Welcome to my little blog about customizable card games or trading card games – whatever term you prefer. I plan to give overviews over existing games and give hints, where one can find interesting stuff about them in the internet. For an easy start I pick the only game I collected completely – sort of. The first Star Trek CCG had its run from late 1994 until 2002. Then Decipher decided to re-launch the game in the form of the 2nd edition with a new look and new rules. Many 2nd Edition cards were marked as being backward-compatible to the 1st Edition with the help of conversion rules. As if the game wasn’t complicated enough already…
Fans of the 1st Edition got the small “All Good Things” set in 2003 to fix the broken links on other 1st Edition cards. And in 2006 Decipher surprised the fans with the small “Enterprise Collection”, which brought Captain Archer’s ship and crew in 1st Edition style to the game.
I personally was a almost reliefed, when the 1st Edition ended. I had collected every single card and decided after a short look into the 2nd Edition, that buying the Star Trek universe on cards once was enough for a lifetime.
Only last year I found out that Decipher had dropped all their products together with the licenses (Lord of the Rings) due to financial problems. The good news was that the Star Trek CCG had gone into the hands of dedicated fans who had founded the non-commercial Continuing Committee to continue the game with virtual expansions, which can be downloaded as PDF files and printed by the players for play at home and even at official tournaments. While the CC is focussing on the 2nd Edition they now have a subgroup for 1st Edition, which is responsible for official tournament rulings, errata and new expansions.
While the 2nd Edition fans already got two full expansions, 1st Edition fans got new current rulings and two small sets: The first one named “Referee Reprints” contains reprints of the so-called referee cards, which were introduced over the years to counter unbalanced strategies. While the CC discusses how to fix the game to make these special counter cards unnecessary, this set gives every player a fair chance to compete in tournaments. The second set “Identity Crisis” is a collection of alternate versions of dual-affiliation cards: Cards that are legal for two or even three affiliations in the game like the Federation or the Klingon Empire, but only existed in the look and color of one of those affiliations. This is more or less a cosmetical update, but it demonstrates the ability of the CC to produce good-looking cards.
Released: November 1994 by Decipher until 2002 with two small fixed sets after that
Current Status: Continued by fans since 2008
Gameplay: Both players build the spaceline out of six mission cards each. Then they add dilemma cards, outposts and special events to complete the playing field. After that seed phase the players use ship and personnel cards to fly along the spaceline and attempt missions. For that purpose they have to overcome the dilemma cards under the missions and bring skills like “Science”, “Medicine”, etc. on the personnel cards to solve the mission. Each solved mission is worth points, the first player to score 100 points wins.
What I liked about it: Star Trek 1st Edition felt like a simulation. One could send his spaceships around, attack the other player’s ships and personnel, breed Jem’Hadar warriors, process ore on Cardassian mining stations, travel through time to stop first contact as the Borg, etc. There were relatively few abstract event cards without a logical connection to the cards on the table.
What I didn’t like about it: Well, I was more a collector than a player. When I played the games often lacked interaction. If one player simply had the more fficient deck there wasn’t much one could do to stop him. And whenever I read about the tournament play there was stuff like first round wins after quite some time of building the playing field. I felt I had to include a dozen referee cards in any serious deck just in case I wanted to play in a tournament.
Links: www.trekcc.org, www.caretakersarray.com
P.S.: Use www.trekcc.org/1e to find the new sets.
