which works out to about 17% of the deck. Since it's better to have too much card draw than too little, I'll probably bump that up to 20%. Or, if I build a deck that plays 3 free personnel each turn and wants to play Ancient Citadel almost every turn, then that deck would be 25% Ancient Citadel.

So some of the cards played in multiples are linchpins for a particular strategy and they need to be drawn reliably and/or drawn in multiples or else the deck falls apart. That includes card draw cards, but also stuff like Gold-Pressed Latinum. In Magic, you can't play 8 Lightning Bolt, so you substitute Chain Lightning or Burst Lightning or Lightning Helix, and those are close enough to get the job done most of the time. There is nothing you can substitute for copies 5+ of Gold-Pressed Latinum.

I also REALLY dislike how 2e relies so heavily on its copy limits for balance. That makes any kind of discard retrieval break the game, so then you still have to individually tune cards to remove themselves from the game. And having cards that say, "something really bad happens to you, and you can't really do anything about it, but don't worry, at least it can't happen more than 3 times a game," is not where you want your game to be IMHO.
2. Only a maximum of 5 Objectives/Incidents/Events can be seeded at the start of the game. REASON: Speeds up start of game, reduces speed of some decks to make a longer game. Also some might find their way into draw decks reducing the proportion of Personnel in there.
3. Only a maximum of 60% of your Draw deck to be Personnel. REASON: This is a harsh one but it would slow the game down, give more variety and more theme to decks.
I think that experienced players are going to be able to work within these constraints (or game the constraints) to make the kinds of efficient decks that you don't like about the current format. Maybe this would help a little with speed and clutter, but I see it reducing deck variety more than increasing it.
4. Artefacts - Not seeded but are closer to 2e in that they can be played when you complete a Mission with Archaeology. Acquisition or Anthropology. REASON: More theme and quicker seeding. Artefacts don’t see much play either for powerful cards. Perhaps they should be play for free? As a side note, I would look at banned Artefacts cards such as the infamous Horg’han and make them bonus point earners if returned to a Facility. Nice and clean and thematic.
5. Equipment – make ‘Equipment Replicator’ a straight rule. REASON: Equipment cards never come out of the binder.
In a CCG, sometimes cards are just bad. Sometimes mechanics are just bad -- even mechanics that date back to the beginning of the game. The thing with CCGs is that even their designers don't completely understand a game or a set before release. Not everything works out. I've enjoyed playing with Equipment Replicator and even Artifacts occasionally, so I think there are ways to get some of these cards into play, but I don't think it's worth adding extra rules or twisting the whole game to accommodate some fundamentally flawed cards or mechanics.
6. Q’s Tent – Reduce capacity to 10. Anyone know why it was 13 anyway? REASON: Reduce a players’ reliance on downloading, more chance of varying cards appearing in a draw deck. I would prefer to throw it out entirely and replace it with a ‘Computer Core’ card that does the same thing in that its’ a store cupboard for downloading cards from, but we could have different ones for different Affiliations that can give some thematic flavour and automatic downloads if you say, initiate a Battle (Klingon), solve a Diplomacy Mission (Feds) etc..
I really want to sing the praises of Q's Tent right now but unfortunately I do not have the time. :)
7. Dilemma Side-deck - Via Doorway atop deck (similar to Dyson Sphere Doorway). Stock 30 Dilemmas 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. We’d have to put some restrictions here otherwise players would ONLY play Planet/Space dual Dilemmas so there would be no mis-seeds, say 12 Planet/12 Space/ 6 Dual? REASON: Play starts quicker, we could also do some theming...
I sometimes see 2E players complain about their opponent taking too long to select dilemmas, so seeding dilemmas is a "loading screen" either way. In 1E with batch seeding as is the standard now, you are at least busy seeding your own dilemmas while your opponent is seeding theirs.

