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The Star Trek Customizable Card Game is, as the name implies, a collectible card game based on the Star Trek universe. The name is commonly abbreviated as STCCG. It was first introduced in 1994 by Decipher, Inc., under the name Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game. The game now has two distinct editions, though both forms of the game have many common elements.

Standard elements

The central goal for a player of STCCG is to obtain (usually) 100 points, primarily by completing missions or "objectives". This is done by bringing personnel, ships and equipment into play, then moving an attempting team to a mission. Once a mission attempt starts, the personnel will create away teams to encounter dilemmas which will challenge them in some way; often if the personnel have the required skills or attributes they can overcome certain dilemmas' effects. Once the required dilemmas are passed, the personnel still active in the attempt (not "stopped") must have the skills and/or attribute totals required by the mission to solve it. If the mission is solved, the player earns the printed points.

Other aspects of the game increase player interactions: ships and personnel can battle, or otherwise affect each other; cards like events and interrupts can alter the environment for one or more players; and points can be scored using methods other than mission solving.

One of the most attractive themes of the game is the differences between affiliations. These are groupings of ships and personnel based on the major interstellar powers of the Star Trek universe, and most decks will be based around one, or perhaps two, of these groups (though first edition in particular allows the use of many).

First Edition

What is now known as First Edition (commonly abbreviated "1E") among players is the original conception of the game, through various designers and iterations. As mentioned above, it was first licensed only to cover The Next Generation, and the first three card sets were limited to that show's universe. As such, the only affiliations created were the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans, plus a placeholder for other groups called Non-Aligned. This narrow scope caused little attraction for players, and it was felt that only five more sets could be released before running the full course of available material.

In 1997, Decipher announced that a wider scope had now been licensed for the game: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the TNG movies would be soon providing cards, thus the game's name was shortened to the existing title. The First Contact set arrived late that year, based on the eponymous First Contact; that set introduced the Borg affiliation, among other new concepts.

This was soon followed by several sets based on situations in DS9; these introduced affiliations for the Bajorans, Cardassians, Dominion, and Ferengi, along with enhanced systems for battling and capturing. The era of these expansions is considered by many players to be the 'golden age' of First Edition.

Two more sets featuring The Original Series cards came next (when that property was added to the license), followed by sets drawing heavily on Voyager which introduced new, but smaller, affiliations. It was after this that the game began a serious decline in popularity and sales.

The last two sets, based on the films and on holodeck scenarios, did not sell very well at all; this led Decipher to take a serious look at the game's future.

First Edition's problems

Some of Decipher's big concerns included the complexity and bloat that the game had built over seven years; there was no balanced 'cost' system for cards, causing stopgap and complex systems to be added to the game over time. As well, the game had embraced many different and not fully compatible ideas over time; this made for long, corrective rules documents and a steep learning curve for beginners. Not only that, the number of cards types went from nine, to over 17 in just a couple years, which made the game that much more difficult. Clearly, the future of the game was in doubt.

Initial ideas

At first, the game designers sought to introduce an entire new game based on Trek; it would be simpler and be targeted to beginners, while the original game still produced expansions, but on a slower schedule. This concept was abandoned when the sales figures showed that the original game could not continue on its own merits.

Fan Sites

Numerous fan sites existed, the majority of which contained tournament reports and strategy articles for the first edition of the game. The most popular of these was named WNOHGB (magazine) and featured the popular Ruling Britannia series of articles. There are also some sites, which developed interactive tools like card search or trade engines - one good example is Decipher-Games (aka ST-CCG.info)

Second Edition

The solution was to reinvent the original game along the basic lines, still allowing 'complex' gameplay but avoiding complex rules and concepts. The standard card types and gameplay would remain, allowing some cards to still be used with the original cards (these are known as backward-compatible). However, many cards central to the new form of the game would only work with the new rules and setup. Thus, Second Edition (commonly abbreviated "2E") was launched in 2002.

Because the game was essentially starting from scratch with the hindsight of seven years' work, the initial Second Edition set was able to cover a lot of ground. As a result, five affiliations debuted in that set (compared to three for the original), though it could be argued that the number was really six, because of a unique new system that divided the Federation affiliation into groupings based on the shows' casts. The focus of the Second Edition sets has been on characters and situations in TNG and DS9, though 'supporting' cards have images and concepts drawn from every part of the canon Star Trek universe.

