For posting deck designs for feedback from other players and members of the community.
 
By MrTyres
 - New Member
 -  
#547923
Hello, long time lurker. I started played Star Trek CCG in 1995 with a buddy, and I kept playing until college in 2006. I still own all my 1E cards and they sit lovingly in binders, rarely disturbed. I liked the gameplay of 2E so much more, in part because my play buddy exclusively played Borg in 1E, which soured the game for me for a bit. I kept several 2E decks built and in OTSD boxes for the occasional two handed solitaire.

A couple of months ago, my buddy celebrated his 42nd birthday with a small house tourney of Netrunner. His wife built all the decks without him knowing, invited us over for board game night, and surprise! I have never played Netrunner before (in fact 6 of us had not) but the night was smashing because we were playing together in a game my friend loved but didn't have much of a playgroup for. So, I start eyeballing my Trek cards again, and since the pandemic has cancelled every trip I planned, I took some of that money and completed my 2E set with doubles of nearly everything (I am missing maybe 5 cards total, mostly the Enterprise ones the pervs longingly stare at and make impossible to buy without spending small fortunes). My 40th is coming this year and I want to throw my own Trek 2E birthday tourney.

So, with that being said, I am looking at building a play cube: making decks for each faction that capture the flair of the culture and mechanics, that is playable with just minor readings of the cards and some help from me, and include no virtual cards. I appreciate the great work y'all do here, and I have gone through the virtual 2E expansions often just looking (at ship and personnel cards mostly because ships are what got me into Trek to start), but I have little to no interest in trying to print them between now and October. I have enough OTSD boxes plus some cheap Ebay steals of the SWCCG boxes that I will cover in TrekCC official covers. I want my players to be able to choose an OTSD box and have pre made decks ready to play.

Here is where I need the help: I haven't played against someone who wasn't me since 2006 or so. I owned some stuff from sets 5, 6, and 7, but my experience is really 1-4. Now that I own everything from 1-14, I have a good bit more cards to pull from. But my concept of a dilemma deck is antiquated. So much so, that in my solitaire games, I just had a big stack of all my dilemmas so they were truly random to me. I need help in building the lists proper.

I want to build the following, with themes listed in parentheses.

TNG
DS9 (cadet deck with Valiant and Defiant)
Maquis
Voyager (with the Revised versions as well, because my memories of Voyager are just that dichotomous: great show or terrible depending on the episode)
Klingon (let us battle)
Ferengi (Rules of Acquisition everywhere)
Cardassian (all the brigs and interrogation)
Borg
Romulan (thinking Neutral Zone stand off with ships that make you discard cards to attempt)
Dominion (infiltrate or battle)
Terok Nor (love the idea of all those factions in a single deck)
Starfleet (either straight or mirror universe)
TOS (again, could go either way straight or mirror)
TNG Yesterday's Enterprise (the C and those yellow icon TNGs)
Bajoran (all the Vedeks, all the Emissary, no Feds if I can)

It is a big list, and I don't know the cards well enough, but I also gave myself lots of time to plan and prepare. If I get it done by GenCon, I may haul it with me and see if I can play with you good people. What ideas or lists can you feed me? I will take all of them.
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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
 -  
Community Contributor
#547995
MrTyres wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 12:55 pm My 40th is coming this year and I want to throw my own Trek 2E birthday tourney.
That sounds like a blast!

You could definitely go the route of building decks, though that might take a fair bit of testing to try to get them to be balanced (I know because of how much testing these decks took - and still take, every time new cards and errata come out). I wish I had a similar resource I could point you to that used traditional cards.

Another thing you could try, which might take less set-up, is to emulate the IDIC Draft model.

Here's the idea: give everyone a core set of cards - if you've almost completed your 2e set, you should have a few dozen copies of common non-aligned personnel. Then, take 4 or so of your favorite affiliations (depending on the number of players you anticipate having), and put roughly equal amounts in that cube, along with interrupts, events, equipment, and dilemmas they can use. One thing IDIC does well is the missions are in a separate pool, so you can't fail to have enough missions.

Then, either (A) draft (if your players are sort of experienced) or (B) just increase the number of cards per player and make it a pseudo-sealed deck thing. Popular rules for making deck-building easier on inexperienced players:
  • You can spend three counters to download a ship on your first turn (or, hell, just let everyone put a ship in their opening hands, being ship-screwed sucks for newbies).
  • Universal treaty: you can use personnel who don't match your HQ at cost+1 (even newbier-friendly: just let 'em use everyone, and only care about affiliations for verbs).
I do something similar with First Edition - I have a "cube" with one of every card from the first three sets, and a pod of the promo cards from OTSD for each player to help make their random cards playable. I've done it a few times, and we have a good time.

Good luck and have fun!
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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
#548021
Paging @Honest to the white courtesy phone, please.

He had a cube draft he set up for the players in Sydney. I'm not sure how many virtual cards were in it, but I've been itching to get my hands on the list for awhile.
 
By Honest
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
2E Australian Continental Champion 2019
#548457
Hey Mr Tyres!

Yep, I made a 2E draft cube, however everything was Virtual (even cards I own the real copies of, I printed out).

I did write about it at the time on this site, it is fun, but takes a chunk of doing. A search should bring it up

I think what you are describing above is not a draft cube, but a bunch of cool, balanced decks for friend to play against each other, while drinking plenty of fluids and eating unhealthy things (one of my strong suits). If it is the latter, plenty of learner decks on this site.

Quick side note, printing out a bunch of cards and using your 1e commons as backers, whilst annoying, if you glue them is like making your own cards, and are reusable (especially if you make a draft cube). If you can find the time to do some printing, you have a billion more options, no matter what format you choose to play.

Most importantly, have fun playing with your mates.

Cheers!

Honest
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