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It’s an Alien Planet! Is There AIR?! You Don’t Know!
4 Plays1 hour ago
Biggs and Truthi talk all things scenarios, going through Star Trek: Into the Unknown's Overtures, Situations, and Complications.
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Transcript
Welcome to 'The Big Unknown'
Star Trek: The Perfect Clip & Mission Fundamentals
00:00:38
Biggs
And welcome back to yet another episode of The Big Unknown. I'm your medical hologram Biggs, and with me, as ever, is our stalwart captain, Truthyness.
00:00:53
Truthiness
Hi, Bags.
00:00:55
Biggs
Hi Truthy.
00:00:56
Truthiness
How you doing?
00:00:58
Biggs
What are we talking about today?
00:01:00
Truthiness
Oh, well, here we go. We got the perfect clip from the best Star Trek movie ever.
00:01:09
Truthiness
So today we are talking
00:01:10
Biggs
um
Understanding Incident Missions
00:01:12
Truthiness
incident, but we're talking mission creation and just kind of the fundamentals of
00:01:18
Truthiness
of missions, like how do they work? Why do I care? Why is truthy so obsessed with this breakdown, with this structure?
00:01:25
Biggs
Why are we doing this as like the second real episode?
00:01:31
Truthiness
Oh, and a doggy. We can always have a doggy.
00:01:35
Biggs
what someone Someone is the neighbor dares to enter the neighbor's house.
00:01:43
Truthiness
I mean, yeah, I mean, you gotta you got to get let those neighbors know whose business.
00:01:44
Biggs
but
00:01:47
Truthiness
All right, so we're going to talk. um you talk missions, and we're specifically going to look at incidents, ah which are the one-off missions that you can create at random. um This is not focused on campaign mode, since I i like to focus a little more toward um those one-off game night type things, or how this might eventually be um in ah competitive mode, if you will. um So this is this is focused on that. If you want to fake downs of the
Star Trek Episode Structure
00:02:19
Truthiness
campaigns,
00:02:19
Truthiness
There's some excellent YouTubers out there that are going through the campaigns. Those are a little bit more canned. um What I love about...
00:02:26
Biggs
this is This is, you're showing up at the game store looking to play with your buddies.
00:02:32
Truthiness
Exactly, exactly. Hey, my dogs are joining in too.
00:02:35
Biggs
Hey!
00:02:36
Truthiness
It's a doggy fun time. so um So first things first, so how do you do these things? um you can With the stuff that is in the starter set, you can either randomly select one or agree to an incident mission, or agree to an overture mission.
00:02:56
Truthiness
So how this generally breaks down is much like a typical Star Trek episode, you have the opening overture and then something complicates the episode. um And I love that general structure of how they've made this game because that is the essential elements of a Trek episode.
00:03:18
Biggs
Yes, it is. never Never is anything as straightforward as ah show up at the alien planet, talk
Crew & Ship Selection in Competitive Play
00:03:28
Biggs
to the guy, 10 minutes of pastoral credits.
00:03:31
Truthiness
Yeah, no, there's none of that none of that quest, straightforward quest type stuff. There's always a complication because you know can't have space exploration go as planned. So the game is set up with that that wonder that structure. And we'll get to to why I love it so much. um But ah let's let's just first start over start with ah how this all works. So you pick your overture. um You actually then would select your crew, which could be interesting depending on how they do this for competitive match play. um There's some real room in here to you know have people select their crews on the fly.
00:04:11
Truthiness
and therefore their ships on the fly. um it It might not be the way to go, and maybe they just, ah you know, if they ever do come up with a competitive rule set for this,
Creating the Complication Deck
00:04:20
Truthiness
they'll come up with some kind of special structure that kind of, you know, hears the deck of overtures and complications that could happen, make your crew accordingly. ah But how the game out of the box is set up is you select your overture, then you select your crew and your ship. So you should know generally what you're walking into, um at least for the opening.
00:04:41
Truthiness
because you never know what you're going to get on the other ones. You select that that Overture, and then you'll also select a situation, um which same thing, you can either pick one that seems fun or you can shuffle. um and then that's This is where the fun really begins, is then you create the complication deck. There's little markers at the top of every Overture,
00:05:07
Truthiness
and um and every every situation ah called categories. you know you so For example, if you want to pull up, say, a delicate treaty situation and neutral drone survey ah for your overture, you'll see like little politics up at the top.
00:05:28
Truthiness
um There's a few categories, and basically what you do is you find all the complications that match those categories. So for example, if you have something that has battle, you would put contested territory into the deck, you'd put tactical extraction into the deck, you'd put infection into the deck, um and you shuffle those up real good.
00:05:48
Truthiness
um And then I'm trying to remember exactly what you do next. I think you pick, do you remember how many of these you pick? It's what, two each?
00:05:56
Biggs
So it looks like each player picks ah draws two cards, chooses which of the two cards they think they're better equipped for, and puts the other one it back into the deck, never to be seen again.
00:06:12
Truthiness
Yeah. So then you put this thing, you put these face down. So the thing that says, you know, there's ah a gray side with a bunch of arrows, it's a complication. And that's the influence track. So any of the stuff that tells you um how to move influence on the situation, the situation is what often what tells you how to how to move influence around. um I think it's part of the overtures as well. ah But as you're vying for influence, whoever has um the most amount of influence once the overture is done,
00:06:45
Truthiness
that's whose complication you flip. So you may have some idea of what's coming, um and if it's at your opponent's complication,
Speculation on Competitive Play Rules
00:06:53
Truthiness
you might have no idea what's coming, ah which to me is is the real fun of of the game there.
00:06:59
Truthiness
you just You're reacting. You've got to react on the fly. like Can you think of
00:07:03
Biggs
So to clarify ah to clarify the rules, you will know what the overture is, you'll know what the situation is, you'll know those two cards, you'll know one of two possible complications, and then you'll get to build your list based on that knowledge.
00:07:29
Truthiness
Yes, that's exactly how it works with an incident mission straight out of the box. um So again, no idea what they're going to do in competitive play, but the simple structure of that on the fly could be really intriguing. I mean, could can you think of any other game that has you do list building on the fly as part of the the game structure?
00:07:51
Biggs
I mean, there's some um there's some collectible card games that when you bring them to a tournament, you're given a sideboard where you're able to edit some of the cards that are like match-up specific, but that's the only real um parallel I can even think of. um Just being able to, I don't know if maybe in competitive play it'll be like you had, because there's the, um I forget what the wording is exactly. There's the core ah there's the core roster,
00:08:33
Biggs
ah the core officers, and then there's the transfer pool of officers.
00:08:38
Truthiness
Yeah, we'll get to that another day because that's that's a whole other thing.
00:08:39
Biggs
So there might be, yeah. So it's it's not so you'll have you'll have basically the core officers I'm imagining is something like your main deck.
00:08:53
Biggs
And then the the transfer pool is your sidebar where you're subbing guys in for specific specific incidents and complications.
00:09:01
Truthiness
Yeah, the transfer so the transfer pool is pretty much random, um and you don't necessarily even have to use it. so But again, that's as for a whole other episode, because there's a lot more that goes into just building that task force.
00:09:16
Truthiness
ah
00:09:16
Biggs
and we'll get And we'll get to that eventually, I'm sure.
00:09:18
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that's what the next episode. Nope. Nope.
00:09:24
Biggs
Somewhere, somewhere eventually.
00:09:26
Truthiness
Nope. Hey, there we go, episode seven. It's going to be episode seven.
00:09:30
Biggs
Yay, something to look forward to.
00:09:32
Truthiness
Exactly. Okay, um so reading an overture chart. So first things first, you got the name, obviously. So like, yeah the one that's in the rule book is Battlefield Rescue. The one I have up in front of me now is Neutral Zone Survey. Next below the title is just a little bit of flavor text. Just, you know, good old fashioned exposition for a Trek episode. Up, going across the top, this is the first thing that's really yeah game play important, is though just directives.
00:10:00
Truthiness
um So you have the the diplomacy, exploration, and combat ones, and they'll either be blue or orange telling you which side of the the directive you're going to start the game with. So unlike what you saw in a lot of demo games, you're not going to start completely peaceful with every single one of these.
00:10:20
Truthiness
ah to reflect a different overture. Like you might be in the middle of ah of a skirmish of some kind. You might be completely peaceful. it's It's dependent on the scenario. So that'll be different advantages for different factions depending on the overture, I think.
00:10:36
Biggs
Makes sense to me.
00:10:37
Truthiness
Oh, right. And these things can have split colors too.
00:10:41
Biggs
Oh, with a split color, then does each side decide what they want to start on?
00:10:42
Truthiness
Any of the overtures? um I'm scrolling through to look. I'll see any overtures with that. There's a complication with it, tactical extraction, and that is based on basically whoever whoever's complication it was. well we We're going to read through all of the the overtures and complications and kind of think through strategies with them um toward the end of the episode. So just but we're going to get a break through just how to read these things. um Up in the upper right corner is that category I was telling you about. That's how you tell what complications to put in the deck. And then going from left to right again, you have the sector setup, the fleet setup,
00:11:28
Truthiness
um and the general setup. So the sectors are one of three things. It's either one, which is solitary, two, which I think is helix, and three, trinary. There's ways to set this up specifically at the very end of the campaign guide and basically it just, the number of systems you're in, how often you're going to have to work between systems. Um, then they're very variable and you can, you have, I think just about equal representation in the starter deck ones, if I'm remembering correctly.
00:12:02
Truthiness
Yeah. A lot of solitaries and pretty equally split helix and trinary, I think.
00:12:09
Truthiness
And then fleets, um every single one of the starter ones start with one capital ship and two of either the support chips, the escorts, or crap, i um do you remember what that other category is, the little little science ship?
00:12:25
Biggs
uh escorts the federation being the only ones that have a thing that isn't uh a fighter
00:12:26
Truthiness
Is that the support ship? I don't remember what it's called. Sciencey thingy, stargazer thingy, and defiant thingy.
