Being a look back at cards from the Star Trek CCG, and what I thought of them back when they were fresh and new... in EPISODE order. Here's a bit of a fabrication inspired by WNOHGB...
PICTURE: The planet was never seen, only mentioned, so this nondescript, non-aligned (yellow) world is as good as any. I mean, we're quite used to it, but it's really just a colored circle with a shadow on it. Am I seeing too much into the crescent looking like the "C" in Tau Alpha C? I know I should go lower, but I'm pushed (by nostalgia? by how distinct it looks on the spaceline?) toward a 3.
LORE: Average stuff, but well inferred from what little we learned of the place in "Where No One Has Gone Before". I also like the mirror effect with the First Contact card for Feds, and this New Contact for the other two original affiliations. A 3.1.
TREK SENSE: Total invention, but still well extrapolated. See, the Traveler told us he was from this world (that could have been a smoke screen so that his story couldn't be crossed-checked, of course, how else should I take his 2E card's "Alien" species?). We know it's far away, so on the other side of the Klingon and Romulan empires, deep in the Beta Quadrant is a good place to situate it. In that part of space, it makes sense that the Klingons and Romulans would be the ones attempting. I know it was just created to give them more stuff to do, but it works. The requirements are a bit strange however, reading a lot like a Federation mission run by Federation values. Klingons and Rommies would probably play it more like conquerors. And what's Empathy, a decidedly alien skill, doing here? The two affiliations don't have a single non-AU Empath among them! Oh wait, The Viceroy is backwards-compatible (still not much). Anyway, is this really necessary unless the Tau Cetans are telepathic or have weird emotions or somesuch? The rest is your standard first contact scenario, with Anthropology to understand the culture, Diplomacy to open negotiations, and Leadership to show the proper authority to enter into them. It's fine, but really more of a Federation solution. If the natives here really are that advanced (as the Traveler was), then the high points make sense: There's a lot you could learn or steal from these guys. Span makes it far away, but a fiver would have been nicer. Since requirements are key, this mission gets panned, winding up at an even 2.
SEEDABILITY: 40 points is a great bounty, and that can easily be upped with mission specialists, but Empathy isn't part of the regular Klingon or Romulan skill pool, so it could make this one tougher than it looks (because 4 skills isn't usually hard to come up with). Thankfully, that's where Major Rakal and/or The Viceroy come in for the Romulans. Even so, this is such a targetable skill that Non-Aligned back-up should also be made available. The Klingons have no other recourse, unless they have a Treaty with the Federation (this is a good mission for that, in fact). The Empathy may indeed be seen as a way to prevent mission theft, as this one's not covered by Fair Play. A high-scoring mission with one difficulty, but definitely not insurmountable. Hits 3.4.
TOTAL: 11.5 (57.5%) Contact was not as fruitful as expected.
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