The Cafeteria at Tolarian Academy

Theta VIII

Theta VIII is the world where the Enterprise-D comes across an illusory hotel and casino. The hotel/casino was created by aliens who felt bad for killing the crew of a human exploratory vessel. They created the hotel to help the lone survivor have a more pleasant experience as he grew older. The only drawback was that the “people” who inhabited the hotel were 1 dimensional characters from an awful work of fiction. It’s not one of the best episodes, but it gave me the idea to create the opposite effect from Talos IV. It doesn’t quite fit the storyline, but it is close enough. In these larger games there are always powerful artifacts and enchantments on the battlefield.

Trill

Ullia

A Ullian in the episode “Violations” is responsible for one of the many instances of “mind rape” in Star Trek lore. I find it a bit icky that it comes up as often as it does. Telepathic history reading would have been a bit of a stretch for a planet power, but going into someone else’s mind and playing their spells for free seems like a strong ability. I didn’t make this ability infallible in the same way I did some of the other similar abilities. I thought that with this one very strong power that there should be some bit of chance, even if it’s small. When I saw how quickly someone took the throne (turn 2) and then put Ullia onto their battlefield, I was happy I gave this planet a tiny downside.

 Vulcan

Sigma Iota II

Sigma Iota is the planetary power I may have stretched the most to come up with. The inhabitants of this planet live according to a book that describes Gangs of the 1920s. It’s one of the funnier episodes of The Original Series. “A Piece of the Action” describes the people of the planet as very industrious and in only a few short years were able to bring themselves up to 1920 era technology. I turned that industriousness into spell cost reduction because they are helping you out. I added the clue ability on because in the episode it takes a bit of detective work on Kirk’s part to figure out why everyone talks like a movie mobster. It’s a stretch, but so was that episode.

Talos

Romulus

Romulus is home to one of the main villains of the Star Trek universe. They come off as sneaky and underhanded in most episodes, so I decided to have the planet follow this theme. I used the Alpha card Illusionary Mask as my template. I have always loved this card. In olden days one of the players in my group would hide his Royal Assassin whenever he played it. It used to die immediately, but because he hid a majority of the creatures in that deck he usually got a few good uses out of it before it died. That’s what I envisioned for Romulus. The few times this has come up, the morphed creature has been a big one (Blightsteel Colossus is still my favorite).

Rubicon III

Regula, (Genesis Planet)

Regula, The Genesis Planet is created at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Genesis device was such a powerful MacGuffin that it managed to kill one of the main characters. I wanted an effect that was almost as powerful. I assume that when everyone benefits from searching for any card that it will 100% of the time create drama, cause action or possibly end the game within a few turns. If the king/queen gets to search again, then they should be well on their way to their team winning. I think that should be a lot of motivation to the non-king/queen teammates to remove them from the throne. All the way around it manages to do everything we want in Kings and Thrones.

Rigel IV

Paxan

Paxan is another slightly obscure world that is seen only in a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We see it in the episode “Clues”, and it’s one of my favorites. Paxan is the home of a very xenophobic species. In the episode Data convinces the aliens to let the crew live if they have their memories erased and won’t ever go back to the Paxan homeworld. It doesn’t work the first time, and the ship finds its way back at Paxan, but by the end a solution is discovered. I really wanted a counterspell planet, but initially I couldn’t figure out how to create one, until this planet came up. Putting Paxan on the bottom of the planet deck fits about as perfectly as possible, and it isn’t abusive.  Also, when someone else becomes king/queen then you get to revisit the deadly planet. It is almost perfect.

Qu’noS

Nausicaa

I was very fortunate that when I was creating the abilities for these planets Conspiracy 2: Take the Crown was just coming out. That set gave me a brand new ability that I think fits perfectly into Kings and Thrones. Goad pushes the action by creating possible openings in an opponent’s wall of blockers, and more than likely dealing a good bit of damage to a player that isn’t you.  I used Nausicaa because of its infamous inhabitants. It was a Nausicaan that stabbed Jean-Luc Picard thru the heart, forcing him to get an artificial heart. That episode “Tapestry” established the species as belligerent and fairly hostile. I took the interaction between young Picard and the Nausicaans who wanted to fight as the impetus for the ability. I have gotten lucky several times when it comes to new abilities or updated wordings, I feel like it’s a sign.

Ornara

Earth

Earth is clearly the alternate win condition for the Throne of the Captain. I tried to come up with or integrate an alternate win for each throne. Just in case the players weren’t moving the action along, these alternate ways to win give everyone some incentive to remove the king/queen. I knew that Earth should do something that represented the sharing/helping nature of the humans in this universe, so card draw it was. I tried not to rely too heavily on drawing cards for the planets abilities, but this seemed appropriate here.

Minos

Cytheria

This is a planet only visited in one episode of ST:TNG. You meet the Cytherians in “The Nth Degree” in which Lt. Barclay becomes super smart and catapults the Enterprise-D thru sub-space to Cytheria. There they meet a very advanced race of aliens who don’t like to leave their homeworld. They the aliens share a lot of knowledge with the Federation. I figured the aliens would be benevolent in sharing information which is why I made it so everyone gets to draw cards. Making it a tap ability does give the king/queen control over when everyone gets the cards though. Drawing 2 cards for the table also pushes the action forward in a big way, and that is ultimately what we want.