00:12:42
Truthiness
Basically, it's one large and two medium or smalls. This is what it comes down to. So you're
Mission Actions & Scoring
00:12:49
Truthiness
always going to have three ships in every single one of these starter scenarios, and you're always going to have a big boy. So every single one of your incident missions in the starter deck is going to have the gem of our battle cruiser and the galaxy class starship. Well, unless you're playing Federation on Federation or domain, you know, and then you're going to just have those.
00:13:09
Biggs
Good old mirror universe.
00:13:11
Truthiness
good old mirror universe or civil war. Did the minions ever have a civil war? Oh, I know.
00:13:16
Biggs
<unk> You'd have to ask someone else.
00:13:18
Truthiness
Yeah, I'm sure a galaxy class fired on a galaxy class some point. as Reasons, mirrors, science. Okay, so moving toward the center, what we have here is the mission action that can be paired with a little symbol here.
00:13:35
Truthiness
So I'm going to look at a new zone survey as an example. This is the action that your officers or even standby can do with an action.
00:13:46
Truthiness
ah so If the unit has stations such as auxiliaries and your ships, the little icon there tells you what station this is. so Remember, I think we were talking last week about how the instrument stations kind of met with the actual action, but you're going to find a lot of these, especially in the overture, the the instrument station is doing most of these things. In fact, is there a single one of these overtures? No, every single one of the overtures involves the instrument station.
00:14:18
Truthiness
as an option. Cool. So the inspiration objective station.
00:14:23
Biggs
but some of them But some of them use other things as well.
00:14:26
Truthiness
They do. Let's see. We got a couple of med bays. We got a weapon station. And then the situation looks like it's got the captain's chair involved as well. Okay. And if something does not, if a unit does not have a station, this would be a team, for example.
00:14:45
Truthiness
Then they can just do this action provided there within range. So we'll take neutral zone survey as an example. um Sensor sweep units at sensor range of an objective. and We'll get into what those different objective things are in a second. um they can They can test.
00:15:04
Truthiness
whatever ah they can test their ops plus logic and re-rolling the sensor value. And if they succeed, they remove the little claim flag. If it was yours, score a victory point. And if it was an opposing claim ah claim, it's a hostile act. And then any critical values, that so if you trigger the critical values of any of these things,
00:15:30
Truthiness
you don't get to count them toward the successes. So these are kind of like win harder dice rolls. If there are no opponents in units within sensor range of the objective scored an additional victory point. And then the little observes is allows you to move the influence marker.
00:15:46
Biggs
All right, so that is the special the special thing that all the ships now can do that's not printed on the ship card that can score you points during the overture.
00:16:01
Truthiness
Yeah. And then the, then finally, the last thing on the right there in red, the complication, it tells you when the complication is triggered. And so in the case of neutral zone survey, when all of the, uh, all of the opposing claim markers are on it are removed or the end of round three, you then flip a complication dependent on which side has the most influence. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
00:16:25
Biggs
Super simple. Couldn't be couldn't be easier.
00:16:29
Truthiness
All right, so flipping down to the Situation Guards, you have a lot of the same things. You got the name. What you don't have is any kind of directives because the situation doesn't and doesn't dictate the correctives. You have your category, which influences the complication.
00:16:45
Truthiness
And then you get your flavor text, any kind of special equipment that goes with it. I don't think there's any special equipment that goes with any of the starter ones. Nope. ah Feature setup. This is the thing that puts in anomalies and various other obstacles. um So this is the thing that will have like anomalous readings. Those are the little question marks. um There's also some ion clouds, debris fields, ah gravity rifts, all kinds of various terrain features.
00:17:13
Truthiness
that can be that are part of the the the part of the scenario.
Game End Conditions
00:17:18
Truthiness
um So next over, you gotta get another mission action. ah So this is the thing you can do that'll allow you to see what the anomalies might be and also move some influence markers around. And then finally, there's usually some little part that's telling you ah what exactly is going on with like the the game aquadrant anomaly For example, on the right there, it tells you exactly what the different anomalies turn into based on the numerical value. Because remember, these all have a printed one through, I think it's eight, right?
00:17:54
Biggs
Yeah, one through eight for the anomaly question marks.
00:17:58
Truthiness
Yeah, so one through eight, you flip them over and you just replace them with whatever um is on that little chart. And so that ah situation is pretty simple. It just adds a little bit of flavor and often a way to move the influence around.
00:18:16
Biggs
And more importantly, a way to set up favorable complications.
00:18:23
Truthiness
Yes, absolutely. And it's just another way beyond just doing the objectives ah to to add your influence to it. So set now you're at the end of the overture, it's time to flip the complication. You're going to see pretty much the same things. You got the name, you got your categories, you got your directive setups. What's interesting here is it immediately overrides whatever your directives were. so Somehow you had, say, flipped hostile on your yourre you're you're diplomatic directive for whatever reason. It now reverts to whatever is on the complication. So congratulations, Dominion. and You managed to work your way into getting a shoot. Sorry, it's peaceful now. Oops.
Reinforcements in Gameplay
00:19:13
Biggs
Womp womp wall.
00:19:19
Truthiness
All right, so what else we got here? um You got some flavor text again. You got the setup, so you're gonna oftentimes remove a lot of the objectives from the previous thing um and add new ones based on whatever it's telling you here. You might get some reinforcements. So yay, a whole other ship. This will come stock with your generic officer, the freebie officer that every ship gets, which I don't think we've really gotten to yet.
00:19:47
Truthiness
ah And you can obviously beam officers over to these ones as well if you want to move your officers around. um And then you got the the the mission action again. So it's telling you you know what you need to do to get more objective are more victory tokens. Yay! You'll find that these complications often have a lot more victory points up for grabs than the overtures. So it's very easy to claw your way back into a game with a complication.
00:20:18
Truthiness
if you are finding yourself a bit behind from the overture.
00:20:22
Biggs
Makes sense to me. So this is where the big point this is where the big points go. I'm just repeating you, it seems.
00:20:32
Truthiness
ah
00:20:32
Biggs
ah um'm not sure i have It's all explained very well. I'm not sure I have much to add here.
00:20:41
Truthiness
Well, you're you're here to look pretty.
00:20:44
Biggs
I do that well.
00:20:47
Truthiness
Oh, man, we forgot we were we were goingnna we we forgot something. Oh, well, we'll get to it in a minute. And then finally, you have the end of the game. So when it tells you generally how the game is going to end, usually it's six rounds.
00:21:00
Truthiness
um There are some that trigger it sooner. So just kind of like if something's a route, there's some things that will trigger, um like, for example, the contested outpost.
00:21:12
Truthiness
If it won round, one player controls all of the objectives.
00:21:14
Biggs
Contested territory.
00:21:16
Truthiness
All right, what did I say? can Oh, my God.
00:21:17
Biggs
contest You said contested outpost!
00:21:19
Truthiness
Oh, shame.
00:21:21
Biggs
ah um
00:21:24
Truthiness
Shame.
00:21:26
Biggs
I'm sure everyone's gonna call a contested outpost.
00:21:30
Truthiness
Contested territory, for example, if all of the objectives are controlled by one player, that ends the game. And it also triggers any additional victory tokens that might be up for grabs at the end of the game. So again, if you're behind,
00:21:45
Truthiness
for a chunk a large chunk of the game, a lot of these complications give you ways to get yourself back into the game at the last minute. um So again, taking condensed territory as an example, each player cohorts an additional two victory tokens for each objective with a friendly a little ah claim marker that they occupy, um in addition to you know what happens every round. like If I remember this one, yeah, you're scoring one,
00:22:14
Truthiness
every round in the ready phase, but the end of the game, you score two. So if you you you're behind...
00:22:20
Biggs
So even if even if someone's scoring three around, three around, and then you go in and sweep them, and all of a sudden you're scoring eight.
00:22:33
Truthiness
which gets you right back in the game. OK, so what I want to do is go through all of these and try to start talking strategy with you. um So we'll start with neutral zone survey. We've got all of our directives set to blue. ah We have ah just a Helix set up, so two systems, the usual fleet stuff, and the set up. So players set up, alternates placing six signal objectives. So there is a solid objective symbol and a signal
00:23:05
Truthiness
objective symbol. The main difference here is that solid objectives you can put teams on. So you can beam a team down to a solid objective. A signal objective is not. It's just in space. So there's no teams that are able to go there. That's literally only difference. For this one, each signal objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of another objective. And after placing all of the objectives of a player, play or after placing an objective a player places an opposing claim flag on it. And then the mission action here is sensor sweep units at sensor range of an objective can with a um with a claim flag can test their ops plus ro logic from the officer. So again, this is those keywords that are on the officers that they don't really seem to have anything in the role. It's literally just word, match word, you get blacked out. Yay.
00:24:02
Biggs
So look through your officers for logic.
00:24:06
Truthiness
Exactly. And that's something you're going to find yourself doing. And that's why the game baseline has fleet and crew selection after you know what's in the objective deck.
00:24:17
Truthiness
Because you're going to want to tailor your officers to the mission. All right. So you success, you remove the claim flag. And if it was one of yours, you score a victory token.
00:24:27
Truthiness
If it was posing, it's a hostile act. ah act general Hostile act means things go boom, boom.
00:24:30
Biggs
What's a hostile act?
00:24:35
Biggs
So this would this would change your I'm shooting enemy ships flag over.
00:24:35
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:24:44
Truthiness
Yeah, I'm trying to remember all of them. Let me see if I can have them pull up. who cau
00:24:53
Biggs
dead space we've got some dead space dead space in the podcast while truthness looks up the rules yep dead air yep we got dead air
00:25:09
Truthiness
I hate you. We have an edit system that will edit out log pauses and you are talking through them.
00:25:16
Biggs
and
00:25:18
Truthiness
These are staying in just to spite you.
00:25:25
Biggs
You say this like I don't know it.
00:25:32
Truthiness
I'm just going to start mashing the soundboard.
00:25:36
Biggs
We are building a respectable sound board just so you know. You the viewer.
00:25:51
Truthiness
just for you the viewer.
00:25:56
Truthiness
ah What was I even looking up? You've distracted me entirely.
00:25:57
Biggs
You're looking up ah hostile. which which one Which of the which are the ah cards gets flipped with a hostile act?
