Star Roamers

Purchase the Star Roamers Faction on Forgefire!

These are the travels of the spaceship Undertaking. Its several-year mission: to find new worlds, seek out new life and new worlds (many of which look suspiciously like 1940s Earth), to bravely go where no person has gone before! The Star Roamers travel about the tabletop, using their incredible teleporting technology to send countless ensigns to their deaths, all in the name of base smashing!

Star Roamers are from the Cease and Desist set and do not have a Titan card.

Complexity Level: MEDIUM-HIGH

Mechanics

Returning Your Minions To Your Hand
Moving Minions Between Bases

The Star Roamers emulate teleportation by triggering and altering the return of minions to your hand. All of their minions work together to create chain reactions that grant you more control of your minions the more are in play, eventually leading to overwhelming protection and mobility. Star Roamers are not so good at affecting other players, though.

The chains can be triggered in multiple ways and can end on any other base or your hand. Science Officer and 5 standard actions initiate returns to your hand, as well as Medical Officer if another one of your minions would be destroyed. Ship's Engineer and Whiplash Maneuver allow you to change return to hand into movement to a different base, saving precious minion plays, as well as gaining extras from Science Officer.

Ensigns protect your valuable Officers and Engineers by redirecting effects toward them instead. The Officers and Engineers in turn - especially Medical Officer - send sacrificial Ensigns right back into the action.

Ship's Captain is the only Star Roamer minion with an on-play ability, but what an absurdly amazing ability it is! This is the minion you will be returning to your hand instead of moving to a different base.

A unique card to the deck is Weird New Worlds, which is one of only two cards in the game capable of expanding the number of bases in play beyond "number of players+1". Teleport Overflow is another interesting action. At the least, it acts like the Aliens' Abduction on yourself, but if you have any minions with the same name you can play all of them on any bases. You can even include the minion you just returned. Very versatile.

Strategy

You are unlikely to have all of these minions in play at the same time, especially since you need to break and win bases to win the game. This is really where the complexity of this faction gets difficult to handle. You may know what to do when you have all these minions in play, but what if your opponents are keeping up with removing your synergizing minions, and you have to decide which 2 or 3 minion combination to spend your precious minion plays on? What do you even have in play right now!? It can be easy to lose track of the options available to you when you have so many other things happening in the game.

Ship's Captain helps you get a team online. Do not dismiss the value of finding your other best minions even though you can't immediately play them. Sometimes you have to choose between keeping your minions for their abilities or breaking bases with their power, but ideally you want both. Port Me Up is especially valuable for this purpose. Star Roamers combine Big Drops and Bait and Switches into coordinated plays coming from multiple angles. Putting them together is a daunting, ever-changing task.

Synergy

Star Roamers perform best with other factions that return minions to hands, which generally also feature great on-play abilities. Medical Officer helps relieve self-destruction penalties, but she doesn't help abilities that require that minions get destroyed (see Escape Hatch's clarification).

Aliens: Gain the minion with the pinnacle of on-play abilities: Invader. Aliens have other on-play abilities to add to Ship's Captain and they can always send enemy minions back to their hands. Scout is an ideal target for Teleport Overflow.
Shapeshifters: Find Ship's Captain and the Officers more easily, and mitigate the destruction penalties of Shapeshifter actions with Medical Officer.
Ninjas: "Return" your Ninja Acolyte with his ability, but actually just move him, generating an extra minion play every turn. Ninja's on-play abilities shore up Star Roamers' lack of destruction, and Infiltrate can destroy Weird New Worlds.
Fairies: Science Officer can return Titania and Ship's Captain when you reduce their power. This can be done with Glymmer or Enchantment to rapidly field your best minions. You can already do this with Puck for extra cards or actions.

Cards - Minions

1x Ship's Captain

Power 5 - Search your deck for a minion, reveal it, add it to your hand and shuffle your deck. If it has power 3 or less, play it here as an extra minion.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

1x Medical Officer

Power 4 - Ongoing: When one or more of your other minions would be returned to your hand, you may draw a card instead of returning one of them.

Errata: Yes, Functional

Clarifications:

1x Science Officer

Power 4 - Talent: Return one of your minions of power 4 or less to its owner’s hand. Play an extra minion with a different name.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

You can return a minion you control but don’t own, and still do the rest of the ability.

3x Ship's Engineer

Power 3 - Ongoing: If another one of your minions would be returned to your hand, you may move it to another base instead.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

These don’t trigger if you return a minion you don’t own, since it doesn’t go to your hand.

4x Ensign

Power 2 - Ongoing: When an opponent plays a card that directly affects one of your other minions here, you may have it affect this minion instead.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

It can take on ongoing or special effects, but not from cards already in play. It can take on multiple effects if it makes sense (e.g. multiple -1 power, but not multiple destroys unless it’s immune). It can have an action played on a different minion played on itself instead. It can substitute for a different minion being taken control of. It cannot take an effect already taken by a different Ensign from a third minion. It can take an effect even if it does not fit the original target’s prerequisites (e.g. “power 3 or higher”).

Clarifications:

You can return a minion you control but don’t own, and still do the rest of the ability.
The minions don’t have to have the same name as the returned minion, but have the same name as each other. A single minion counts as a group with the same name.

1x Weird New Worlds

Play a new base. You may play an extra minion on it.

Errata: Yes, Functional

Clarifications:

If this card leaves play before the next base scores, the number of bases is increased for the rest of the game.

1x Whiplash Maneuver

Play on a base. Ongoing: If any of your minions on other bases would be returned to your hand, you may move them here instead.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

These don’t trigger if you return a minion you don’t own, since it doesn’t go to your hand.

Cards - Bases

1x USS Undertaking

Breakpoint 22 - VPs: 4 2 1 - At the start of your turn, you may move one of your minions to here, or from here to another base.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications:

1x Neutral Space

Breakpoint 18 - VPs: 3 2 1 - Minions here are not affected by other players’ minions here.

Errata? Yes/No

Clarifications: