Seven trade on turn one! Such is the power of this week’s format, Frontier Expedition. But that power is only afforded to player two, so player one needs to plan very carefully this week. We’re going back to the Big Money Format, not quite as big as Commitment to the Cause was in week four, but the bombs appear much faster than normal. How do you prepare? What are the pitfalls? And how does your intrepid reporter find new and interesting ways to fail to win an arena run this week? Read on to find out.

Format Rules and Technical Data

The scenario rule for Frontier Expedition ensures that the scrapping can begin whenever you want, and that dramatic openings are possible for player one and likely for player two.

Each player starts the game with two Explorers in the place of two Scouts in their starting deck.

The sets are Star Realms Core Set, Crisis: Bases & Battleships, Crisis: Fleets & Fortresses, and United Heroes. We rarely see United Heroes with the Core Set in the Arena. That set, along with the two Crisis sets included, makes the average cost of cards in the trade row about a half-point more expensive than normal. This doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of the game it really adds up. Thankfully, we have two Explorers in the starting deck to help with this.

In my three runs this week, most games ended between turns 17 and 18 — meaning eight or nine turns per player. A couple of them went very long, past turn 25. Since most of the expensive cards in this format are offense-oriented, it makes sense that getting to them faster would lead to faster games.

To Scrap, or Not To Scrap?

Because two of your starting-deck cards self-scrap, it can be tempting to jump into Machine Cult as soon as you can. It is very possible to win most games of Star Realms by being the first player to scrap all 10 starting deck cards, and you can still do that in this arena; I won both times I managed to do that this week. However, scrapping as a general strategy is not as strong as normal. Games are faster than normal, so you will have fewer opportunities to use them. And, because both players begin with some scrapping, the incremental value of additional scrapping is decreased.