00:26:08
Truthiness
oh
00:26:09
Truthiness
Okay, here we go. So that is the, I've forgotten the names of these things. So that's diplomacy. Oh God, what are the names of these damn things again?
00:26:21
Truthiness
It's the one with the little burning fist.
00:26:22
Biggs
there's the there's the There's the ships, there's the talking, and then there's the teams.
00:26:28
Truthiness
Yeah, so for the Federation, this would be we come in peace. So if you do a hostile act, ah before your units perform hostile acts, score two negative victory points, and then set this directive to hostile. um So generally, bad idea to do hostile
Penalties for Hostile Acts
00:26:45
Truthiness
actions, especially for the Federation. ah Whereas for the Dominion, if you're behind, you actually...
00:26:55
Truthiness
can do this pretty much with just a hail. um So we that's another episode I believe. But yes, generally, you're going to be penalized for doing hostile acts without any kind of provocation.
00:27:05
Truthiness
um And then there's also an aggressive act, which is kind of Close, but not quite. It only penalizes you one um one victory token. But again, all of these things generally not a good idea to do a hostile act unless you know you're going to win super hard by doing so.
00:27:26
Biggs
Yes. And plus, remember your hostile act, changing your changing your stance there can just be erased once the complication rolls around.
00:27:39
Truthiness
Yeah. So sometimes you really got to think about it. um It goes back to that quote from Gerns is it's ah it's about competition and you know vying for influence, but not necessarily a war game um all the time. Oh yeah. Where were the other things? Okay. The critical effects. If there are no opposing units in sensor range, score of the objective, score an additional victory token. So again, it's a win-harder thing.
00:28:04
Truthiness
And this one is actually, where you can also move the influence thing here. So you can move it one track. ah When it says move it one, all you're doing it is moving it ah one toward your side. So once you're at like that apex of the triangle that forms from putting the complications down, there's really
Influence Marker Mechanics
00:28:23
Truthiness
no point to influence. And it only takes two influence results to move it to your side. um And three is the maximum that's going to make it ever move.
00:28:34
Truthiness
So it's important, but don't get too hung up on you know rolling. like don't Don't worry about rerolling to get a ton of influence, ah because even one can be a substantial change. Okay, and then finally, the last thing here, end of the round when all of the objective claim flags are removed, um or end of round three, and then it flips over to the complication.
00:29:01
Truthiness
So what do you think here? This favor.
00:29:04
Biggs
So sounds like it favors um it favors ships with a lot of engineering crew and officers with logic.
00:29:15
Truthiness
Yep, it looks pretty evenly spread. You got the even number of objectives here. um You're placing the opposing ones.
00:29:27
Truthiness
So I suspect there's going to be a lot of placing on your side of the board.
00:29:33
Biggs
placing them defensively, yeah making them have to fly all the way across the board.
00:29:35
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:29:38
Biggs
And then you can leave one of your guys behind so that you can um so that you can tag whatever they're looking at to make sure that they can't get the win more result.
00:29:38
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:29:54
Truthiness
Yeah, just keeping yourself within that senses range of those those objectives just to yeah keep the the thing down. I suspect a lot of these are going to be fairly even.
00:30:05
Truthiness
you know there's There's a lot of incentive here to you know just let the other guy get his three and you get your three um because, yeah.
00:30:13
Biggs
But you might be, depending on how the complications are shaking out and what you know about the complication you might get, there might be some jockeying for position once that complication drops. So if you see If you see all of a sudden, hey, wait a minute, all of his ships are crowding around my ships and there's only one guy left flying around completing the objectives. Hmm. What's on its way?
00:30:49
Truthiness
Yeah, and I think this is a good example of where getting your complication can make a difference. Even if you're not set up perfectly to take advantage of it, you can put yourself in a position to to take advantage of at least the how the complication sets up. All right, you anything else you want to talk about with that one?
00:31:11
Biggs
Nope, well, ready to move on.
00:31:13
Truthiness
Okay. Show the flag is the next one we're going to talk about. So this is a a Helix set up again. So two systems, usual fleet thing um set up. you Players alternate put a placing four solid objectives. These are our four rally points is what the card calls it. These are solid objectives with capacity two. Capacity just tells you how many teams you can have on it.
00:31:37
Truthiness
So two teams can occupy this thing. Each solid objecting is placed in a system beyond six inches of another solid objective. So this is another one, even split. The mission action, pontificate.
00:31:49
Truthiness
This is um the instrument station pontificate. Did they really call this pontificate?
00:31:55
Biggs
They did.
00:31:56
Truthiness
Yeah. and yeah Oh, I forgot the the directives. Sorry. so we're We're calm on the combat and diplomacy. I remembered to pull this one up this time, so I remembered the names of them.
00:32:07
Truthiness
And ah we are hostile on exploration. So for the Federation, what does that do? It just basically manage manages, that's the one that manages your teams.
00:32:20
Truthiness
So the Federation is doing...
00:32:24
Truthiness
security or survey teams for alpha, security or survey teams for beta, and engineering teams or security teams for what's that Y in the Greek alphabet? Is that gamma?
00:32:34
Biggs
Gamma. Gamma.
00:32:37
Truthiness
I know things. I smart.
00:32:40
Biggs
I can't believe that I was required for this.
00:32:43
Truthiness
yeah All right, and then Dominion is assault team or diplomatic, Envoy, Beta is assault team or diplomatic, Envoy, and Gamma is assault team or damage control team.
00:32:53
Truthiness
So um yeah, the Dominion like assaulting things.
00:32:58
Biggs
I see.
00:32:58
Truthiness
Shocker. that's Yeah, it's something to say for the team's episode, but it's interesting that they can crank out more, I guess, yeah, the Federation can have security teams on everything too.
00:33:09
Truthiness
Nevermind, not something to talk about. Okay, so that one's hostile, so that sets your teams pontificate. Units at comms range of an objective without a friendly control marker can test command plus discipline with a difficulty of two, re-rolling their instrument chooses that instruments or sensors. I've forgotten the symbol that fast.
00:33:31
Truthiness
um
00:33:32
Biggs
Sensors.
00:33:33
Truthiness
and plus one difficulty if there's an opposing team on the solid objective. If you succeed, if there is no claim flag, place a friendly claim flag.
00:33:44
Truthiness
and score a victory point. um If there is an opposing flag, or replace it with a friendly flag instead, but that's a hostile act. And then finally, critical. um If there are no marked flags on it at all, score an additional victory token. And then the usual observation result is one influence marker move.
00:34:05
Truthiness
complication, usual end of round when all of these solid objectives have a flag on them, or the end of round three. Each player scores a victory point ah for each system they in which they control a objective, so and a victory token for each system in which they control most. So, yeah. What's your thing in here?
00:34:30
Biggs
So as the person who places the last rally point, you may want to throw that last rally point into your opponent's um into your opponent's side to make it so that you're easily able to have the most rally points in a system.
00:34:58
Biggs
by just claiming the one that's right by the system you're deploying to.
00:35:04
Truthiness
Yeah, I suspect the the last one's gonna shape this the most, because i because the first two that go down are probably just gonna be one in this system, one in the other, close to me. um If you could overload...
00:35:15
Biggs
Two super close to me, and then one far away from...
00:35:16
Truthiness
yeah
00:35:20
Truthiness
Yeah, if you can overload a system, that might that might be something that could really favor you, because then you can just... Of course, then again, you can put two solid objectives closest to you in one system and kind of overload that system.
00:35:34
Truthiness
So you have a shot at that's probably three instead of just two, but I do see this one probably splitting fairly evenly on two, but it's gonna it's going to probably come
00:35:45
Biggs
man You can play it safe, as the as the last person you can play it safe and go for two ah two easy ones near you, or you can be bold and try to ah try to make it a little more exciting.
00:36:08
Truthiness
Yeah, I think this one might favor the Dominion slightly. um Federation and Dominion are pretty even on the command stats for their crews. But if I'm remembering the Dominion roster, discipline, I think, is a lot more common. um So they might have an easier time accomplishing this. Although when it comes to that re-roll stat, I think the Federation's generally better. I don't know. I feel like discipline probably might might help give the Dominion a slight edge here.
00:36:36
Biggs
I guess it depends on who has the better ops for their ships.
00:36:41
Truthiness
Yeah, that would be for for for the Nutrizone survey, but show the flag is is a discipline. There's a command one. Okay, distress call.
00:36:50
Biggs
yeah
00:36:52
Truthiness
We'll move on to this one. All the directives are calm. This is a three system scenario and set up your alternating six signal locations um with, okay, they're calling them signal locations, but these are solid objectives um with capacity.
00:37:09
Biggs
They're locations, they're not signals.
00:37:12
Truthiness
Yeah, so there are solid objectives with capacity three and unstable two. I should have looked up what unstable two does.
00:37:22
Biggs
Yep. So one thing to know about this game is that there's a lot of key words that you will, I'm sure, start to remember exactly what they do and how they work
00:37:31
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:37:40
Biggs
But ah you're going to be referencing the 100 page rulebook a lot.
00:37:42
Truthiness
it It'll take time and this is.
00:37:48
Truthiness
Yep. And. you'll It'll, I promise, reps and time. I'm um like three runs removed from looking at these rules less, so yay me.
00:37:59
Biggs
Yay.
00:37:59
Truthiness
Sorry, we're doing a podcast. I definitely you should add this fresh air in my head. But anyway, unstable too. So during the hazard phase, each unit it within two inches of this feature must make a test with their ops plus mechanics with a re-roll of their impulse turn.
00:38:16
Truthiness
That's a little interesting. um if And the difficulty is whatever the value is. So for unstable two, um it's difficulty two. If you succeed, you only get two and ah hazard tokens.
00:38:31
Truthiness
um oh Yeah, that's the success.
00:38:32
Biggs
Oh, no.
00:38:34
Truthiness
ah the
00:38:34
Biggs
Oh, no.
00:38:35
Truthiness
The critical results allow you to remove one of those hazards for every critical result. On a failure, you're going to add one hazard plus one hazard per point by which you failed the test.
00:38:49
Truthiness
Then if the ship has three or more hazard tokens, any opponent may remove three from the ship and have it sustain one crew loss. It bad.
00:38:57
Biggs
o Oh, no.
00:38:58
Truthiness
It real bad. um so Yeah, but don't don't get within two inches of these things. like Just say as far away as you can. So each objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of all other objectives. The mission action in on the instrument station is to decipher the message. yeah It's a sensor range of the objective without a control marker can test for science plus culture, rerolling sensors, and minus one difficulty if there is a friendly unit on the outpost.
00:39:31
Biggs
Just thinking back to um the Federation and Dominion um small ships, your Defiant and your Jem'Hadar Fighter, they've only got two blue dice. It's not a lot of not a lot of science to work with here.
00:39:56
Truthiness
Nope, and hey, the technically for these, you could bring two stargazer glasses for your for your mediums or smalls, and you could have three ships that can test this. And then, of course, the Federation teams, if I'm remembering correctly, generally have better science as well. um Let me see here. so to today Shock of Shockers, the gem who are awful at science.
00:40:24
Truthiness
Who'd have thunk it? Yeah, so the teams, the survey teams have three signs for the Federation. The the diplomatic employees, which is the best science for the Dominion are only two.
00:40:35
Truthiness
So yeah, ah science, not a Dominion strong suit. This is not one you generally want to see as the Dominion.
00:40:41
Biggs
No.
00:40:44
Biggs
No, I suppose not.
00:40:46
Truthiness
Um, so if you succeed the test, uh, score a Victor token and then place a claim marker on it. And then the usual, uh, influence marker for the observes complication at the end of the round, all, if all objectives have a claim marker on it or the end of round three.
00:41:05
Truthiness
So yeah. Um, this, this, this is one of the Federation wants to see. Bad. Um, yeah.
00:41:11
Biggs
Yeah. that's ah That's a lot of, that's a lot of ah I mean, still it's a maximum of six points, but that's still, if you're the Federation, you're looking at maybe outscoring four to two.
00:41:27
Biggs
Maybe yeah maybe maybe it turns maybe the distress call turns into an easy way for the Dominion to send out a hail and go hostile.
00:41:27
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:41:38
Truthiness
Yeah, maybe with the Dominion, you use your battle cruiser, get a couple, deal with being behind by two and just count on being able to just kind of do your... um diplomatic directive and just go totally hostile once the complication flips. And maybe just try and use the situation to kind of give you influence while the yeah Federation is doing their stupid little surveys. Alternatively, you could go, you know, not hostile, but you go aggressive actions. So like team actions against their teams and just make their life miserable. um But there's really no good way to slice it. This is a bad one for the Dominion.
00:42:20
Truthiness
Okay, what's our next one?
00:42:22
Biggs
Looks like Battlefield Rescue.
00:42:22
Truthiness
Battlefield rescue, okay. ah So this is a single system, usual fleets, players alternate four. wreckage drifts, which are solid objectives with capacity to an unstable one. So not nearly as bad as the last one, um but still unstable. i Each objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of other objectives. After setup, each player chooses an unused officer from their roster and sets that card side as a possible survivor with their trauma equal to their health value. So basically, this guy's incapacitated.
00:43:03
Truthiness
And yeah, could be the survivor, uh, from your instruments panel or your medical bay, or again, teams can do this as well. Uh, units at com range of the objective can test, uh, their command and biology with a difficulty at three and reroll sensor value. I'm a success if there's no.
00:43:22
Truthiness
claim marker on the objective, score a victory point, and place a claim marker on the objective. Critical if testing unit is a team and the friendly possible survivor has not been found, attach that officer to the committed team and then score two victory points and move the influence marker to.
00:43:39
Truthiness
Critical is huge on this one. Oh my.
00:43:42
Biggs
Yeah, seriously.
00:43:43
Truthiness
You got a free officer and some victory points.
00:43:46
Biggs
ah An injured officer, but...
00:43:48
Truthiness
Yeah, true. You can get them to the med bay real fast and you've got yourself a freebie.
00:43:54
Biggs
And it's just any unused it's just any unused officer, so ah free, most expensive officer you can cram in there.
00:43:54
Truthiness
Okay. um Yeah.
00:44:02
Truthiness
Yeah, right. Yeah. Miles O'Brien. Boom. Your injury.
00:44:08
Truthiness
All right, it's a complication when end of around when all objectives have been claimed or end around three, each player scores and a victory point if they control two or more solid objectives and two more victory points if their possible survivor is not incapacitated. So if you get him and heal him, oh my goodness, four freaking objective points or victory tokens right there.
00:44:36
Biggs
dang
00:44:36
Truthiness
And then I think we forgot the directives. um So the directives are,
00:44:42
Biggs
Dang No fleet shooting angry talking and angry ground shooting
Mission Victory Conditions
00:44:50
Truthiness
yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:52
Biggs
I'll let you remember what they're called
00:44:54
Truthiness
Yeah, that's what I was trying to remember. i I had it and then we had to look up unstable and I completely lost it.
00:44:58
Biggs
<unk>
00:45:02
Truthiness
Oh, God.
00:45:03
Biggs
yeah but ah We'll get the terminology at some point.
00:45:08
Truthiness
Hey, I'm trying, I'm trying hard, damn it.
00:45:09
Biggs
that yeah
00:45:13
Truthiness
ah
00:45:14
Biggs
it's ah It's a thing.
00:45:17
Truthiness
Yeah, and that's why it goes back to what we said the first episode.
00:45:17
Biggs
it's a
00:45:20
Truthiness
it's Fluency in these cards is a big part of of the game. There's a heavy use of symbology, so if you're not getting it right away, don't worry about it. like And it doesn't even really matter what the names are at the end of the day.
00:45:33
Truthiness
Do you remember what Armada's red, yellow, and blue objective categories are actually called? I don't. They have names.
00:45:41
Biggs
No, they do. That's red.
00:45:43
Truthiness
I think navigation's one of them.
00:45:44
Biggs
They do have names. It's red, yellow, and blue.
00:45:47
Truthiness
Exactly. So this one's basically the, the, the ship shooty, the team's one and the hail card. at ah yeah Combat, combat, diplomacy, exploration.
00:45:56
Biggs
and ta Talkie, talkie, talkie.
00:46:01
Truthiness
So your, your diplomacy, your if diplomacy and exploration directives are hostile in the battlefield rescue.
00:46:02
Biggs
Talkie ship shootie, ground shootie.
00:46:09
Truthiness
All right. Moving on, we got two more to get through on the overtures. So unstable discovery. This is a solitary system. Set up players alternate placing six unusual readings.
00:46:21
Truthiness
These are the signal.
00:46:22
Biggs
but what are But what are the directives?
00:46:25
Truthiness
Ah, I keep skipping them, don't I?
00:46:28
Biggs
Walmart's still thinking about them.
00:46:29
Truthiness
yeah So the combat and diplomacy objectives are calm. The exploration objective is hostile. So that means Aggressive X can go on unchecked and you have a lot more access to your combat teams.
00:46:44
Truthiness
Okay. ah Setup players alternate placing six unusual readings, which are so signal objectives with treacherous two. Oh, God, I'm going to have to look that up too now.
00:46:55
Truthiness
Treacherous. Treacherous X, one is space unit just you while a space unit performs a warp maneuver that crosses this feature, it must immediately resolve the following test. Oh god, I remember this one. I've triggered this one. It's bad.
00:47:12
Truthiness
um So it's your ops plus navigation, re-rolling it, sensors. If you succeed, complete the maneuver and add two ah hazard tokens. um On a critical, you remove one hazard token per critical. On a failure, add one hazard token plus one per failure. Then the opponent places the space unit touching the feature. Finally, the unit sustains three damage to its forend.
00:47:39
Biggs
oh
00:47:40
Truthiness
Yeah. Real bad. Real bad. Do not, do not, do not warp over these things.
00:47:44
Biggs
Ohhhh!
00:47:47
Truthiness
I've done it. Or I've seen it done. Did I do it? I don't know. We've done it. um it's um It's a very quick outing.
00:47:54
Biggs
are you Are you able to take that damage to shields?
00:47:58
Truthiness
Yes. It's damage.
00:48:00
Biggs
Okay.
00:48:00
Truthiness
Yeah. It's not just straight cards.
00:48:04
Biggs
Aww.
00:48:04
Truthiness
don't yeah Okay, so ah each signal objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of any other signal objectives. So six, alternating, no teams landing on these things. Yay. Okay, mission action is decode the signal which can be done from the instruments or the medbay. Units at sensor range of an objective without a a claim flag can test science plus logic, ah difficulty three. On a success, you score a victory token,
00:48:36
Truthiness
um If the objective is the signal objective, remove it, and if it is a solid objective, place a friendly flag on it. Wait a minute. Was there?
00:48:46
Biggs
How? Dead.
00:48:48
Truthiness
Oh, here we go. That's why. Because you get to the critical.
00:48:49
Biggs
Yeah.
00:48:51
Truthiness
Place a promising lead, which is a solid objective with k capacity three and unstable two. It must be placed beyond six inches of any other objective or friendly unit.
00:49:01
Truthiness
A maximum of three of these can be placed in this way. So yeah, criticals. Yeah, start to to give you stuff. um And if the testing team is if testing unit is a team, score an additional two victory tokens and then the usual influence move. Complication, head around when there are no signal objectives or the end of round three. Okay, ah yeah, so what are you thinking?
00:49:28
Biggs
Hmm.
00:49:29
Truthiness
Mederation again?
00:49:30
Biggs
Well, the obvious is science and logic, which ah science benefits the Federation, but it's a little bit lower.
00:49:39
Truthiness
Yeah, difficulty three ain't quite as bad.
00:49:43
Biggs
So as long as you got someone as long as you got someone with logic on board, um you can make it um with your Gem Hadar fighters.
00:49:43
Truthiness
ba in
00:49:48
Truthiness
had to
00:49:56
Biggs
i don't know what the I don't know what the teams look like, but maybe there's a team that would be better for it.
00:49:57
Truthiness
Okay. Yeah.
00:50:02
Truthiness
a Two, it's got two. So this is another one. You're probably leaning on the the battle cruiser quite a bit. um I'd have to look at their roster again. I can't remember how much logic is in there.
00:50:13
Truthiness
That would probably determine quite a bit. Like if you put somebody with logic either at the station or as part of one of the diplomatic invoice, maybe that helps.
00:50:23
Biggs
I mean, they can still, the the fighters can still test for, there's no penalty for failure, so they can still test it to move the influence markers.
00:50:23
Truthiness
Okay. I can try.
00:50:34
Truthiness
Yeah, and it's not gonna hurt you to to just roll the dice and you know you got two, you can theoretically pass a three difficulty test. Actually, you can technically pass a four difficulty test with doubles, but I mean, the odds are just really low.
00:50:43
Biggs
with ah With a double.
00:50:48
Truthiness
Okay, on to our final overture, missing survey teams, column for all directives. This is a Helix system, so two systems. For setup, players alternate placing three scouting points, which are solid objectives with capacity three and massive one. Massive one means after a space unit performs a maneuver, if it is within two inches of the feature, it must take a command plus navigation test with the difficulty of the X. So just one um with rerolling impulse turn value. And once again, success gives you two peril.
00:51:23
Truthiness
So still not good.
00:51:24
Biggs
Oh,
00:51:25
Truthiness
um Criticals remove one per critical. And then for failure, you add a one hazard plus one per failure, and then the opponent may rotate the ship up to one impulse click.
00:51:36
Truthiness
Not too bad.
00:51:37
Biggs
oo okay.
00:51:39
Truthiness
The hazards aren't great. Those you know get your opponent's re-rolls when shooting at you, or some other things if I'm remembering correctly. But overall, not too bad. um Just you know don't get too close.
00:51:51
Truthiness
because I think you can you can probably do this test. Yeah, sensor the range is usually beyond two inches depending on the spacing of the ships. Just keep your distance.
00:51:59
Biggs
Yeah, but there's there's something else.
00:52:02
Truthiness
All right, each object are each best place you placed in a system and beyond six inches of other objectives. Then players alternate placing three suspicious regions. These are signal objectives with treacherous two and unstable two, beyond six inches of another object.
00:52:18
Truthiness
so
00:52:19
Biggs
i feel like we've I feel like we've seen treacherous too.
00:52:23
Truthiness
Yeah, we have. That's the one that you don't want to warp over.
00:52:26
Biggs
yeah What about Unstable 2?
00:52:26
Truthiness
Don't do that.
00:52:28
Biggs
What was that again?
00:52:28
Truthiness
Yeah, we did that one too. That one's a so when's the ah the crew loss.
00:52:30
Biggs
That one was the but Don't Get Near It.
00:52:34
Truthiness
This is the crew loss.
00:52:35
Biggs
Oh, okay.
00:52:36
Truthiness
Yeah, this is within two inches crew loss. The other treacherous is if you warp over it, and massive is within two inches. So generally, you want to keep your distance from all of these objectives. They're not great.
00:52:47
Truthiness
um This is a different one than we've seen so far. So usually it's been even placements um of types of objectives. This one has three and three.
00:53:00
Truthiness
So I guess maybe let's get into a little more of what the the mission action is here to hear see what kind of influence that would have. So tactical appraisal. This one's instruments and tactical station. Units at sensor range of an objective without a claim marker can test their ops plus navigation, rerolling their sensors. On a success, you get a victory token. If the objective is solid, place a flag on it. If it is a signal objective, remove it. On a testing unit is a team, score an additional victory point.
00:53:29
Truthiness
ah And then for influence, the only one you can do to get influence off here is the signal objectives, however. So you can score more points off of using teams on the solid objectives, but you'll get more influence the influence off of the signal objectives.
00:53:47
Truthiness
That's pretty different. OK, and then in the hazard phase, the trailing placer player chooses one solid objective and or i'm sorry ah objective and moves it up to three inches.
00:53:54
Biggs
and
00:53:58
Truthiness
It cannot enter or leave a system in this way at the end of the round when all solid objectives are claimed or at the end of round three.
00:54:01
Biggs
oh
00:54:07
Truthiness
This one is probably...
00:54:08
Biggs
You can end it quick with solid objectives and oh oh moving that hazard, I can see ways to use that ah offensively.
00:54:09
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:54:16
Truthiness
yeah
00:54:18
Truthiness
Yeah, three inches is not small in this game. It's not huge, but they it ain't small. um
00:54:26
Biggs
oh you were gonna Oh, you were going to warp out to the other sector.
00:54:31
Truthiness
Nope. You don't want to do that now. is
00:54:35
Biggs
but
00:54:37
Truthiness
Yeah. Oh, God. So I think the player who gets the first placement probably gets the advantage here because those solid objectives can end this fast. And if you're alternating, you get two of them. So how do you mi mitigate this as the second player placing?
00:54:58
Biggs
ah the The ways to mitigate this as the second player, I would say, would be to... ah those Those suspicious readings are our nasty little guys. I would place them i would place them near the...
00:55:24
Biggs
near the enemy's objectives near the enemy's solid objectives so that when you're inevitably trailing, you can start
Strategy for Placing Objectives
00:55:35
Biggs
messing with their ships.
00:55:37
Truthiness
Maybe you try and just hit, maybe you, uh, since we're in a two system thing here, maybe you put your, so your solid objective fairly close to the first one they place and then just go, you know, maximum warp straight at it.
00:55:51
Biggs
Hmm.
00:55:52
Truthiness
Like warp goes pretty far. Like you can.
00:55:55
Biggs
yeah just say just say screw it we're all it's a two so it's a two system uh thing but we're all just going to be playing in one something like that
00:56:05
Truthiness
Yeah. So like, um, like like what's the gem of our fighter warp nine, warp eight, but you you can theoretically warp twice in turn, one with the officer at the command debt chair, and then one with your standby, like you and you can get there on turn one.
00:56:22
Biggs
here
00:56:25
Truthiness
I don't know, this one's this one's definitely the most this ones most different from the rest of the overtures.
00:56:31
Biggs
it will be It will be interesting to see how people figure this one out. and the the I will say what I like about choosing these randomly rather than everyone agreeing to one is that it will force everybody to have a plan for any of the overtures.
00:56:37
Truthiness
yeah
00:56:58
Biggs
You might not, there's a lot that you might not see, but jim you still might see it, you know?
00:57:00
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah. All right, so now we're moving into the situation. um So again, this is I'm going to probably go through these pretty quick. I don't know how much we're going to talk to them. We've already been talking for a while. um So gamma quadrant anomalies, feature set up. These are just six question mark markers. The anomalous readings randomly selecting one through eight. They must be placed beyond four inches of any other object. This would be including objectives.
00:57:28
Truthiness
You can scan the anomaly from either the captain's chair or the instruments, and units of such range um can test to science plus navigation. For excess, they expose whatever the anomaly is, and you can move the influence marker with the usual observed token. um So on one to two, nothing but a glitch in the sensors, space units within two inches.
00:57:51
Truthiness
Take a hazard token three is a comet which has Abundant two and capacity two. Oh god. I have to look up abundant now
00:58:04
Truthiness
Abundant, each unit with no advantage within two inches gains the following action. Gather resources. Difficulty three, test science plus commerce or field craft. On a success, you add an advantage token plus one advantage token ah by which you exceed the difficulty to a maximum of the X. So yeah, comment, lineable comment. That's good, yay.
00:58:26
Biggs
Nice.
00:58:28
Truthiness
um Four is an Abstable Nebula with obscuring two units within two inches. This feature increases evasion vet by two and treats its comms and sensor range as two.
00:58:40
Truthiness
That's pretty sweet. It makes it very hard sticking damage. So if you end up in a hostile situation and you stick close to the Nebula, that's going to be hard to stick damage, especially on a Defiant or a Geminar Fighter.
00:58:54
Truthiness
I did four damage.
00:58:54
Biggs
Where all of a sudden youre you need four just ah just to pin them down.
00:58:57
Truthiness
to do anything. Yeah. Okay. Five through six is a gravity, which is treacherous three. That's our, oh God, don't warp over this. um And by the way, ah anomalies, if you do warp over them, they f flip.
00:59:10
Truthiness
um So you can be surprised by a sudden gravity rift that really, really hurts.
00:59:11
Biggs
one um
00:59:21
Truthiness
um Same goes for Pulsar. This one's a massive one, unstable two, and treacherous two. So all of those horrible things we talked about in the objectives, it does that. Yay.
00:59:32
Truthiness
Okay.
00:59:32
Biggs
That's...
00:59:33
Truthiness
just Now, this arrived in Ion Storms.
00:59:34
Biggs
That's no bueno.
00:59:37
Truthiness
This one has four Ion Clouds. ah So those were the these are obscuring one and treacherous three. So that's not great.
00:59:48
Truthiness
um You just got to make sure you don't do this. Go over to this guy at warp. Otherwise, it helps you with the the same thing as the nebulas. All of all the ion clouds are placed beyond four inches of another object. The mission action or the situation action is fog of war. Hostile acts performed by units within two inches of an ion cloud do not trigger the victory point penalty on their controller's objective. directive Ooh.
01:00:20
Biggs
Hmm, a little, a little rooty.
01:00:22
Truthiness
You want to do some some dirty stuff, this thing could really help you.
01:00:25
Biggs
Excuse me, point and shooty.
01:00:25
Truthiness
Yeah.
01:00:28
Truthiness
All right, in the hazard phase, each space unit at two inches of a ion cloud must test ops plus mechanics with a re-roll of their shield value for a difficulty of three.
01:00:41
Truthiness
Success, no effect. ah On two criticals, you can add an advantage token, the usual influence thing, and on a failure, you're going to add a hazard token and lose two energy.
01:00:56
Truthiness
So this thing, no.
01:00:57
Biggs
Not the worst, not the best.
01:00:59
Truthiness
And it lets you do some some stuff, some some stuff ah without triggering a mutual point penalty. that's That's nice, especially for the domain, I feel, on some of those silly science objectives.
01:01:13
Truthiness
Silly science. Okay, delegate treaty, feature set up, players alternate placing two gravity rifts, which are massive one and treacherous three. We've already talked about those. And then four warning buoys. These are going to be the question marks randomly selecting four, one through eight. um And each gravity rift and a warning buoy must be placed beyond fortune and just any other object. The usual language at this point. All right, um the warning buoys our bait do the diplomatic incident channel. So one through three, it's a broadcast warning, each space unit within two inches at one hazard token, or I'm sorry. um Oh my God, I'm blanking. What is that symbol?
01:01:58
Biggs
uh disadvantage crud
01:02:00
Truthiness
Oh goodness, advantage and hazard token.
01:02:04
Biggs
hazard
01:02:06
Truthiness
ah two if at are One at green alert, two at yellow alert, and three at red alert. Then the unit's owner places one and new boring buoy. Return the removed one to the stock, then randomly select the new one beyond four inches of any other object.
01:02:24
Truthiness
Ew, I don't like that. Four through six, a warning shot, place each space unit to it just saying three damage to its nearest, um it to its end nearest to the token.
01:02:38
Truthiness
And then four, seven and eight is political file. Each space unit at two inches must test command variables. So honestly, on failure, his players course. nick if victory token This one stinks.
01:02:49
Biggs
Ooh.
01:02:52
Truthiness
I hate this. There are no good, there are no good things.
01:02:57
Biggs
No, they're not.
01:02:59
Truthiness
just Just stay the hell away from them. Even you got to be four inches from objectives, I feel like this is why you can really mess with somebody and the approach their objectives.
01:03:08
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
01:03:10
Truthiness
Because from a situation happens after the objective placement, right?
01:03:16
Biggs
I think so.
01:03:17
Truthiness
Yeah. so you can I think this one really helps somebody who's like ah like the the missing survey teams you were talking about there, um that last one. I think this is one that could really help mitigate some of those approaches for somebody you think has an advantage. It's, I don't know, it mean. Okay. Hostile Raiders. um Players alternate placing two nebulas, then four distress buoys. I'm sorry, the two nebulas have obscuring one and then distress buoys
01:03:51
Truthiness
um have treacherous to lose use with little question mark randomly selecting four out of one through eight each nebula and each distress really must be beyond four inches of any other object tactical sweep units at sensor range of a Distress Buoy can test three ops, plus navigation, rear-reeling sensors. Under success, you look at it at the ah and then expose it or remove it six inches. So you can look at this thing and decide whether you you want it to go away or if you want to flip it. It must be placed within two inches of any other object if you do move it and then the usual influence move.
01:04:30
Truthiness
The distress beacon table remove it and on a one through two survivors and escape pod. Yeah, you get a victory point. Um, three through seven traps at my pirates place, uh, place the, uh, the token with a minefield, which is unstable two and treasures two and eight of a rotter. The trailing player places one hostile radar auxiliary unit at six inches of the token before removing the token. Uh, that's complicated as hell.
01:05:01
Biggs
That is, I don't even know what an auxiliary unit token is.
01:05:04
Truthiness
It's basically shuttle crafts and stuff like that. it's And this is where things get really complicated. And this is where I think they they could use to smooth some stuff out, um especially when we get into the complications.
01:05:17
Truthiness
It can have a lot of stuff on the table.
01:05:20
Biggs
Hmm.
01:05:21
Truthiness
I like this one. Okay. Last one. i Last situation is anomalous objects. Players alternate placing six strange beacons with capacity to randomly selecting six of the one through eight with each question mark token being placed within four inches beyond any other object. The mission action is research the object with the instruments or medical bay.
01:05:45
Truthiness
units at sensor range of a strange beacon can test three signs plus culture and rerolling sensors on a success. You had an advantage token. um Look at the strange beacon and you may expose it on a failure. You add a hazard token.
01:06:02
Truthiness
All right, strange beacon table. It's either an ancient archive with abundant three and capacity two, and each space within two inches as an advantage token.
01:06:09
Biggs
Ooh.
01:06:12
Truthiness
That's pretty nice. Four through seven, dangerous rift, treacherous three, don't warp over it. Unstable two, each space unit within two inches adds two hazard tokens. And then eight is a volatile wormhole.
01:06:26
Truthiness
Ooh, which wormhole do I don't remember this at all.
01:06:28
Biggs
Wormhole 1, place its corresponding token in another system or deep space beyond 12 inches of the original wo wormhole and beyond 4 inches of any other object. For each space unit at 2 inches of the first wormhole, any opponent places that unit anywhere at 6 inches of the second wormhole. So you just Looks like if you ah were near the wormhole, you just um get shunted somewhere else.
01:07:03
Truthiness
Okay, that's fun. All right, Bakes, you want to keep pushing through? We're already an hour in here. Do you want to stop here or do you want to go into the complications?
01:07:14
Biggs
B-b-b-bonus time!
01:07:28
Truthiness
Courtesy of today's Lower Deck episode.
01:07:32
Truthiness
Told you we'd find a good spot for it.
01:07:35
Biggs
It's perfect and beautiful.
01:07:35
Truthiness
And and it's pretty bleak for us. We don't have to do anything.
01:07:39
Biggs
let's Let's go.
01:07:41
Truthiness
All right.
01:07:41
Biggs
On to contested outpost.
01:07:43
Truthiness
Yes, onto contested outposts, which it will now be known forever. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, so getting into this, everything is completely hostile. Guns are blazing. All the directives are go. Just start shooting the crap out of things. I think the Dominion loves that. Just just blast away. All right, complications set up. Players alternate placing or removing solid objectives until there are four in this sector.
01:08:12
Truthiness
These are strategic holdings with keywords from the overture and capacity three. Oh God. Each new objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of any other objects. Reinforcements. Oh boy. So yeah, more complication. You got another ship to manage with just a generic officer on it. Mission actions secure the location. At objectives, teams can test two up our test ops plus skirmish, rerolling its weapons value. Difficulty is two. You add one if the objective is occupied by his imposing team.
01:08:53
Truthiness
success, remove an opposing claim marker, or place a friendly on the objective. On a critical, after removing an opposing marker, place the friendly.
01:09:03
Truthiness
So basically, if you critical, you get to skip a step of removing and then claiming. You just get to do it on one. In the ready phase, each player scores a victory token for every objective they control.
01:09:15
Truthiness
And at the end of the game, you score an additional two victory tokens for everything you can control. um And this goes until all players one player controls all of the objectives or until round six.
01:09:26
Truthiness
So there's kind of a mercy rule at the end here. um So you may not golf with concerns. I kind of doubt that. So yeah, guns blazing, pew, pew, control thing.
01:09:34
Biggs
Pew pew. Let's go.
01:09:37
Truthiness
Let's go. Yeah, I think the Dominion loves this. Like you've got the Jevidar fighters just, and I feel like they pump out teams really well from the battle cruiser. um
01:09:46
Biggs
And boy, do they have ah do they have ops, and I would assume skirmish.
01:09:50
Truthiness
Yeah. umman she yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Their officers are really well tuned to grant for team combat. I think this a hundred percent favors the Dominion.
01:10:02
Truthiness
Okay. You got any other comments there?
01:10:04
Biggs
a
01:10:04
Truthiness
This seems pretty straightforward.
01:10:05
Biggs
No.
01:10:06
Truthiness
Shoot things. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.
01:10:11
Biggs
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
01:10:18
Biggs
Actually, what the the drop that we really need is a little Grunkle Stan chanting fight, fight, fight.
01:10:25
Truthiness
Yeah, absolutely. All right, next one, inscrutable entity. This is a super boring calm one. All of the directives are calm. Nobody likes that. Nobody wants that.
01:10:37
Biggs
except Except the Federation.
01:10:37
Truthiness
Boo. Stupid hippies. and Okay, convocation setup. The trailing player places the inscrutable entity at two inches of any system center, then adds two hazard to the nearest unit, then players alternate placing four clues, which are signal objectives, beyond six inches of the inscrutable entity and beyond six inches of any unit.
01:10:51
Biggs
Two hazards.
01:11:05
Truthiness
From an instrument or medical bay, ah you can study the creature's wake. You, to sense the sensor range of the signal objectives, can test three science plus biology. um On a success, you score a victory token on a failure, remove the signal objective, then place a signal objective within two inches of the inscrutable entity. I'm going to stop saying it annoyingly like that, I swear. And beyond two inches of any other signal objective.
01:11:32
Truthiness
um This adds a hail option for everybody. ah Join the solution. Joint solution. Persuasive player tests four or trust plus empathy, difficulty of four,
The No-Win Scenario
01:11:45
Truthiness
rerolling sensors to coexist with the entity. End of the game, each round in which a player succeeds at the joint solution test in which the inscrutable entity is destroyed, or round six. So if the entity gets killed, a player succeeds at the joint resolution
01:12:06
Truthiness
or six rounds. If the 060 provider succeeds at the joint resolution test, the game is mutually lost.
01:12:13
Biggs
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
01:12:15
Truthiness
If a player destroyed the inscurable entity, they rolled two ah blue dice and score negative at your point per hit result.
01:12:25
Truthiness
Oh my God.
01:12:26
Biggs
So... So... Mutual... So...
01:12:31
Truthiness
Mutual lost. so oh god so what so so if you just want to make everybody lose you just refuse a hail take the negative victory points and be like yeah we're both losing bro i don't love this one oh
01:12:42
Biggs
but
01:12:52
Biggs
Oh, tournament scoring is gonna be fun.
01:12:55
Truthiness
god okay i there's no way this one makes it into a competitive packet like oh god please no please no
01:12:59
Biggs
Oh no! Oh no! This has to! yeah i'm I am imagining like a Legend of the Five Rings style scoring where an honorable loss gets you some number of points, but a mutual loss is just like zero.
01:13:19
Truthiness
this is it this is the ultimate chicken test like you like i'm gonna make us both lose i'm just gonna refuse i don't wanna refuse it you both lost and i remember
01:13:25
Biggs
To the so top top table and no one makes it into the finals because Because because the because whoever whoever it is is just like, no, screw that guy. Screw that guy. Screw that guy so hard. I'm gonna blow up the entity.
01:13:47
Truthiness
I'm trying to remember, because I think the entity, I'm trying to remember the exact rules for the dang entities. me see if I can find it. I think there's ways that this thing moves. Right, yeah, and that goes into the whole, yeah, that's right. Okay, so this goes into the auxiliary units thing we're going to do in another episode. This thing moves and has the ability ah to do stuff ah based on, excuse me, um various other factors in the game.
