As most of you may have now heard the Kazons and Videans will now be their own affiliations. Some may hate this other may not. Now they could’ve worked out a complicated, but interesting plot to make them Non-Aligned although it would have been tough to do.  Now these affiliations may be interesting to try, but they’ll have a low number of characters compared to other Affiliations even if just about every image of a Kazon or Videan is used. Decipher will likely mess up the stats a bit, like how they made the Warbirds have lower stats then Sovereigns and Ferengi have 8-8-8 stats etc. Of the two affiliations the Videans will most likely be more common and the Kazon will be much weaker.  The Videans will probably have a good deal of Medical as they were fighting the Phage for all that time, and will probably have a number of personnel with Transporter Skill since they could beam Organs out of people. Also for you Armada/Attack deck lovers the Videans provide great opportunities.  If you can find a way to get to one of the other Quadrants, or have another affiliation in the Delta Quad you would be able to supposedly Latch onto other ships and invade it, perhaps scoring points for “Organs Stolen” through an objective. The Kazon will have a high strength allowing personnel battle to be an option for them.  These two affiliations may seem funny or sickening, but will probably contain strengths… remember how we laughed at the ‘crinkle noses’?  Ship wise the Videans will be stronger, but the Kazons will probably have a ship designed for range, another for weapons etc. The Videans will also have more skills to choose from with a more medical theme. The Videans will also be strong in Science, and will probably have Archeology as they will probably have searched old civilizations for a cure (Sounds like Crusade, I know…).

        The Kazons will have more Survivalist theme with skills along those lines. The Kazons will be low on cunning, high on strength. Also, with cards being reprinted with a Voyager picture and product logo for use in Voyager Sealed Decks it will be interesting to see which cards are chosen.  With the DS9 type Starter decks we should hope the reprinted cards are distributed like the special missions in the Deep Space Nine starter decks.

// Editor's note: Colorado players are hoping all the special cards are available in 2
// starters like TwT, so you don't have to buy a bunch of them

        The Non-Aligned stuff in Voyager should be fun… they’ll still have plenty of Non-aligned Stuff to use and will probably have a Non-Aligned outpost (Karenam?). The Delta Non-Aligned ships might also be good making the Non-aligned more interesting to do (The first deck using one Affiliation in two Quadrants.). The Non-aligned are an affiliation and shall also be greatly enhanced by this expansion.  Now, many agree that the Kazon being an Affiliation is just not right, but they are a large race and don’t really get along with anybody (in a few cases they don’t get along with each other!). Now there will be Voyager Sealed Decks, and unless they have a Fed Outpost released in this set you’ll have to choose between Kazon, Videan, or Non-Aligned. They may even have Voyager format tourneys similar to the Mirror Mirror format where it’s Videan, Kazon, or Non-Aligned (or it just may be Kazon or Videan). It’ll be interesting to see a Videan vs. Ferengi ship Battle or a Kazon vs. Klingon (Both Low cunning with high strength! ;-)) Personnel Battle.