[Boffo97]

(This is a little off topic, but hopefully close enough. Mods can of course feel free to move it if they wish.)

What's your story? How did you get involved with ST:CCG?

For me, sometime between WB Premiere and AU, a friend got me into the game by giving me a few hundred of his extra cards, including a Deanna Troi (which I didn't understand at the time wasn't all that great a card). I was a huge Trekkie, which I got from my mom, who had watched Trek from the first episode.

When I went to college, I didn't play much due to lack of opponents, though I got one other person into the game... ironically giving him an extra Major Rakal. But I kept collecting because the cards were pretty to look at, and it's fairly exciting to open a pack.

On the Decipher boards, I took the name of EHCCGPP, short for the Emergency Holographic CCG Playing Program, since I could have used one of those at times. If the name sounds familiar, I was one of the reviewers during the last legs of the Wesley's Card of the Day reviews, and was fairly active on the chatroom on Wesley's site. I even completed my Rules of Acquisition set after opening a box and revealing the rares as I opened them in the chat, only to find after I completed the box, I was one card short (Brunt) of the set, and a guy asked for my address and offered to send me Brunt.

In 2001, I had one of the best times I had with ST:CCG after winning 2 passes from the local Fox Station to go to Comicon. Thanks to a local chat group of San Diego players, I got a ride to go pick up the passes, as well as selling the extra pass for face value.

At the Con, I bought a Collection Tin for $20 (though all I needed to complete Premiere at that point was three rare missions), got a bunch of cards autographed by Decipher Guest Vaughn Armstrong (aka Admiral Forrester on Voyager) who was very gracious, signing multiple cards with a smile. I even had 4 cards of his Vidiian character and said it would be okay if he just initialed them... but he signed them fully and even asked me if that was alright.

There was a tournament there, but I didn't enter, but still made out big time. Thanks to a huge stock of Premiere to trade, I made a ton of trades, filling out my Trouble with Tribbles (except for Spock and McCoy, who I got in Motion Pictures) bridge crew and Voyager mains, even doing some trades with Decipher employees. On a whim, I even had Evan Lorentz autograph my Mot the Barber card.

By the time I moved back to my hometown, my STCCG collection had grown to 9-10 binders, not counting extra cards. My friend refused to play 1E with me anymore since he had really stopped collecting after Q-Continuum and I had not (I believe The Borg was the most recent set), so I could really murder him in a game if I tried.

We both got a bit into 2E, and there were some nice cards and some good gameplay there, but I really prefer 1E.

In February 2010, I went to South Korea to teach and left my STCCG collection home... but now I've come back and am about to go back again and will try to take it with me. Luckily for customs, 1E is not worth much anymore.

Besides 2E, I also got a bit into the Decipher Star Wars CCG, NFL Red Zone CCG (flawed because the more rare cards a deck had, the more penalty prone it was) and mainly the World of Warcraft TCG, in large part because of the rare loot cards which had scratch off codes for items for the PC MMOPRG. In one sad story, I got some Korean WoW cards while there and got a really really rare loot card that goes for $200-$250 in the U.S. But since it was a Korean card, it would only work on Korean servers, and I wasn't able to find anyone to sell it to.

I collected from all of the sets, but was only able to complete Premiere (if you count the collector's tin), Alternate Universe, Q-Continuum, First Contact and Rules of Acquisition.

So what's your story?

[AllenGould]

Hopefully I remember this properly.

The year I graduated highschool, I spent the summer with a friend of the family while working and waiting for university to start. Their relative (a brother, I think?) brought over a couple boxes of this new collectable card game thing, and left them for us to try out. There was two starters of Premiere Trek, and two starters of Magic.

Was pretty obvious that neither game played out of the box properly, so we mixed them up and tried to build "proper" decks. The Trek deck sorted fairly nicely into a Fed vs Kli/Rom decks (I think we were short on dilemmas), and the Magic decks ended up being a two-color vs. a three-color, and pretty obviously didn't work at all. So, we played Trek.

