This forums is for questions, answers, and discussion about First Edition rules, formats, and expansions.

Which Delta Quadrant group/team/species do you most want to see in 1E?

Ocampa
9
10%
Talaxian
7
8%
The 37's
9
10%
Sikarians
4
5%
Voth
11
13%
Vaadwaur
6
7%
Devore
5
6%
Krenim
27
31%
Overlookers / The Hierachy
7
8%
Mari
1
1%
User avatar
Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#591436
Hi folks,

Happy Friday! I don't know about all of you, but this has been a stressful week. I'm glad it's over (or nearly over), and I get to spend some time talking about First Edition with all of you. Today, I thought I'd ask you about the [1E-DQ] as it will be the next "block" of sets.

In particular, I thought I'd ask you about the various groups of [NA] factions that appeared throughout Voyager. Obviously, Kazon, Hirogen, Borg, and Vidiian are the main affiliated bad guys, but what about smaller groups like the Voth or the 37s?

In this poll, I'm giving you a list of some of the groups/teams/factions that appeared - you can vote for any of them that interest you! I stayed away from groups that mostly already appear in game. And if there's something here that you want to see that isn't on the list, please post about it!

Here is a quick list of each group/faction and the first (or primary) episode where they appeared; they appear in no particular order:

Ocampa
Short-lived humanoids with potential for great mental power.
"Caretaker"
Existing Examples: Kes, Tanis

Talaxian
Losers of a devastating war, Talaxians make due as scavengers, traders, and refugees.
"Caretaker", "Homestead"
Existing Examples: Neelix, Paxim

The 37's
A group of humans and their descendants stolen from Earth in 1937.
"The 37's"
Existing Example: Karyn Berlin

Sikarians
Humanoid pleasure seekers that came into conflict with Voyager.
"Prime Factors"
Existing Examples: None

Voth
Dinosaurs! In space!
"Distant Origins"
Existing Examples: None

Vaadwaur
Humanoid survivors of an ancient empire, frozen for 900 years.
"Dragon's Teeth"
Existing Examples: None

Devore
Authoritarian xenophobes that hate telepaths
"Counterpoint"
Existing Examples: None

Krenim
Masters and victims of temporal manipulation.
"Year of Hell"
Existing Examples:

Overlookers / The Hierarchy
Imagine if The Dominion was run by bureaucratic potato people.
"Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy"
Existing Examples: None

Mari
Telepaths that suppress all violent thoughts.
"Random Thoughts"
Existing Examples: Nimira

Take a few minutes and vote for your favorites! If there are any we missed that you're excited about seeing in game, post about those too. We'll be reading. And I hope you all have a great weekend!

-crp
User avatar
 
By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#591446
So, let me look at this a little different perhaps.

Flavor reasons, they should almost all be affiliations.

Gameplay wise, the biggest reason is to not let Faction A work with Faction B. As in, not let the Krenim and Kazon work together without at least some hoop to jump thru like a treaty.

So, based on that, I think the Voth and Krenim have the biggest reasons not to allow freeform mixing.

And I think the krenim have the most story hooks for possible mechanics. (Just thinking about them give me some really out there ideas that are a good reason why i'm not involved in making the cards, lol.)


So Krenim.
User avatar
Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#591456
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:52 pm Flavor reasons, they should almost all be affiliations.
I'm not seeing affiliations, but rather an opportunity to add a lot of [NA] factions with their own [WC]-style cards. There would be a different Voyager-centered icon for that.
User avatar
 
By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#591459
jadziadax8 wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:22 pm
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:52 pm Flavor reasons, they should almost all be affiliations.
I'm not seeing affiliations, but rather an opportunity to add a lot of [NA] factions with their own [WC]-style cards. There would be a different Voyager-centered icon for that.
[Voy] ?

:shifty:

*ducks!*
User avatar
 
By Smiley (Cristoffer Wiker)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#591465
No more affiliations!

But sub-factions under the NA banner for sure. They can just trigger on species, or we'll have to go make a new icon for each one of them, which will probably just be too small to see anyways (my eyesight is failing, apparently).

So I would go with all of the above. But maybe design them first and start sprinkling them in so that they get introduced a little a time but not getting the whole faction power/mechanic all at the same time.
User avatar
Executive Officer
By jadziadax8 (Maggie Geppert)
 - Executive Officer
 -  
2E North American Continental Semi-Finalist 2023
ibbles  Trek Masters Tribbles Champion 2023
2E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#591469
Armus wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:32 pm
jadziadax8 wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 7:22 pm
boromirofborg wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 4:52 pm Flavor reasons, they should almost all be affiliations.
I'm not seeing affiliations, but rather an opportunity to add a lot of [NA] factions with their own [WC]-style cards. There would be a different Voyager-centered icon for that.
[Voy] ?

:shifty:

*ducks!*
I totally walked into that.
User avatar
 
By Professor Scott (Mathew McCalpin)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Trailblazer
1E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#591470
Reminds me of an old Army joke....

2 Lieutenants walk into a bar...
The 3rd one doesn't duck either.
User avatar
 
By WeAreBack
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#591490
Handling these species by making them a faction may be the wrong way to think about them because, by its nature traveling through the delta quadrant on the way home, Voyager never lent itself to fleshing out various other races over the course of multiple seasons. (The The Kazon only make it through the end of season 2, the last time we actually see a Vidiian is, midway through season 3, and the only race getting more than a handful of episodes after that time is the Borg.)