01:14:16
Truthiness
Needless to say, this is one of the more complicated complications. I don't love it. Not gonna lie, this is one of the ones I really hope not to see.
01:14:27
Biggs
Oh this one's gonna be this one has become my favorite one now.
01:14:32
Truthiness
Of course it has, you've got damn troll.
01:14:33
Biggs
look
01:14:35
Truthiness
okay moving on to cloak and dagger you got a calm combat objective a calm diplomacy objective and a hostile exploration objective so aggressive x on the table hostile x will still penalize you complications that players alternate placing removing Placing or removing solid objectives until they're eight in the sector. These are secret bases with keywords from the Overture and Capacity 3. Each new objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of any object, then players alternate placing their um there claim flags on these objectives. so Reinforcements, you get another ship, small or medium.
01:15:17
Truthiness
um Secure evidence. This is a test from the instrument panel or from the cargo bay, or again, a team. at Two inches of an objective with an opposing claim flag. Units can test command plus field craft for a difficulty to rerolling instruments. Or sensors, rather. ah Success. Bank a victory token on the unit.
01:15:43
Truthiness
On a critical, if a unit is a team, bank an additional two victory tokens. So you really want to use teams here.
01:15:50
Biggs
Ho ho ho ho ho!
01:15:52
Truthiness
And team combat's on the table, so it's not going to be peaceful. All right, destroy evidence is another mission action. While an objective with a friendly um claim marker is on it, teams can test ops plus fieldcraft, rerolling weapons power,
01:16:10
Truthiness
ah one difficulty plus one difficulty for each opposing unit within sensor range of the objective. Unlike success, remove the flag claim flag, but that's a hustle act. So you're going to take a penalty doing that. ah The game ends at the end of the round when there ah when no um objectives have any claim markers or round six.
01:16:36
Truthiness
Each unit scores all of their victory tokens on their units that are not disabled or destroyed. So this one's what's a ground fight.
01:16:43
Biggs
This one's spicy.
01:16:44
Truthiness
This one's a nice, nice, spicy ground fight. um Really going to be focused heavily on teams because you've got a lot of victory tokens and you've got to keep alive till the end of the game.
01:16:56
Biggs
And I like that the Gem Hadar, um if they're behind, they could just be like, nope, no one gets any more, no one gets any more of our tokens.
01:17:06
Truthiness
Or if they're ahead.
01:17:06
Biggs
Destroy the evidence.
01:17:08
Truthiness
No, no, that that penalizes you. You're like, you're going to lose if your token's doing that.
01:17:10
Biggs
Yeah, but if you but if you you've got the you've got the hail that lets you flip if you're without penalty.
01:17:15
Truthiness
True. That's true. you good you could flip it You could flip it if you're behind and just start blowing up evidence um and then focus your your teams on just a few objectives.
01:17:22
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
01:17:26
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
01:17:26
Truthiness
Yeah, I like that. I'd i'd probably say that favors the Dominion then.
01:17:32
Truthiness
All right. Tactical extraction. We got what four more of these left. Tactical extraction. um This is the mixed one for directives. The player who revealed this complications chooses one player to be the sector defender, and each other player, so the other player in one versus one, is the interloper. The sector defender sets their directives to hostile,
01:17:58
Truthiness
Each other player sets their directives to calm. I'm changing the words that are actually here because it just uses colors. ah The sector defender places or removes three objectives, solid objectives until there are six in the sector. These are embedded bases with any keywords from the overture or cap capacity team. Each new solid objective must be placed in a system beyond six inches of any other objects. Mission action is extract asset at a objective without a claim flag. Teams test three test command plus field craft for a difficulty of three. On a success for the interloper, place a friendly claim flag on the solid objective and bank two victory tokens on the unit. From a success for defender, if there are no opposing units within comm range, score a victory token.
01:18:49
Truthiness
The end of the the game ends at the end of round six, or at end of round which there are claim flags on all solid objectives. Each interloper scores all victory tokens on their units that are not disabled or destroyed, and two if three or two victory tokens if there are three or more friendly claim flags. Sector offender scores token victory token for each victory token on an interloper unit that is destroyed or disabled, and two if three or more ah objectives have no claim flag. This one's weird.
01:19:21
Biggs
Yeah.
01:19:23
Truthiness
I'm not sure who this favored.
01:19:23
Biggs
It looks like...
01:19:25
Biggs
ah I think it...
01:19:27
Truthiness
Yeah, at the defender ah
01:19:28
Biggs
it the The thing is, it could favor either side, um because you can choose as the player who reveals it.
01:19:43
Biggs
whether you're the defender or the interloper.
01:19:45
Truthiness
yeah this is this is such a dynamic one.
01:19:46
Biggs
And I think that's very that's very neat.
01:19:50
Truthiness
That's very dynamic.
01:19:50
Biggs
And you can pick up, as the defender as the defender, you can just continue to score um you can continue to score with your tests.
01:20:02
Truthiness
Yeah, no poison is in calm range, you just score.
01:20:02
Biggs
and Yeah, you can just score and it doesn't and it doesn't like lock it off.
01:20:05
Truthiness
I almost feel like the defender has the advantage here.
01:20:08
Biggs
Yeah, I definitely feel like the defender, whoever whichever side is the defender, should have the advantage of this one.
01:20:14
Truthiness
Yeah, because you get to set up all the defend you get to ah set up all the objectives so you can do the tests really quickly before somebody gets in range. um And then you're dictating combat.
01:20:27
Truthiness
So if you don't shoot, there's nothing the interloper can do to ah barring, like say, their dominion and they're behind.
01:20:27
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
01:20:37
Truthiness
um There's not a whole lot they can do to play catch up. And they can't, yeah.
01:20:43
Biggs
And even their their banked tokens don't count towards them being behind.
01:20:48
Truthiness
Yeah. And so if you know you see a unit banking a ton of tokens, you just go full hog near the end of the game on that unit.
01:20:56
Biggs
but from from from from
01:20:56
Truthiness
Like if you want to wait till round six and just jump that one poor little guy, you can you can do it.
01:21:02
Truthiness
Yeah. Defender advantage there, I think for sure. um And I think it advantages to whoever it is.
01:21:06
Biggs
That's going to be, i feel I feel like that one is powerful no matter who has it. If you flip that one, oh, you're you're gunning for you're gunning free your complication.
01:21:19
Truthiness
Yeah, you really you really want that in your deck. It comes up in my hand, I'm definitely using it. All right, ah race four knowledge. ah This has a calm combat directive, but hostile diplomatic and hostile exploration directives. You get a reinforcement here for a medium or small ship.
01:21:40
Truthiness
ah Players alternate placing or removing solid objections until they're eight in the sector. These are archeological sites with keywords from the Overture Capacity 3 unstable 2.
01:21:51
Truthiness
Each new solid object can be placed in a system beyond six inches of any other object. Remove all um hazards, if applicable, and then shuffle them.
01:21:59
Biggs
hazards.
01:22:04
Truthiness
So I guess we're placing more
01:22:07
Biggs
I don't think we...
01:22:07
Truthiness
Yeah. Okay. It comes into play with the the mission action.
01:22:09
Biggs
yeah.
01:22:10
Truthiness
All right. So the mission action is search for secrets. Any team at a objective without a claim flag can test science plus culture. Only a difficulty of two though, um, and reroll sensors on a success, place a friendly claim flag on the objective and choose a face down hazard token and flip it.
01:22:30
Truthiness
then resolve the corresponding effect on the archaic secret table, set the the hazard token aside. So this thing doesn't actually go on the table. You're basically just using it to a one through eight randomizing.
01:22:46
Truthiness
On a failure, the unit sustained's crew gains a point of damage for each hazard token it has and adds one hazard token.
01:22:55
Biggs
Oof.
01:22:56
Truthiness
Oh, that's that's not nice. All right, archaic cigarettes. On a one to two, you discovered a stellar gate, score a victory token, then each player with a team there may move it to another objective. On a three through four, it's an ancient record. Add an advantage token to each team at the objective. On a five through seven, it's an energy surge in each team on the objective token to sink three damage. Oh God, that pretty much instantly kills any team.
01:23:23
Truthiness
um And on the it's a di device of vast power, and you score two victory points.
01:23:30
Biggs
The first thought is there are not a lot of victory points available for this one.
01:23:33
Truthiness
No, there are not. and And on a five through seven, you just die? What?
01:23:39
Biggs
yeah
01:23:42
Truthiness
Oh, that's horrible.
01:23:45
Biggs
It's not great. a
01:23:49
Truthiness
This one's basically just
01:23:50
Biggs
Well, this one's gonna be the, you know, if you're the Federation and you're drawing them and it's like, hmm, complication, race for knowledge, or one that clearly favors the Dominion.
01:24:04
Truthiness
i think I think this is one that, um frankly, I'm going to ignore, and I'm going to try and focus on ah victory tokens from my directives.
01:24:05
Biggs
soon
01:24:10
Biggs
If, alternatively,
01:24:17
Truthiness
um
01:24:17
Biggs
Alternatively, alternatively you could you could yeah you could get this and say, okay, well, since I know this is what the complication is going to be, I'm going to score as many points as I can in the overture, and then we're going to focus on and then we're going to focus on directives.
01:24:33
Truthiness
That's true.
01:24:36
Truthiness
Yeah, because but you can but get victory tokens from predict of directives. And I think it's something we we haven't really talked about. like um Like, for example, we'll take the Dominion, seize control. um After a friendly team inflicts health damage to an opposing team, score a victory token and you can do one per round on this. So the team actions here are hostile. The Dominion can just go full ham on attacking whatever teams the Federation wants to put down on these objectives.
01:25:05
Truthiness
Screw testing, stupid science.
01:25:06
Biggs
You don't need to test, so you don't need to find some science. That's silly.
01:25:13
Truthiness
And you can also score by capturing opposing officers. So if you want to just start boarding parties and having super happy forward boarding time, if you can capture imp opposing officer, that's another way to get objective points. So in other words, screw this objective, go do other stuff.
