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By CaptMDKirk (Matt Kirk)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#385865
Hey there, folks. Please post any feedback here pertaining to Project Excelsior. We're looking forward to the results of the public playtests at NA Continentals in July and Worlds in October, but if you have sleeved up a deck with a friend and tried it at home yourself, we'd love to hear from you!

Please do not post speculation or criticism here if you haven't tried the format and don't have any gameplay results to support your position (you can do that in the FYI article thread). We'd like to keep this thread focused on players' reactions to using the new card pool, and we'll be considering feedback based on actual data to improve the format as it develops.

If you would care to play online with other Excelsior testers, feel free to post here to arrange games or to share your availability with others.

The current format version is v0.3.

Thanks for your participation! :cheersL:

If you'd like to volunteer to help launch the new format, please send me a PM.
Last edited by CaptMDKirk on Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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By CaptMDKirk (Matt Kirk)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#386144
Naetor wrote:It would be ideal if the card search engine and/or Lackey had an 'Excelsior' filter. Not sure how challenging this would be.
We've talked about this internally; stay tuned for updates. A Lackey filter would be interesting (Nava are you out there?). :D
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By Nava
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#386467
I'm out there :) just spent some time in the Gamma Quadrant reg those Synthehol licences and contemplating how to solve that Conundrum. Well it would be possible to create such a deck filter, there is just one caveat!
The deck filter works like this: You define a Format by naming all sets which are part of that format. Sounds simple?
It is as long as all cards of a set are part of a format; but lets take two cards from the Excelsior list, Aftereffects and Fractured Time - both are part of In A Mirror Darkly and the Excelsior list but Distraction (also from IMD) isn't part of the list. Either we end up with stuff like 1E - virtual sets defined by lackey which wreck havoc with saved decks and are a pain to maintain - or we choose to do something different:

I could add the cards in the Excelsior list a second time to the Lackey files and create a single virtual set called "Excelsior" (and a format Excelsior o.c.) and all players would simply select the checkbox "Ignore doubles" to see only one instance of that card. That would keep things simple, would make maintaining the changing Excelsior list easier and would players allow to use their decks without any major problems while still being able to test and play Excelsior.

Could you live with that?

Nava
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#390584
3 of us got together to play today. We had the Romulan, Klingon and Ferengi starters.

Experience levels going in:

- Everyone is familiar with the basic rules
- The Romulan player has only really played with one deck, a straight Cardassian solver, and was looking for something with more interaction
- The Klingon player has played a fair number of different decks, but not Klingons
- The Ferengi player (me) has played with Ferengi in one tournament only, and against a bunch of times, but not enough to remember individual cards
- Everyone was reading pretty much every draw deck card for the first time in the first game.
- I think I'm the only one who has a good handle on the patterns of dilemmas, e.g. with Exposed Power Relay even though I don't remember seeing the card before, I can process like: "Randomly select a guy... if you still have 9 person... oh this is an anti-weenie dilemma".

I watched or played 4 games. I want to say first that I love the idea of this format and I kind of don't want to play complete any more if there is the option of a coherent constructed format with a small card pool. Also, thanks for all the playtest materials Matt!

ROMULAN:

Every personnel has game text, this didn't work well for a starter deck. If you know that some of the personnel abilities are important, you need to read all of them. I thought this was just a problem with the starter deck, but I checked the card pool, every Romulan has game text.

This starter needs focus, with all of:

- assassins
- ships that force discards when the opponent attempts missions
- GUYS + AWC
- stop prevention
- dilemma cost reduction

... there was way too much for a new player. IMO a starter should pick one. I like a starter that demonstrates interaction, so my pick would be assassins. And make everyone else mooks with no abilities!

(again, this may seem like only feedback about the starter, but the card pool doesn't have the cards to support a simpler deck)

Big missions are hard to solve.

Sensing a Trap is horrible for an inexperienced player. You need to have a really good handle on what cards the other affiliations are likely to use in order to hit. Fun for the Excelsior pool, not great in a starter.

One interaction that was very hard to communicate: Escaping Detection plus the anti-planet ship does nothing against me if I'm attempting at a space mission. "But why don't I have to discard cards to attempt? His ship is at all of my missions. One of my other missions is a planet. Remind me why don't I have to discard cards to attempt?"

This must be said at the end of it all: although the Romulan player was pretty helpless with reading every card three times before playing it, he said that he did enjoy the challenge.

