Playing In A Star Trek CCG Warp Speed Tournament

It's your first Warp Speed tournament and you're sitting there with your Enhanced Premiere in front of you. The tournament director says, "You may now open your packs. You have 30 minutes to assemble your deck". Well, watcha gonna do?

The first thing I'd suggest is take all your preconceptions about Star Trek CCG Sealed Deck play, fold them up into a nice little bundle, and put them neatly away in your bag for later - you won't be needing them!

Warp Speed is a totally new tournament experience, so we'll take a look at how to build your Warp Speed deck, as well as some of the strategies that you'll have to think about as you plot and weave your way to victory.

• 21 premium cards - each "two cards in one"
• 6 combo dilemmas
• 6 dual personnel
• 9 mission IIs

I
t's always a good start when you sort out your cards into piles by type and reject the obvious no-hopers. There aren't quite so many definite 'no' cards in Warp Speed - holograms are useable and the ability for personnel to mix freely doesn't mean instant ejection of minority affiliations. But you should flick through your Event pile, roundly curse Lady Luck if you have one or more Raise the Stakes and toss them out. Some other cards that you won't be needing for sure are Treaties and Espionage cards... when everybody's chummy and can mix freely, these don't do you much good.

Now turn to your missions . I assume that you'll play three of them to dilute your opponent's dilemmas and that you'll mix planet and space to make sure you can get a full win (you do want to win, don't you?). Reject missions that you can't solve (duh!) and try and select those that you have some redundancy of skills and affiliation to solve. If they're easy to solve, all the better - you don't have to worry about having them stolen in this format. Then make sure you've got a compatible outpost - the built-in outpost on some of the Warp Speed missions is very handy (saves you a seed slot for a start).

Personnel are next. You've got a pretty good idea of your core mission solvers and have got a good degree of redundancy among them. For both the Enhanced Premiere and regular Premiere dilemmas, there are certain extra key skills that you'll be looking for: SCIENCE and MEDICAL for a number of dilemmas, ENGINEER (even Tomek!!) for Garbage Scow, Computer Skill for Ancient Computer and Impassable Door, and Diplomacy for Shaka and Nagilum. This last skill is usually in desperately short supply but it appears on several of the new EP dual-personnel cards. Don't ignore the possibility of gaining skills through equipment - here OFFICERS can come in very handy as they can often benefit this way. Make sure that you have a good collection of these skills in the fewest people possible (you want your deck to be lean and mean and it's difficult to move at Warp Speed when you're carrying excess baggage). Pick two or three ships that you can staff easily - if you've got a Husnock Ship then make sure you use it. A short spaceline means that the ship's mediocre speed won't hurt you too much, and it's the only vessel that will survive a Borg Ship attack.

Events and Interrupts will make up the rest of your draw deck unless you want to feel belligerent and pack a lot of weapons (but that would be diluting your deck...). Before you cackle sadistically and reach for the old Sealed Deck power events - Static Warp Bubble, Telepathic Alien Kidnappers, The Traveller - stop and think.

I've waited hours for my ship to come in - seed a ship so that you can move as soon as possible.

You didn't fold up all those preconceptions like I suggested, did you? "Evening up" in Warp Speed knocks the power Events for a loop, reducing them from game-breakers to minor irritants. Include them if you will, but they won't give you the boost of old. Another card to ponder is Red Alert: it'll certainly move your game into Warp as you deploy freely and even up each turn, but do you want to give your opponent the same chance? Up to you. Q-Net could still work quite nicely, but Diplomacy is easier to come by in Enhanced Premiere, so it may not always work for you. One card that deserves a second look in this format is Masaka Transformations. Your draw deck should be small, so if you aren't seeing the card that you need, there's a good chance Masaka will find it for you.

The value of most Interrupts hasn't changed much with the new format. Temporal Rift and Rogue Borg Mercenaries are cool for delaying your opponent, and Distortion of Space Time Continuum may give you the zip that you need at the right time. If you're ENGINEER-rich, then Particle Fountain is a good card to include in your deck. As you aren't playing to 100 points in this format, differentials are likely to be smaller and those extra points can make a lot of difference in your placing at the end of the day.

So you should have your draw deck. Close to 20 cards? I hope so.

Your seed deck can be up to 10 cards and this includes a possible seeded personnel, ship or equipment. If you are poor in dilemmas then you'll undoubtedly choose one of these latter options. I've waited hours for my ship to come in - seed a ship so that you can move as soon as possible. If you have a lot of good dilemmas then you might use them all to hold your opponent at bay. Self-seeding point dilemmas is a tempting prospect, but remember, in Warp Speed you'll have to get through your opponent's dilemmas before you reap that benefit. As for Artifacts - unless you've been unlucky enough to draw a Thoughtmaker, use the best of them. When you're at warp, speed is of the essence - a Horga'hn can supercharge you while a Time Travel Pod can quickly kick your opponent back to impulse.

Now you're set with your highly tuned 20-card draw deck and awe-inspiring 10-card seed deck. Let play commence. Personally I'd go for the 2-mission win as much as possible, but if your opponent is stalled out and is obviously not going anywhere, then those 3rd mission points are an attractive prospect to enhance your differential. Don't be afraid to change your deck between rounds to remove things that aren't working for you or add a skill that you suddenly realize is missing. And when the tournament is done and dusted just remember -

• if you placed well it's testament to your superior playing skills
• if you placed badly you got bad cards (that's the excuse I always use!).
• if you placed well or badly is less important than having a good time. That's in your hands.

Now you can unpack and unfold those neatly laundered preconceptions. Thank you for your attention.

Neil Kirby
Veridian III Ambassador