Like many other Star Trek players, I anxiously awaited the release of the latest expansion, The Trouble with Tribbles. I was ready to put behind me the problems that had plagued the last few sets. Problems such as, miscut rares, rare-less packs, and poor sorting. I was going to give Decipher a fresh page to start over with and assume only the highest of quality would come from this set. Man, did I set myself up for a let down.

        In the very first pack I opened, I was shorted an uncommon. I was opening them with Rom and he told me not to worry, that some packs came with an extra Tribble rare in the slot of one uncommon. Relieved I passed my first tribble to find an Ensign Chekov and several commons behind him. As I proceeded through the box I found my missing uncommon in a pack with 10 cards in it. So I really, could not complain at this point because I did pull a McCoy and did not have to worry about getting one of those.

        I opened two more boxes over the next couple days (120 packs) and was several cards short of a set, I did however boast five Mr. Spocks (they’re all gone don’t email for a trade) and in my second box actually found out that I was able to predict the uncommons in the next pack based on the ones in the pack I was opening (each consecutive pack contained two uncommons from the previous in a rotating loop).

        So with my optimism squelched after the poor sorting issues, I set on the task of finding valid uses for each of these cards or trying to determine why each was included in the set. I started with Gem (who I’m told is truly, truly, truly, truly outrageous). Gem was one of two cards that carried an old series icon but was not in the Tribbles episodes, so why put her in this set? Why not preserve her for Mirror Mirror (which will be available before man colonizes the moon)? She’s a Support Personnel with Empathy X 2, but so is Maques. There are already more than a few Non-Aligned personnel with Empathy (Maques, Devioni Ral and others). After speaking with a fellow player (Captain Jack), I was able to identify several personnel that were not produced but could have been in Gem’s place. To make a long story short (too late), how about Cyrano Jones, the nefarious Tribble Trader or Harry Mudd, the 23rd Century equivalent to Huggiebear, or Charlie X, or even that random Engineer who always seemed to be drunk and alone in Engineering (you know who I mean). Would these have not been better choices for this set than Gem who could have easily waited until Mirror Mirror.

// Editor's Note: Decipher was unable to obtain permission for several cards in time for TwT; for example, the estate of the actor who played Cyrano Jones refused to allow his image to be used //

        I moved on to cards like Lt. Bailey, Ferengi Infestation, Lucsley, Dulmer, Breen Warship and the Klingon ships, all cards that could have either been delayed or made uncommon to allow other cards in the set. As it stands now I wouldn’t use a 23rd century ship unless I had a bunch of OS personnel and a Crew Reassignment handy.

        So in the end what will the legacy of this set be, Rules introduced the Ferengi, Blaze introduced the concept of battle damage and tactics, Dominion introduced the Dominion, and so forth; what will Trouble’s legacy be? Will it be remembered as the set that introduced the original crew and made them immediately functional or the poorly constructed set that introduced the Tribble Side Game? Time will tell.

- Skullduggery