01:25:31
Truthiness
This one's mean. Man, you gotta be desperate to try and... I feel like this is one where desperation plays in. If you're behind, you are risking those three through sevens to go for those ones, two, or eights.
01:25:43
Biggs
this is this feels This feels like one where you want to be in the lead before it's flipped.
01:25:48
Truthiness
Yes, yes.
01:25:51
Biggs
If you are choosing this as yours, you are going into it going... Because remember, you get to choose it after you see the overture.
01:26:04
Truthiness
Yeah.
01:26:04
Biggs
So you see the overture, you go, okay, I'm going to be at least two points up after the overture. And then you go, OK, we're going to race for some knowledge after that.
01:26:15
Truthiness
yeah Yeah. Oh man. ah Oh, that's that's cruel. That is a cruel, cruel complication.
01:26:35
Truthiness
All right, missing crew.
01:26:35
Biggs
okay
01:26:39
Truthiness
um This one's all calm directives for each player and opposing chooses an opposing officer. Then these officers are abducted by a mysterious entity. Set them aside.
01:26:50
Truthiness
Then players alternate placing four cryptic signals, which are signal objectives with treacherous three and unstable two. Each signal objective must place beyond six inches of any objects. The mission action is search for understanding. you know It's a sensor range of a solid-rejection-contest command, plus empathy, difficulty three, rerolling, sensor value. When a success, so score a victory token on a failure, an abducted officer of an opponent's choice sustains one damage.
01:27:21
Truthiness
on and you actually gain a hail thing here. And it's a joint solution. Oh, God,
Rules on Officer Abduction
01:27:27
Truthiness
this can be tool a loss, isn't it? Persuasive players. ah Trust plus diplomacy with a difficulty of four. Rerolling sensors to convince the NC to return the officers into the game. Each round in which a player succeeds at the joint resolution test in which all set-aside officers are incapacitated or at the end of round six.
01:27:52
Truthiness
If no player succeeds at the joint resolution test, the game is a mutual loss.
01:27:57
Biggs
Yay!
01:27:57
Truthiness
a
01:27:59
Biggs
Yay!
01:28:00
Truthiness
a ah
01:28:02
Biggs
No, you dont you have you have no idea. Like, okay, one of the things that I liked best ah about ah the Legend of the Five Rings living card game was their tournament rules for comp, their tournament rules when you hit time, right?
01:28:26
Biggs
If you, when you hit time, you tally your points. And if one person, yeah or I should say, each player has the opportunity to honorably surrender. And if a player honorably surrenders, they get ah They get 3 points, and their opponent who won gets 6 points. However,
01:29:00
Truthiness
I say, boo good sir.
01:29:03
Biggs
however
01:29:03
Truthiness
Boo!
01:29:05
Biggs
however if you decide, no, I could win this game.
01:29:10
Truthiness
All
Tournament Rules & Honorable Surrender
01:29:13
Biggs
yeah if i just have If I just have one more turn, I could win this game. You can decline to honorably surrender and fight it out. and if you And if you win, you get four points. And whoever loses gets no points.
01:29:13
Truthiness
I have to say is, it's very good.
01:29:35
Truthiness
Okay, so the good news here is there's really no victory points tied to the hail. um And there's some pretty significant penalties for refusing a hail.
01:29:47
Truthiness
So that's the good news. um But man, I got to say, if I'm down by a bunch of points, I'm refusing to hail. I'm refusing to hail and just just being spiteful.
01:29:58
Truthiness
like This is going to be some really interesting social dynamics here, because if the gate if the game's not close, the guy who's behind can really take it.
01:30:08
Biggs
but
01:30:09
Truthiness
it's because mean yeah
01:30:11
Biggs
ah the The saltiness of people, but there could be there could be some serious saltiness.
01:30:19
Truthiness
Yeah, I really honestly, this is fun for a friendly game, but I really hope these don't this mutual law stuff doesn't go into competitive play because oh man, this gets salty so fast.
01:30:28
Biggs
if it If it does, it would it will have to be very carefully added to competitive play to to to really incentivize not getting a mutual loss.
01:30:32
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah, we'll see.
01:30:39
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah. Okay, moving on to infection. um So this has a calm combat directive, a calm diplomatic directive, and a hostile exploration directive. right Players alternate adding or removing so objectives until there are six in the sector. These are in infection infection origins. So solid objectives with keywords from the overture and capacity three.
Social Dynamics in Refusing to Hail
01:31:03
Truthiness
New solid objectives must be placed beyond six inches of any object.
01:31:07
Truthiness
Mission actions, there are a couple of them. Infectious outbreaks. Hazard tokens cannot be spent. Each unit with two or more hazard tokens has an outbreak.
01:31:18
Truthiness
Okay, so that's not really a mission action so much as just something that happens.
01:31:22
Biggs
A problem.
01:31:25
Truthiness
Do you see anywhere that says what an outbreak is?
01:31:29
Biggs
ah Is it a keyword?
01:31:30
Truthiness
I never played this one.
01:31:34
Truthiness
Oh, here we go. It's in the hazard phase. Okay. So each unit with an outbreak suffers one damage and adds another hazard token. Oh God, this one has another joint resolution.
01:31:46
Truthiness
Damn it. Okay. The actual mission action,
01:31:48
Biggs
It's part of the game!
Infection Mission Rules
01:31:50
Truthiness
the actual mission action is at the medical station.
01:31:53
Truthiness
It's acquire samples units, it's a sensor range of a solid object without a claim flag can test science plus biology with a difficulty of four yeah Um, but okay, so minus two difficulty of the testing unit as a team.
01:32:09
Truthiness
Okay. So this is within reach for the medium. Uh, on a success play me plants, a friendly claim flag on the objective and score victory token failure to more hazard tokens.
01:32:22
Biggs
like all
01:32:22
Truthiness
Oh God. Hazard tokens bad.
01:32:25
Biggs
Oh ho ho!
01:32:27
Truthiness
All right, hail joint solution. Precisely player tests trust plus biology with difficulty of four rerolling sensor value to contribute a cure, to distribute a cure. ah The game ends at the round in which a player succeeds at the joint resolution or round six. If no player succeeds at the joint test joint resolution test, the game is a mutual loss. Well, you know what I think a mutual loss is already.
01:32:55
Biggs
Yep, i have I have some thoughts. I have some thoughts for scoring.
01:32:58
Truthiness
Go for it.
01:33:00
Biggs
So in in a tournament setting, what if ah what if if you contributed to help avoid a mutual loss, you get a point?
01:33:13
Biggs
So a loss, like, let's say, let's say, let's say a win is two points, a loss is zero points, a mutual loss, everybody gets zero points. But if you lost, but you contributed to avoiding a mutual loss, you get a point.
01:33:32
Truthiness
That sounds even more complicated. Just kill it. No neutral loss nonsense. I do appreciate kind of the social tension that that comes from this because it's it's such a such a game of chicken. but sh ah you say i Yeah, I just really worry um about this for a competitive environment because no matter how you do a mutual loss, somebody can just tank the game and then you get into collusion and all that fun stuff. But I mean, it's for fun.
01:34:02
Truthiness
Um, and these, the starter ones I think are very much intended for the, the for fun. They're part of the incidents, missions, um, for the campaigns.
Scoring Systems for Tournaments
01:34:11
Truthiness
Um, I talking with Briggs is ah are not bigs, you're bigs talking, talking with, with, with Mike and Max.
01:34:15
Biggs
I'm big.
01:34:18
Truthiness
I'm, I'm curious from the things they've, they've said, I'm curious if we'll end up with kind of like a competitive play stack of, of overtures and complications.
01:34:29
Truthiness
I would love to see like, um, like faction-specific complications that that you can and always pick out of.
01:34:36
Biggs
Oh, that could be fun.
01:34:37
Truthiness
Like the Federation, you know, you get a stack of complications and part of your, you know, the competitive play thing is you you pick pick two that you want to optimize your fleet for.
01:34:49
Truthiness
and Yeah, I think that that, and then you have, um then you just have competitive play overtures. And then you just set the category toward whatever you want you want to call it. like l you know, matched play or matched or be the category. And that way you're you're generating, you know, nothing but matched complications to make the... you' You've already got the tools in there to to to make that. Like you have these categories, you can make new categories and say that these categories are the ones for competitive play. Really easy, simple way to do it with the system as is.
01:35:30
Truthiness
But overall, like you can see why I love these complications flipping. Cause man, they just, some of them are just crazy.
01:35:41
Biggs
oh
01:35:41
Truthiness
Like tactical extraction is just a very odd game. Cloak and Dagger is really fun. Contested Outpost.
01:35:49
Biggs
and we And we know that you're never going to choose one that has a possible mutual loss.
01:35:54
Truthiness
now No, no, no, no, no. I need the Michael Scott. No, no, no.
01:35:58
Biggs
we didn hit this question
01:36:00
Truthiness
No! No!
01:36:01
Biggs
if
01:36:03
Truthiness
Please, God, no.
01:36:05
Biggs
Ah.
01:36:08
Truthiness
But just remember.
01:36:16
Truthiness
Have I mentioned I really love the soundboard?
01:36:22
Biggs
it's It's the best new edition we have. remember Remember the previous soundboard was literally just me putting my phone in a tin cup and putting it close to the microphone.
01:36:26
Truthiness
All right.
01:36:35
Truthiness
I remember you singing and that's about all I really remember because that was so traumatizing that I i can't remember anything else.
01:36:37
Biggs
yeah
Game Complications & Soundboard Fun
01:36:46
Biggs
uh too late how quick how quickly we forget the dead space song the dead air song uh clip it clip it for the sound board
01:36:46
Truthiness
and And no, there will be no big singing in this podcast.
01:36:55
Truthiness
Wait, you sang already?
01:37:00
Truthiness
but Oh god. We're going on a song now. We're using elevator music.
01:37:10
Truthiness
Oh god. I'm gonna have to now. Alright. Thanks for joining us, there everybody.
01:37:16
Biggs
Well, this has been yet another podcast.
01:37:22
Biggs
Oh, you've listened to us for probably close to an hour and 40 minutes.
01:37:22
Truthiness
but
01:37:28
Truthiness
Enjoy.