#584170
The OTF thread reminded me of it, and with the CC having said that VOY is up for some love soon in future sets, I thought I'd expound on what I view as Decipher's greatest failure, and a need in the game today.
Everything following should be treated as my opinion, even if not called out as such. I do not claim to be an arbiter of objective truth.
1E: Two-player solitaire
At times 1E has had the reputation of two-player solitaire. This is understandable, especially when compared to Decipher's other two big games (Star Wars [SW] and Lord of the Rings [LOTR]) and the perennial Other Game, Magic.
In all those games, interaction is baked in from the very beginning, and you have to work to build your deck to avoid interacting with the opponent. (And when you do, it's often looked at as a mistake and "fixed". (See: Dagobah era SW)
Critically, what those games have is a lot of casual interaction. My deck might be trying to do X, and yours might be trying to do Y, but I can still try and slow you down.
The Golden Era of Decipher 1E
Opinions will likely vary as to the exact golden era of 1E under Decipher, but for me it was the First Contact-Rules era, especially Blaze of Glory. And when you think about it, most of those sets added something that gave players a reason to interact.
FC: Assimilation and battling preventing probing.
DS9: Some of my favorite memories were running battles over who controlled the Nor.
Dominion: Invasive Transporters allowed more access
BoG: The BBSD remains one of my favorite additions to 1E.
Now, those were not always the top tier strategies (indeed, looking back at those decks they rarely were), and they could go too far (blowing up outposts for a lockout.) but they did provide more chances for spontaneous, unplanned interaction.
_____________
Then came VOY and the DQ. To Decipher's credit, they were trying to replicate the show, and struggling to get home, but now it was very easy for two players to sit down at a table, take out their decks, and aside from dilemmas, never interact with each other's cards.
This has several negative effects overall:
1. Snowballing : it's much harder for the player that is behind to catch up. Previously, it might be possible to cruise over, start a mini-fight, kill off a person or two to buy that crucial turn.
2. Dilemmas are more important than ever, so there's an arms race to make dilemmas deadlier. Than to make better and faster crews to survive or overcome the dilemmas.
3. Faster games, or games that feel faster because there's no interaction
4. The seed phase is the most important phase.
I love the seed phase. It's part of what makes 1E unique. I have fond(ish) memories of sitting in the Kendanya station chat rooms, indicating how many dilemmas I'm seeding under different missions based on scraps of paper I had. But on some level, especially when playing remotely instead of in person, it gets boring. And it's very easy for the average players to get outplayed by the stronger players here - making it harder for them to keep up and win occasionally.
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The fix so far.
The fix so far is to require 140 points if you haven't solved an AQ mission, mitigated to an extent by Homefront. This was a good band-aid, and does a decent job of making the deck that is non-interactive consider including ways to get to the AQ.
But it only accelerates the focus on dilemmas/seed phase, and still does nothing to promote unplanned interaction.
Now, yes, there are ways for decks to plan on how to get to the DQ and "bring the fight", however, in our current game state, this isn't always tenable for a few reasons.
1. It puts the onus on the interactive deck to be interactive, instead of interaction being the default and the non-interactive deck having to try for it.
2. It leads to all or nothing battle decks. I'm not going to spend 2 turns trying to get to where you are, just to at most buy a turn, and realistically fall further behind in the dilemma race. I will do that if I can eliminate your facilities and lock you out of the game - which is not a desirable game state.
-------------------------
How to solve?
I don't know. I'm not a designer, just a tinkerer. But I will say every home-brew format I've tinkered with for my own amusement has started with the basic premise of a rules based way to move between quadrants, at a cost. Maybe it's moving off one space line end of the DQ to the AQ and being stopped. Maybe it's a location representing between space that players can move to/from, and is automatically downloaded if you seed a DQ mission.
I would love to see more cards that promote non-battle interaction of nouns, and more rules that shape the game that direction. And I would love to see steps taken to make sure that nay return to the DQ for a design focus doesn't bring a return to 2-player solitaire.
