Alidar's Announcement Analysis #33: STCCG In 2000 by Alidar Jarok Quite a lot to discuss about the recent announcement... where to begin? First there's the news that the Second Anthology is delayed until March. Wasn't this set supposed to be pre-released at a convention last October? Being delayed for a month or two I can see, but five? Well, at least Rules of Acquisition was on time, which is more of a priority than a specialty set with only six new cards, IMHO. Of course, the fact that First Contact is out of print is a bit surprising. Sure, I know that the First Anthology and DS9 starters are out of print, but I've never heard about First Contact being out. You'd figure that Decipher would announce when it happens, if only so that people would pick up the packs when they see them, figuring that they might not have the chance in the future. But then there's the announcement that FC has been out of print for over a year. That's extremely odd, as EFC came out exactly a year ago. Then why would they make EFC in the first place, as opposed to EAU or any other set they have tons of extras lying around, especially given the fact that most of the serious players and collectors have all of the older sets that they could want? And what does this hold in store for First Contact itself? Since it's out of print, will we get a white border set? I don't know if it's all that necessary. (Now DS9 starters, on the other hand, are a different story.) But I always see the occasional question asking when Decipher would make an unlimited set. Well, if it's out of print, why don't they? Next, on to The Trouble With Tribbles. The first thing that glares out at me is the inclusion of the ultra rare card. I'm not quite so much annoyed by its rarity as I am by its existance. Sometime way long ago, back when there were only three affiliations and a fourth wasn't even in sight, Decipher promised that they wouldn't make another ultra-rare card due to popular (or should I say unpopular) demand. Unfortunately, that article is long since gone, the victim of many site redisigns (plus I think that Decipher deleted most of their articles back then, especially the "minor" ones like this one). But I do remember it, as do a number of other players I spoke to. That's perhaps what I'm most miffed about. And the vagueness continues: what's an "ultra-rare"? The Future Enterprise was three times as rare as a normal AU rare. Will the new UR's be the same rarity? There's nothing suggesting otherwise; but then again, nothing suggests that they'll be the same either. And what of the card? Why UR's instead of previews? Granted, having them released later on down the road takes some of the grandeur out of possessing them. But then enters the gameplay concern. OK, the Future Enterprise was hard to get, and you could only get it there. However, it was very hard to staff, and offered little else other than its speed - its offense could hardly be used, it had decent defense, and the cloak wasn't quite that essential because its mere presence could drive away attackers. But what if Seven of Nine was a UR as opposed to a preview? (Well, she is for all practical reasons for at least another year, but that's another story.) On a similar line, what if the new UR's are great in terms of gameplay? What if the UR card was something like Cargo Bay, or Headquarters, or other cards that give a huge drawing mechanism or free card plays? Then all hell would break loose. As a result, the UR can't be too powerful without some severe player backlash. And that would diminish the UR somewhat, if it was little more than a white elephant. Doesn't seem like Decipher could profit from this; at least not as much as releasing a preview card, then releasing it as a standard rare in the next expansion. At least if the preview card is a little too good, then everyone can get it as a normal rare within half a year, and that would minimalize the damages, so to speak. Of course the set also brings forth other new elements. For one, we'll finally be seeing TOS cards. How will this be done? Personnel aren't so bad - Leadership is still Leadership in any time period. Just slap an AU icon on them and let them run free... at least on a few people. However, this won't feel right... so what if there's a new mechanic to bring TOS people to the TNG and DS9 people? Report to a time location and use the Orb of Time? But other problems will arise - ships. I'm certain everyone wants an original Enterprise, and it's almost a given that we'll see one. But if pattern holds, it will be a 5-4-5 ship. At any rate, I can't see it being stronger than 6-6-7, which are the stats of the generic Excelsior, whose class was the replacement to the Constitution class ships. Captain's Log only goes so far... so why would I want to use this ship? Especially since it seems that it will have a special staffing icon (oh no, not the Enterprise-E