[stressedoutatumc]

Well, "bookend" implies and end to something, so I hope it's not that.

What I would love to see, would be going back to Premier and offer a full re-design to the entire set. Same images, but updated lore and skills/attributes/ships to make them more playable in the current game. WB/P's lack of skill depth and makes them a liability most of the time.

[FranklinKenter]

Non-tournament legal Premiere booster packs priced at the low low price of $999 for four packs.

[jadziadax8]

Non-tournament legal Premiere booster packs priced at the low low price of $999 for four packs.

Zing!

[Professor Scott]

Non-tournament legal Premiere booster packs priced at the low low price of $999 for four packs.

Zing!

As much as I want to bad-mouth Wizards for the stupid genius idea of making them..... I really end up questioning those that ACTUALLY bought them which made the stupid idea into a genius one.

#IfYouPrintItTheyWillBuy

[enabrantain]

USS Enterprise (D)
Phlox
Miles O'Brien (Inquisition)
Kira
Kurn
Jadzia Dax
Chakotay (Faces)
Bashir (Inte Arma)
Harry Kim (Killing Game)
The Doctor
Captain Kirk (Lirpa)
Garak (Guest at the Occupation lectures)
Beverly Crusher (Dixon Hill)

[karnstein]

For the 30th anniversary, I’d like to see the Continuing Committee doing work that helps to ensure will continue to attract new players and thrive for another 30 years and beyond.

In particular, the projects that I think would be important for building for the future are a sealed deck project (à la the Official Tournament Sealed Deck; OTSD) and a virtual starter deck project.

Below, I have described what I envision for these projects and detail at length why I think they are important. I also address feasibility. (I apologize for being so long winded.)

TL;DR: needs to attract new players and maintain causal players (in addition to dedicated players). In my experience, OTSD and virtual starter decks have been essential to achieving these goals. I think creating a new sealed deck experience and new virtual starter decks is doable and key to thriving long term.

What Would These Projects Be About?

The sealed deck project would be about creating an online tool for generating a manageable set of some preset and random cards that could be used to create playable decks, similar to OTSD.

The virtual starter deck project would be about creating a process that produces one or more roughly equivalent, distinctive virtual starter decks as appropriate for each full expansion.

Why Are These Projects Important?

These projects are important for recruiting future players and retaining causal players.

I’ve been a causal, kitchen-table player off and on since just before the Alternate Universe expansion was released. Since then, I’ve introduced scores of people to the game. Some of those people introduced others. At least some I know are still playing.

The one thing that I have found most helpful when recruiting new players and retaining causal players has been the OTSD.

Before OTSD, I built decks to give away to anyone who was curious. I’d play a learning game with them and let them keep their deck. Sometimes, prospective players kept playing, but only rarely did they start collecting their own cards and building their own decks.

Once OTSD was released, prospective players could learn the game by playing with a deck that they had built themselves. This resulted in some important consequences. Building a deck meant learning how to build a deck, which increased the likelihood new players would actually build decks in the future. Building decks also helped new players learn the rules more effectively. Moreover, building their own deck gave new players some more skin in the game, making for first games that were fun and engaging.

Three features of OTSD were key to its success.

First, each box contained the same 20 preset cards. I could teach new players the game by referring to specific examples of the components, such as Impose Order (requires Treachery), Darmok (requires ), Suna (has Treachery and ), and so on, because all those cards were in every box.

Second, OTSD gave players everything needed to build a workable deck from a manageable set of cards. Building a deck from the starter decks and/or booster packs without the 20 predetermined OTSD cards would require a lot more cards, thereby increasing the time, complexity, and cost required. The small number of available cards also encouraged creativity (e.g., mis-seeding dilemmas as a bluff) and using and learning about cards that might be overlooked otherwise.

Third, the decks built from the cards in an OTSD box were frustrating and weak. This was a feature, not a bug. The solutions to the problems with your deck were usually pretty obvious, and the desire to get cards to improve your deck followed naturally from building and playing with a weak, frustrating deck.

Not only did I use OTSD to recruit players, I also used it anytime we didn’t have decks ready, which is common among causal players.

I also used OTSD to kick off what we referred to as “leagues.” (I don’t know whether this is a commonly understood meaning of the term.) A league was a group of players who played weekly games using decks built from a limited set of cards. For league play, each player started with an OTSD box. Each week, we played matches, opened new packs of cards, traded, and improved or rebuilt our decks. Leagues were a way to allow new players who did not already have a collection of cards to play on a more level field. Moreover, players could learn over time, with deck mechanics gradually becoming more sophisticated, and no one was overwhelmed by too many choices.

