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Alidar's Announcement Analysis #32: USS Jupiter by Alidar Jarok Yesterday, Decipher announced the upcoming release of a new STCCG card with a new computer game. Good move or bad? There are a few arguments each way. First, the initial print run of this card will only be available bundled with the computer game. Naturally, this causes a big problems for those that don't own a Windows-based computer (Activision rarely makes non-Windows games), or those that don't care for the game in general. A few probably want the card, but have no interest in the game, or can't use it. Spending about $50 for essentially one card doesn't seem like the greatest deal to me, or to a number of others. Of course, it has announced that the card will be released later on. It's good to see that Decipher won't be forcing a percentage of its player base to buy a game that they don't want. The announcement that it will be reprinted fortunately will help avoid the Data Laughing fiasco that happened a few years ago. (Many players bought an overpriced "strategy guide" - which coincidentally provided virtually no strategy - just to get the card, then Decipher released the card later in the Two-Player Game because they had a lot of leftover supplies.) Or will it? After all, they only said that the card will release again, not the card in the exact same form. What if one was white border and another one being black border? This makes a big difference to collectors. And will it be a mail-in offer or will it appear in a regular set? We'll just have to wait and see. And what's Decipher's definition of "later"? I'm still waiting for my black border Dr. Telek R'Mor to come out... The USS Jupiter is the first ship to be equipped with the Chain Reaction Pulsar, a new, powerful weapon capable of ricocheting off multiple enemy ships. OK, the lack of TrekSense on this one is just mindboggling. What do they do, replace the torpedoes with giant Super Balls? I can see it now: "The USS Jupiter - the real cause of the 1972 New York City blackout." Speaking of the Chain Reaction Pulsar, it will be interesting to see how it's going to be incorportated into the game. I would guess that it would be a Tactic, probably similar in some ways to the recent Plasma Energy Burst. If so, then this might mean that the (apparently) new symbol next to its name could be a Tactic download of some sorts. Maybe this would be once per game, or maybe once per battle. Anyway, this seems more like a defensive card than anything. First of all, the ship alone seemingly could take out an armada. Second, it's probably a Tactic, meaning that the Feds can't use it with the Three-Way Treaty. So unless they have a ton of Incoming Message: Attack Authorizations in their decks, the card won't get all that much use. Of course, if the Pulsar is a Tactic, then we could be in trouble. Generally every affiliation could use Tactics - Bajorans using Quantum Torpedoes and Federation using Plasma Energy Bursts don't make much sense, but they're possible. Not only that, but the effects are all the same, "matching" ships only get a little bit of an Attack bonus. The thought of Klingon decks running around with this weapon is just nausiating... Looking at the rest of the ship stats, it seems that Satelk will command it, and it seems comparable to the Thunderchild. But being comparable just won't cut it. The article's description of the Thunderchild being "popular" is a bit misleading. It's certainly popular among collectors, but I have yet to see it be played in a game, and I've played in over 15 tournaments since the release of Blaze. The stats of the Thunderchild are comparable to, say, the Defiant and Enterprise-D. But who would you rather have as a matching commander of your ship - Picard, Sisko, or Shanthi? Somehow I think that the first two are more popular than the latter. This alone may be the deciding factor keeping the Thunderchild in binders (that plus the lack of a Cloaking Device and storyline value). And lo and behold, the Jupiter's (supposed) captain isn't all that much better than Shanthi, if at all (at least Shanthi can report for free to the Office). Why bundle it with the game? At first I thought that it was to entice non-players to start up the game. But then again, Decipher gave out a Starter Deck II to everyone who pre-ordered Hidden Evil in the past year. Starter Deck II's would give computer gamers a far better feel of the game than one promo that has limited uses. Plus we all know that Decipher has plenty of Starter Deck II's lying around. So it seems that this is there almost solely for financial reasons - the card will "force" STCCGers to buy the game more than it would get computer gamers to start the game. Sure, some might start, but nowhere near as much as the number of STCCGers that will be buying a game for a single card, a game that they might not even want or could even use. Well, it's a new move by Decipher, and it has possibilities to be both good and bad effects. Let's just hope that they don't shoot themselves in the foot - the potential to lose collectors with products like this is rather high. Just look at what's happening to B5CCG - there's hardly any collectors because of their promo cards... Alidar Jarok bwa@force.stwing.upenn.edu http://force.stwing.upenn.edu/~bwa/stccg/ Comments about this article? Post them on the WNOHGB BBS!