incident revisited!). Same goes for the other ships we'll get too. Well, at the very least, the usual Events and Interrupts could provide some interesting effects without suspending the validity too much. How will the TOS crew interact specifically? It would seem kinda wrong to just say that all cards from one major property would just walk through an Alternate Universe Door and pop into the current timeframe. The only way around this would be either a separate spaceline or time locations. As for the new spaceline, well, do we need yet another? And time locations (at least the one we have now) isn't really versitile for much - only Stop First Contact (one of the lesser-used Borg deck types) and Field Trip decks (whee, cheese!). But also included in addition to regular boosters are preconstructed decks. I'm kind of iffy on this idea. Sure, the decks would be good for newbies. But would they be good for much else? The Young Jedi and Austin Powers fixed decks contain one or two good cards, plus an absolute slew of some of the most basic commons (getting five each of about four or five different cards starts to get annoying real fast). Why not do what they do for SWCCG's Special Edition - a starter with about, say, 15 fixed cards and everything else be random? As it stands now, I don't see the preconstructed decks being used for sealed deck tournaments because everyone would have the same decks. Similarly, existing players will likely only get one or two of each deck to get the premiums. That leaves only new players, who won't likely get all that much, if only because they have so many properties to choose from, why keep buying the same thing over and over? I just don't see (at least with the info I have now) how Decipher expects these kinds of starters to sell very well. After I get the premiums, why would I pay $10 for two rares and a lot of commons I have tons of when I can buy a regular booster for $2.50? Keeping on the starter subject, I suppose that the Federation is the natural choice for one of the starters. As for the other, it would have to be the Klingons if only for a lack of options - they were the two affiliations that thematically were in the episode. However, right now, the Federation and the Klingons are the two affiliations with the biggest card selection in terms of personnel (142 and 71 respectively; the Romulans come in third at 60). Do they really need that many more common personnel? Second, will these decks be primarily TOS cards, or DS9 cards? If it's mostly TOS, what will they do with the Klingons? We probably haven't seen more than 20 Klingons in the four episodes of TOS that they appeared in. Keeping on that streak, we probably didn't see many more Romulans, and none of the other affiliations. This pretty much dooms TOS standalones from ever showing up, and keeps Decipher from doing too much with the TOS people in fear of unbalancing the left-out affiliations. Lastly, there's the whole Tribble business. One card will have one tribble, one will have five, one will have a hundred and so on. Apparently you replace tribble cards with "bigger" tribble cards as time moves on - reminds me of SWCCG's squadron cards in some respects, or at least Young Jem'Hadar. But what the heck will we actually do with tribbles? Put them on opponents' planets and have them "eat" away the point value? Next up on the list of topics is Reflections. Yeah, I guess we all knew it was coming. But what will its effect on the game be? For pure players, none. All the card in the set are already out, and they probably already have them. But what of those that both play and collect? Depends on each individual player, I suppose. They may feel compelled to try to collect all the foils. However, it's likely that they won't come close and decide that you don't need every distinct copy of a card - a regular Q will rearrange the spaceline as well as a shiny Q can. The collectors, however, might have a problem with this. Most collectors strive to get every type of every card. It's what drives them, and you're not really going to change that. So the "if you don't like it then don't buy it" argument won't work at all here. It's all or nothing, anything less is a failure in their eyes. I can see this causing a number of collectors to leave the game. Naturally, in true fashion, Decipher didn't provide many more details. Technically they didn't say that there would be 114 foils, as it is for SWCCG. However, the "a hefty selection' comment suggests that there will still be a considerable amount. Also at issue is the foil rarity. Again, they said nothing. Will Decipher make every foil of the same rarity? Or will they do something similar to SWCCG? Somehow I have the feeling that it will be the latter. If so, collectors will have a fit (or already had, in some cases). Let's assume they do 114 foils, they're all the same rarity, and you get absolutely perfect