[Joelin02]

New Civilizations requires 4 missions and at least one planet and one space

Why was this card made? I can only think of letting you use cards that benefit you somehow but lose points. Quinn comes to mind
Or missions with low point values like Relief Mission or with the outpost or with the wormhole.

Completing 4 missions does require doing a lot of dilemmas which seems to be a negative.

Anything I miss?

[Professor Scott]

New Civilizations requires 4 missions and at least one planet and one space

Why was this card made? I can only think of letting you use cards that benefit you somehow but lose points. Quinn comes to mind
Or missions with low point values like Relief Mission or with the outpost or with the wormhole.

Completing 4 missions does require doing a lot of dilemmas which seems to be a negative.

Anything I miss?

Well, @Worf Son of Mogh and I won this a variation of this deck, which we Netdecked from @The Ninja Scot. Who had also won with it though he had the win acheivement much earlier as did Jules. Out of the 20 posted decks using it. 5 won with 4 more in 2nd. 9 also finished in the bottom half, with the other 2 somewhere in the middle. Only 12 players have tried it. In it's debut tournament, I went 5/5 and Michael went 1/5 with this deck.

All that to say it either works well or fails miserably. Best of luck in your choice.

[jadziadax8]

Right now people build most of their decks with 30 or 35 point missions, due to the Fair Play rule in Modern. New Civilizations is supposed to incentivize playing with smaller point value missions. I built a fun Vulcan Lander deck around it.

[Joelin02]

New Civilizations requires 4 missions and at least one planet and one space

Why was this card made? I can only think of letting you use cards that benefit you somehow but lose points. Quinn comes to mind
Or missions with low point values like Relief Mission or with the outpost or with the wormhole.

Completing 4 missions does require doing a lot of dilemmas which seems to be a negative.

Anything I miss?

Well, @Worf Son of Mogh and I won this a variation of this deck, which we Netdecked from @The Ninja Scot. Who had also won with it though he had the win acheivement much earlier as did Jules. Out of the 20 posted decks using it. 5 won with 4 more in 2nd. 9 also finished in the bottom half, with the other 2 somewhere in the middle. Only 12 players have tried it. In it's debut tournament, I went 5/5 and Michael went 1/5 with this deck.

All that to say it either works well or fails miserably. Best of luck in your choice.

I peeked at that deck as well as some other decks using New Civilizations and what confuses me is all the missions are 30 points or higher. The benefit of New Civ is if you use on average missions with less than 25 points, or else you can just win with regular win conditions.

[JeBuS]

New Civs is 30 or less

[Professor Scott]

I didn't say it before, I left it for you to discover, but the idea is a 3 mission win with New Civ as a backup if things go wrong. As an intended win condition, no, it's garbage. You would be at 120 pts from the 4 missions alone, why not go all or all with 35s if you are gonna go for 4.

The point is, we did it for the achievement, not because it's a good card.

It does allow for some fun stuff like Recruit Mercenaries without a need for Altonian Brain Teaser or Amanda/Kevin/Q2 with out fear of Oof!, etc.

[Joelin02]

New Civ requires 4 total missions to win not 3. So you benefit if you complete 4 missions on average are under 25 points.

Why are multiple people saying 3 missions? I’m reading the text and it says

Seeds on table if each of your non-homeworld missions shows 30 points or less. When you have completed a planet mission, a space mission, and four total missions, you win the game.

[Armus]

I still need to build my Excavation/Relief Mission/Study Stellar Collision/Test Mission/Sensitive Search New Civ deck...

[Professor Scott]

New Civ requires 4 total missions to win not 3. So you benefit if you complete 4 missions on average are under 25 points.

Why are multiple people saying 3 missions? I’m reading the text and it says

Seeds on table if each of your non-homeworld missions shows 30 points or less. When you have completed a planet mission, a space mission, and four total missions, you win the game.

Having it in play does not require using it to win. What I was saying is, if I can solve 3 for 90 points and get 10 bonus, points I win at 100, the New Civilizations is a backup if HAD to solve a 4th. I wouldn't deliberately try to solve 4 missions, if I can win with 3 naturally. There is an achievement for both playing and winning with New Civilizations. That is the reason we played it, not because there was a tactical reason.