I’ve enjoyed countless OTSD games in diverse settings over the years. I might not be here today if it weren’t for OTSD, nor would some of the new players I’ve recruited.

If I had a magic wand that granted me one wish for the 30th anniversary, I would wish for a modern sealed deck successor to OTSD.

The second most helpful thing has been the virtual starter decks.

The game continued to evolve after OTSD, of course, and eventually the game changed so much that OTSD became an ineffective on-ramp for new players. Moreover, causal players lost interest because OTSD no longer reflected what the game had become. OTSD had become outdated.

About a decade ago, I started printing and playing with the virtual starter decks, and, in some ways, my experience of the game resembled that of my first few years with . I used the virtual starter decks to teach new players and then gave them their deck.

Although I used virtual starter decks to recruit new players and have causal games with friends, they were limited in a few ways.

For example, the virtual starter decks were not very distinctive. Aside from one flavorful verb card in most decks, the virtual starter decks all played pretty much the same way. Playing the Coming of Age virtual starter deck did not feel very different from playing the Broken Bow virtual starter deck.

A second limitation was that I discovered some of decks seemed relatively weak in comparison with the other decks. Virtual starter decks drawn from the same expansion seemed pretty well matched, but there were imbalances across expansions.

Finally, in comparison to OTSD, another limitation was that no deck building was involved. As a result, only rarely have the virtual starter decks inspired new players to take up the game and begin building their own decks.

However, despite their limitations, the virtual starter decks did inspire some of my friends to keep playing. Whenever a virtual starter deck was released along with a new expansion, I’d print, cut, and sleeve the cards, and my friends would want to give the new deck a try, if only to see what the cards looked like.

Sadly, the virtual starter decks were discontinued in 2017, so even that gameplay has slowed down to a trickle for me. I’ve worked to create my own starter decks for Live Long and Prosper https://www.trekcc.org/1e/decklists/?mo ... 223caa46a and other sets, but I’ve come to realize that, without a standard power level across the virtual starter decks, hitting the right power level for new unofficial starters is difficult.

So, if I had a second wish, it would be for distinctive, roughly equivalently powered virtual starter decks for current and future expansions that could be used to recruit new players, to play when no one has a deck built, and to generate excitement for new expansions.

Are These Projects Feasible?

Both projects would be challenging and would require resources that could instead be directed to other worthwhile efforts, but I believe neither project is impossible. I have experimented with different solutions to both projects using existing cards, with some success. It definitely takes a great deal of work.

That said, these projects (or something like them) could be vital to long-term future for , and the 30th anniversary is an opportune occasion to consider the possibilities.

[BCSWowbagger]

What Would These Projects Be About?

The sealed deck project would be about creating an online tool for generating a manageable set of some preset and random cards that could be used to create playable decks, similar to OTSD.

The virtual starter deck project would be about creating a process that produces one or more roughly equivalent, distinctive virtual starter decks as appropriate for each full expansion.

If you can design + test a pool for "nuOTSD," I think I could adapt the Virtual Pack Creator to support it. That can be my contribution to what seems like a very good and useful (but surprisingly hard to coordinate) project.

I can't make it "official" (so I'd probably have to call it something like "Belmont Modern OTSD"), but I can put it on the website (unless JeBuS or eberlems tells me not to). If it's good, then I suspect people will start playing it (like Warp Speed Cube). If people are playing it, I suspect it will eventually find its way to becoming official.

Even though I now wear a green badge, I have often found that the fastest way to make something happen at the CC is to do it and then ask for official blessing. That's no slight against the CC; I am obviously quite a fan of the CC! It's just that there are a lot more good ideas for projects than there are people + coordinators to bring projects to fruition, and the best way to prove to people that your idea is actually worth doing is to do it so well it blows their socks off.

[JeBuS]

@BCSWowbagger I've already got some code in there somewhere that lays the groundwork for it. If someone comes up with the list of cards, it's easy enough to make it into a generator.

[BCSWowbagger]

@BCSWowbagger I've already got some code in there somewhere that lays the groundwork for it. If someone comes up with the list of cards, it's easy enough to make it into a generator.

I love this guy. I really do.

[jadziadax8]

@BCSWowbagger I've already got some code in there somewhere that lays the groundwork for it. If someone comes up with the list of cards, it's easy enough to make it into a generator.

I love this guy. I really do.

He made it for Worlds 2021 when I put together the rainbow sealed event. That's how I got packs of BoG and TMP.

[abargar7510]

My experience over the past year or so matches karnstein's. Some of the most enjoyable games I've had locally in that timeframe have been some type of sealed PAQ + OTSD specials type of formats. They are fun, competitive, and don't come with the overhead of having to learn OTSD rules, contendingwith the virtual cardpool, and printing gobs of cards.