Cost/Resources

One major difference in Second Edition was the addition of a costing system to personnel, events, equipment, and ships. A card's cost is listed in the top left-hand corner of a card, directly preceding the card's title as a single digit number. A player receives seven 'counters' at the beginning of each turn; to play a card, the player must expend a number of counters equal to the cost of the card. Interrupts do not have a cost; when a game effect target's an interrupt's cost, it is treated as zero.

Dilemma pile

Another major change in the gameplay of Second Edition was the new method of handling dilemmas. Instead of using First Edition's lengthy procedure of a 'seed phase', which could last upwards of 15 minutes, Second Edition employs an 'on-the-fly' method for constructing dilemma combinations. Whereas a First Edition player was constrained to using the same dilemmas in each game of a tournament, the Second Edition player has a side deck, or 'dilemma pile' from which to draw a random selection of dilemmas based on the amount of personnel the opponent uses in a given mission attempt. This concept is similar to First Edition's Q-Flash side deck, and also to a rules variant of First Edition introduced by a group of players from the San Francisco area called 'Trek 1.5'. This more dynamic method of selecting dilemmas is dependent on a player's ability to remember which personnel his/her opponent has played, and their ability to satisfy a dilemma's requirements.

Gameplay considerations

While First Edition attempted to sometimes literally represent instances from the Star Trek universe in the game, Second Edition has focused more on a consistency of gameplay as a priority over design consideration with regard to remaining faithful to the source material. Effects on cards sometimes lack the "Trek sense" that First Edition cards contained, but are generally much more equitable when compared with other similarly costed effects.

Reporting icons

One aspect of affiliation uniqueness that Second Edition has continued is specialized repoting icons. While not a new idea (First Edition's Mirror, Mirror set first featured Empire and Alliance icons for affiliated personnel and ships), Second Edition's widespread utilization of the icon as a cultural identifier has allowed designers to introduce support cards that better represent the various Trek shows' themes. This is the primary tool to divide the Federation affiliation into separate groups (The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager each have an icon representing their personnel and ships.) However, other likeminded groups can have these icons as well; the Maquis incorporate members of three different affiliations into their arsenal, while the Terok Nor personnel and ships represent the brief period of Cardassian/Dominion command of Deep Space Nine.

Set history

First Edition

Premiere

363 cards basic set. Introduced the game as such. Was plagued by a lack of good Dilemma cards that could be used for any mission and a slow play mechanism. This led to extremely limited play styles. Only the Federation was truly competitive. Card types were: Personnel, Ship, Outpost, Event, Interrupt, Equipment, Artifact, Dilemma, Mission. Most (in)famous card: Horga'hn (let you take double turns after obtaining the artifact).

Warp Pack

To compensate for the problem that Starter Decks of the game were often unplayable, this product was given away free. It was a 12 card pack with mostly missions. Most of its cards were from Premiere or later reprinted in Alternate Universe, one only appeared in the 2 Player game.

Alternate Universe

This 122 card set addressed the Dilemmas problem, adding a substantial number of those that could be used anywhere. It added the Doorway card type and introduced the first Ultra Rare card in the game, the Future Enterprise. A suitably large grouping of personnel could still pretty much overcome any Dilemma. The set's focus was centered around the Star Trek episodes that dealt with different timelines or time travel.

Two-Player Game

Released in two versions, this was an introductory way of playing the game containing two different premade decks each. Many players criticized the set for having only planet missions, very few Dilemmas. Was sold in two variants, Federation and Klingon, differing only in three bonus cards. The other 125 cards were identical. 21 new cards.

Q-Continuum

Based around the mischief of Q, this set included the concept of Side Decks, extra stacks of cards from which you could draw under certain circumstances. This became a predecessor to downloading and was the first time you could exercise any control over what you would draw. Made the Romulans very competitive. 121 cards. New card types: Q-Event, Q-Interrupt and Q-Dilemma (all only played from a side deck).

First Anthology

This was a boxed set of 2 Starter Decks, 6 booster packs and 6 preview cards to appear in later sets. These preview cards were the first cards not based on The Next Generation series. Also included was a coupon for $10 off the purchase of the soon to be released Fajo Collection. This coupon, called The Doorway To The Fajo Collection and printed on paper to look like a card, is still sought after by collectors of the game even though it is not an actual card.

