#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.