Mending Broken Links

by Kathy McCracken
MajorRakal@decipher.com

From the days of premiere Star Trek CCG, many players have taken a great interest in a phenomenon commonly known as "broken links" – cards that don't yet exist, but are referenced on existing cards. Speculation ebbs and flows about exactly when the matching commander for a ship will appear, what the heck Bluegills will do, or whether there will ever be another "Implant card" for the Borg to install using their Assimilation Table. The designers make a concerted effort to close at least a few broken links in each expansion set, and in Holodeck Adventures they have outdone themselves, with over a dozen links forged.

Name-Dropping

Broken links fall into two main categories and one minor one. The first and most obvious category includes cards that are explicitly named on another card, either in game text or in bold or bold/italic type in the lore of a personnel card (indicating a persona, a mirror version, or someone being impersonated). In such a case, you can be sure that eventually you'll see that card made. In Holodeck Adventures, the longest-standing broken link of this type has to be Clone Machine. Not only was it named on Doppelganger (Q-Continuum) as a counter to that event, but it was actually first mentioned in the premiere rulebook!

Almost as old is Orbital Bombardment, a card that Assimilate This! (First Contact) purported to nullify, along with Crosis and Build Interplexing Beacon. Several other much-anticipated named broken links in this set are personnel cards – if you've been waiting for Chancellor Gowron to enable you to play Treaty: Bajoran/Klingon for free, your wishes have been fulfilled. Likewise, Vic Fontaine and Ezri Dax debut, after being foreshadowed in Mirror, Mirror by their mirror versions, Fontaine and Ezri. And if you've been on pins and needles since Voyager to be able to download Naomi Wildman with her mom's special download, your wait is over.

"Any," Icons, Etc.

The second major category of broken links isn't quite so explicit. These are the cards that are not referenced by name, but rather are implied in more general terms by game text or other features of existing cards. When 10 (of 10 and 01 from The Dominion) had a special download for "Any Bynars card," it was pretty safe to assume that there would eventually be at least one more Bynars card besides the premiere Bynars Weapons Enhancement, and here it is at last: Bynars Data Transfer. In the same way, Borg Nanoprobes (The Borg) has been somewhat limited in its ability to nullify "a Species 8472-related dilemma," as there was only one until this set's Your Galaxy Is Impure. Donik (The Borg) lets "your [Hir][Holo] personnel...report here", not too useful as there were no such personnel in The Borg. But the designers knew they would remedy that in Holodeck Adventures, and indeed, the set gives you a full nine dual-affiliation Hirogen holograms to report to Donik, including their leader, Iden. And the implied promise of Continuing Committee (Rules of Acquisition) to let you report "any Neral" for free is fulfilled with a new version of the Neral persona, Praetor Neral.

Even an icon can make a broken link. Three premium cards in the Introductory Two-Player Game – Commander Troi, Commander Data, and Admiral Picard – had a mysterious icon named in the rule booklet as the "Barash icon" which would be developed in a future set. It's a little farther in the future than the designers planned at the time, but after the addition of two additional personnel with a Barash icon (Ambassador Tomalak and Prot), the alien boy himself has now put in an appearance.

Open-ended references such as "any" links and "card title group" links are technically no longer broken once a second card in the group is made. But in many cases, you can probably expect more cards in the group to eventually appear. Such is the case with the "I'm A Doctor, Not A..." cards referenced on Dr. McCoy ("...Bartender" joins the previous two, and lead designer Evan Lorentz says there will definitely be more in the future), and the Chula and The Clown dilemmas, with two additional cards added to each group.

A related type of broken link is the ship/matching commander connection; a non-existent ship named in personnel lore, or a non-existent personnel named in a ship's lore, as its captain or commander. Lorentz says, "We don't promise to fulfill all these ship/captain combos, but we definitely keep them in mind when working on a new set." Keep it in mind they did in Holodeck Adventures, providing the matching commanders for the Miradorn Raider (DS9), which was "alternately commanded by Ah-Kel and Ro-Kel," in a dual-personnel card.

Preview Cards

A third (and rapidly shrinking) category of broken links is the preview card. Starting with the six in the First Anthology, around a dozen preview cards have promised an eventual black-border rare version. However, there are no such cards in Holodeck Adventures. (Only two remain, Ensign Tuvok and Admiral Riker.)

Broken Links and the Future

The designers did work on potential closure of a few more broken links in this set, but the cards didn't survive playtesting. While this happens all the time during development of a set, not all cards dropped from a set are sure to see the light of day. But if the card in question is a broken link, you can expect it to turn up someday. Empathic Touch, Dimensional Shifting, Timepod Ring... we can anticipate these and more in future sets, and in the meantime, we can continue to speculate on what they will do.

"Of course," says Lorentz, "we did create a few new broken links as well" – for example, Christopher Pike to pass Talosian Cage, a mission at Mariposa where you can play Clone Machine, and Weyoun 6 (the most likely additional version of a Vorta persona implied by Clone Machine) – "but we opened far fewer than we closed. I think there should always be some broken links unfulfilled, because it keeps interest rolling and promises there is a future for the game." And with around three dozen broken links still out there, it looks like a long and bright future for Star Trek CCG.

December 6, 2001