Mr. Tucker, Turn on the Nitrous

I have to admit, the overall plan for First Edition design seems very well thought out. They placed a whole block of cards which benefited and enhanced decks using the Deep Space 9 property logo ahead of the KCA expansion, Crossover, knowing that those cards would inherently benefit and affect said faction. Now that we are in the mirror universe block, we see a similar effect occuring for The Original Series (TOS) and Enterprise property logo decks, though in reverse. Some cards that will help the Terran Empire decktype are going to help out an Original Series Federation one, and cards that help out the Mirror Starfleet faction will certainly have a major effect on the regular universe Starfleet build.

And given that the focus of the soon to be released Through the Looking Glass expansion is focused on the mirror universe equivalent of TOS, I expected to see cards which would help my previous TOS based builds. But what I was not expecting was one that gave a boost of nitrous oxide to my Starfleet deck!

Protect the Timeline

Today's spoiled card, Protect the Timeline, helps all of those decks. But I have the sneaking suspicion that it helps Starfleet AQ decks the most, at least at this time. Much like Wednesday's card of the day, Full Compliment of Shuttles, this Incident adds an additional free play engine to a deck that does not see a lot of play while encouraging said deck to focus down on a single property logo.

For the cost of one seed slot, Protect the Timeline plays on the Time Location of your choice and adds an additional free play there. Most time locations allow some sort of free play (or can gain it), so this card can be added to any deck to bring that to a total of two free plays per turn. This free play, though, must be a unique personnel. This minor stipulation should allow design to control how many free plays are possible and what skills are possible for each time location.

What should be immediately concerning is the ability to stack this play engine. But unlike many free play engines in the game, Protect the Timeline has its own build in limitation. The third sentence on the card effectively nullifies other free play engines, unless they are associated with the targeted Time Location. For instance, I could stack Office of the President with Camp Khitomer and Protect the Timeline, but this stipulation would limit the Office free reports to people native to Camp Khitomer. With a proper treaty in play, I could stack The Great Hall with these three as well. But still, there is a limit to the number of free personnel to be used in such a deck. 

The final sentence of the card adds one more, bonus function. It allows for travel between the targeted Time Location and the corresponding spacline location. This built in function is a bit easier than any currently existing methods of time travel in the game, given that it seeds and is always on. But it does have a limitation, it will stop the ship unless that ship and/or at least three of its crew members are native to the Time Location. So again, the limit seems to deter the use of this card in most decks while encouraging and welcoming its use in the intended deck types; ones that are focused on a single Time Location.

And that brings me back to my Starfleet deck, which is the first place I thought of tossing this new Incident. A little over a year ago, I published an article describing my current Starfleet deck. It was pretty damned good when I played it back then, and now with an additional free play engine I expect it to be spectacular. Starfleet pack all the overpowered skills and stats of Voyager era personnel with the dilemma cheating power of The Original Series and the endless drawing capabilities of the KCA. The only thing they were missing was speed and that looks to have just changed...