Design Log: Stardate 05.09.2003

Why Isn't This Card Backwards?

No, I'm not talking about the likes of Mirror Image. One of the most unobtrusive features of the Second Edition card templates is the small colored bar in the border that indicates compatibility with First Edition gameplay – the so-called "backwards-compatible" cards. Almost half of the Energize cards are playable in First Edition decks. But how do the designers decide which cards are backwards-compatible and which aren't? There are plenty of deciding factors, and not all are obvious.

First off, is there a "quota" for backwards-compatability? No; unless a card fails to meet the criteria, then there is no reason not to make it 1E-compatible. If that meant an entire set was backwards-compatible, that would be great – all the more reason for all Star Trek CCG players to be interested!

Non sequitur = Non-compatible

It's easier to give reasons why a card isn't backwards-compatible than to state why it is. Among the more obvious knock-outs for compatibility are references to gameplay features and concepts that don't exist in First Edition, including card-play costs, "headquarters missions," and Second Edition-only skills. For example, a card that affects costs is useless in First Edition. Shadow Operation fails on two counts: it not only reduces a 3-cost personnel to cost 1, but it also requires you to have your staffed ship at your opponent's non-headquarters mission. (Since even a homeworld is a "non-headquarters mission" in 1E even if there's a headquarters located there, it would probably be unbalanced to allow a card which wasn't intended to work at a headquarters mission to have an effect there.)

But what about those Second Edition skills? Don't they just translate according to the conversion rules. Well, yes and no. Programming, Transporters, and Telepathy are straightforward enough; any time a card mentions one of those skills, treat it as Computer Skill, Transporter Skill, or Empathy, respectively. Where it gets sticky is with Intelligence, which translates to a 1E equivalent only for Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, and Federation personnel. So a Non-Aligned personnel with Intelligence won't be backwards-compatible (like Marshor in Second Edition premiere) because his skill has no equivalent. More important, cards that require or affect Intelligence personnel, such as the dilemmas A Klingon Matter and Stolen Computer Core, won't be backwards-compatible. After all, how can your 1E Bajoran opponent meet a requirement for Intelligence when there is no equivalent for Bajorans or Non-aligneds?

A related but slightly less obvious issue is that of cards that simply don't work correctly in 1E because of differences in the rules. A good example is the dilemma Houdini Mines. "Unless you have 2 Engineer and 2 Science or 2 Programming and 3 Security, randomly select a personnel to be killed, then this dilemma returns to its owner's dilemma pile." At first glance, this looks like it work fine in 1E (allowing for the conversion of the final clause to "replace dilemma under mission to be encountered again"). But the similarity in wording to 1E dilemmas is deceptive, because a 2E dilemma does not stop your personnel unless it explicitly says so – even if you don't meet its "conditions" (in 1E terms). So what would Houdini Mines do in 1E if you didn't meet its requirements? It kills a random personnel, goes back under the mission, and then your Away Team immediately encounters it again (because they aren't stopped and the mission attempt continues), it kills another personnel, goes back under the mission again... You can see how this might be a problem.

Persona non grata

Backwards-compatibilty for personnel cards can be a complex matter, aside from the skills issues mentioned above. Take these two Energize personnel:

On the face of it, they're pretty similar. Both universal, no downloads, no sticky skills-conversion problems, and innocuous abilities. Yet Khos is 1E-compatible, while Jural is not. Why? The key here is that Jural has a 1E version already; Khos doesn't. Different versions of a universal "persona" can raise a lot of questions about things like persona exchanges, so they aren't allowed. Even more of a potential landmine is the case where a universal 1E personnel turns into a unique 2E counterpart, like Galathon, Steadfast Rival. Should you be able to swap a unique version of a persona for a universal, or vice versa? You can have only one unique Galathon in play, but any number of universal Galathons – so can you have both at once? Again, those questions are avoided by keeping the unique Galathon 2E-only.

On the other hand, if both the 1E and 2E versions are unique, no problem; the 2E card is just another version of the 1E persona. Benjamin Sisko, Man of Resolve, is a new version of the Benjamin Sisko persona established in DS9, just like The Emissary, Jodmos, Lt. Sisko, and Dr. Noah, so he is backwards-compatible. (Benjamin Sisko, Defiant Captain, by contrast, is not, for reasons that will become clear shortly.)

Power to the People

Over- and underpowering in the 1E setting are also major – if not so clear-cut – reasons for cards not to get the backwards-compatible stamp in general. For example, while downloading exists in both editions, the designers generally avoid making cards allowing downloads backward-compatible. Why? In Second Edition, the power of downloading is tempered by the fact that all downloads are to hand; you don't avoid the the card's play-cost. In First Edition, on the other hand, the default is that a card downloads into play. Thus, a download that would be balanced if it went to hand may well be overpowered in First Edition, especially when a personnel or ship is the target of the download. This is why the Fortune and the afore-mentioned Benjamin Sisko, Defiant Captain are not 1E-compatible. A download isn't an absolute bar to compatibility, though – backwards-compatible Kargan lets you download a Maneuver card.

You might expect that Julian Bashir, "Unnatural Freak" would be backwards-compatible as a version of the Julian Bashir persona. But his ability is considered too powerful in 1E; removing cards from the discard pile from the game is not much of a "cost" there for a variety of reasons, not least the fact that you probably would just as soon clean old dilemmas out of your discard pile anyway.

Other examples of cards that become too much of a powerhouse in 1E are Ak'voh (unlike 2E, 1E has lots of mass killers which could cause your opponent to discard his entire hand) and Deep Roots (a card that can destroy events would be able to knock out even [Ref] cards in 1E that are immune to Kevin Uxbridge).

On the other hand, some cards that are balanced in 2E become wimpy and useless in 1E, so there is little point in making them compatible – no one would use them anyway. One example is Picking Up the Basics, an event that reads "Plays in your core. Order – Destroy this event and stop one of your [TNG] personnel to make one of your other [TNG] personnel present gain all of that stopped personnel's skills until the end of this turn." While you might indeed have several [TNG] personnel in your 1E deck, the scope of the effect is too limited in a deck that is not primarily [TNG] to be useful. In other cases, a 2E version of a persona might be too inferior compared to his 1E version to bother making him 1E-compatible.

Looking Back

Determining whether a card deserves backwards-compatibility is not an exact science by any means. Certainly if there are any doubts about a card being possibly too powerful for 1E, it's best for the designers to err on the conservative side and make it non-compatible (better than having to deal with an overpowered card later on), but allowing a wimpy card to go backwards isn't so much of a potential problem (worst case, no one will bother to use it in 1E). And an occasional requirement for Intelligence skill, or a reference to a card title which is itself not backwards-compatible, may slip through as long as the card contains adequate alternatives to still be balanced. But this look at some of the designers' prime considerations for backwards-compatibility should go a long way toward answering those nagging "what were they thinking?" questions.

Kathy McCracken
Major Rakal
Star Trek Intelligence Officer

May 9, 2003

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