[LORE]

What's next for the Warp Speed Cube?
This year I hope to finish the fourth and final beta version of my cube, removing the excess Space dilemmas, tweaking the ships, and swapping in some interactive cards (Kevin, Quinn, Anij, Madam Guinan, etc.) in place of some of the chaff. Then, once I can draft the cube without seeing a card and thinking, "Ugh, why is this still in the cube?" I'll call it version 1.0, and then I'll start promoting it more.

Hopefully, what's next will include another round of Cube Draft as part of our local league. Perhaps as one of the playoff events @Commander Joe ?

As always, thank you so much for putting this together and all the work that goes into it. Such a great option for casual STCCG.

[SirDan]

I think this might be a fun option for the San Diego Regional this year. Watching with great interest.

How have you handled the logistics? Are real cards real, or are they all printouts? Is everything pre-sleeved? Maybe with different colors for seed/mission/draw decks? Are you using reusable cube draft "pack" containers? How big of a box is needed for toting it around?

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

I think this might be a fun option for the San Diego Regional this year. Watching with great interest.

How have you handled the logistics? Are real cards real, or are they all printouts? Is everything pre-sleeved? Maybe with different colors for seed/mission/draw decks? Are you using reusable cube draft "pack" containers? How big of a box is needed for toting it around?

The way I've done it is to have everything sleeved up beforehand. The 48 missions are one color sleeve, the 96 dilemmas are another color, and the 330 remaining (240 draftable plus up to six 15-card starters) is a third color.

I bought an Ultimate Guard Arkhive 400+ for this, and that's just big enough. It doesn't really add much benefit over a basic box, so IMHO it's better to invest money in quality sleeves before a quality box. An Anthology box or plain 800-card (unsleeved) box should work. I'm using a mix of physical and virtual cards and I think the average card thickness is somewhere between single-sleeved and double-sleeved.

I personally don't prepackage the packs. I just show up, have the other players help me shuffle the cards, then deal them out as needed.

I recommend having a few printouts of the Warp Speed rules as well the custom rules for this format and the list of necessary skills to pass all the walls that players can refer to during drafting and play.

Also, since you're thinking of using this for a Regional, I'll just reiterate a disclaimer that my version only supports up to 6 players. If you expect more than that, Ausgang's Bavarian version has an 8-player version.

[Kaiser]

Since I'm currently building the 8-player version from excess printouts from older decks and spares from my trade binder, I was thinking about this as well.

I'm merrily mixing Decipher foils and non-foils with printouts on paper of varying grammage, I think the difference in thickness is negligible (unless you have some heavy 250+g/m² paper in the mix).

I definitely suggest keeping everything sleeved. I also went for one colour for the missions, one for the dilemmas, one for everything else.

Ausgang uses "cube shells", mini deck boxes that hold about 20 cards, for the starter cards for each player (very convenient that they come in packs of 8 ), I'm definitely getting these.

I'm also planning to create a custom (probably double-sided) card that includes a quick overview of the most important rules (winning conditions, etc.), and maybe a list of what goes in the starter pack to make cleaning up easier. Will share once I'm done.

[OKCoyote]

Ausgang uses "cube shells", mini deck boxes that hold about 20 cards, for the starter cards for each player (very convenient that they come in packs of 8 ), I'm definitely getting these.

Burger Tokens makes good plastic deck boxes of this size. I use them for Jumpstart decks in Magic: the Gathering, and I used them for starter pools at last year's Worlds.

[JeBuS]

I use these clear tuck boxes for this sort of thing. Other vendors probably have something similar in other sizes.

[SirDan]

Moving forward with this for a late-May event. Just so I'm on the same page here, this is what we're using:

Everyone gets one set of the Starter Cards in this decklist. Six players is what this set accommodates, so six sets is a good number to have.
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28072
Changes:
Replace Dr. Farek with Dr. Nydom

The 48 Missions from this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28058
Changes:
Replace Reunion with Homeward
Replace Brute Force with Bat'leth Tournament

The 96 Dilemmas from this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28027
Changes:
Replace Personal Duty with The Metrons' Arena
Replace Borg Ship with Lethean Telepathic Attack

The 53 Federation cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28055

The 53 Romulan cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28057

The 55 Klingon cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28056

The 79 cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28058
Changes:
Replace Dr. Nydom with Dr. Farek

That's 240 cards.