So, there for the grace of starter decks go I.

[Zef'No]

My STCCG story begins on Christmas Day, 1994. I was given a Premiere starter deck as a present from a distant family friend. I was certainly into Star Trek by that point, but I doubt this person would have known this; it was just a random novelty item that I hadn't asked for, or didn't even knew existed.

I was instantly intrigued. I spent hours over the next several weeks reading the cards and the rules, and I became hooked. I lived in a rural suburb, far away from big shops (or other Trekies), so expanding my power in the universe was difficult at first. I did however manage to purchase some packs when we went to city centres.

Finally I could actually customise some decks! - I still didn't have many decent cards though and had to use all three affiliations to make them viable. I started to get my brother interested in the game and I shared out my cards so we could both build decks and play.

The gameplay was very primitive at first, but we did have fun. I managed to persuade my brother to buy his own cards, and I obviously kept doing the same, through Alternate Universe, Q-Continuum and First Contact... This was before we had internet access so we had no idea what to do with the Q cards or how to play Borg. But we kept having fun.

I finally got internet access around the time DS9 came out. Also around this time, I began trying to get some friends interested in the game. Although we managed to have a few good games, they were never as enthusiastic as I was and my brother's interest waned as he got older. I started trading online, later setting up an online trading group exclusively for UK-based players. I even started playing games online at Kedanya.

Unfortunately, finding real people to play with became almost impossible. I once travelled over 160 miles across country to get to my first sanctioned tournament!

My interest in the game never ceased though and I collected all expansions until 1e was cancelled. I imagine I will continue to do so for as long as physically possible.

[Neelix]

In 1994, the year before I graduated from high school, I found some geeky freshmen were playing this game called Magic the Gathering - with cards. But they weren't cards in one box, they were cards in packages like baseball cards. I was hooked instantly - my first Magic card I ever read and fully realized how a CCG could be GREAT was Dark Heart of the Wood.

But my father was a Southern Baptist Minister and there was NO WAY I would be allowed to play "devil" game like Magic. So I took my love of sci-fi to the next level and went to Boardwalk and Park Place (The greatest game store ever - still, to this day!) to look up the other CCGs. I bought my first starter deck of ST:TNGCCG and opened the box in the van on the way home with my mom. My first rare I ever got was Geordi LaForge. I read the rules three times and finally realized I needed more cards to really play with another person. I split my starter into two parts and played three games against myself that night - using my draw deck and encountering my own dilemmas seeded under my own missions. Mom finally came in and told me I had to go to bed because I had school the next day.

The next day, I snuck the cards to school and showed every one of my friends that would listen. In those early days, my playgroup was about four guys. Justin Hutto, Matt Anderson, Clay Black and me. We divvied up the affiliations - with Justin playing Klingons, Matt playing Federation, Clay playing whatever he wanted because he loved it so much he started buying booster packs by the BOX right away and me - playing Romulans.

I took my love of the game to college the next year (1995) and taught John Potts (a HUGE Trekkie) Steven Suits, Travis Kerns, Al Young and Phil Fleming how to play. We played pick-up games at the student center all the time and sometimes on the floor in our dorm. I finally had reliable internet access (thanks to a phone line in my dorm room) so I got on Decipher's website and got set up to host tournaments. We hooked up with a game store in a nearby city where four other ADULTS were playing STTNGCCG tournaments and went crazy.

But as time marched on, my buddy's interest waned. They either left CCGs behind or went on to Magic or something else. This was the late 1990's and CCGs were popping up all over the place.

Eventually, AU and QC came out. John Potts totally floored me when he played a copy of "To Thine Own Self" on a one man mission attempt I did the second semester when we all got back to school. New cards! Then - First Contact came out and we loved the movie - and loved the new set. I got more people interested again and held my own tournament at the Student Center. Decipher announced they finally had rights to make cards based on everything Star Trek - and I've never looked back.

