Design Log: Stardate 06.18.2003

How Many Prylars Does It Take To Mend a Broken Link?

After cards that mention non-existent cards by name (or at least what we thought was a card title), the next most important category of broken links is what I call "implied" broken links. Here, a card's game text implies that cards with some specified characteristic will exist, and that probably there will be more than one such card.

Where Have All the Ba'ku Gone?

Since it had been stated that The Motion Pictures expansion would have cards from all nine feature films, players naturally expected – and got – cards from Star Trek: Insurrection, including such cards as Transporter Drones, Ru'afo, and the eponymous mission, Insurrection. Conspicuously absent were any Ba'ku, despite the mission's special text stating that "Ba'ku may report on planet (for free)." So where did they go?

"We only had 130 card slots in the set," says Evan Lorentz, "so we had to make some cuts. At the time there were only two Ba'ku in development, Anij and Artim. There were unresolved problems with the concept for Anij's special skill, so she was put off until a later set. And Artim was not the card we would have chosen to be the only Ba'ku in the set, so we decided to cut him also." With All Good Things being that "later set," It was decided to allocate four slots to Ba'ku personnel, including both Anij and Artim, a meaningful number of personnel who can report for free on the Ba'ku planet.

How Many Hupyrians Does It Take to Carry the Nagus's Beetlesnuff?

OK, with no Ba'ku in evidence, Insurrection's text was definitely a broken link! But what if there is already one card with the characteristic... or two? Well, then it becomes something of a judgment call for the designers. Got example, the Ferengi headquarters, Tower of Commerce, says, "Once per turn, one Ferengi V.I.P., CIVILIAN or Hupyrian OR one HQ card may play for free here." There were plenty of Ferengi V.I.P.s and CIVILIANS, but only one lone Hupyrian: Zek's bodyguard Maihar'du. The text could be taken as simply a way of including someone who logically should be able to report there, but didn't happen to fit any of the other categories. On the other hand, the designers seldom expend precious game text space to give an advantage to a single card (unless they're a really major character).

"When it seemed like a card clearly intended to refer to one of a group – rather than 'one of a kind' – we tried whenever possible to make at least one more card in that group," says Evan. Hence the inclusion of Uri'lash, a universal Hupyrian, in All Good Things. His ability to take advantage of the Tower of Commerce's free reporting isn't a storyline stretch, either; like Maihar'du, Uri'lash is the bodyguard of a Grand Nagus (Brunt), though of admittedly short tenure.

Tsunkatse!

Gesundheit. All right, so only one Hupyrian, or prylar, or universal [OS] personnel isn't enough. But what if there are already two cards that fill the bill? Is it still a broken link? Maybe, maybe not. When 10 (of 10 and 01) got a special download for "Any Bynars card," that implied at least one more beyond the old standby Bynars Weapon Enhancement. And one more is what we got, with Bynars Data Transfer (in Holodeck Adventures). If we were going to have more expansions for First Edition, probably another Bynars card would have come along eventually, but the designers felt that particular broken link was sufficiently covered by the second card.

Penk's broken link, however, turned out to be a slightly different case. His special download reads, "[SD] Any other card that has “Tsunkatse” in title or lore." When the Voyager expansion came out, that was broken link, because that set included only one card with Tsunkatse in its lore – The Pendari Champion. Then The Borg expansion included another, Hajur. Two ought to be enough, right? Wrong, because there was still no card with Tsunkatse in its title. While the designers originally had in mind (and worked on for a while during Voyager development) a Tsunkatske verb card, the mechanic for Tsunkatse matches didn't work out and would have necessitated more Tsunkatske fighter personnel cards. In the end, it was decided to fulfill this implied broken link with the Tsunkatse Ship, which at the same time granted Penk matching commander status.

Cloning Around

In a previous Design Log, I stated that when the long-missing Clone Machine finally put in an appearance in Holodeck Adventures, it "simultaneously creat[ed] another broken link." That wasn't quite accurate; it actually created two. One "named" broken link, to be sure (Mariposa), but it also engendered an "implied" broken link near the end of its game text: "Once every turn, if your Vorta just died, you may suspend play to download any version of that persona here."

Where's the broken link, you may ask? We have lots of Vortas. Sure, but at the time, none of them had more than one version of their persona. It would have had the same effect if it just said "download another copy of that Vorta." Clearly, the designers meant for at least one Vorta to have more than one persona version, and the obvious multi-persona Vorta was the most prominent one, Weyoun, several incarnations of whom who saw on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Of these, perhaps the most interesting version (because he was most unlike the "normal" Weyoun we grew to know and hate), was would-be defector Weyoun 6. Because of his Non-Aligned affiliation, his special skill can be used to protect even Odo.

Of course, there are other ways besides game text to imply the existence of a card. Broken links implied by lore will be the subject of the next All Good Things Design Log.

Kathy McCracken (Major Rakal)
Star Trek CCG Intelligence Officer

June 18, 2003

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