Plus, there are Piggyback cards in the "Outside the Game" section of the decks above. These are best as virtual slips that go in the same sleeve as the "parent" card.
5 Federation
6 Romulan
8 Klingon
3 Non-Aligned

I've put together a spreadsheet so that the local group can decide if we want to all donate real cards, nice prints, or whatnot here.

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

Moving forward with this for a late-May event. Just so I'm on the same page here, this is what we're using:

Everyone gets one set of the Starter Cards in this decklist. Six players is what this set accommodates, so six sets is a good number to have.
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28072
Changes:
Replace Dr. Farek with Dr. Nydom

The 48 Missions from this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28058
Changes:
Replace Reunion with Homeward
Replace Brute Force with Bat'leth Tournament

The 96 Dilemmas from this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28027
Changes:
Replace Personal Duty with The Metrons' Arena
Replace Borg Ship with Lethean Telepathic Attack

The 53 Federation cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28055

The 53 Romulan cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28057

The 55 Klingon cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28056

The 79 cards from the Draw Deck Section of this list:
https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/ind ... ckID=28058
Changes:
Replace Dr. Nydom with Dr. Farek

That's 240 cards.

Plus, there are Piggyback cards in the "Outside the Game" section of the decks above. These are best as virtual slips that go in the same sleeve as the "parent" card.
5 Federation
6 Romulan
8 Klingon
3 Non-Aligned

I've put together a spreadsheet so that the local group can decide if we want to all donate real cards, nice prints, or whatnot here.

Looks about right at first glance. I'll try to take a closer look by this weekend.

[SirRogue]

I'm also planning to create a custom (probably double-sided) card that includes a quick overview of the most important rules (winning conditions, etc.), and maybe a list of what goes in the starter pack to make cleaning up easier. Will share once I'm done.

This sounds like a good idea. I was also thinking it would be nice to have a card with the list of skills required to meet all the dilemmas. Maybe this can be a simple checklist printout rather than a quality permanent card, since it's likely to change as the various cubes evolve, and people might want to use it to actually write on while deck building. I might just print this as a 9up page myself to bring it along to have enough to share.

[boromirofborg]

This sounds like a good idea. I was also thinking it would be nice to have a card with the list of skills required to meet all the dilemmas. Maybe this can be a simple checklist printout rather than a quality permanent card, since it's likely to change as the various cubes evolve, and people might want to use it to actually write on while deck building. I might just print this as a 9up page myself to bring it along to have enough to share.

Hmm. I'm very mixed on this. I get the desire for it, but it also feels like it takes away from the awesome feel of beaming down with no / little idea of what you are encountering.

If prevents lockouts, but it would also be a little dissapointng to me.

(No offense, just sharing opinions of what makes it appealing.)

[SirDan]

We ran a quick test last weekend with three of the locals. Granted we only saw a fraction of the cube itself, but it was a good time.

I have a couple of notes:
Important to use updated text instead of the prettiest versions of cards. I have some swapping to do.
In a format that relies on a lot of kill dilemmas, Genetronic Replicator is a beast. Consider removing for something like Extraordinary Methods or Dig.
With three players - despite trying otherwise - we all defaulted to a single affiliation. Looking forward to playing with 4 in two weeks to see how that dynamic changes.
Atmospheric Ionization is brutal on your only planet turn one. We are considering ejecting this from the cube.
Interrupts are very strong when you even up every turn.
Thomas got both Admiral Riker and the Enterprise. What a combo!

[SirDan]

Regional complete. Good, fun afternoon. The four of us all had a pretty good time, with only a few feel-bad moments.

We will likely make this a recurring format down here - it is so easy to pop down for an afternoon, it doesn't take the 5+ hours for a complete Modern event, or the days of deck prep. Maybe every other month?

Changes to the pool for next time:
Atmospheric Ionization and Distortion Field are out.
Genetronic still out.
Escape, Emergency Transport Unit, and All-Consuming Evil in.

Considered changes for the future:
Removing the infiltrator theme from the Romulan deck.

Considered changes for the far future:
Removing ~20 each of Fed, Rom, and Kli cards; add in ~30 each of Car, Baj cards, and the missing treaties. (Will have to proxy Kli/Car.)