When I moved to New Orleans, La. after I got married (the first time) I still found some people to play with and started processing Ore on Terok Nor while facing down Doug Thompson and some other Lousiana players. By the time 2E had come out, I had moved back to S.C. and was the editor of a small town newspaper there. I used my office and the comic shop next to it to start hosing 2E events and we drew in some players from Charlotte and the surrounding area.

I taught Michael Camp, Will Hawkins and others how to play and eventually we met up with the Charlotte play group that included Nathan Miracle (GooeyChewie). 2E was awesome!! We loved it and I let my 1E cards collect dust for a while.

And now we're here...the CC is doing a great job of keeping this hobby going and I couldn't be happier. I played in a 1E tournament with Kazon last night - here in 2012. Who would have thunk it?

The future looks bright - and Star Trek Lives!

[jjh]

Love these stories. I'm enjoying reading each one. Thanks to Neelix, Zef'no, Allen, and EHCCGPP for posting.

More, please.

[Maelwys]

Mine's posted here already...

[soggy_amphibian]

I'd got into Star Trek with The Next Generation. I didn't really know that many people outside my family who were into it, but one day at school somebody brought in some WB Premiere. I found out where to get some and started collecting, too. In my first Starter I pulled a Toreth, and I did better getting the Romulans than getting the big-name Feds (still haven't pulled a WB Data - my list says I'm missing a WB Worf, too, but I pulled one in a sealed SD2 I got from a thrift store the day before US Thanksgiving). There were some things we didn't quite get in the early days - I seem to recall we didn't quite get the difference between Classification and Skill, so we were using Equipments to get recursively high Shields with Nutational and Metaphasic Shields.

I remember a Day of Wonder when someone actually brought in a cardlist. I remember I had pretty much the whole thing memorised. Well, not the associated rarities, I guess. One guy's father thought it would be a good idea to have a card marked if it were rare (you know, schools and thieving kids). So on the white border towards the bottom right, there was a short dash of highlighter... I remember one poor Geordi LaForge looking that way. I remember confusion when we discovered some of the Alpha/Beta differences. Having a bunch of them, I remember holding a Study Stellar Collision over a candle and watching that star burn. I was showing off a Stone Of Gol to a friend. He turned and took a big bite at it. Pretty sure I still have it, bite-marks and all.

Someone had a black-and-white home-printed magazine that had some Q-Continuum preview information, saying about the side decks (and the image quality was pretty bad, of course). The writer had obviously got some of his information by word-of-mouth, talking about a new card "Thy Known Self".

I kept collecting. On an exchange trip to Germany, my host took me to a hobby store in his town, and I got some packs of First Contact there. This was where I noticed Tarantino Of Borg and Schwarzenegger Of Borg. My exchange partner's older brother had a picture on his wall, a photo of him with a bottle cap or something over his eye. It looked just like this, so I left a copy of that card there.

Somewhere around this time I got the First Contact and Cloud City posters - picture on one side, mostly card list on the other.

I was on holiday with my grandparents and we went to Eastborne, I saw a Deep Space Nine poster in a window as we passed in the car. Later on I got them to go back there, got my first two DS9 packs: Elim Garak was one of my pulls.

I moved somewhere around the time of Dominion or Blaze Of Glory coming out. I found a hobby shop in town, and bought a bunch of packs from there. This move put me within travelling distance of London, and I did go a handful of times into London (anyone remember the Old King's Head Pub and the tournaments there), with Colm and Ringo and that crowd. They were a good group. My favourite tournaments were the Sealed (not that I did much better in them than in the Constructed): I know I played one OTSD (thus my Klingon OTSD box) and one Voyager Warpspeed Sealed (that was my last there). One tourney I didn't do very well, and still won a Black Border Premiere Enterprise. Another time I think it was Ringo gave me 2 Oversize cards (Admiral Riker, and Two of Nine). There was one time where one of the players donated his TNG VHS collection as prize support. I seem to recall that being a really big tournament, that may have been the time I went that they weren't in the Old King's Head Pub anymore. Bit hazy, long time ago. There was an element where I had to choose between buying cards and attending tournaments, the former won more frequently. Also, it seemed that tournaments kinda fell apart after the release of Voyager. I went to the Warpspeed Sealed, didn't go to a few, was thinking of going to another and they were more sporadic then didn't happen.