distribution (like that will ever happen). It'll take $570 just to get the set. When you factor in non-perfect distribution and the very-probable possibility that the foils will be of varying rarities, you'll have to shell out quite a bit to even come close to completing the set. Who does this benefit the most? New players, and sealed deck players. For the new players, they won't really have to go out and buy all the different sets like they do now. They can get Fair Play, missions, outposts, counters, Tents, and so forth from the same pack, and get foils as trade bait (or maybe not; one of Decipher's main arguments that collectors can complete their Blaze foil collections by trading with players never really happened as players hoarded their foils because of insanely high prices listed by Scrye - again, another story entirely). As for sealed decks, a Starter Deck II (yay, a way to get rid of them!) and a pack or two of Reflections could be very interesting. However, with a $20 price tag, that would all but kill it in my area, and in many others. Too bad Reflections cost so much per pack, because they would be great for this format. Other concerns about Reflections: first, what will actually appear in it? Commons, uncommons, and rares from all pre-Blaze sets are givens. But what of the previews that appeared? Technically, they appeared in the sets, but technically they were never officially a part of the sets either. So maybe not. But the Future Enterprise is a whole different story. A few people I know hope that it's not there, or it won't feel as exclusive. Others want it in just to get a chance of getting it. So what will Decipher do? Their claim that they saved boxes of First Contact for products like this suggest that it would be in it. What would they do, open all the packs and remove the FE in them? To do so would be to mess with the "FE to other AU rare" ratio and really annoy those that don't have an FE to no end. What cards will be foiled? Unfortunately, just rares will. Too bad, as some of the common and uncommon cards would look nice (Temporal Vortex, Energy Vortex, Wrong Door, etc.). And it's not like the "I don't want a common in my rare slot" argument will mean much, as the foils are there pretty much only for collectors. You know full well that you're getting one popular foil card when you buy the pack, unlike Blaze of Glory. Oh well. And on the same lines, will they foil preview cards, or even *GASP!* the Future Enterprise? Again, doing so would disrupt the "FE to other AU rare" ratio, throwing collectors into a frenzy. Tough choice. It's definitely a popular card, but also a very touchy subject. To finish off Reflections, the statement that you could possibly get 17 rares in a pack is a bit misleading, and very optimistic. According to my calculations, there's a 1 in 5,480,386,857,784,802,185,939 chance of that happening (assuming they just open up packs and randomly sort them, as they seemingly claim to). As a comparison, let's take a national lottery in America. It'll have odds of, say, one in fifty million. Assuming this fact, you're 1,100,000,000,000,000 times more likely to win the multi-million dollar jackpot. Kinda puts things into perspective, no? Moving on, there's Mirror, Mirror, an early fan favorite. What can we deduce from it? First, the ultra-rare issue is the same as before. But is it finally time to give DS9-only constructed events a way to report AU characters? It would certainly help out the format quite a bit, even though the impact right now is rather minimal (you'll get Garak, Captain Kirk, and Gint, and that's about it). But on the other hand, it would give Federation players a motivation to use their Defiants. Second, TOS will rule this set again. Kind of strange how the one property that will have the hardest time fitting in with this game is getting the bulk of the next two sets. But anyway, this set, though it doesn't say so, almost guarantees a lot of the more popular mirror versions of the DS9 crew as well. It would be interesting to see how they handle the Alliance - a Klingon/Cardassian/Bajoran treaty that only works on the mirror side? How will the mirror universe act, exactly? The obvious choice is (yet another) spaceline. But then again, you'll have to reprint tons of the same missions, it would seem, or something like that. What if they simply move through a doorway, but remain on the same spaceline? They won't be able to interact with the "real" universe, plus you won't have to worry about duplicating the universe. Keeping track of who owns Nors and who solved what missions in what universe might be odd, but it could work nicely. Finally, unlike with the current quadrants, it seems that there will be ways for one universe to affect the other. After all, Kirk's visit to the other side resulted in the end of the Empire and the start of the Alliance. Perhaps they can even steal technology, and