Deneb

Breen

The Breen really make their appearance in Deep Space 9 and I loved them. I knew I wanted to include their homeworld in the planet list. I gave them a very large ability because they have a big effect in DS9. I get to be extra Vorthosy because they “freeze” opponents creatures using their fancy energy dampening weapons, but they also live on what is rumored to be an icy cold planet. So proud of that one. If you manage to get the Breen over to your side, they can help you eliminate a few players, just like in Star Trek. Perfect.

 Cardassia Prime

Baku

Baku was chosen because it is the main planet of contention in the Next generation movie, Star Trek: Insurrection. I generally shied away from giving any of the throne related cards giving life because it goes against the main idea of Kings and Thrones1, but I felt it was the only way to get the Vorthos feel of Baku. It makes its inhabitants virtually immortal, and giving your team life is the Magic equivalent of immortality.

Betazed

Betazed is a planet of telepathic people. So I knew I wanted there to be a revealing of opponents hands. I didn’t want there to be a discard aspect to the Betazoid people because they are generally seen as helping the Federation, not harming outsiders. I thought of the parley Queen Selvala, Explorer Returned. I took half of her ability and turned it colorless. A possible early Betazed tapping for upwards of 6 colorless mana is just the right side of help I wanted to create, and it isn’t unfair in the games we have played with it.

The Planets of the Federation.

Back after a week on vacation. Back to finish up the Throne of the Captain.

I chose to create 23 planet cards to create a unique gameplay experience whenever the Throne of the Captain was chosen. I figured this throne would be picked around 10% of the time, and you’d see 10-15 of the planets each game. Then the next time this throne is chosen you have a very low likelihood of seeing the same set of planets.

Arch Enemy, for 4 to 10 players!

It’s probably not a big surprise that I chose this variant this week. We finally had a release of the 20 new Arch Enemy cards. I can’t wait to dig through those cards and see what we can add to our group’s deck. Group deck you say? Well, in our play group we have a single deck of 20 scheme cards. Over the first 6-12 months that it was out we decided to create the best possible set of scheme cards that would be usable by any deck and any player. If we are playing with only 3 allies, we use the basic rule set layed out in the original rules, except for one. We make the amount of poison counters it takes to kill the arch enemy to half of the Arch Enemy’s starting life total. 

We realized that because of the strength of the schemes the Arch Enemy could probably take on more than 3 allies. We have played regularly for years with up to 9 allies. Only one person has ever beaten 9 allies, and it was in epic fashion with a giant tribal deck. That game is still talked about. When we started playing all the time with 4-6 allies we decided we had to give the Arch Enemy a little help. We always increased the life total by the 12.5 per player, but that proved to be not quite enough. The addition of the scheme free turn has since pulled the percentages back to around 50/50 and that is ideally where we want it. 

The very best thing about this variant is the speed at which we are able to play a lot of games. We can usually get thru 5 or 6 in the time it would take us to play 2 normal commander games. If you want to play the way we do, we all choose a deck for the game. We then roll the dice and see who is going to be the Arch Enemy. When that game is over, we then roll again, but the person who was the Arch Enemy cannot be it again, until everyone has had a chance. 

The Alliance Emblem is the strongest and most game changing of the Federation emblems. I have included the reminder card in this post to show that the Alliance emblem is only even used from 8 players and up. I didn’t want this to destroy a smaller game. In a larger game however, the king/queen becomes an enemy the second they gain the throne. Removing an enemy and increasing your team by one can be hugely beneficial. It can also galvanize the enemies into wanting to eliminate you that much faster.

The most interesting dynamic that comes from the Alliance card is when the ally is working in lock-step with the king/queen and then a new king/queen comes along and takes the throne. The ally has now become the enemy of the old king and kills that former ally. It’s these giant story swings that makes me love the hidden role style team games.  

The Neutral Zone is the only emblem that does not actively protect the king/queen.I wanted each of the emblems to feel very different, and be easily told apart from one another. I knew that if all of the emblems protected the king/queen they would be boring and very hard to overcome. Even with emblems in Kings and Thrones coming and going I still haven’t created a way to outright remove an emblem from a player. (That is an ability I thought about putting on a realm at one point. Put this realm back onto the table: Target player loses target emblem.) Again,  if I ever feel the need or itch to make an expansion (the evil thrones) I would use this ability. When designing this throne I realized I hadn’t given the king/queen a way to protect their revealed allies. Star Trek to the rescue. I changed the wording of the original Neutral Zone emblem to protect a teammate. In games where this gets played early by the king/queen it has made a significant difference in how the game played of the next several turns. The teammate was able to build a large board state and single-handedly eliminate a couple of enemies. It does exactly what I wanted it to do.  

This is the most unusual of the Federation Emblems. This is the one that really makes this throne feel like you are playing a game of Civilization to me. You are actively giving a positive ability to encourage you not to attack them. I like the possible tension created by this ability. I made the agreement create a planet because then the player given the agreement has some stake in the current king/queen staying on the throne. If the throne changes hands then the player with the agreement loses their favored status. For a long time I had this just granting a scry and drawing of a card, but I thought in the long run that gaining planets and their abilities is much more flavorful in the long run. I also thought that the king/queen giving control of one of their planets feels very royal.