The Good: It brings the original Star Trek series into the Second Edition well, Good foils
The Bad: Missing card, somewhat lame overall feel
The Basics: Missing cards and uninspired foils make "These Are The Voyages" one of the lesser Second Edition Star Trek sets!
The Star Trek Second Edition for the Customizable Card Game was an easy-to-play game, at least by CCG standards. As the game evolved, the Second Edition worked to bring players and collectors back to the game by broadening the representation of the Star Trek universe it depicted. It was one of the final booster pack releases, "These Are The Voyages," that finally returned the original Star Trek to the game. And it's a pretty dismal release.
"These Are The Voyages" hit the market relatively soon after the prior set and it was a remarkably average release for Decipher. The "These Are The Voyages" cards were only released in boxes of thirty packs, with packs possessing eleven cards each. Each pack included 11 cards: 1 rare (or foil), 3 uncommon and 7 common cards.
Basics/Set Composition
"These Are The Voyages" is a 141 card set of gaming cards, mostly focusing on characters and events from Star Trek: Voyager. The set consists of 41 Common, 41 Uncommon, 39 Rare, 18 Archive Foils and 2 Archive Portrait foil cards. The Archive foils are reprints of popular rares from the "These Are The Voyages" set and the 2 Archive Portrait foils are unique foils that foreshadow future cards.
The 121 non-foil cards consist of: 20 Dilemma (cards that feature obstacles from the series', like a Distress Call or Excalbian Drama), 1 Equipment (cards featuring mass-produced objects in the Star Trek universe, like the Tox Uthat), 11 Event (cards that feature extended circumstances for the ships or crews, like Condition Red or a Plasma Energy Weapon), 6 Interrupt (cards featuring quick turns of fate in the game, like a Cascade Virus or the use of a Neural Transceiver), 4 Missions (cards that act as the "board" for the game), 72 Personnel (2 Bajoran, 4 Borg, 1 Cardassian, 3 Dominion, 33 Federation, 2 Ferengi, 8 Klingon, 8 Non-Aligned, 5 Romulan and 6 StarFleet characters), and 7 Ship (4 Federation, 1 Klingon, 1 Non-Aligned and 1 Romulan) cards.
The cards truly do manage to focus on Star Trek: Voyager and taking their cue from such releases as the Lord Of The Rings Trading Card Game, some of the most popular characters and ships, like Captain Kirk and most of the M.A.C.O.S. are released as common cards (there are, in fact, two James T. Kirks in this set).
Playability
The Star Trek Second Edition CCG is essentially a cross between a role playing game and a board game with cards being set down to create the board and players assembling a ship and crew to then travel the "board" and earn points. This set follows the same basic rules as they were laid out in "Second Edition Premiere" (reviewed here!).
By this point, there is some complexity in terms of dealing with time periods for some of the cards (i.e. Enterprise and Star Trek characters are not, technically, supposed to interact in the game with the 24th Century Federation characters), but most of the cards designed for playing, like the Event and Interrupts include the necessary text to understand how they are appropriately played. Anyone who has been playing the game will find this game easy to play and the "These Are The Voyages" expansion does not offer any changes to game play, it just restores the original Star Trek time period to play in the game.
Rule Changes
There are no changes to the rules in this expansion. One need only be attentive that the icons indicating which quadrant of space and which time period the card may be played in.
Highlights
Given that Star Trek is the focus of "These Are The Voyages" set, it makes sense that the highlights would all be related to the original Star Trek. Even the commons and uncommons are cool, with Gem, Uhura, and a Lovok Founder all making their Second Edition premieres. Characters like Chekov and Nurse Chapel round out the common set well.
But the grails are all in the rares. It is in the rares that one finds Spock, McCoy, and a "Trials and Tribble-ations" Jadzia Dax. The rares make for the best highlights, but here some of the characters are represented as Uncommons or even common cards!
The highlight of "These Are The Voyages," objectively might well be the Khan Noonien Singh card. 12 R 102 is Khan Noonien Singh, Bold Man, a powerful Non-Aligned Personnel card that makes for an leader for a rogue crew deck. Khan is a natural leader, a powerful card and it has a great image of Ricardo Montalban as Khan!
Collectibility
The "These Are The Voyages" cards were only released in the one release, so they are fairly uncommon, which always helps to increase the value. Unfortunately, there are several problems which lower the overall value of this release and make it something of a pain to collect. The first is that there is a missing card. There is no 12R58, which would have been a Cardassian Personnel card. It was not produced, much less released.
Then, there are two short-printed cards, a common and an uncommon. Yes, the two cards that are new reprints of previous Archive Portrait cards are under-represented in the common and uncommon sets as a result of another printing error.
The foil reprint cards help to thin the rares out some, but the grail for the collectors are the Archive Portrait cards, which pop up approximately one every three boxes. Unfortunately, in the "These Are The Voyages" set there is a mediocre Archive Portrait (the Augment Persis) and a highly coveted one, the alternate universe T'Pol, Dutiful Commander foil card. I suppose it's because it panders to the audience, using the Archive Portrait's extended image to present a long, exposed torso of T'Pol, making is a very alluring card.
The Archive Portraits have the potential to turn an average set into something truly extraordinary. Unfortunately, they fall short of that with the less inspired one, cementing this as a mediocre set that appears to have been rushed to market as opposed to actually proof-checked. That seals its fate.
Overview
There are too many problems with this set that lower its appeal. Star Trek in not a bad choice to try to use to reboot the game, but it has been pretty much milked to death. The "These Are The Voyages" cards start with a thematic deficiency and plummet with the quality issues. There are better Star Trek Second Edition CCG sets.
This set was preceded by "Genesis" (review pending) and followed by "In A Mirror Darkly" (review pending).
This set of gaming cards culls images from:
Star Trek
Star Trek: Enterprise and
"Trials And Tribble-ations"
This is a set of gaming cards I sell in my online store! Please visit my These Are The Voyages Inventory Page for an updated listing of the cards and sets I have available!
4/10
For other gaming card reviews, please visit my Gaming Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2013, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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