Star Trek Customizable Card Game

Original Release: 1994
Developer: Decipher
Publisher: Decipher
Original Platform: Board Game

I nearly skipped this game. I loaded it up in Tabletop Simulator and was greeted with thousands of cards and an extremely complicated rulebook that was over 110 pages long. It was extremely daunting. I received some encouragement that it wasn’t as scary as it sounds and managed to find a different version on Tabletop Simulator that came with pre-built decks and a simplified ruleset based on those starter decks – the 110 page rules covered many years of additions.

At the start of the match, you build the “board” out of mission cards, which represent locations. In more advanced games, these can form separate quadrant and some cards need to be next to each other. You then take turns adding dilemmas to these missions, these represent challenges that the crews will face.

Each turn you play one card, slowly building up your ships and their crews, along with other actions you can perform. You can then move your ship between locations (as long as they’re in range) and attempt missions, ending your turn by drawing one card.

On missions, cards will cause you to lose crew (temporary or permanently). If you manage to get through them all and then have enough crew to meet the requirements of the mission, you’ll score the points for the mission, the first to 100 wins. When you add more complicated cards, extra factions, alternate realities and all sorts of other stuff, then the game can get very complicated.

When collectable card games are typically combat based, I really enjoy how this feels to play, and that the missions aren’t just combat based, it’s about having the right people for the job. I don’t like collectable games, but if this game had released in playable packs with pre-made decks, then I would have loved it.