The Next Phase - Romulan Starter

This Deck was build by Paddy Tye and was published first on "The Continuing Committee (trekcc.org)" at Jun 25th, 2018.

The Next Phase - Romulan Starter

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Hints & strategie notes for this Deck

Jolan Tru! Today we discuss the revisions to the Romulan starter deck in Coming of Age. Like all the other TNG starters, a lack of non-duplicated universal personnel was a key feature that needed updating. However before we address any new personnel, let’s discuss one other weakness of the original Romulan starter deck – the missions.

Final Mission

As most players will know, mission selection is key when building a deck. While many people will default to 35 point missions, all the starters originally contained a mixture of point values on missions – at least 1 mission worth 40 points and 2 missions worth just 30 points. However, the Romulans had problems with this as, in addition to 2 missions worth 30 points, they also had a 20 point mission, Conceal Unlikely Society. Now, you did have the option to discard 3 Youth to boost that mission to be worth 35 points, however there were only 3 Youth in the original Romulan starter deck, so you’d need either to have had a lucky draw or be close to decking out to have them all available. In addition, no-one wants to voluntarily discard personnel unless it’s your final mission needed to get over the winning line!

Another problem with the Romulan mission selection was that their tastiest mission (the one worth 40 points) required drawing into one specific card: Deranas, the only ship in the deck with enough WEAPONS to solve Intercept Sleeper Ship. The Klingons at least have two options in their deck (I.K.S. Bortas and Commander K’Ehleyr) but we decided a new option would be preferable here. So with at least two missions needing to be swapped out, what could we replace them with? In this case, we decided some new missions were called for – especially due to the lack of 40 point missions available within TNG Block.

The first replacement mission is Investigate Energy Readings, based on the planet from “Future Imperfect” where Riker encountered Barash. It provides a full 35 points unlike Conceal Unlikely Society, and you may also notice that the Barash icon makes an appearance in the requirements. Interestingly, all three affiliations that can attempt this mission do have at least one personnel available who would be able to help solve using that requirement! One nice boost from this mission is that once solved it lets you download Barash. With his ability to double Hologram Ruse, will that classic Premiere dilemma see more play as a result?

The second replacement mission is a nice juicy 40 point mission. Prepare War Game Scenario is based on a Federation combat drill from “Peak Performance”, which featured Klingon guile, fake Romulan warbirds and Ferengi interference! So it’s no surprise that this mission gets all 4 affiliation icons! It might also tempt a Federation player to get Sirna Kolrami out of the binder, especially as a mission specialist where his Leadership can boost the mission to an even more tempting 45 points!

You’ll also notice a third change in the missions. Investigate Destruction had previously been shared with the Federation starter, so we’ve replaced this with Recover Prisoner.

Unification

The main thing you’ll notice about the three new Romulan personnel is probably the skill boxes – each one having 4 skills is a major upgrade for Romulans, who never benefitted from skill-dense universals like B’Somgh, Zegov and Gozar when TNG Block first came around. The other thing you might notice is that they all have a reference to the Romulan Underground. One backdoor objective that Alan and I had when working on this set was to try to boost the limited card pool for The Romulan Underground warp core card. With 3 new personnel, 10 bonus points from The Romulan Underground, a Romulus System region that now has a built-in draw mechanic and the potential dangers from 22nd century Romulan Minefields that can be more easily avoided, will a Romulan Underground deck now see a revival?

Jacen, Mengran and Nefets span a broad range of skills, the only duplications between them being Honor (useful for the bonus points on The Romulan Underground) and Astrophysics (very often needed for Romulan Space missions). If you include the one existing Romulan Underground universal (Kharic) these 4 personnel cover 6 of the 7 Personnel Types (CIVILIAN, OFFICER, SCIENCE, ENGINEER, SECURITY, and MEDICAL) and numerous other skills (Leadership, Navigation, Computer Skill, Astrophysics, Stellar Cartography, Geology, Biology, Exobiology, Anthropology, Honor). While this gives the Romulans (and in particular the Romulan Underground) a broad skill base, they will still need to rely on the older universal personnel to provide a source of Physics, Archaeology, Diplomacy, etc.

One further thing to note is the higher Integrity on these personnel (7 on Nefets and 8 on Mengran) – this adds two potential targets for Ambassador Spock’s download (bringing the total to three), making him a very powerful addition to any Romulan deck.

The final addition is a reprint of Palteth. As another mission specialist (replacing Dr. Syrus) his Computer Skill will come in handy for solving both Prepare War Game Scenario and Advanced Combat Training. In fact, if you examine the Romulan missions in the starter, you’ll note that between D’Lors and Palteth as Mission Specialists there are three missions where they have potential to add points. This is actually the case across all four starter decks, and might help mitigate any point losses from Lack of Preparation!

Hopefully you will all find this update to the Romulan starter deck (and the other three) useful when teaching new and returning players!

by Paddy Tye, First Edition Creative Manager