even infiltrate the other player (is that your Sisko or my Sisko? :-) ) Seems interesting, in a way. And then there's the preconstructed decks. It would be interesting to see what they'll do. I would prefer to see two of the three Alliance races (the Cardassians and Bajorans can use more personnel, even common ones; the Klingons just got a starter in the previous set). However, it seems that this set will focus on the TOS mirror episode. Oh joy, more Federation. And what would the other side be? It would be interesting for it to be the Empire. But I can't see that working without making another affiliation. I just can't see them making an Alliance affiliation - not many episodes to draw from, and they don't provide anything all that unique over similar personas of existing mains. Finally, Enhanced Premiere. Jeesh, how much of this stuff did Decipher print up? They flooded the market with the initial print, then packaged them into the OTSD, they give away tons for free as prize support, and now comes Enhanced Premiere. No wonder they can never sell the stuff. Will this be better than EFC? Maybe not. First, the Borg were in need of improvements. The Original Three don't really need much. Second, many players could always use an extra Regenerate or a card of the like. What more could they want from Premiere? All the cards in Premiere were either insanely weak to start with, or are countered so heavily or severely that they're worthless. Just about the only rares that are useful are the Enterprise and half the bridge crew. Other useful cards are Palor Toff, Scans, the counters, Kivas Fajo, and The Traveler. Pretty much everything else doesn't see much use, or at least not any more. The two-skilled personnel are very easily surpassed by personnel from later sets, and the powerful cards like Horga'hns, Anti-Time Anomalies, and Q would cause you to lose. Not the most ideal of sets any more. Other than maybe 10 key commons and uncommons (out of 363 cards), new players can probably just save their money and skip this set over - they'll do far better with cards from the more recent expansions. Decipher's general response to EFC was that if you don't want the packs, then you can trade or sell them. Well, maybe that's fine for EFC, but I don't know of anyone in the area that would take Premiere for free, and that's saying a lot. We just have so much from when it first came out, plus all the rebundled products that have been pushed on us (OTSD, Starter Deck II, etc.), and all that we keep on getting for prize support. People in my area haven't bought a single pack of Premiere in about two years, just because they get more than they want without buying them. As for trading the rares, as I mentioned above, if it's not the Enterprise or bridge crew, you'll have a tough time. What can I do with eight Jagrom Shreks? Who would really want to trade for them? Players in our area now give away their Premiere rares whenever they can. This is good for new players, who literally get a whole Premiere set from the various local players combined, just so that we can clear out room in our trade binders. Kind of ironic, in an odd sort of way. As for what the cards will do, that's a different story. Decipher better do a great job on the premiums if they want this thing to sell, because people will be deciding if the premiums in them are worth $5 each. They can do a bit with this, though. They can finally introduce Barash, bring in some of the old Holodeck Adventures cards (like Moriarty), or even create Borg personnel like good ol' Third of Five. Of course, a Subcommander Setal would always be nice. ;-) Of course, I must wonder why they decided to release this instead of Enhanced Q-Continuum. First, you have Decipher employees giving players hints about the premiums at some of the Regionals last September. Then at DecipherCon, Decipher venomously denied that the set was even planned in the first place. Then they get very quiet about it, acting as if everything never happened before. Too bad too, as it would be a far better choice than Enhanced Premiere. Creating cards revolving around the senior crew in, say, Q's Robin Hood fantasy would have been fun. Plus everyone I know, even the most established players, wouldn't mind getting a few more packs of QC just to get more Tents, Flashes, and Androids. Player reactions to that set was by far the most positive, and it would have sold very well. But apparently they decided that it wasn't reason enough. Go figure. Naturally, I can't say for sure how the sets will affect the game all that accurately until I see the sets themselves. But there are a few disturbing possibilities from the new sets that may arise. We'll just have to cross our fingers and wait and see what happens, I guess. Alidar Jarok bwa@force.stwing.upenn.edu http://force.stwing.upenn.edu/~bwa/stccg/ Comments about this article? Post them on the WNOHGB BBS!