[Armus]

Unpopular opinion...I wish cards like this and others that make you discard off your deck did not exist in StarTrek CCG. It's pure NPE and based on how decks get built in this game ESPECIALLY devastating. Just my opinion of course and I do appreciate the number of cards able to trigger a mill is limited.

If you're running a skinny deck with no retrieval... that's kind of on you.

You'd be in the same boat if you lost a key personnel to a dilemma if you didn't have redundancies or retrieval, but the more of that you put in, the bigger your deck gets.

Quite the Balancing Act, though I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

[stressedoutatumc]

Unpopular opinion...I wish cards like this and others that make you discard off your deck did not exist in StarTrek CCG. It's pure NPE and based on how decks get built in this game ESPECIALLY devastating. Just my opinion of course and I do appreciate the number of cards able to trigger a mill is limited.

If you're running a skinny deck with no retrieval... that's kind of on you.

You'd be in the same boat if you lost a key personnel to a dilemma if you didn't have redundancies or retrieval, but the more of that you put in, the bigger your deck gets.

Quite the Balancing Act, though I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

And I'm all for that reasoning.

But, you also have to admit that in games that have mill mechanics (MTG, for example) the way you build a deck is usually very different (at least it is for me). I don't know anyone playing trek that loads up 4 copies of each critical personnel or personnel type. I don't think the game wants players to do that either. I think that there will be some balancing that probably needs to happen because there's no downside to this mill mechanic. Maybe anyway. Time will tell.

[AllenGould]

But, you also have to admit that in games that have mill mechanics (MTG, for example) the way you build a deck is usually very different (at least it is for me). I don't know anyone playing trek that loads up 4 copies of each critical personnel or personnel type. I don't think the game wants players to do that either. I think that there will be some balancing that probably needs to happen because there's no downside to this mill mechanic. Maybe anyway. Time will tell.

I'd ask the question "why aren't people playing backups of their critical cards?" Because doesn't that sound like the game is far too soft that you can stock and depend on a single copy?

[JeBuS]

But, you also have to admit that in games that have mill mechanics (MTG, for example) the way you build a deck is usually very different (at least it is for me). I don't know anyone playing trek that loads up 4 copies of each critical personnel or personnel type. I don't think the game wants players to do that either. I think that there will be some balancing that probably needs to happen because there's no downside to this mill mechanic. Maybe anyway. Time will tell.

I'd ask the question "why aren't people playing backups of their critical cards?" Because doesn't that sound like the game is far too soft that you can stock and depend on a single copy?

The ability for everyone to do all the things they want without repercussions sounds like a terrible game. I've been part of non-Trek gaming groups with folks who will pout or just quit and leave if anything goes wrong with their master plan. I try to avoid playing with them after that.

[Takket]

Since he is a founder and a vorta playing him in multiple for free with The Great Link and Reward from the Founders Is pretty easy.

Yikes.

I've never tested this guy, wasn't involved in his design in any way, and all I did was approve the rules text... but my first reaction is "meh."

Milling doesn't do anything unless your deck is exhausted during the game. Until then, all milling does is randomly discard cards, which is the equivalent of taking my deck and shuffling it, so that some randomly selected cards that I was about to draw instead end up at the bottom of my deck where I'm not going to draw them.

So, like, fine, mill away. There's already 10-20 cards in my deck I'm not going to draw anyway, so all your milling is doing is giving me more information about what's left in my draw deck.

I was curious to put this to the test, so I tried to build a deck around Founder Borath and playing him in multiple in the Twilight Release Event.

Plan was to use clone machine, great link, and reward from the founders. I'd play FB for free as a vorta, then shape-shift him back to hand for a founder. then play him again for free as a founder. That triggers two discards.

Problem I had was I was clogging up my hand with an awful lot of interrupts (shape shifts and palor toffs) to keep cycling the Borath's in and out of play, and if i don't draw into the founders I need to keep swapping him out with it stalls out.

Basically I was not reliably getting two discards a turn and at the same time i was starving myself for personnel to go attempt missions.

So I sort of gave up on that, and went to a more standard deck, with 2 FBs, 2 Nacheyevs, and two of the AU Jemmie guy, (whatever his name is). Nacheyev and the Jemmie not having any way to report for free kind of hurts. I mean, you can do birthing chamber to play the Jemmie a lot, but playing the same personnel over and over is usually a bad idea because you are missing skill depth. The deck did well but was not in any way focused on forcing discards. I went 2-2 in the tournament. I played people for discards when i could. Game 1 I forced my opponent to discard T'Pol in a Vulcan deck. That hurt him a bit. Discarded a few Klingons in my last game too.

I struggled a bit with my own dumb move that I kept forgetting to leave someone behind to run the Clone Machine.

I think the strategy might have some legs if you can team it up with something else to accelerate it. Maybe a Fed/Dom treaty deck with In For a Trim and Temporal Shifting. Definitely needs more time to tinker with card ratios and getting enough draws to fuel it. (Something I was not patient enough to try and figure out in the week i spent building the deck lol)

[Dunnagh]

I dont think this is viable [UNLESS*] because you need to play this guy every turn, so he needs to be in your deck often. He does have some good skills, but a deck with 25 SCI, MED, Comp Skill, Dipl and Treachery needs to have a LOT of other people unless they dont want to overcome all those other dilemmas.

*you find a way to seed a card and kill one of your 2 boraths each turn to download another borath to mill your opponent for 1 card each time.