(The first time we tried it we didn't have the OTSD which led to an infamous "I'm going to the restroom, let me know when you've won" moment after I was Static Warp Bubble'd)

Having a "nuOTSD" would help immensely, I believe, in lessening the barriers to entry that many players feel in regards to the virtual/OTF world.

He made it for Worlds 2021 when I put together the rainbow sealed event. That's how I got packs of BoG and TMP.

@jadziadax8 - is this a publicly available feature? I am working on creating for my local playgroup 5 balanced "starter-style" decks for each of the 5 DQ affiliations using only cards from Voyager/The Borg. Being able to supplement those decks for a "sealed" like format without having to rip open real packs would be extremely useful!

[jadziadax8]

@jadziadax8 - is this a publicly available feature? I am working on creating for my local playgroup 5 balanced "starter-style" decks for each of the 5 DQ affiliations using only cards from Voyager/The Borg. Being able to supplement those decks for a "sealed" like format without having to rip open real packs would be extremely useful!

No, it's not public. It was definitely a proof of concept thing for the hard to get sets (BoG, TMP and NE). I wouldn't necessarily say it's ready for beta testing.

[JeBuS]

I'll add it to my to-do list to get something like this into a user-friendly state. No promises on when it will be ready. There's a lot of stuff on that list, and "user-friendly" takes the longest, by far.

[Takket]

I'm curious, what do people think the scope of OTSD should be?

The original contained 20 fixed cards, 4 packs of premier, 1 pack of AU. Is that where we want to leave it? Is there any desire to change the fixed cards you get? Or to give you random cards from any other set? You could get, say, 1 card from every physical/virtual set released.

Granted some of those could be completely useless, like a card, but that's the nature of sealed deck.

I also don't know how you account for rarity in Decipher sets. If you pulled 1 random card from First Contact it is serious BS if one person gets the Ent-E and someone else gets some common drone. At least with a whole pack everyone gets the same number of rares/uncommons/commons. So to keep it fair does everyone get 1 pack of every Decipher set (that came in packs) and then 1 or 2 cards from every virtual expansion?

You also don't want to give people SO MANY cards that it takes a day to make a deck. OTSD I think you used to get 0.5 hour in the room to make your deck, then you played, in Decipher days.

I created a spreadsheet in excel that randomly generates 6 , 6 and 6 dilemmas from the list of dilemmas in the game. I think it would be easy enough to adapt it to create random packs and/or pull virtual cards at random. But I assume you want something web based so people can come to CC, click on a link, and it spits out a list of cards they can use to build a deck?

I haven't done sealed deck in the CC era so how is this accomplished when you talk about virtual packs? Since cards have to be printed do people get a list of what's in their "packs" ahead of time, then make a deck list off of that, print them out, and take them to the tournament? I know CC has the virtual list generator, just don't know how people actually use this......

I was laying awake last night thinking about this lol. It seems to shame to limit OTSD to the original scope when there is so much to pull from.

Question I think an OTSD project should answer:

How many cards should people receive to build a deck?

What sets are the card being pulled from? Is it limited to Decipher era when cards came in packs, or does it include CC era virtual cards? (Block/scenario seems the way to go. This is how CC set it up now, with traditional OTSD, TNG scenario, mirror scenario, DS9 scenario...). https://www.trekcc.org/vpc/

Are cards pulled from randomly generated "packs", or just a fixed number at random from included sets? (Keeping in mind "rarity" matters for Decipher sets, but not CC sets)

What fixed cards does everyone receive? (Same 20 at original OTSD, or do we change that?)

How do people receive their list, and how does the TD verify that the deck they showed up to the tournament with actually contains the cards on their list they were allowed to choose from? Does the TD get a list of the cards I got, and I bring a check list so the TD can verify everything in my deck came off my list? It looks like right now the TD prints off all the cards, brings them to the tournament, and hands them out to each player? Do the players back/sleeve them on site?

There are so many cards to draw from it seems a shame to limit OTSD to only premier/AU. But if you have some sort of web based random card generator, the size of the pool you choose from could be as simple as checking or unchecking a box, giving the TD control over the size of the card pool (i.e. smaller pool for beginners, larger for pros).

[Klauser]

...
needs to attract new players and maintain causal players (in addition to dedicated players). In my experience, OTSD and virtual starter decks have been essential to achieving these goals. I think creating a new sealed deck experience and new virtual starter decks is doable and key to thriving long term.
...
That said, these projects (or something like them) could be vital to long-term future for , and the 30th anniversary is an opportune occasion to consider the possibilities.

Outstanding post - excellent points, sir.