Saturday, April 27, 2013

Simple Repack Theatre Meets Decipher Learning From Past Mistakes With "Reflections 2.0!"


The Good: Some very nice foils,Decent original foils, With price depressed the boxes are a great deal
The Bad: Rarities, A ton of filler!
The Basics: With brand new foils mixed in with foil reprints and a ton of extra singles, "Reflections 2.0" makes itself worthwhile to collectors and investors, if not players.


When the Star Trek CCG reached a certain point, it had a lot of material and as a result, Decipher, Inc. had a lot of material stocked up. With the first edition of Star Trek CCGs, this resulted in a number of attempts to liquidate the stock, possibly the most notable of which was the Reflections (reviewed here!) set. Comprised of foil reprint cards mixed in with obscene amounts of singles from the first six sets, "Reflections" devalued a lot of collections and made for an annoyingly difficult foil set to attempt to collect. So, when Decipher, Inc. announced Reflections 2.0 for the Star Trek Second Edition CCG, many of us were wary. We did not, as it turned out, need to be.

Decipher's most blatant effort to dump old Star Trek Second Edition CCG stock to date came in the form of "Reflections 2.0." After only a few years of producing the Star Trek Second Edition CCG, Decipher warehouses were apparently still plugged with old inventory from the first three sets, so they came up with an interesting solution; repackage the cards and reprint some as foils. Learning from their prior mistakes, though, this time Decipher offered some intriguing new foil only cards. So, while there were a few foil reprints from the first four sets, there were also brand new cards, making this set essential to collectors and investors. It turned out to pay out well for both. As for players, some like the original cards in this set, many could not justify the expense to get them.

Basics/Set Composition

The Star Trek Customizable Card Game "Reflections 2.0" set was the sixth full expansion set of cards sold in boxes created by Decipher to continue the Customizable Card Game Second Edition. Players saw the game as a strategy game that is like a Role-playing game with cards. The players got to use characters, vessels, and scenarios are all already conceived by others. The original concept was to find a way to make play socially acceptable for an older audience and it generally worked. Collectors saw this as another thing to collect to show their love of Star Trek and while the cards have very different images from the trading card releases, many collectors were turned off by how small the images were and how much space on each card was given to game-related text.

"Reflections 2.0" is a 121 card set that is comprised more or less of half of foil reprint cards from the first four sets of Star Trek Second Edition CCG cards (see links at bottom of page) and 61 foil cards unique to this set. The set consists of 60 rare foil reprints and 61 Premium rare foils unique to this set, with the most popular characters and scenarios being given the more rare status. Interestingly, there is no differentiation within the rarity for the exclusive cards and thus, they seem to come up with the same frequency.

The 61 new cards that are unique to "Reflections 2.0" include: 13 Dilemmas (cards featuring challenges the crews faced, like a shipboard fire or an unknown microorganism), 19 Events (cards featuring long-standing challenges or concepts in the overall Star Trek universe, like an interstellar treaty or a Maquis Raid), 7 Interrupts (cards featuring phenomenon that quickly turn events, like a change of heart or a transwarp conduit), 20 Personnel (2 Bajoran, 2 Borg, 2 Cardassian, 3 Dominion, 5 Federation, 2 Klingon, 2 Non-Aligned, and 2 Romulan characters), and 2 Ship cards (1 Dominon, 1 Federation).

Fortunately, for collectors and investors, those trying to assemble a 121 card foil card set will find the packs of 18 cards have two foil cards per pack, usually a foil reprint and one of the Premiums exclusive to this set.. The other 17 cards are all regular, repackaged cards from the prior sets. There are commons, uncommons and rares from the first three sets of Star Trek Second Edition CCGs. Once in a long while, a "Reflections 2.0" pack will have a "Necessary Evil" single in it, as well!

Playability

At its most basic level, this is a board game where one constructs the board and pieces out of a selection of cards. The starting purpose of the game is to get 100 points, points most often are derived from completing missions by thwarting dilemmas using the unique attributes of your ship and crew. The "Reflections 2.0" set incorporates the cards introduced and revised with the "Second Edition Premiere" set.

"Reflections 2.0" does not add any new affiliations or concepts.

This is a very complex customizable card game, but it represents a level of gaming sophistication designed to appeal to younger adults and actually challenge them, which is a decent idea given the thematic complexity of the Star Trek universe. The problem, of course, is that most people who would be most stimulated by this game do not have the time or effort/interest to learn to play it. As a result, the mid-teens that basically run the CCG players world seem to have had mixed impressions about this game.

This is very much a collector's set as players who seriously play the game will already have everything that is in these boxes of cards and would be unlikely to play with the more valuable foil cards anyway.

Rule Changes

The basic rules for the Star Trek Second Edition CCG were laid out in the "Second Edition Premiere" set and are covered in my review (see link below). There are no rule changes in this expansion.

Highlights

The "Reflections 2.0" set set out to wow fans and it manages to do some of that with its impressive list of new cards. In addition to the fun of Vina as an Orion Slave Girl, there is Troi as Major Rakal, her Romulan alter-ego from "Face Of The Enemy" (reviewed here!). Fans of the franchise will appreciate the appearance of a few alternate personas - Picard and Riker - from "All Good Things . . . " (reviewed here!).

But the stand out for me would have to be Odo, Curzon Odo. This card is based on the events of "Facets" (reviewed here!) and it is a wonderful and clever idea for the gaming card. Combining the talents of the shapeshifting Odo with the technical knowledge of Curzon Dax made for a great character and now a powerful card. As well, the picture looks good and it looks good as a foil!

Collectibility

"Reflections 2.0" is all about the collectors and it's all about pleasing the collectors who need everything. While nowhere near as difficult to complete as the original "Reflections" set, this has enough complexity to keep fans hunting down the full set.

In general, though, the "Reflections 2.0" set actually had the inverse effect of what collectors and especially investors want out of a set. The "Reflections 2.0" set itself remains quite valuable. Most collectors did not have the patience or money to sift through all the garbage to pull the cards per pack they needed to try to assemble the 61 original cards or the 60 card set of foils depicting cards they already had, so many simply let dealers do all the work and purchased their sets from dealers.

The problem is, the dealers who opened them ended up flooded with commons, uncommons and rares from the first three sets, which depressed the value of the sets of cards that had already been out. All three sets plummeted in value upon the release of "Reflection 2.0."

The only positive aspect of the "Reflections 2.0" set from a collectibility perspective is that the set wisely focused on reprinting the most popular ships and personnel cards. These two card types tend to have more universal appeal and as a result, they do increase the overall sense of value to the set, even if it does not add new characters or even new images of them.

In other words, it's a long way to go for little pay off.

Overview

The foil set that was "Reflections 2.0" set represents the best cards already in the marketplace as well as a whole bevy of new powerful cards with intriguing characters and situations to play with and/or collect. Nowhere near as uncreative as the first "Reflections" outing, it is easy to covet these cards and nicely, it is not impossible to collect them!

This set culls material from the following Star Trek Second Edition CCG series, which I've reviewed:
Second Edition Premiere
Energize
Call To Arms
Necessary Evil

This set was preceded by "Fractured Time" (reviewed here!) and followed by the Star Trek CCG expansion "Adversaries Anthology" (reviewed here!) and the full release "Strange New Worlds" (reviewed here!).

This set culls images from:

The Star Trek films
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise

Check out my current inventory of this set at my Reflections 2.0 Store Front!

7/10

For other card reviews, please visit my Card Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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