[Darmok501]

What cards should be considered essential to play in any deck? Also, what about Federation specifically?

[Kaiser]

What cards should be considered essential to play in any deck? Also, what about Federation specifically?

None. There are no hard must-include cards, but if you have look at the Affiliation HQ page, you can see which cards are played most often.
Some of these only make sense in specific deck types (e.g., HQ: Secure Homeworld) , others can be considered useful for a wide range of builds (e.g. Q's Tent, Assign Mission Specialists, Defend Homeworld, Assign Support Personnel, Quark's Isolinear Rods, most of the cards listed under top 10 draw deck cards).

For Feds, it depends very much on what kind of focus/era your decks has. The tendency over the last years has been to create specific builds that focus primarily on one subgroup (TOS, TNG era, Movies, DS9, Voyagers, Mirror quadrant), all of which usually run different setups.

[StellarCartography]

I think there are staples that can fit in many decks, but there is also faction specific staples as well. Kaiser makes a very valid point in this regard when it comes to faction cards.

If I were to guess two to three cards that are flexible

Kevis Fajo - Collector
Maska Transformer
Assign Mission Specialist

Then you have a wider ranger with factions, that will use more utility cards for their builds and that can vary by a lot.

[pfti]

That being said, for fed, the Starbase is always a good option
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/?cardID=4578

[Se7enofMine]

Hmm. I don't know about 'must haves.' I guess it depends on your meta.

I only play with two friends. We stay away from any cheese so we don't even play with QtRef or any ref cards.

What we do enjoy doing, and its for giggles, is messing with each other by way of silly stuff like Loss of Orbital Stability and cards like that. So for my 'meta,' I always stock:

- Amanda Rogers x3
- Kev Uxbridge x3
- Nanoprobe Resus x3

Sure it dilutes the deck by 10 cards but we aren't world class players anyway.

It does lead to some awesome moments when LoOS is played, then a Rogers, then another Rogers, then a NanoRes to get back the Rogers and so on. Again, worth it? Maybe not. But its a lot of fun.

- Q's Tent. Not tooooo many decks without a Qtent side deck.
- Regenerate, depending on what you are running, could be handy

As I say, a lot is meta, deck type, and your play style.

[pfti]

Hmm. I don't know about 'must haves.' I guess it depends on your meta.

I only play with two friends. We stay away from any cheese so we don't even play with QtRef or any ref cards.

What we do enjoy doing, and its for giggles, is messing with each other by way of silly stuff like Loss of Orbital Stability and cards like that. So for my 'meta,' I always stock:

- Amanda Rogers x3
- Kev Uxbridge x3
- Nanoprobe Resus x3

Sure it dilutes the deck by 10 cards but we aren't world class players anyway.

It does lead to some awesome moments when LoOS is played, then a Rogers, then another Rogers, then a NanoRes to get back the Rogers and so on. Again, worth it? Maybe not. But its a lot of fun.

- Q's Tent. Not tooooo many decks without a Qtent side deck.
- Regenerate, depending on what you are running, could be handy

As I say, a lot is meta, deck type, and your play style.

a note about this, because errataed rogers has a point box, it does not go to the discard pile when played, so it cannot be rececitated.

[Se7enofMine]

Huh. I never noticed the errata. Im playing old physical copies. Oops.

Noted haha

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

If you're using an outpost, then Assign Mission Specialists.

It's also really good to have a way to download a ship, Spacedoor for outpost decks and Call for Reinforcements for Headquarters/other decks.

Going to the Top and I'm a Doctor, not a Bricklayer are ways that lots of decks can get another personnel into play.

I always like using Q's Tent, even stocked in the draw deck! Though most players won't consider that "must have." I've always meant to write an article about how I use it, but for now I'll just say if you want to use it, don't overdo it. I only use 3-4 copies in my 40-60 card decks.

Other pet cards I frequently use are Mutation and The Power, typically one copy each. If you overdo it with the card selection cards, then you just draw in to more card selection cards.