Important Gameplay Change for Assign Mission Specialists

Many cards and rules in the First Contact expansion set made significant changes in the Star Trek CCG gameplay environment, and the Assign Mission Specialists card was no exception. This Objective card brought fistfuls of little-used personnel out of their binders for the first time since the game's inception and created brand-new deck archetypes. Unfortunately, it also led to an abusable tournament strategy when combined with Ready Room Door for repeated downloads of personnel with no card play cost.

We had intended (and announced) that Enhanced First Contact would include a card to address this issue, and several different proposals were designed and playtested for this purpose. Although some of the resulting designs would have adequately addressed the current tournament situation, we nonetheless felt that none of them would serve the player quite as well as a straightforward revision of the card itself to remove the phrase "Captain's Order" -- the real source of the card's abusability. (This card is re-balanced further by the new definition of "bonus points" below.).

Although Decipher's design philosophy is to avoid errata whenever possible and address gameplay issues with new cards, in this case we felt that issuing errata was the best approach. This delivers a solution to all players more quickly, and creates a better focus for the powerful new cards in Enhanced First Contact.

The revisions are documented in the following Current Rulings Addendum.

STAR TREK CUSTOMIZABLE CARD GAME CURRENT RULINGS ** ADDENDUM ** 10/26/98

This document is an addendum to the 10/19/98 Current Rulings document and contains changes for Assign Mission Specialists and the definition of bonus points. These changes are effective immediately..

ASSIGN MISSION SPECIALISTS.

This objective has clarifications ("your outpost"; "bonus points") and errata (the deletion of "Captain's Order"):

Seeds or plays on table. You may download to one of your outposts up to two different mission specialists that you do not already have in play. Also, while in play, each of your mission specialists scores 5 bonus points whenever they use their skill to meet a mission requirement. You may voluntarily discard objective at start of any of your turns. (Unique.).

Future printings of this card, if any, will incorporate the revised game text.

BONUS POINTS.

Bonus points are now defined as points (whether positive or negative) that come from any source other than a Mission card or a [Borg only] Objective card.

Other point-related objective cards (without the [Borg only] icon), such as Assign Mission Specialists and File Mission Report, provide bonus points.

Note that the "flavor text" in the First Contact rules supplement stating that "Bonus points are irrelevant" to the Borg was not entirely accurate. (It has always been possible for the Borg to score bonus points -- albeit negative ones -- from cards such as Assimilate This! and Balancing Act.) The actual *rule* following the flavor statement was correct: "A Borg player scores points, both positive and negative, only from Borg Objective cards and cards which specify that they affect Borg." However, to accommodate the possibility of future non-Objective cards that allow the Borg to score points, this rule is hereby expanded as follows:

A Borg player scores points, both positive and negative, only from [Borg only] cards and cards which specify that they affect Borg..

by Bill Martinson,
Star Trek CCG Lead Game Designer

please direct game play questions to
Major Rakal , Star Trek CCG Intelligence Officer

date: 26 October 1998

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