Instead, the best option for these species something more like how the Son'a were handled in TMP -- a group of non-aligned personnel that have a couple of neat tricks (in their case, Collect metaphasic particles and Son'a observatory) and who need to be involved in completing their objectives and staffing their ships (or you take a penalty).

The Malon -- who actually appear in more episodes than any race on the above list other than the Talaxians and the Ocampa -- actually have an agenda not that dissimilar from the Son'a: laying waste to someone else's planet for their own convenience. I imagine we could give them an objective that works a bit like a Cargo Run, only each time you complete it, it would reduce the point value of the opponent's mission by a certain amount. Maybe an objective that you could download multiple times onto the same mission using taking charge?

The Krenim should have something similar, where their ship is its own time location allowing free reporting of personnel with a particular icon aboard. (New version of Paris and Chakotay could have that icon). Given the maniacal, Ahab-like obsession of their captain, Annorax, they should have a powerful restriction that you cannot win the game without completing a particular mission or objective. This would counterbalance their massive power: the ability to disrupt the timeline in a way that is similar to what the Borg do with Stop First Contact.

I could see similar structures for some of the other species listed built around objectives, but some, like the 37s, are better off as just a few non-aligned characters.
User avatar
 
By boromirofborg (Trek Barnes)
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
1E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
2E North American Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#591496
Let me argue in favor of the idea of micro-affiliations for a moment:

making then all NA has one huge downside : they can all work with [Fed] AND they can all work with each other.

Affiliations are the ST version of the color wheel from Magic. An inherent attempt at balance by making sure that one deck cannot just run the best of everything. And since NA can work with anything, they are the most dangerous.

Now, of course, it can be solved by adding lots of restriction boxes of [Cannot work with [Fed] ], but that can get messy.

Being [NA] also limits the power. As mentioned, I want the Krenim to be actually powerful. Disrupt the timeline, undo opponents things, etc. There's lots of potential. But I don't really want a Krenim/Fed deck to be the strongest.

In a game where the is already an admitted lack of dials for the cost of a card, making a card [NA] makes a card cheaper.

Making a card be an affiliation now requires 1-2 seed slots, which seems like a fair cost for micro-affiliaitons.

------------------------

If we assume these would be like full affiliations, that's setting ourselves up for disappointment. there simply isnt enough screengrabs for full affiliations of most of these on the list. Instead Deciper already showed what was the beginnings of a decent idea, back with the Kazon/Vidiian emblems. They were treaties that could be used for any affiliation. That was bad because it removed the cost and meant that you could always run FED/x deck, but there is room for something like that. Perhaps a treaty that lets any two of the micro affilaiitons work together.

If you look at the banned list, there are no Affiliaited personnel on it currently, and it's usually [NA] people that make the list because of their flexibility.
User avatar
First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#591505
How many of those factions have enough on-screen bodies to actually be a faction?

History should have taught us what happens when we try to shoehorn in a faction into too few people.

And stuff like Krenim don't really fit into the "go solve missions". They feel more like dilemmas or Tribbles or some other interference tactic.

Also:
Give a man a duck and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to duck and he'll never run into a bar again.
User avatar
 
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#591508
I don't have anything really to say about this specific question (yet), but, what I will say right now is that I'm really excited by the prospect of new Voyager cards. Voyager and The Borg are my two favorite 1E expansions. Yes, I know that they are really where the power ramp up accelerated that led to Really Bad Things. But, what I love about those expansions is that in every pack, you would get something cool. Whether it was a dual affiliation guy, a really nice card for a new affiliation, a dual personnel, a new version of an existing classic card, or something that an existing deck could take good advantage of, every pack had something that could be exciting for someone. I hope that these new expansions follow in those footsteps.
Last edited by abargar7510 on Sat Jan 14, 2023 10:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.
User avatar
 
By WeAreBack
 - Beta Quadrant
 -  
#591509
boromirofborg wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 1:58 pm [Cannot work with [Fed] ], but that can get messy.
The problem would be letting the [Fed] benefit from the powerful mecanics that these "groups " (for lack of a better term) come with, not with [Fed] working with any particular personnel.

It would be rather like all of the Khan-related cards: [Fed] can work with the dozen or so khan related augments that exist other than Khan himself, but can't benefit from either the Genesis device and cannot easily benefit from Ceti Eel (because they cannot be present with Khan, except without using a workaround like Planet of Galactic Peace)

All you would have to do is put "Unless playing [Fed]" on the Melon garbage dumping objective and on one of the key cards that allows the Krenim to do their stop first contact equivalent.

Recall from the show, the Voyager crew actually does work with a team of Melon to stop an out of control Melon ship from wrecking a whole planet. And the Krenim who were not part of Anarax's crew were perfectly fine to get a long with in some of the timelines Voyager encountered in Year of Hell.

If it weren't for the fact that Admiral Dougherty was participating in relocating the Bak'u in Insurrection, one would expect a similar restriction on Collect Metaphasic Particles.
User avatar
 
By Iron Prime (Dan Van Kampen)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Moderator
#591510
There are lot of great points in this thread. I like the idea of species-related [NA] sub-factions controlled/introduced via [WC] -type cards.

....

But if I'm honest I just want space dinosaurs. Pretty please?
1EFQ: Game of two halves

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve re[…]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Happy birthday to @Takket ! :D :thumbsup: […]

Opponents turn

Remodulation