Protowarp: 1E : The Basics / Rules

What is Protowarp? My attempt to solve a “problem” for STCCG in general – the lack of an easily accessible, limited format, involving the new cards.

This is a project I’ve been working on for about 3 years now.
Part 1 of the solution came in 2020, during the pandemic. Wizards of the Coast released a new product for Magic called Jumpstart. The idea is simple. take two random, themed decks of 20 cards, shuffle together, and play. But it could never be that simple for Star Trek, right?

Where it clicked for me was realizing to make the missions the “hero card” of the packs. The current breakdown in a 1E pack is this:

• Mission
• 1 Planet Dilemma
• 1 Space Dilemma
• 2 P/S Dilemmas
• 5 personnel, all of whom match one of the affiliations on the mission¹ and between them, have the skills to solve the mission.
• Ship, same affiliation.
• 1 “verb” (Event, interrupt, Objective, Artifact, Incident, etc) that is seedable if desired.
• 3 other verbs, priority given to cards downloadable or mentioned by other cards in the pack.

That gives you 15 cards. Take 6 of these packs, add a “starter set” (currently a Neutral Outpost + Spacedoor) and you could literally play with no changes made other then choosing what to seed.

Table Drafting

So, we lay out a grid of packs, 6 x number of players. The only visible card is the mission.

Each player takes a turn picking a mission pack. (snake order, so player 8 makes 2 picks, then it reverses back to player 1, etc.)

When you pick a pack, it will tell you which affiliation you picked, this is public.

So if I picked Verify Legendary Journey, that card could be: Federation, Bajoran, Cardassian, or Ferengi.
In this case, it’s Ferengi. Now, any other players know that the other Verify Legendary Journey pack is not Ferengi.

There are a couple of strategic notes for picking packs. First, while there is a universal treaty in place under the rules, you still need matching affiliations for things like staffing and mission attempts/solving. So having as many of one affiliation can be beneficial for synergy.

Second, you know that the requirements of the mission will be in that pack. So you can either pick similar missions for guaranteed redundancy, OR you can go wide to get a better skill spread for dilemmas.

When you are done, each player will have:

• 6 missions (make sure not to pick duplicates of non-universal (not allowed) and to get at least 1 Planet and 1 Space (not required, but it’ll be harder to win if you don’t.)
• 24 dilemmas. (6 planet, 6 space, 12 either)
• 30 personnel
• 6+ other seedable cards
• 18 other cards
• 1 neutral outpost, 1 spacedoor.²

We then take a pause for deckbuilding (paper: recommended 30 minutes or less, online, you have until your match.) You are allowed to modify your deck between rounds.

Alternate Requirements

Format rules

Mostly the same as Modern, which a few exceptions.

• Each player gets 2 Normal Card Play and 2 Normal Card Draw per turn. Other cards may add additional free plays or draws.
  • If something replaces your Normal Card Play or Normal Card Draw, it may replace either of the two that you get and you still get the other NCP/NCD.
  • If something says “draw no cards this turn”, then you skip your draws.
• Universal Treaty is in effect. (Same as Warp Speed Sealed) Everyone works together.
• Normal battle restrictions are still in place.
• The AU icon and Quadrant icons (except on missions) are unloaded. Meaning, things can refer to them, but they do not currently require a doorway to seed/play³, or have rules related to reporting in their native quadrant.⁴
• TNG / DS9 icons. This is a big difference then any other format.
  • As a rule, Your personnel and ships that have a Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek Generations property logo gain  (even if not in play).
  • As a rule, Your Nors, personnel, and ships that have a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine property logo gain  (even if not in play).
  • Some packs will containing Continuing Mission or Reshape the Quadrant. This is to use them to download their respective engines, or the card draw for Continuing Mission.
  • If you play a card that would normally break them, they are still discarded. (I.E.: Playing Benjamin Sisko will still discard Continuing Mission.) Cards will keep their or icons if this happens, but you will lose any other benefits of having those cards in play. (You won’t get to draw cards for Continuing Mission, and Formidable Warriors won’t give you free plays.)
  • However, even if you never played Continuing Mission, you could still use Tag! to download Alexander Rozhenko.
• Duplicate Missions
  • Because this format is more likely then normal to have duplicate missions, place them at the same location on the spaceline, but each on the players half of the table.
  • You seed dilemmas under your opponent’s copy of the mission, they seed under yours. You only attempt your copy and face opponent’s dilemmas, and vice-versa.
  • Both missions are at the same location, so a ship at my copy is present at your copy. They are the same mission for all purposes except attempting.

Playing Online

Playing online had a few challenges. So I created a massive Google spreadsheet to allow the drafting. A google account is required to draft/edit the spreadsheet, sorry.

On the Table Draft tab, the first thing you will see is a list of what affiliations are available in the draft.

While I have currently built out over 400 possible packs, and all affiliations are possible⁵, for simplicity, any given draft will only include 6 packs of each affiliation, and I recommend only Affiliations = to the number of players. (So in a 8 player pod, I’ll enable 8 random affiliations.)

When you pick a pack, check the checkbox under the pack. (This will hide the image, signifying the pack is taken) and then choose that pack number from your dropdown underneath the packs:

When you select the pack from the dropdown, it will automatically fill in the name of the mission (to help you avoid duplicates), the type mission (P, S, or P/S to help you pick at least one of each) and the affiliation of the chosen pack.

once everyone is done drafting, at the bottom of the sheet is a tab for each person:

Click on your tab.

Here you have two choices. If you highlight columns B and C (simple option) and copy them, you can then go Lackey and in the deck editor, click the deck tab and click the paste button.

This will paste your entire deck in to Lackey, and then you can drag to the correct tabs. OR

You can highlight and copy columns for Missions, paste them into the Lackey mission tab, etc.

1. Well, usually. You might see some NA people as well, or some unusual theming if required. ↩︎
2. packs may contain other outposts, more copies of spacedoor, etc. ↩︎
3. AU icon will probably go back to standard rules when time locations are added, and if so, each player will get a seedable door. ↩︎
4. Current protowarp packs are all Alpha Quadrant, but I have plans for GQ/DQ/MQ ↩︎
5. Except Borg currently. Too messy. ↩︎