[Gomtuu Crew]

I recently investigated the STCCG in more detail (I've often looked at the Continuing Committee site over the years), specifically on YouTube. I have watched the majority of two videos by 'jkkaiser' that appear to be fairly current.

What's happened to this game?!
Its shocking!


Its often said that 1E post-BoG had too many free personal and free downloads. Card types and bloated rules were mentioned, but that never presented a game play issue to me.

The STCCG had always been cited as having no resource system... no lands, etc. Play one, draw one being the system we'd play within.


I see the game now and I understand that there are virtual cards I am unfamiliar with (as well as the later sets). In the two videos, the guys are talking about their 'six card draws per turn' that appear to essentially be setup with seed cards
The seed process appears to be about setting up three out of four parts of a combo engine... essentially playing cards before the first turn, to ramp things up. The seeding of 1E was previously more about 'seeds' to enable play. Not instead of play.

I was under the impression that the game was wrong when we could download everything and break the 'play one, draw one'. Now it seems like the Continuing Committee has continued what Decipher did.
It doesn't seem to play like the old game at all.

I understand that the old game was slower to setup and get going, so we'd look for things like AMS, maybe a Space Time Portal drop late game (if you'd worked for it). It seems like we've dived into the area that I assumed they'd be trying to desperately move away from and patch the holes of.

Am I wrong?
Should former players looking in now expect a completely different game, that loosely sits on the framework of old?

Thanks

[KazonPADD]

When Decipher stopped developing 1E, they left the state of gameplay really mixed. More recent Delta Quadrant decks could easily achieve 2 free reports in addition to their card play, with draws to support that. This left AQ affiliations with a much harder time keeping up with the pace of DQ, Romulans had 2 Headquarters, Klingons could use a Headquarters and two Time Locations, Cardassians had a Headquarters, free ASP downloads and Crell Moset eating personnel to play more, and Bajorans had free Resistance personnel and Espionage downloads on top of their headquarters free play.

1E had already become a race for speed under Decipher, with little desire from players to slow things back to play one, draw one. The CC has drawn a line (this far and no further) to curb the worst offenders from the DQ, and level up the other affiliations so that everyone can compete at a standardised level.

What remains is now a weirdly well-balanced game-state, but it has taken years of development to get there. Players now don’t all naturally drift to playing the most overpowered affiliation, because they have a broad choice of similarly powered affiliations.

[PantsOfTheTalShiar]

Welcome, Gomtuu Crew!

I'll answer "yes" to the title of your post with the caveat that the players on that channel are VERY much on the competitive side of the spectrum.

Thus far, the Continuing Committee has indeed continued the game onward from where Decipher left it at the end, although some of the cards/strategies have been nerfed. (KazonPADD summarized it better than I could.)

What has kept me interested in 1E is that you can still use your old cards -- a lot of them really -- unlike other CCGs where the old sets are obsolete except for the most broken cards. The game is still about how you use your personnel to find a way past your opponent's dilemmas. There are constraints as to what makes for a competitive deck (as with any CCG), but in my opinion there is still plenty of room for creativity within those constraints.

Still, occasionally players here hold online "Return to Talos IV" tournaments where you can play with older card pools, such as Premiere-Alternate Universe-Q Continuum only.

[Ensign Q]

to me the original paq game is just horrible. draw one, play one is a slug. playing 10 turns of draw go before anything happens is awful and a waste of time. im glad its skipped by seeds and the action starts turn2 now.
the game pace is wayy better.
although im kinda sad, i missed the wild west times, when everything was possible.
i just hope, cc will re-introduce some of what was lost, because normalizing everything into midrange solver is not developing the potential of this awesome game

[WeAreBack]

It's quite bad isn't it? In my mind the worst part is that with 12-15 cards being seeded to set up free draw and play engines, the number of seeded dilemmas has fallen by around half. Yes, newer dilemmas are harder to get past, but games last only a handful of turns.

[Ensign Q]

It's quite bad isn't it? In my mind the worst part is that with 12-15 cards being seeded to set up free draw and play engines, the number of seeded dilemmas has fallen by around half. Yes, newer dilemmas are harder to get past, but games last only a handful of turns.

im pretty sure the amount of turns, where you actually play the game and not just report are roughly the same

[stressedoutatumc]

It's quite bad isn't it? In my mind the worst part is that with 12-15 cards being seeded to set up free draw and play engines, the number of seeded dilemmas has fallen by around half. Yes, newer dilemmas are harder to get past, but games last only a handful of turns.

You know, I hear people say this, but most of the games I've watched actually take way more turns than is being overexaggerated. I don't doubt that some games are over in 4 or fewer turns, but I don't honestly think that is anywhere near the norm. I'll relent if there is data, but I think it's an overstatement about the speed.

[stressedoutatumc]

I recently investigated the STCCG in more detail (I've often looked at the Continuing Committee site over the years), specifically on YouTube. I have watched the majority of two videos by 'jkkaiser' that appear to be fairly current.

What's happened to this game?!
Its shocking!

FWIW, it's honestly SO much better. I played in the original days (the last physical set I remember was Blaze of Glory) and the game now is just so much more fluid and offers so many more choices.

I'd offer that the game now is really a Paper-Rock-Scissors game where you can choose to seed and deckbuild in whatever balance of Offense and Defense you would like. So, yes, you can seed 12+ cards into setting up downloads and engines, but you will 3 or fewer dilemma under each mission. You can seed alot more dilemma into defense, but will probably start slower. That applies to your decks as well. Go with 35 and have no way to stop your opponent interactively. Go with 75 and be much slower and reliant on your dilemma.

But, as a direct answer, yes, Kaiser to me represents a typical build. I think he does a great job setting up and executing deck concepts that you can literally copy and have fun playing the same day. I think he has done tons for this game and community in terms of growth.

[Armus]

I'll put it this way:

Turn 1 wins of various flavors were possible for the last 3 years of the Decipher era (2000-2002). I know because I played them and I played against them.

Even the fastest speed games today are 4-5 turns unless something really goes sideways. Most games are 6-10 turns.

Given the choice, I know what era I would prefer to play in...

[Ensign Q]

the only possible scenario i can hypothesize a 5 turn win is when the opponent has only 2 dilemma on the missions and very weak ones. but thats on the player and not the game.
usually each dilemma should stop you for a turn at least. my benchmark is female/scow + mission debriefing. i dont run dilemma weaker than a guaranteed stop and a relocation/kill.

since you need at least 2 missions to win, 3 dilemma each is already 6 turns to crawl through the dilemma.

[Fritzinger]

I'm seeing a lot of detail that might hide the essence of what's happened:

The decipher era of 1e that you knew was quaint compared to the utterly nuts later years. Turn 1 win decks everywhere.

The CC has massively reined in and balanced the game since then.

Of course if you want a game that doesn't have a seed phase to influence it, and also doesn't have any special resource cards, come check out 2e, which these days has about the same number of cards and options.

[Dunnagh]

There was this one tournament where I watched my opponent download Mr. Rom / Mr. Nog / Mr. Quark again and again and flip them to their hand for 10 Minutes until they did a STP drop (they maskaka´d their hand before) - this was the most boring thing I ever needed to do in a ST game and I think I quit tournament play afterwards ( so yeah thanks to that opponent!)

That was then. It wont happen today - and today you can play PAQ personnel or TMP and both have equal chance to win