[BCSWowbagger]

I did a New Civilizations deck that leaned into using it to ignore negative bonus points, so I ran a lot of Recruit Mercenaries / A Missing Day / Kevin & Amanda.

As it turned out... there aren't actually very many things in this game where you can use negative bonus points as a cost, and so Voltroning all the negative bonus point cards together doesn't actually buy you very much. Certainly not enough to be worth facing 2-3 extra dilemmas.

So New Civilizations remains a card that interests me a great deal, still my favorite card of that set, but it needs another tool to allow the deck to break out. (Since it's a 4-mission win deck, Design can afford to give it a very high power level, and would actually have to do so in order to make it competitive.)

[Professor Scott]

I did a New Civilizations deck that leaned into using it to ignore negative bonus points, so I ran a lot of Recruit Mercenaries / A Missing Day / Kevin & Amanda.

As it turned out... there aren't actually very many things in this game where you can use negative bonus points as a cost, and so Voltroning all the negative bonus point cards together doesn't actually buy you very much. Certainly not enough to be worth facing 2-3 extra dilemmas.

So New Civilizations remains a card that interests me a great deal, still my favorite card of that set, but it needs another tool to allow the deck to break out. (Since it's a 4-mission win deck, Design can afford to give it a very high power level, and would actually have to do so in order to make it competitive.)

Right, as it is now, it's just an Opening Monologue trick and not much else.

[BCSWowbagger]

There were some cool cards in the Cut File that gave you some very neat cookies if all your missions showed 25 points or less, and those could be the key. I'm not (really) part of Design anymore, because Rules is a full-time job, but, who knows, maybe they'll surface again someday.

[Enabran]

@ James: A goody like this?

Seeds or plays on table. When you begin a Mission and you have completed 3 Missions, you may nullify a Dilemma at that mission.

[BCSWowbagger]

That would definitely help, but strikes me as too direct of a solution to the problem. A four-mission win deck shouldn't be able to face fewer dilemmas, because the thing that makes it interesting and different from other decks is that it faces more dilemmas. So if the 4-mission win deck simply nullifies a dilemma, it ends up playing just like other decks, and is no longer as interesting. So your idea is good from the Balance side but undermines the Design.

I'd go for more of an angle shot:

Phase 7 Survey
Examine all the seed cards beneath a mission that shows no more than 25 points. Lose points. [-15]

This forces the New Civs player to face a ton of dilemmas, but gives her an advantage: she will use this powerful interrupt that only her deck can take full advantage of, and therefore she will generally see every dilemma before starting her first attempt.

Other players could technically use this card, but probably wouldn't, because the cost (to anyone but a New Civs) would be too high. (If it's not high enough, make it -30. The New Civs player doesn't care!)

(Another Achilles Heel of the New Civs player is Dead End, since a New Civs player leaning into the build will probably never have more than 0 points. Using Phase 7 Survey to find the Dead End may be sufficient, but it's also possible New Civs decks will need another tool at some point for dealing specifically with Dead End.)

[Armus]

That would definitely help, but strikes me as too direct of a solution to the problem. A four-mission win deck shouldn't be able to face fewer dilemmas, because the thing that makes it interesting and different from other decks is that it faces more dilemmas. So if the 4-mission win deck simply nullifies a dilemma, it ends up playing just like other decks, and is no longer as interesting. So your idea is good from the Balance side but undermines the Design.

I'd go for more of an angle shot:

Phase 7 Survey
Examine all the seed cards beneath a mission that shows no more than 25 points. Lose points. [-15]

This forces the New Civs player to face a ton of dilemmas, but gives her an advantage: she will use this powerful interrupt that only her deck can take full advantage of, and therefore she will generally see every dilemma before starting her first attempt.

Other players could technically use this card, but probably wouldn't, because the cost (to anyone but a New Civs) would be too high. (If it's not high enough, make it -30. The New Civs player doesn't care!)

(Another Achilles Heel of the New Civs player is Dead End, since a New Civs player leaning into the build will probably never have more than 0 points. Using Phase 7 Survey to find the Dead End may be sufficient, but it's also possible New Civs decks will need another tool at some point for dealing specifically with Dead End.)

Wouldn't Borg Clown with this?

Needs an "even if playing Borg" line on that point loss or it's broken as hell.