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DECIPHER.com > Star Trek CCG
> Tenth Anniversary
The History of Star Trek CCG: Release Date Sleuthing
As I was going over my notes on the First Edition Premiere and Alternate
Universe sets the other night, I ran into some striking inconsistencies
concerning release dates. You've got to understand that I'm piecing the
early history together from numerous sources, and even if they're all supposedly
Decipher (and therefore, one would assume, "official")... well, let's just
say that some seem to be more official than others. So I had to put on my
Sherlock Holmes cap and Tal Shiar badge to see what I could deduce. (I've
pulled the days that exact dates fell on from my calendar program.)
According to the old STCGG
timeline on the website:
- Premiere Limited - November 1994
- Premiere Unlimited - December 1994
- Premiere Unlimited beta - not listed
- Collector's Tin - November 1995
- Warp Pack - August 1995
- Alternate Universe - November 1995
Well, that's a start, though not quite as specific as I'd like. What does
the BradyGames Player's Guide say? (This came out sometime on 1995; I originally
guessed in the spring based on the release dates given, but more about that
somewhere down the page.)
- Premiere Limited - November 7, 1994 [Monday]
- Premiere Unlimited - December 1994 (second printing), February 1995
(third printing)
- Premiere Unlimited beta - "Scheduled for Summer 1995" (fourth printing)
- Collector's Tin - "Scheduled for Spring 1995"
- Introductory Two-Player Game - "Scheduled for Summer 1995"
- Warp Pack - not mentioned
- Alternate Universe - "mid-1995"
OK, data on the Collector's Tin and AU from the BradyGames Guide is meaningless,
because both got held up dreadfully by the certain "Paramount problems".
But the guide indicates that there was another alpha unlimited printing
in February, before the beta printing, and that's where that came
from on the new timeline. But (and this a huge "but"),
I haven't found that anywhere else. So maybe it needs to come off my 10th
Anniversary timeline. I can speculate that there might have been what seemed
to be firm plans for the February printing when the book went to press,
which later were scrapped in favor of just going straight to the beta (revised)
printing.
Now let's try that STCCG Statistics page that surfaced on archive.org
during the first contest:
- Premiere Limited - November 10, 1994 [Thursday]
- Premiere Unlimited alpha - December 12, 1994 (second printing) [Monday]
- Premiere Unlimited beta - March 1995 (third printing)
- Warp Pack - May 26, 1995 [Friday]
- Collector's Tin - October 18, 1995 [Wednesday]
- Alternate Universe - December 8, 1995 [Friday]
Hmmm. The exact dates lend a convincing degree of verisimilitude. The
fact that those dates aren't all Wednesdays is somewhat puzzling (it looks
like Decipher may have settled on Wednesday releases later on), but at least
they're all weekdays, and it's something of an assurance that they weren't
totally made up after the fact by someone assuming that all releases were
on Wednesdays. The Premiere Limited date doesn't quite match the one exact
date in the BradyGames guide, but it is the same week, so it looks like
we at least have the week nailed down. The alpha unlimited date looks plausible
as well. That beta release lists only a month, but on the face of it, it
could be true, falling as it does between the alleged third and fourth printings
mentioned in the Player's Guide. And what's up with that Warp Pack? Big
difference between May and August!
Well, I've got one more dated source, and I would expect it to be pretty
reliable: a series of online letters to the public from Decipher's then-president
(now Chairman & CEO) Warren Holland. There were three of them, starting
in late December 1994; the ones of interest here are the second and third,
dated February 10 and April 26, 1995. Unlike the statistics article or the
Player's Guide, in this case we know exactly when these were published,
and we know there was no publishing lag as is possible with a printed
book.
What did Warren have to say? For starters, in the February 10 letter,
"There have been a number of print runs of the *alpha* white-border
cards... in the near future the print run... will be converted to a *beta*
version." According to Ross Campbell, Decipher's V.P. for Production,
the alpha white-border printing was considered to be all one "printing"
produced intermittently over a period of some months. That would make it
the "second printing" with an initial release of December 12,
1994, and the purported "third printing" of alpha cards mentioned
in the Player's Guide would be simply a continuation of the second printing.
Then on April 26, "Our next shipment of basic cards, planned for June,
have been updated to a 'beta' white-border version." Since the letter
itself is dated after the March release purported on that STCCG Statistics
page, we can be sure that the stats page is wrong – if anyone would
have known that beta wasn't out yet, it would have been Warren! (Also in
the April 26 letter, "Look for the Player's Guide in the third quarter
of this year." That throws out my theory that the Player's Guide was
published in the spring. In fact, it appears to have been delayed along
with AU and the Collector's Tin, by Paramount's failure to approve the products.)
Add to that the fact that the stats article was also wrong about the composition
of the AU common sheet, and I suddenly find that whole page suspect. Still,
the beta printing is the only inexact date listed, so I'm inclined to accept
the others as at least likely. And indeed, I do have semi-confirmations
of a couple of the other dates, again in the form of online public communications
from Warren Holland.
The first is an "update on the STCCG/Paramount situation" posted
in an unknown (to me) online forum October 11, 1995 under the DAnswrMan
handle (which could have been Warren himself or it may have simply been
posted for him by whoever was acting as DAnswerMan at the time). Aside from
stating that production of the game would end at the end of 1997 and that
various plans (e.g., a tournament structure) had been cancelled, he also
said that approvals for Alternate Universe and the Collector's Tin had finally
been received in late September. That makes the October 18 release of the
Tin set plausible.
The second is the December 4, 1995 "Alternate Universe Notice"
(quoted on our message boards recently from an archive site that titled
it as the "Alternate Universe Collation Problem") concerning "excessive
duplication of commons." After explaining that they didn't want to
hold up the long-delayed product any further to correct the collation, Warren
said, "We decided to ship as planned. Alternate Universe(tm) shipments
began to retailers and distributors on Thursday November 30, 1995."
A shipping start on the last day of the month means that the November 1995
release date listed in the old timeline can't possibly be the "street
date," and it makes the December 8 release date on the statistics page
apparently accurate.
And the Warp Pack? Warren's February 10 letter announced the Warp Pack
giveaway with an expected availability of April; it didn't quite make that,
evidenced by his April 26 letter stating, "Warp Packs are now in production
and should be shipping the middle of May." That makes the statistics
page's claim of May 26 sound just right, and the old timeline's August date
way out of line (and indeed, Ross Campbell recollects that the Warp Packs
were being given out at the summer conventions that year).
Put all this together and it appears that, with the exception of the beta
release date, which should probably be June 1995, we can accept the STCCG
Statistics page as "correct":
- Premiere Limited - November 10, 1994 [Thursday]
- Premiere Unlimited alpha - December 12, 1994 (second printing) [Monday]
- Premiere Unlimited beta - June 1995 (third printing)
- Warp Pack - May 26, 1995 [Friday]
- Collector's Tin - October 18, 1995 [Wednesday]
- Alternate Universe - December 8, 1995 [Friday]
So there you have the closest I think we're going to get to the "real"
release dates. I've updated the timeline to match; if you have any additional
documented input, please send it to me at webmaster@decipher.com
with STCCG History in the subject to keep my spam filter from eating it
for breakfast. Jolan tru!
Kathy McCracken (Major Rakal)
Star Trek CCG Intelligence Officer and Tal Shiar Agent
April 19, 2004
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