Somewhere in that timeframe I ordered my Fajo Collection from The Eccentric Order. When it arrived there was an extra customs charge attached. I don't know if it was legit or not. I didn't hear anything back afterwards.

I kept collecting cards, but with the quick release cycle following Voyager I found it progressively harder to collect the cards. By the time The Motion Pictures came out, there was so little stock of it and I had so little money to pay for any of it, I've got huge gaps in that set. I did get an All Good Things when it came out. When 2e came along, I opted out of collecting this other card game given that I had so many gaps in my 1e collection. I gradually bought up all the stock of 1e the hobby shop had.

After I got married, I bought a few singles on ebay, ordered some stuff from Hill's later on (the Enterprise Collection probably filled more gaps than the booster boxes I ordered). Somewhere around here I came across the CC, towards the beginning of their 1e support. I joined the 1e Lackey tournaments when they started, and here I still am.

[rsutton41]

My STCCG story starts a little after everyone else. I have pretty much been a Star Trek fan from birth. I have no idea how it got started or where my love came from but it happened early in my life. So the foundation for loving STCCG was already set via my love for Star Trek. In 1997 my friend knew of my love of Star Trek and he brought me a Premiere Starter deck. From that moment on I was hooked. It was like crack ! I loved it ! Truly the best of both worlds - Star Trek and a game that took a ton of strategy.

By the time that I started playing - AU and Q Cont. had already been released. I had a lot of learning to do. There was really no play group or anybody to play against. So I set off on a quest to learn the game and teach it to anybody who would listen. I can remember caring the little tiny rulebook around reading it every time I got the chance. Cards were hard to find in my area and at that time internet sales were not really an option because shipping was so high and I could only buy 1 pack at a time. (After all I was a High School student with no money) Every time I would go any where I could get a pack I would. My collection built slowly - As FC and DS9 came out slowly collecting them too. I taught a few people to play and I built decks for them to play. They enjoyed it but the game was crazy expensive for a casual player. They would play but interest would fizzle. I continued to play against myself. I can even remember calling decipher with questions I had about the game because I had no one to ask. (I am sure the questions were hilarious !)

My STCCG world was about to change. I was looking on Decipher's website and saw a Tournament posted in Knoxville, TN which was 45 minutes away. I WOULD BE THERE ! - We met at a new card shop to play our first tournament. It was a great shop because they sold STCCG and supported the game ! Awesome ! - We had 8 people which was what it took for a tournament back in Decipher days. We all loved the game and would have many tournaments after some that wouldn't make numbers some that would. We as the Knoxville crew would travel around together and play in a few events in Johnson City, TN which had a huge following and we would travel to Nashville and Chattanooga to play as well. In 2001, Voyager came out and the game started to fizzle for out group because unless you played DQ (which meant) unless you had money you couldn't compete. DQ dominated and the players who had money dominated and it became not fun. The games would be over in 4 turns and people because frustrated. The core group of us kept playing mostly at my house for fun. There were a few more tournaments that would make the magic number 8 but that is what killed us. Unfortunately, our group died the game became so unbalanced it wasn't fun. I continued to play with a couple of people. I started College at the University of Tennessee which luckily was right near the cards shop. I started working there for packs of cards in the evening which to me was better than money at the time lol ! - My collection continued to grow but I would have no one to play against....

