#magicvariant

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The alternate win condition for the Throne of Cobra-La. If your opponents let you assemble 16 Cobra troopers then they should be rewarded with dying. It would only take the initial 5 troopers plus maybe 3 full turns with both of your teammates revealed for you to get Serpentor and a reasonably sized army. Assuming your deck plays spells and maybe creatures too, I would think someone is being eliminated. You may notice that Serpentor’s own ability gives himself the bonus too. If someone wasn’t paying attention and has no creatures to block with then you can sneak in for the kill!

I couldn’t find a good screen grab from the cartoon or even a semi reasonable toy picture. I was lucky when I found the recent comic book scans. This art isfrom the IDW comic book series. I liked the full frame art here because it is so different from the regular artifact frames of the other Cobra creatures. It shows that something special is happening. 

I chose to go with Serpentor over Cobra Commander only because Serpentor had a little more luck against the Joe team. He is also nuts, which makes him a bit more interesting in a game where there are usually a lot of people playing. Give you an excuse to attack wildly if you wanted. Serpentor said to attack you, and you, and you. 

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This is Secret Alliances. It is a multiplayer variant for 5-15 players, (the extra 5 cards will be in the next post). This is a cross between Star and a regular team game. You determine how many players, then choose how many teams you will need.

5 players=3 teams: 2 matching color pairs and 1 single face down Ally.             6 Players=3 teams: 3 matching color pairs                                                         7 players=4 teams: 3 matching color pairs and 1 single face down Ally.             8 Players=4 teams: 4 matching color pairs and so on up to 10 players. 

Let’s use a 7 player game as an example.  The Bert, Ernie, Darth Vader, Sidous, Godzilla, Mothra and Spock will be used.     The cards are then passed out face down. If your card says reveal, then you reveal. The hidden team members are never allowed to flip their role card over during the game. What this does is create 2 “mini” games within the larger overall game. You will have 3 players with revealed role cards and 4 players with hidden roles. The revealed players know who is not on their team (the hidden role players), and the hidden players know who is not on their team (the appropriate revealed players and all of the other hidden players). The player who is Spock/Blue will know they are by themselves, but no one else will. Play proceeds as normal in both “mini” games until a point is reached where one ally is able to help the other, or an attack of opportunity comes up --example-Mothra sends her creatures at Sidious, who Godzilla has been trying to eliminate or Ernie casts a spell killing one of Godzilla’s creatures which is attacking Bert.--. You can see how these interactions will usually will inform some of the table who their allies might be. The game continues until only one team is left. 

This is one of my favorite variants because once everyone realizes what kind of interaction there can be between the “mini” games the level of deception and political action skyrockets. The depth of what can happen in this game is incredible. 

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Theta VIII

Theta VIII is the world where the Enterprise-D comes across an illusory hotel and casino. The hotel/casino was created by aliens who felt bad for killing the crew of a human exploratory vessel. They created the hotel to help the lone survivor have a more pleasant experience as he grew older. The only drawback was that the “people” who inhabited the hotel were 1 dimensional characters from an awful work of fiction. It’s not one of the best episodes, but it gave me the idea to create the opposite effect from Talos IV. It doesn’t quite fit the storyline, but it is close enough. In these larger games there are always powerful artifacts and enchantments on the battlefield.

Trill

For Trill I took a little bit of an Unglued take on the planets power. Instead of creating another card draw engine to show off the scientific prowess of the Trill people, I went another way. The Trill are a symbiotic people, most of the population is humanoid, and the rest are sentient, virtually immortal slugs or worms. I think you can see where I’m going. I hadn’t made many planets that create creatures for the king/queen, so this was a perfect punny fit.  I made the wurm green because most of the players in our group have some of the existing wurm tokens lying around. This planet usually brings a small smile to the face of Star Trek fans who get it. Sometimes that’s enough for me.

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Ullia

A Ullian in the episode “Violations” is responsible for one of the many instances of “mind rape” in Star Trek lore. I find it a bit icky that it comes up as often as it does. Telepathic history reading would have been a bit of a stretch for a planet power, but going into someone else’s mind and playing their spells for free seems like a strong ability. I didn’t make this ability infallible in the same way I did some of the other similar abilities. I thought that with this one very strong power that there should be some bit of chance, even if it’s small. When I saw how quickly someone took the throne (turn 2) and then put Ullia onto their battlefield, I was happy I gave this planet a tiny downside.