First Contact

This 130-card set introduced the Borg as an affiliation. As a collective, they did not solve missions but Objectives (a new card type). They also had the power to assimilate Earth in the past. A mechanism called downloading allowed easy access to specific cards in your deck.

The Fajo Collection

Highest price per card for any product, this set of 18 special cards in a binder was available only through direct order from the manufacturer. It was limited to 40,000, each set included a certificate of authenticity and other items to enhance its collectibility. Most cards had a serious graphical twist.

Official Tournament Sealed Deck

To enhance Sealed Deck tournaments, this box included 5 booster packs (4 Premiere, 1 Alternate Universe) and 20 fixed premium cards. In contrast to the Fajo Collection's highest price-per-card, this product offered the best value-per-card. Among those premium cards were 6 missions, 6 dilemmas and a few others. It was completely playable out of the box and the best starter product in the game. The most popular card from the set 'Spacedoor' solved an age old gripe about the difficulty of obtaining a ship, while 'Space-Time Portal' proved an adequate defence to the Anti-time Anomaly card. There were six different boxes, but all boxes contained the same product. These collectors' boxes were affiliation-themed: Federation, Bajoran, Borg, Cardassian, Klingon and Romulan.

Deep Space Nine

Moving away from The Next Generation crew, this set focused on the DS9 series-specific Federation, Bajoran and Cardassian affiliations. It introduced new rules for Nors, Sites and Headquarters and added a lot of complexity to the game. It also provided counterstrategies to two of the dominant concepts at that time, but not to all of them. Cardassians had a way to do massive card-drawing and recycling. 276 cards.

The Dominion

Introducing its namesake affiliation, this set fleshed out the Deep Space Nine strategies and generally achieved good play balance except for a few issues. This set approximately marks the turning point in the history of the game as from now on, sets would nearly always introduce more problems than they fixed.

Blaze of Glory

The one set to sell out the most quickly, this expansion completely revamped ship and facility battle system. It also added the new card type: tactics. This was used to enhance space battle strategies more effective and realistic. Consequently, Klingons became extremely viable by playing strategically for combat to kill off the opponent and before solving any missions. 130 cards. The only set to have had 18 of its cards subjected to a foil treatment - these metallic versions were exceedingly rare.

Starter Deck 2

This was a basic premiere starter deck with 8 cards added: 6 missions, 1 outpost and 1 event to make all affiliations become one. Allowed out of the box play, but did not add much strategy to the game.

Rules of Acquisition

The Ferengi expansion added this affiliation as well as several small strategies, but it was the one set with the least contribution to the overall game. This pack greatly increased the Ferengi participation in the CCG saga. 130 cards.

Second Anthology

Like the First Anthology, this was a collection of decks (here, a pair of the aforementioned Starter Deck IIs) and packs with 6 cards added, however the 6 new cards here were premium and would not become available anywhere else.

The Trouble with Tribbles

Introducing the Original Series characters, this set also added Tribble and Trouble cards and brought back the ultra-rare rarity. From this point, every set would have one ultra-rare card. Gameplay ideas introduced in this set mostly became viable only with the next set, but the Federation was strategically strengthened because of the lack of alien races in the Star Trek timeline. Klingons also gained some ground. 131 cards.

Enhanced First Contact

These were small boxes with 4 First Contact packs and 3 premium cards each. Brought the Borg back to tournament level quality. There was a die-cut window in the packaging, allowing players to shop for any specific premium card.

Reflections

Sold in normal packs, this set added no new cards whatsoever. Instead, it contained random cards from Premiere, the 2-Player Game, Alternate Universe, Q-Continuum, First Contact, Deep Space 9, Dominion, and Enhanced First Contact as well as one of 100 foil-treated metallic cards in each pack. These foils represented the best 100 cards released in full sets from Premiere to Dominion. 5 more foils of preview cards were also in the set but were not found in packs but instead found in the boxes of booster packs and the cases of booster boxes.

Mirror, Mirror

Drawing both from the original series episode and its Deep Space Nine cousins, this expansion added flavor and strategy to the Original Series, making decks based on using the mirror universe extremely strong. 131 cards with mostly personnel (the most personnel heavy set in the game) were added.

