Showing Your Cards

When Personnel etc. report to an outpost, the cards are placed face up on the table where your opponent can see them. Once they board a ship, they are placed out of sight under the ship (of course, the owner can see them at any time). From this point on, the only time a player must let an opponent see these cards is:

If a special card is played which requires one or both players to reveal cards (a scan card, for example); or

If a player needs to prove he has a particular card. For example, when an Away Team beams to a planet, the cards may be laid face down. If the Away Team attempts a mission or solves a dilemma, the player must prove he has the required skills. Of course, in battle, all cards must be shown to count and compare total attributes.

Classification And Skills: Super Personnel
Occasionally, a person's classification will also appear as a skill. For example, Geordi La Forge is an ENGINEER, and ENGINEER is also in his skills box. This means he is a super ENGINEER with a total of ENGINEER x2.

Most Romulan and Klingon ships have cloaking devices. You turn on a cloaking device by turning over the ship card face down. To de-cloak, turn the ship card back over (after which it acts normally). A player may only cloak or de-cloak a particular ship once per turn. An advantage of cloaking a ship is that it is invisible to other ships and cannot be attacked, yet it maintains its movement range. (Note: An opponent can look at the range of a cloaked ship to verify movement.) A disadvantage is that a cloaked ship cannot attack another ship and no beaming can occur until the ship is de-cloaked.

The Meaning Of Capture, Cumulative, Etc.
Sometimes, you may capture cards from an opponent. Unless otherwise stated, they are returned to their owner after the game. Cumulative cards may be used more than one at a time, adding their powers together. Cards marked non-cumulative cannot be doubled- up to increase your power.

Treaty Cards
Normally, affiliations cannot intermix. However, some Event cards form Treaties that allow intermixing of affiliations by one player. When a treaty card is in play, the personnel, ships, outposts, etc. can all be shared by the player as if they were one affiliation. The only exception is that mixed personnel can only accomplish a mission together if at least one personnel matches the mission affiliation requirement. Treaties have benefits and risks. A treaty can be destroyed by certain Event or Interrupt cards. In this case, personnel caught aboard a ship of another affiliation are under house arrest and cannot participate until they are transferred to a ship or outpost of their own affiliation. This means they are excluded from being used to meet a ship's crew requirement.

As such, holographic characters exist in computer memory, but have physical form and strength when projected. Holographic characters look amazingly like other Personnel cards (although they function somewhat differently). You can identify a holographic re-creation by means of a yellow, reconstructed molecule icon like the one shown here.

Holographic characters can be carried aboard any ship. When they board, they are symbolically loaded into the ship's computer memory. However, such cards need technology (like a holodeck or holoprojector) to interact with the real world. Ships with holodecks can use holographic characters to accomplish space missions or act as a member of the ship's crew, but they cannot beam down to a planet without a holoprojector.

Holoprojectors are special Event cards that allow holographic re-creations to be projected to a planet surface where a character can become a member of an Away Team. Holographic characters have skills and participate in Away Team activities just like any other personnel (which means they can also be stopped) but they cannot be killed. If a holoprojector card is destroyed (or the ship departs), holographic characters are immediately deactivated and returned to the ship. If a new holoprojector is brought into play, such cards can be reactivated. If a ship controlling them is destroyed, holographic re-creations are also destroyed.

Most holographic characters have a universal icon next to their name so you can have as many duplicates in play as you wish. Some holographic characters are non-aligned, some have affiliations (i.e., the programs are proprietary to one affiliation). Many have very special skills. You will see more holographic re-creations in future editions and expansion sets.

Rogue Borg

A player may save these nasty Interrupt cards in his hand and unleash them in mass attack. A lone Rogue Borg card has an attack strength of only 1. But, they get stronger in numbers! Two Rogue Borgs have a strength of 2 each, totaling 4. Three have a strength of 3 each, totaling 9, etc. A Crosis card enhances this power, doubling combined strength. For example, four Rogue Borg plus one Crosis have a strength of 50 (5 each = 25, times 2 = 50), enough to win most battles.

Rogue Borg are beamed directly from your hand to battle the entire crew of any occupied ship (empty ships are immune). The battle works like an Away Team battle. Afterwords, the entire crew is stopped and the surviving Borg remain on the ship. The Borg battle automatically at the start of every players' turn. Sometimes both sides bring in reinforcements. If the Borg wipe out a crew, they can do nothing but secure a ship by remaining aboard. However, if you have the Event card Lore Returns in play, Lore helps them commandeer the ship. The Borg then act similar to personnel (no longer interrupts) under your control moving the pirated ship up and down the spaceline on your turn wreaking havoc.

Supernovas devastate a spaceline location. A player must first have acquired the Tox Uthat artifact and played it to the table as an event. On a later turn, play the supernova as an event from your hand, face up, over any Mission card (which stays underneath for span reference). Everything else there is vaporized (ships, personnel, dilemmas, artifacts, even outpost are discarded). Thereafter, ships may move across or stop at that location (span is unchanged). Some cards "de-nova" the explosion, and reinstitute the mission underneath. The Tox Uthat can also be played as an interrupt to stop a supernova. Other cards delay supernovas. A supernova does not cancel points for an already-scored mission.

Raise The Stakes
This Event card forces an opponent to choose from among two options: (1) give up the game; or (2) continue playing with the provision that the eventual winner of the game will be allowed to randomly draw one card to keep from the loser's entire deck. More than one of these cards can be played in the game, raising the stakes by one card each time it is played!

Longer Spacelines...Using even numbers, expand the length of the spaceline past 12 cards.

Larger Decks... Advanced players might prefer that there be no upper limit to the customized deck size. Players are still subject to the same limitations on seed cards (one half of the deck size).

Alternative Endings... Increase the number of points required to win to 150 or 200 points. For a hectic game, try a time limit of exactly one hour (the air time for a Star Trek: The Next Generation ® episode). When the hour is up, the player with the highest number of points is the winner!

No Duplication in the Universe... This advanced rule modifies the basic duplication rule to read that no duplicates are allowed on either side of the spaceline. Only one specific personnel or ship is allowed in the game at any one time. For example, if one player puts Lt. Worf into play, then the other player cannot bring a Lt. Worf into play. This is particularly interesting, not to mention challenging, if both players are playing the same affiliation!

Newsletters And On-Line Forums
It is anticipated that players will develop many advanced ways of playing this game. We plan to create newsletters and On-Line computer forums for players to share ideas and learn about upcoming releases, new rules, tournaments etc.