I would take a short break from the game - During this break I would start dating my wife. (I am glad I took a break now) When Decipher announced 2E I got excited. I immediately signed up to be an ambassador !! I had run enough tournaments in 1E days that they immediately picked me up. I started being an Ambassador totally awesome ! I bought lots of boxes of 2E Premiere - The Ambassador program sent me tons of cards to give away and promote like crazy ! - Cards were again so hard to come by in East Tennessee. Players would come and go but strangely I created a big play group in Chattanooga. We would have quite a few Tournaments there. We were hot - I wrote a ton of articles for Decipher about strategy. However, after a few months the play group again got to the point where we wouldn't make the magic 8 for Decipher's numbers. I liked 2E but I never had the passion for it that I did for 1E. The 2E play group fizzled and for me STCCG ha died. I was so sad.... I loved the game so much that I framed my favorite cards to keep around for great memories ! That was in 2004...... My cards remained in there binders and boxes until 2011.

Fast forward to August of 2011..... My wife and I had built a house where I would finally have room for my Star Trek stuff. I started to un-box my Star Trek gear and there they were my STCCG cards. I remembered all the great times I had had where I would build decks and pay against friends. I got my cards out and started looking at them and I thought I am going to build a deck jut for fun. I wondered if I could find anyone to play against. I started building and I was sitting at my computer and I did a google search for Star Trek CCG and I found the CC !!!!! OMG people still play and there are new cards !!!!!!!!!! I started reading everything I could tournament reports - worlds reports - all the new cards !!! Holy crap there is so much to learn ! I started looking for a place to play the 2 decks I had built. I was hesitant to play I had to learn all I could before I went to a tournament. Plus, there was nothing anywhere close to me until in January - Scott Baughman "Neelix" posted a tournament in Feb. of 2012 - I had to go ! 4.5 hours away but I was going. I feverishly got my deck ready and play tested and play tested it before I went. I drove up there the day of the tournament and was GRACIOUSLY invited in to Scott's home where I would find 8 trek players. Holy S#$% I said it is alive the game is not dead ! - The guys were awesome ! Scott was once again the most gracious host. I came up a couple more times and I even got to play at another place in NC in Jacksonville against some players there. I had a great time. I was hooked I had to go to GENCON !

[Zef'No]

I seem to recall we didn't quite get the difference between Classification and Skill, so we were using Equipments to get recursively high Shields with Nutational and Metaphasic Shields.

The original version of Metaphasic Shields does not specifiy classification, so at the time, this was allowed. We did it too

[soggy_amphibian]

The Equipment did specify Classification, so it got nuts.

Edit: I'm enjoying all these stories too. Keep 'em coming!

[timerunner]

I started to collect at the beginning and then steadily through to TMP where all my local games stores stopped selling the game with Second Edition.

Highspots include getting the Pendari Champion in my first Voyager booster then the Borg Reg Barclay in my second Borg booster, everything else was kind of intermittent (I must have bought boxes worth of Q-Continuum and to this day, have never managed to get a copy of Q's Tent.

I've pretty much only played the game intermittently on Lackeyccg and spent a lot of time trying to create a working deck online since then.

[Ventrue]

I started in 1998 when my mother gifted me the Introductory 2-Player Game. I was in heaven! But I never played a CCG game before so it took a whole year to realize the concept behind buying packs and expanding. None the less, Once I was in my second year of college in 2001, My girlfriend was ready to leave me over this game. I've became so obsessed I abondan my friends and family for it. I quit the summer of 02 because the idea of starting over again seemed ridiculous (Second Edition). I set fire to my 1E cards.

I promised my self I will never get involved with something like that again. THANK GOD FOR WoW. I ended up putting my efforts into something more tangible and got ranked on my server and open the AQ gates and downed the original Naxx nationally in 7th.

But now WoW sux so I am back to 2E.

[KazonPADD]

My tale: Back in 94/95 (can't remember exactly) I was at school and me and my fellow geeks would routinely avoid natural daylight and physical exercise by hanging out in a classroom and watching episodes of Star Trek on the Languages department TV and Video (big thanks to our equally geeky German teacher for letting us set up "Star Trek Club").