FERENGI:

Some of the tricks were fun. I'd like to see doubling down on the "put cards under Ferenginar, get bonuses" theme in the starter. Leave the other themes in the pool, but not in the starters.

I picked up on a two-mission theme with Salvaged Enterprise and Ferengi Tradition, but there's a *lot* of planning to do here - solve the 35 point planet mission with Salvaged Enterprise (better hope you downloaded it - and better hope you have the Programming to drive it - more on this later), solve the 35 point space mission, know how many Ferengi Traditions you can afford to discard for other effects (exactly one). If two-mission win isn't really intentional then I'd take Ferengi Tradition out.

I didn't manage to make Gint's ability work and it seems out of place with the goal of not gaining counters.

Just like Romulans, it felt like way too much reading on the personnel, needs more mooks.

There are some dire skill gaps, most mission skills there are only 4x, there's only 2x Science for Mining Survey and 2x Astro for Exploit Drought. There's only 4x Anthro when Gather Info requires 2x Anthro. Not a lot of Programming for Salvaged Enterprise either.

I'm in two minds about the Ferengi dilemmas. They're on the complicated end, but the theme of stopping your opponent based on your Ferengi's skills is genius in that you can just ignore it while you're not ready for it. Once you understand the trick, it becomes really good. IMO that's the right kind of depth to include in a starter.

KLINGON:

The Klingon player seemed to be able to solve missions fairly well. I was disappointed to see that he never bothered to battle anyone. I would say that some of the other combat/engagement cards in the pool could be in the starter. They're not that complicated.

ADDITIONAL RULES:
We played with 45 minute time limit and the ship download rule.

Timing - with all of the reading of complicated cards, I think in one game one player managed to solve two missions. In the others, it was one or zero missions each. Game times were 50-55 mins after even turns.

I AM STILL IN SUPPORT OF 45 MINUTE TIME LIMIT. 45-55 mins is manageable, the same players in complete sometimes do 75 minutes. Also, another 15 minutes did not seem like it would be fun. And we are used to mod wins around here.

Ship download - this worked well, no-one objected and it eliminates the NPE of not drawing a ship. Hard to beat that.

It seems like maybe the randomness of not drawing a ship would be a good thing when dealing with big decks. I feel like Excelsior format would be better for favouring small decks.
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By CaptMDKirk (Matt Kirk)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#392496
T-Ricks wrote:Are any of the existing affiliations in v0.2 going to be rotated out of Excelsior when v0.3 gets here? Or, are we just adding more affiliations/factions at this point?
v0.3 will feature TNG, Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, and Borg. The pools for each affiliation will be much deeper, and the total card pool will be doubled (~800 cards). This will simulate the card pool at its largest; we wanted to stress-test the format by including the max number of options.
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By T-Ricks (Rick Kinney)
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#392514
CaptMDKirk wrote:
T-Ricks wrote:Are any of the existing affiliations in v0.2 going to be rotated out of Excelsior when v0.3 gets here? Or, are we just adding more affiliations/factions at this point?
v0.3 will feature TNG, Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, and Borg. The pools for each affiliation will be much deeper, and the total card pool will be doubled (~800 cards). This will simulate the card pool at its largest; we wanted to stress-test the format by including the max number of options.
Will v0.3 be the last revision prior to Worlds? I'd like to start looking at what I might want to build for the Excelsior Format tournament.
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By CaptMDKirk (Matt Kirk)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#392522
T-Ricks wrote:Will v0.3 be the last revision prior to Worlds? I'd like to start looking at what I might want to build for the Excelsior Format tournament.
v0.3 will be the version we will test @ Worlds.
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#392529
CaptMDKirk wrote:
T-Ricks wrote:Are any of the existing affiliations in v0.2 going to be rotated out of Excelsior when v0.3 gets here? Or, are we just adding more affiliations/factions at this point?
v0.3 will feature TNG, Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, and Borg. The pools for each affiliation will be much deeper, and the total card pool will be doubled (~800 cards). This will simulate the card pool at its largest; we wanted to stress-test the format by including the max number of options.
Interesting, so no ferengi?
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By CaptMDKirk (Matt Kirk)
 - Delta Quadrant
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Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Architect
#392535
Fritzinger wrote:Interesting, so no ferengi?
Not this time around! The feedback indicated that Ferengi were too complex for what we were trying to accomplish, and that players were having more issues trying to figure out how to optimize their usage rather than focusing on playing the game.

This is not to say we'll never see them again; indeed, the nature of rotation in Excelsior means that familiar faces can pop up from time to time.
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