Gone But Not Forgotten: Star Trek: Customizable Card Game

Welcome to another (randomly) regular series here on Bearers of the Word. In 'Gone But Not Forgotten' I'll be talking about 'collectable' games like CCGs and CMGs that I've played in the past. Usually, these are games that have been discontinued and you can't find anymore. So, let's get started!

To boldly go...

No School Like Old School

In 1993, Magic: The Gathering exploded on to the hobby scene. Kids and adults alike were spending hundreds of dollars on a card game that had an original background. Soon, companies that owned 'nerd' licenses took note and started selling the rights to others to get a slice of this new expanding market. One of the first was Star Trek.

The first edition of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game was released in 1994. Now, 20 years later, the game has aged... Poorly. But, I love it all the same.

Gotta love cosplay...

Affiliations:

When the game was first released, there were three Affiliations: Federation, Romulan, and Klingon. There were also Non-Aligned, who could work with any Affiliation. Most people built decks around one Affiliation but there were treaty cards, so you could mix and match if you wanted. The first Affiliation to be added was the Borg, in the First Contact expansion. The Borg played completely differently that any other affiliation before or since, assimilating planets, ships, and people to win. The next major expansion was Deep Space Nine, which added the Cardasian and Bajoran affiliations. Of course, they followed this up with the Dominion in a self-named expansion. The Dominion were the first affiliation to be set up in a completely different quadrant. If you didn't get the Bajoran Wormhole, you were stuck in the Gamma Quadrant. Later expansions added the Ferengi, as well as cards from the Original Series and the Mirror Universe. When they released the Voyager expansions, they had to add the Hirogen, Viidian, and Kazon factions. They even did a minor Enterprise expansion and an expansion for the Original films. By the time the game died, there were 13 affiliations and two Mirror Universe 'groups', spread across four quadrants (Alpha, Gamma, Delta, and Mirror) and across all of the TV series and films. Needless to say, the game had grown too big to be any sort of manageable endeavor. And, many of the affiliations and groups couldn't really function or score enough points to win out of the box.

Who cares about Kirk or Picard? It's all about Sulu!

How the game works:

The set up for this game was unique and interesting. Instead of summoning up monsters and artifacts, the creators of the game looked at the source material. You included six 'mission' cards in your deck. These missions (really planetary systems) had a list of requirements you needed to complete them and a number of points you would score if you did so. They also had a number at the bottom which showed how much range your ships would need to use to get past the card. Because nothing goes as planned, you and your opponent would slide (or 'seed' as the game called it) Dilemma cards under the missions. When you attempted the mission, you would run in to the Dilemma and have to deal with it. You could include up to 30 Dilemmas in your seed deck, so you could put down Dilemmas that helped you score bonus points and put some down to screw the other guy. Of course, he'd be doing the same to you... In addition to Dilemmas, you could also place Artifacts under a mission, but this was risky as your opponent could use them if they completed the mission.

Once you got done seeding missions, you would place your 'outpost' which was your starting point. Any ships, personnel, and equipment you played would come in to play at your outpost, so you wanted to place it somewhere useful. The ships had 'staffing requirements' that you had to meet with personnel, which was kind of a pain in the ass if you drew people that didn't have the right stuff to staff the ship. Once you got a ship staffed up, which could take awhile, what with your massive play decks and being able to play ONE card a turn, you flew the ship around and completed enough mission to score 100 points. In the most basic terms, that's the game. Of course, it gets way more complicated when you use later expansions.

Because it was one of the first post-Magic games, it doesn't have the balance or slickness of later games. You know, things like cost and resource management. You drew one card and played one card each turn. That's it. So, the game developed draw engines and play engines. Some of the most powerful cards in the first release have been banned because they provided too many draws or too many plays per turn. In order to balance the game in later editions, they created cards to specifically counter another, so you'd want to include those counter-cards in your deck. This in turn lead to 'deck bloat' as I call it. It wasn't uncommon to see play decks over a hundred cards. Decks between a hundred and fifty cards and two hundred cards seem to be the norm.

One of the best episodes, Yesterday's Enterprise

For all of its flaws, the game is fun to play. You can have the oddest crews in the history of Star Trek running around (Captains Kirk and Picard commanding the USS Defiant in the Delta Quadrant battling the Ferengi? It's possible) as well as some humorous combinations of factors (facing a Borg raid on your outpost in the Gamma Quadrant while infected with alien parasites). Completing missions was the goal of the game, not combat. Of course, combat became a way of denying your opponent points, by destroying his ship, it took time to build up a fleet capable of attacking, much less destroying, a single enemy ship. The game tried to keep the flavor of the setting, using your wits and skill to overcome obstacles rather than using your fists and phasers. Even with all those Affiliations, each one had a different way of playing. The Federation, for example, couldn't start a fight, but they had the largest number of personnel and powerful ships. Federation players developed a tactic known as 'redshirting' where they would beam down one personnel that had no real use to attempt the mission. Maybe they overcome some Dilemmas, maybe they don't. You just keep beaming down some more disposable crew down until all the Dilemmas are finished, then beam down your people who can complete the mission and score your points. Of course, the creators of the game came up with counters to this tactic, but it still exists today.

In contrast, there's the Ferengi. They use the only resource in the game: gold-pressed latinum. They use this to get equipment out, score points, and complete missions. They have an interesting mix of ships and a surprisingly good selection of personnel, so they don't need to fight to win or prevent someone from winning.

Even though the game is long unsupported, a group got together in 2007 and have tried to keep the game alive. This group, the Continuing Committee, has done a lot to modernize the game and even added their own expansions. If you're interested in starting up this game, or just want to see what was, head over to the 'Links' page and click on their name.

Yes, there is a Tribbles game as well