One lunchtime, my mate Seb brought in his "third set" of STCCG. His other 2 sets were collection only, and his 3rd set was for playing with. It was mostly commons and uncommons, but had a few rares in it (I recall Worf and USS Phoenix). I played Fed, he played Romulan. I can't remember end result but I loved it enough to invest in it myself and buy my own cards. I still remember opening my first 3 packs of Alternate Universe and getting a Future Enterprise in one of them! Seb stopped playing eventually (chose to spend his money on booze and fags) but another of my friends (Lofty) started collecting from DS9 onwards, and we still play to this day whenever I go back home.

I carried playing at Uni and carried on collecting through to TMP (and picked up AGT and EC when they came out) but starting over with 2E felt like a step too far so I stopped. I scaled back a lot then, only getting my cards out for occasional trips home and friendly games against Lofty.

Then in 2010, when I discovered the CC and found they were producing new 1E cards, I managed to find another player in my area (Marcus, aka Carwash, who I'd also played back at Uni about 10 years back) to play against. A few months later we also met up with Danny (nuttersuclan) and ended up going to my first tournament with them. Had a great time and been playing actively again (work permitting) ever since!

[Data's Socks]

For me it was somewhere around the AU expansion, although the story would start with another game. At a get-together at a friend's place one night, I walked into his room to find him and another friend playing Magic. I'd never heard of the game before and it looked awesome.

Previously, cards to me meant playing or trading cards. Pieces in play meant a board at least. But here, cards that were laid down were somehow interacting with one another across the carpet, and they could be rotated and otherwise manipulated. Even the choice of which manner of creature or spell to use in a deck was up to the player. I couldn't wait to have a deck of my own.

I walked into a game store at the mall hoping to find Magic cards, and here's where STCCG caught my eye. Being a fan of TNG and being taken by complete surprise, it was that exciting feeling of finding something you just knew you had to take home with you. To complicate matters, SWCCG also caught my attention. I remember comparing the Premiere starters for both games, feeling sure that choosing one game would likely mean giving up the other. In the end I chose Star Trek for the open sandbox the description on the back offered.

The first card I saw opening the starter was U.S.S. Sutherland--a great picture! I can't hope to remember all the cards in it, but I know very early on I was marveling at Mot the Barber's unusual skill and Fleet Admiral Shanthi's impressive card title and distinct uniform. Later on, a second starter gave me a treat. I was going through the cards again when I suddenly got to Wesley Crusher. I don't know how I missed him earlier.

My older brother picked up the game too after I'd gotten my first starter. He focused on Premiere even as expansions were released so that's where our games took place. Hologram Ruse and Nagilum, exclusive to him, were the bane of my away teams and crews. He must've been pulling Rogue Borg Mercenaries in every pack as well, but he didn't ping me with them. Instead Crosis and a sizable party boarded my mission-solving ship, which meant sending another ship back and forth for reinforcements and a rendezvous. That was really slow going when the ship was a Husnock Ship, but finally the deed was done. Upon joining the crews aboard the original vessel, another sizable party of RBMs landed on their heads.

It was fun not knowing at first what cards were in the set, though the rulebook did give tantalizing hints. Tox Uthat (Artifacts, really), Supernova, Hunt for DNA Program, and Roga Danar reached mythical status. Even the plain artwork of the packaging had a way of emphasizing the cards hidden inside.

The game store had another item on display in their glass cases: the Collector's Tin, and its treasure of all 363 cards, but the price was well out of my reach. Collection-wise one of the most exciting moments would be when my mom bought a Collector's Tin each for my brother and me, thus making the impossibility of playing with all the cards possible.

[Worf Son of Mogh]

Seb stopped playing eventually (chose to spend his money on booze and fags)

Man I did a huge spit take when I read that, luckily only getting the floor not my laptop. Then I realized the poster was British but man that first read, came across very interesting this side of the pond.