Voyager

First of the Delta Quadrant sets, this one introduced all the main cast from Voyager. It also brought in two new affiliations, the Kazon and the Vidiians. From this set to the very last, dual-affiliated cards would be printed in both of its affiation versions, making the collection of an entire set more difficult. This set was designed with 3 things in mind: introduction of an optional faster-paced gameplay system called Warp Speed, viability for the cards to stand on their own within a Voyager-only play environment (i.e. using only cards with the Voyager logo), and overall compatibility with the existing game environment. One card in particular, the Delta Quadrant Spacial Scission, was considered by many to have been the point at which the game had finally "jumped the shark." 201 cards.

Enhanced Premiere

Just like the earlier enhanced product, this combined surplus packs with some premium cards and sold them as a new product. The premiums introduced the Next Generation crew in various forms as dual-personnel (two personnel on one card) and the Combo Dilemma concept, which took fairly useless dilemmas from the Premier set and made two-in-one combinations to try and increase their effectiveness. This concept was only marginally successful in implementation. 21 premium cards.

The Borg

This set re-introduced the Borg affiliation to be both Voyager-only viable as well as compatible and balanced with the overall game environment. It also introduced the Hirogen as an all-new affiliation. With the release of this expansion the Borg affiliation enjoyed a revision of gameplay features that had limited their gameplay viability (e.g. previous complications in assimilating personnel). The inflation of ship stats continued with the incredible weapons (28) and shields (28) of the Borg Tactical Cube. This overcame the increased ease of obtaining the magic figure of shields 12 sufficient to save a ship from an initial Borg assault. Consequently a Borg player was able to devastate an opponent in a style to which there was limited defence. 131 cards.

Holodeck Adventures

Originally planned to be the 4th set, this one got pushed back to #13 in the release order. It added lots of non-aligned support to all decks, including the new versions of the Next Generation Bridge crew based upon their Holodeck personas. However more impact was generated by the extremely versatile deck manipulation strategy provided by several cards. These cards allowed players to draw more cards than normal and stack cards from their discard pile on top of their draw decks. As a result, fewer turns were needed to complete a game. In some cases one- or two-turn games were common. The set included a range of cards which aided abusive strategies and exagerated a tendency seen in the game for many years. 131 cards.

The Motion Pictures

The last full expansion added scenes and characters from the 8 as of yet not covered movies to the game (Nemesis was not out at that time). It did relatively little to alter gameplay. The Baku were not in this set, but the Son'a were (as non-aligned, just like the Baku would be in All Good Things).

All Good Things

Released about a year after the last full set, this boxed set had a starter, 10 Reflections boosters and 41 new premium cards, all of which filled holes in the game as there had been cards referenced on other cards but not actually made. With the long time since the last release, All Good Things did an extremely good job fixing abusive strategies, resulting in a mostly balanced ultimate play environment. All Good Things was sold out before release through preorders and boxes are nearly impossible and expensive to buy. While including some much sought after cards, the set was seen by many players as a 'scraping the barrel' exercise with cards of dubious gameplay or collectors value, players were also disappointed that the set did not include cards which had long been sought after eg. the Rogue Borg vessel

The Enterprise Collection

Originally scheduled to be released in November of 2005, this 18 foil card set available only from Decipher's online store introduced the Starfleet affiliation to First Edition. This affiliation is made up of characters and starships from the television series Enterprise. The headquarters facility, Seat of Starfleet allows Starfleet affiliation characters to attempt Federation affiliation missions. This set came as something of a surprise to First Edition fans after Decipher's statements that there would be no further First Edition sets after All Good Things.

Certain cards in the set have printing or typographical errors of some sort. These cards (with their errors) include:

•T'Pol/Soong Manuever - two dashes are found surround the equals sign after "Hit" in the game text as well as a dash after the equals sign after "Direct Hit".

•Starfleet Phaser Pistol - The card was foiled to have a two line lore box and a four line text box when the card is actually a three line lore and three line text.

There are also noticeable errors on a majority of the cards including most of the collector's information on each card being shifted twards the bottom of the card and the expansion icon (as well as the AU icon) being shifted out of their proper place on the card.

An interesting note: although Decipher's website stated the set would ship July 7, 2006, some people on Decipher's message boards received their sets one to two days before July 7th. Others have complained that their orders had been canceled by Decipher.

