The game closely mirrored the show. All the cards and images were from the show. You had missions that would give you points when you completed them. You won when you completed a planet and space mission and had 100 points. Your opponent tried to prevent you from completing missions by playing dilemmas that you had to pass. The dilemmas were based on problems that character had to overcome from the television show or movies. You had two decks. The draw deck contained your personnel, ships, equipment, events, and interrupts. Then you had your dilemma pile which was filled with all sorts of problems. You also had your home world and the missions that you would try to complete to win the game.
The great thing about the game was that it was Star Trek of course. You could play as the Federation using the prime directive as your guide. You could be Romulans and manipulate everything around you to win. You could be the Borg and take your opponent's personnel to use for your deck. It was great. Each affiliation had its own flavor. When you played Klingons you really felt like you were flying around the universe kicking butt. Which is really hard to recreate in CCG form trust me. To top it off the game was extremely balanced. After many sets the errata list was only a page long. Only once or twice was a broken combo found and it was always quickly taken care of. There were never “top decks” that you had to play if you wanted to win in a tournament. My favorite affiliation was the Borg and I had a great time taking my opponent's personnel and using them to help me complete missions. Often I would pass a dilemma they had placed with a hearty laugh while waving their own personnel at them. Yes I know that is very annoying, but hey thats what friends are for.
The game died for several reasons. One was that Decipher had litigation going on that was draining the company of resources. Also there was no Trek on TV, and the last movie was only so so. Additionally Decipher had problems getting enough cards out. For example one of the best sets, Necessary Evil, sold out. It was one of the sets with some really powerful cards. This alienated many players. Take all this together and you have a problem with no easy solution.
Decipher dropped the game and lost the license, but it is still played. A group of players started a committee to keep cranking out virtual cards. I have played it some in the last year. So I guess this game could be called undead. With the new movie I really wish that someone would resurrect it.
Date of death: December 14, 2007