Everything following should be treated as my opinion, even if not called out as such. I do not claim to be an arbiter of objective truth.
1E: Two-player solitaire
At times 1E has had the reputation of two-player solitaire. This is understandable, especially when compared to Decipher's other two big games (Star Wars [SW] and Lord of the Rings [LOTR]) and the perennial Other Game, Magic.
In all those games, interaction is baked in from the very beginning, and you have to work to build your deck to avoid interacting with the opponent. (And when you do, it's often looked at as a mistake and "fixed". (See: Dagobah era SW)
Critically, what those games have is a lot of casual interaction. My deck might be trying to do X, and yours might be trying to do Y, but I can still try and slow you down.
The Golden Era of Decipher 1E
Opinions will likely vary as to the exact golden era of 1E under Decipher, but for me it was the First Contact-Rules era, especially Blaze of Glory. And when you think about it, most of those sets added something that gave players a reason to interact.
FC: Assimilation and battling preventing probing.
DS9: Some of my favorite memories were running battles over who controlled the Nor.
Dominion: Invasive Transporters allowed more access
BoG: The BBSD remains one of my favorite additions to 1E.
Now, those were not always the top tier strategies (indeed, looking back at those decks they rarely were), and they could go too far (blowing up outposts for a lockout.) but they did provide more chances for spontaneous, unplanned interaction.
_____________
Then came VOY and the DQ. To Decipher's credit, they were trying to replicate the show, and struggling to get home, but now it was very easy for two players to sit down at a table, take out their decks, and aside from dilemmas, never interact with each other's cards.
This has several negative effects overall:
1. Snowballing : it's much harder for the player that is behind to catch up. Previously, it might be possible to cruise over, start a mini-fight, kill off a person or two to buy that crucial turn.
2. Dilemmas are more important than ever, so there's an arms race to make dilemmas deadlier. Than to make better and faster crews to survive or overcome the dilemmas.
3. Faster games, or games that feel faster because there's no interaction
4. The seed phase is the most important phase.
I love the seed phase. It's part of what makes 1E unique. I have fond(ish) memories of sitting in the Kendanya station chat rooms, indicating how many dilemmas I'm seeding under different missions based on scraps of paper I had. But on some level, especially when playing remotely instead of in person, it gets boring. And it's very easy for the average players to get outplayed by the stronger players here - making it harder for them to keep up and win occasionally.
----------
The fix so far.
The fix so far is to require 140 points if you haven't solved an AQ mission, mitigated to an extent by Homefront. This was a good band-aid, and does a decent job of making the deck that is non-interactive consider including ways to get to the AQ.
But it only accelerates the focus on dilemmas/seed phase, and still does nothing to promote unplanned interaction.
Now, yes, there are ways for decks to plan on how to get to the DQ and "bring the fight", however, in our current game state, this isn't always tenable for a few reasons.
1. It puts the onus on the interactive deck to be interactive, instead of interaction being the default and the non-interactive deck having to try for it.
2. It leads to all or nothing battle decks. I'm not going to spend 2 turns trying to get to where you are, just to at most buy a turn, and realistically fall further behind in the dilemma race. I will do that if I can eliminate your facilities and lock you out of the game - which is not a desirable game state.
-------------------------
How to solve?
I don't know. I'm not a designer, just a tinkerer. But I will say every home-brew format I've tinkered with for my own amusement has started with the basic premise of a rules based way to move between quadrants, at a cost. Maybe it's moving off one space line end of the DQ to the AQ and being stopped. Maybe it's a location representing between space that players can move to/from, and is automatically downloaded if you seed a DQ mission.
I would love to see more cards that promote non-battle interaction of nouns, and more rules that shape the game that direction. And I would love to see steps taken to make sure that nay return to the DQ for a design focus doesn't bring a return to 2-player solitaire.