I get that the seed phase feels like setup more than it feels like gameplay, especially when you don't have enough experience with the game to make meaningful decisions during the seed phase. I know it took me some time to feel like I was doing anything but placing my missions randomly. In the meantime, there are some tricks to speed up the seed phase. Some people like using The Squire's Rules so they don't have to make decisions about seeding dilemmas. I often like to duplicate my dilemma combos so that I have 2 copies each of 3 combos instead of 6 different combos, and that way I have easier decisions. Players often will keep their seed phase downloads separate instead of shuffling them in their draw deck, which saves a little time.
8. Increase Ship Staffing – Another way 2e got it better. Add a ‘Staff’ Icon to all Ships that already have a Command/Staff icon. REASON: Slows down play just a touch, more on theme.
This is a reasonable enough idea, though of course testing would be necessary to see how effective it would be. It would require mass errata, but the CC has been willing to do mass errata. To me though, it comes down to what the appeal of the game is. Is this a game where you get to play with the cards you collected back in the 90s/00s, or is this a bootleg amateur fan-made Star Trek card game? The former seems a lot more appealing than the latter, so that's why I am not a fan of functionally changing a lot of existing cards without a REALLY compelling reason.
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By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
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1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#584984
PantsOfTheTalShiar wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 1:50 pm This isn't a result of "the current state of the game." As far as I can tell, this is how the game has always been. When I asked how many personnel should be included in an OTSD sealed deck, the answer was "as many as you can." When I see competitive decks from the 90s posted, they are either 1) cheese that is no longer possible in the current game or 2) predominantly personnel, card draw, and ships.

STCCG is about the personnel in the same way that MTG is about the creatures and SWCCG is about the characters.
I mostly agree with you here, but I want to quibble over a couple points.

OTSD shouldn't be considered "normal" ST any more than 6-packs of sealed is "normal" MTG. They are both normal as in a valid, perhaps most pure way to play the game, but both are different from constructed in a few ways, and the ratio of personnel/creatures is one of these.

A lot of verbs in ST play off other cards which often won't be present in sealed, so you are just happy to have as many minimum-payables as possible.

Now, as someone that has also played magic for many years, I agree that the current state of the game is also more creature heavy, but there's also a long and vigorous debate how good that is.

At the least, even in standard with the smaller pool, there is often a viable (if not top tier) deck that can run with 4 creatures or less.

I don't think that a personnel-less deck would be a good thing in STCCG, but I would be interested in seeing more verbs since that usually promotes more interaction.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
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#584989
I played magic in the 90s.

I played against a guy with a Winter Orb/ Icy Manipulator/ blue counterspell deck that let him untap all of his stuff while I never got to untap anything.

I sat at the table for 20 minutes watching him play solitaire and eventually getting pecked to death by an air elemental, the only creature on his side of the board in a pile of random nonsense.

It sucked.

Not long after that I wasn't playing Magic anymore.

I love a good creature brawl, but blue permission decks made the game so unfun I had no desire to even build a deck after that.
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By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
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#584990
Armus wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:05 pm I played magic in the 90s.

I played against a guy with a Winter Orb/ Icy Manipulator/ blue counterspell deck that let him untap all of his stuff while I never got to untap anything.

I sat at the table for 20 minutes watching him play solitaire and eventually getting pecked to death by an air elemental, the only creature on his side of the board in a pile of random nonsense.

It sucked.

Not long after that I wasn't playing Magic anymore.

I love a good creature brawl, but blue permission decks made the game so unfun I had no desire to even build a deck after that.
Turbo Stasis is not any more fun to sit across from than that, but at least it killed you quickly, although you have not played MTG if you've neither played nor died to a berserked, blood lusted, double giant growthed Ornithopter that you foolishly choose not to block.
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
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#584991
Professor Scott wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:24 pm
Armus wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 8:05 pm I played magic in the 90s.

I played against a guy with a Winter Orb/ Icy Manipulator/ blue counterspell deck that let him untap all of his stuff while I never got to untap anything.

I sat at the table for 20 minutes watching him play solitaire and eventually getting pecked to death by an air elemental, the only creature on his side of the board in a pile of random nonsense.

It sucked.

Not long after that I wasn't playing Magic anymore.

I love a good creature brawl, but blue permission decks made the game so unfun I had no desire to even build a deck after that.
Turbo Stasis is not any more fun to sit across from than that, but at least it killed you quickly, although you have not played MTG if you've neither played nor died to a berserked, blood lusted, double giant growthed Ornithopter that you foolishly choose not to block.
Sure but that's just fun!
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#584992
You're right that 90s blue permission sucked. But in the same way that div-dooby and Q-bypass sucked, it's not really as much of a thing anymore. ;)
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