Design Log: Stardate 12.16.2002

Can't We All Get Along? Compatibility in Second Edition

"There aren't any treaties in Second Edition! How can I get my Feds and Bajorans to work together after I report them at Deep Space 9?"
"Why would I want to use two headquarters – and lose a solvable mission – when I don't have any way to use Romulans and Cardassians together?"

No, I'm not talking about compatibility with First Edition cards – rather, the kind of compatibility that plagued First Edition by confusion with "matching affiliation" and all the rules baggage about house arrest. In place of more than two-thirds of a full-size page of small type (that's just for the glossary entries on compatible, matching affiliation, house arrest, does not work with, mix, and treaties – and there are lots more topics that are related!), Second Edition sums up compatibility (without even using the term) in one short sentence (easily overlooked by by a veteran Star Trek CCG player accustomed to the First Edition concept):

Once a personnel or ship is played, it may mix freely with any other affiliation. (page 9)

Well, now, that certainly answers those typical questions you see above. Deep Space 9 allows cards with a [DS9 icon and Non-aligned cards (as well as equipment cards) to report there. No matter that those [DS9] cards include both Bajorans and Federation – once you have them in play, they can mix freely. Simple and intuitive, because it reflects what we saw on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine every week: Bajoran and Federation personnel working together as a normal, routine circumstance. (It's telling that in First Edition, one Frequently Asked Question was, "Surely you don't need a treaty to use Federation on Deep Space 9... do you?" Happily, Second Edition finally makes the answer to this, "Of course not.")

And in fact you do have a way to use your Romulans and Cardassians together without a treaty, so if you want to take advantage of Romulan abilities to examine your opponent's cards or prevent his use of skills, while also utilizing Cardassian deck-manipulation abilities, have at it! All you need to do is stock both Cardassia Prime and Romulus so you have someplace to report the cards, then mix and match for best effect. In fact, if you can make do with Cardassian ships, you don't even have to have Romulus to get Romulan personnel into play; just play Alternate Identity to replace some 1-counter glinn with an expensive Romulan from your hand.

Couldn't such "deregulation" of mixing requirements be too powerful? After all, in First Edition there were deliberately no Ferengi treaties made, because the designers didn't want to give other affiliations unrestricted access to the powerful Ferengi downloading abilities. But in reality, mixing hasn't actually been deregulated – it's simply been made self-regulating. In most cases, to get full use of two affiliations, you need two headquarters missions. Lots of Bajorans and Feds don't have the [DS9] icon, so if in addition to Kira Nerys and Julian Bashir you wanted the particular abilities of, say, Winn Adami or Worf, Security Detail Leader, you'd need Bajor or Earth to get them. Likewise, if you wanted all the nifty Romulan cloaking devices, you're pretty much stuck with playing Romulus.

Now, in First Edition, the ability to report different affiliations was, to all intents and purposes, unregulated; all you needed was a seed slot for an additional outpost card, which could be seeded at any mission with the right affiliation icon, and in general it wasn't difficult to select a number of missions that either of your factions could attempt. But in Second Edition, that second headquarters knocks out a solvable mission, leaving you with only three to solve and score points from. Given that you must solve at least one planet and one space for a full win, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket with your single planet (or single space) mission. So, you must weigh the value of the extended abilities to be had from more than one affiliation against the potential for disaster if somehow all your personnel with a vital skill for that single mission get killed. And fully utilizing more than two affiliations, thereby reducing your solvable missions to two, is pretty much out of the question. So the potential for abuse of the apparent "free mixing" is very low.

And there is the essence of the complexity-reduction we find in Second Edition: instead of writing rules that say different affiliations can't mix, then lots of cards to let them mix after all, and other cards that can destroy the mixing cards, followed by more rules to tell you what "mixing" entails (report to the same places? mix? staff ships? battle together? attempt missions?) and what to do if the card that let's them mix gets destroyed (aka "house arrest"), followed by still more rules that say you can't deliberately destroy such a card if it would put your personnel under house arrest... well, I'll take that one simple sentence you see up there (and the self-regulation inherent in the headquarters missions) any day.

Kathy McCracken
Major Rakal
Star Trek Intelligence Officer

December 16, 2002

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