Recently we've had prize ships, 3 new ships a month, and reinforcement boosters, so there are lots of new ships to deal with. I love this paradigm, it gives me lots of new cards to play with and lots of combos to think about. I know this isn't a view universally shared, and some people struggle to buy all the new ships and use them effectively.
Part of the reason that I like the speed of release is that I'm in the lucky position of being able to buy one of each of the new ships each month, but I think another part of it is playing fleet pure.
The store I play in has an odd set of house rules (no 50/3 or retired resources, penalty pure with cards like mirror soval and Khan 8 allowing independent faction cards only to be deployed to any ship without penalty) and it is my choice to almost exclusively play Fleet Pure, but it does help to deal with change.
For each OP I first decide on a faction to play, then I build a fleet to fit with that OP scenario. This really limits the number of cards I have to consider for each event (usually the chosen faction plus independent) I don't really like OXP (I've never used it) but this also helps. Most of the time I play federation, so I have the greatest familiarity with those cards. All this means that each wave gives me only 1 or 2 new ships to consider when fleet building, and when I do switch factions, I have the ships from preceding waves to consider afresh. It's almost like I get a wave entirely of one faction to consider in my builds!
The other thing that helps to deal with change is that I have a set build for each faction, and my first way of looking at new ships is to consider how their upgrades fit into my standard build. With Klingons, for example, my standard build is 3 high quality high attack vor'chas and with each new wave I'm looking for upgrades that help to make that build better. Over time I've swapped Gowron for Kargan and then Kor 8, since those cards have helped to make the fleet better at what it does well.
Playing fleet pure also limits the number of intermix combinations that I have to consider with new expansions. Which means that I can deal with new expansions more effectively and see how to use them quicker. This makes every new expansion wave or prize ship a n exciting time for me where I don't get quickly overwhelmed.
I'm not criticising people for a second who play mixed and I understand that for many people, finding the stand out upgrades in each expansion is an important factor in deciding whether or not to purchase an upgrade, but my method of dealing with change leaves me excited for each wave, each preview and each prize without feeling overwhelmed!
I'd be interested to hear the process that other players go through when considering which expansions to buy and how to use the upgrades therein.
As always, I'm not Picard.
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