 Vulcan

Vulcan is of course where Spock is from. The logical, highly scientific race of people. I made this one of the few cards in the whole game that is 100% weighted towards the current king/queen’s team. I think the Vulcan people would say “it is not logical to help your enemies, only your friends.” Vulcan is very powerful.  Again, I didn’t mind making some of the planets powerful because there are 23 of them in total. The odds are not high that you will draw any particular one.

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Sigma Iota II

Sigma Iota is the planetary power I may have stretched the most to come up with. The inhabitants of this planet live according to a book that describes Gangs of the 1920s. It’s one of the funnier episodes of The Original Series. “A Piece of the Action” describes the people of the planet as very industrious and in only a few short years were able to bring themselves up to 1920 era technology. I turned that industriousness into spell cost reduction because they are helping you out. I added the clue ability on because in the episode it takes a bit of detective work on Kirk’s part to figure out why everyone talks like a movie mobster. It’s a stretch, but so was that episode.

Talos

The Talosians were the antagonist in the very first Star Trek Episode, The Cage. They are telepathic, highly advanced and a bit mean. They are capable of creating very sophisticated illusions. So sophisticated that it is almost impossible to tell reality vs illusion for the characters. I think a 1 turn copy of a creature is reasonably close to what the Talosians do in the movie. I chose not to give the copy the illusion targeted problem, because in a lot of cases it would make the copy useless. There are so many players in these game that will just happen to have odd targeting abilities. I want the copy to actually do something in the game, even if it’s just an attack.

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Romulus

Romulus is home to one of the main villains of the Star Trek universe. They come off as sneaky and underhanded in most episodes, so I decided to have the planet follow this theme. I used the Alpha card Illusionary Mask as my template. I have always loved this card. In olden days one of the players in my group would hide his Royal Assassin whenever he played it. It used to die immediately, but because he hid a majority of the creatures in that deck he usually got a few good uses out of it before it died. That’s what I envisioned for Romulus. The few times this has come up, the morphed creature has been a big one (Blightsteel Colossus is still my favorite).

Rubicon III

Rubicon was one of the final planets I designed. At this point with almost 20 other planets, I wanted something very, very different. There are a few distinguishing things about this planet. The world is watched over by a super powerful celestial being, the people do little more than play games all day, and the rule of law is absolute. It was the 2nd item that I latched onto for the ability. In the games we have played the tension created by the dice roll is great.

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Regula, (Genesis Planet)

Regula, The Genesis Planet is created at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Genesis device was such a powerful MacGuffin that it managed to kill one of the main characters. I wanted an effect that was almost as powerful. I assume that when everyone benefits from searching for any card that it will 100% of the time create drama, cause action or possibly end the game within a few turns. If the king/queen gets to search again, then they should be well on their way to their team winning. I think that should be a lot of motivation to the non-king/queen teammates to remove them from the throne. All the way around it manages to do everything we want in Kings and Thrones.

Rigel IV

Rigel IV is the only planet that doesn’t have any specific story linked to it. It is a normal colony world about 90 light years from Earth. The NX class Enterprise visits the Rigel system in an episode. One of Spock’s questions from the beginning of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home references Rigel and it’s treaty with the Argus. Keiko O’Brien visits Rigel IV for a hydroponics conference. It is this last fact that gave me the clue for the ability. I figured a nice stable world would be able to provide the king/queen with an extra mana each turn. It doesn’t need to be flashy, just helpful. This is one of the few planets that can be transferred to your teammates. I wanted a king/queen to be able to help the little people.  

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Paxan

Paxan is another slightly obscure world that is seen only in a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We see it in the episode “Clues”, and it’s one of my favorites. Paxan is the home of a very xenophobic species. In the episode Data convinces the aliens to let the crew live if they have their memories erased and won’t ever go back to the Paxan homeworld. It doesn’t work the first time, and the ship finds its way back at Paxan, but by the end a solution is discovered. I really wanted a counterspell planet, but initially I couldn’t figure out how to create one, until this planet came up. Putting Paxan on the bottom of the planet deck fits about as perfectly as possible, and it isn’t abusive.  Also, when someone else becomes king/queen then you get to revisit the deadly planet. It is almost perfect.

Qu’noS

Qu’noS is of course the Klingon homeworld. The Klingons are known for being aggressive fighters, and I figured I should keep this ability simple. They prefer honorable interactions, and what’s more honorable than one creature beating down on another creature. This was probably the very first planet ability I created. I knew what I wanted from the beginning. I even knew I wanted to add trample, because I wanted the king/queen to be able to eliminate players with the help of the Klingons. I like the flavor there.