Second Edition

Second Edition Base Set

This set reintroduced the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, and set up a base for play with five distinct affiliations: Federation (With both Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and a mixture of Earth-based cards), Bajoran, Cardassian, Romulan, and Klingon (Non-Aligned continued as well).

Energize

This served as a companion set to the base set, and introduced a new group of cards the Maquis, while not an entirely new affiliation, they did report to a different Headquarters then other cards. It also created cards to counter certain stratergies that had popped up after Second Editions base set released.

Call to Arms

This set introduced the Dominion and Borg affiliations, adding new keywords including Interlink, and also added many strong dilemma cards to the game.

Necessary Evil

This set was notorious for being hard to find, as Decipher did not produce enough to come close to meeting demand, the online orders were sold out within hours of its release, and many suppliers did not receive their full order. This set introduced many 'odd affiliation' cards, including a Klingon Riker, a Cardassian Odo, and a number of cards capable of avoiding being stopped by dilemmas. It created several new dilemmas that made decks with many events to be competitive. It also saw many cards that worked well with bonus point stategies and new, better ways to get bonus points, making bonus point strategies competitive for the first time in second edition. This set saw the biggest change in gameplay since the second edition came out despite the small print run.

Tenth Anniversary

This 18-card set comprised of 9 famous ships and their corresponding captains. It was used as a retail sales incentive and not sold in booster packs as normal.

Fractured Time

This small set was released in six different collector's boxes similar to those in the Official Tournament Sealed Deck product from First Edition. The affiliations represented on the boxes were Federation, Bajoran, Cardassian, Romulan, Klingon and Dominion. Each box contained the same 40 fixed cards in addition to packs of the first three sets and a random starter box. This product surpassed the OTSD in total price value per card. Several of these premium cards had a major impact on gameplay.

Reflections 2.0

This set included 61 new cards, and a foil treatment of 60 cards from the previous expansions, even a few Necessary Evil cards. Each pack contains one card unique to the set, and one foiled card previously released, as well as 13 randomly sorted cards from the previous 4 sets.

Strange New Worlds

This set introduced the Ferengi affiliation, holograms and more androids. It also created large increase in cards that provide more points to spend, although most are Ferengi cards.

Adversaries Anthology

The Adversaries Anthology was released in September 2005 and is seen as a great entry level product for newer players. The product contains 2 starters and 6 boosters from pervious sets (Premiere, Energize and Call to Arms), 18 foiled versions of highly sought-after cards and parts 3 and 4 of the extended art preview set (Borg Queen and Shinzon). The set comes in a box which can hold 600 game cards. There are complaints though that the box is quite shoddy and of poor quality, especially in comparison with the high quality of previous anthology boxes.

To Boldly Go (coming soon)

This set will introduce the Starfleet (Enterprise era) affiliation as well as new cadets.

Captain's Log (coming soon)

This set will introduce the Federation Voyager culture and a number of ships with matching commanders. There will also be a focus on the Pursuit keyword, introduced in the Premiere Second Edition set but not really developed since.

These Are The Voyages (coming soon)

This set will largely feature the Original Series cast. The name of this set was chosen via a fan poll.

In A Mirror, Darkly (coming soon)

This set will introduce alternate universe characters. The name of this set was chosen via a fan poll.

Other Minor Sets

Two other minor sets are also planned - "Genesis", a set of 27 cards sold only online featuring unique card layouts and First Edition compatible cards, and "Dangerous Missions", a set of 19 cards revolving around some of the most popular missions in Star Trek history.

Tournaments

World Champions

First Edition

1997: World Champion: David Bowling (Runner-up: Todd Soper)

1998: World Champion: Bill Chien (Runner-up: Todd Soper)

1999: World Champion: Mike Harrington (Runner-up: David Bell)

2000: World Champion: Eric Johnfanno (Runner-up: Brian Sykes)

2001: No World Championships (Cancelled after September 11)

2002: World Champion: Franklin Kenter (Runner-up: John Corbett)

Second Edition

2003: World Champion: Matt Frid (Runner-up: Hayden Chrsitiansen)

2004: World Champion: Andrew Ehret (Runner-up: Raymond Linton)

2005: World Champion: Christian Pulsfort (Runner-up: Caleb Grace)

External links

Collectible card games | Star Trek games

Star-Trek-Spiele

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Star Trek Customizable Card Game".

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