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DECIPHER.com > Star Trek CCG
> Tenth Anniversary > Timeline
> 1998
The History of Star Trek CCG: Deep Space Nine
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Updated July 1, 2004
(added exact release date plus links to the newly rediscovered Deep Space
Nine expansion area and a Q&A!)
Seven months after the introduction of the Borg – the first full new
affiliation since Premiere – in First Contact, the Star Trek CCG universe
expanded once again with the Bajorans and Cardassians, Deep Space 9/Terok
Nor, the Bajoran Wormhole, and the whole new quadrant that it led to. And
for the first time, the game had starter decks playable right out of the
box.
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Released
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July 23, 1998
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Design Team
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Bill Martinson (lead), Tim Ellington, Sandy Wible
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Product Configuration
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276 cards (100 R - 80 U - 80 C - 16 C*)
(C* = starter deck-only missions)
60-card randomized/playable starter decks (2 R + 58C/C*/U)
Each starter includes 44-page rulebook
12 starter decks per display
9-card expansion packs (1 R - 3 U - 5 C)
30 expansion packs per display
Collector's card list in booster display
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Press Sheets
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Rare 10x10; uncommon, common 8x10
Starter decks – unknown.
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New Mechanics
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Commandeering
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New Rules
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Docking defined; docked ships cannot fire weapons; Tal Shiar and Transporter
Skill lost built-in functions; no outposts at homeworlds. New terms: homeworlds,
quarantine, native quadrants, walking.
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New Features
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  Gamma
Quadrant spaceline. New affiliations: Bajoran, Cardassian. New card types:
facility (outposts and stations, along with new headuarters, become subtypes),
sites (work with new type of station called a Nor). New skills: Law, Resistance,
Smuggling, Klingon Intelligence, Obsidian Order.
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Highlights
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White-bordered preview U.S.S. Defiant found in booster packs. First randomized-but-playable
starter decks.
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Packaging
Expansion Icon
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Factoids
- Some of the earliest buyers of Deep Space Nine found a big surprise
in a booster pack: a white-bordered U.S.S. Defiant that was not listed
on the card list. The unannounced preview card would be followed up by
a black-border rare in the next set, The Dominion.
- But why was this card not discovered at the big sealed-deck pre-release
held at Origins? A special batch of boosters was packed for this event,
leaving out the preview cards to maintain the secret.
Notable Cards
Deep Space Nine brought one of the most powerful card-manipulation cards
ever – Process Ore. For a moderate amount of setup, you could get two
free card draws at the start of each turn, and cycle cards out of your discard
pile back to your draw deck to boot. Sure, you needed a Nor for it, but
players had already discovered the dial-a-skill utility of Ops downloading,
so why not tack on the free card draws with ore processing?
  
Ever since the Q-Continuum expansion introduced side decks, Q's Tent had
always overshadowed the Q-Continuum ("Q-Flash") side deck. But
the lowly Q-Flash got a new lease on life with Beware of Q, which let you
swap out a dilemma that you had discovered would be ineffective with a Q-Flash,
giving the seed slot a second chance at hurting your opponent. Too, it could
let you seed some of the more troublesome Q-icon dilemmas like "real"
dilemmas. Mandarin Bailiff just got a lot more popular.
Links
Deep Space Nine expansion area
Q & A transcript
Card list HTML
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Spoiler list HTML
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Rule booklet HTML
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Rules changes PDF
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