Tale as Old as Phage

by Ross Fertel, Storied

31st July 2024

Today, we've got a couple stories about a few cards. One spans decades but both coalesce into several cards in Phage.

We begin in First Edition with the creative elements of Voyager. As a standalone set, there were reprints of cards to make the set work, and one was the dilemma Assassin's Blade. The leading story candidate for a while was Ex Post Facto, an episode involving implanted memories of a murder being transmitted into Paris's mind. The only issue that came about revolved around the image in black and white, which would not work well with the black and white template. The only color on the card would have been the not too colorful expansion icon!

As things turned out, Decipher would introduce monochromatic cards a couple sets later with Holodeck Adventures. The Captain Proton portions of Voyager were broadcast in black and white so Decipher printed cards form those stories in black and white entirely, from personnel to equipment. When it came time to cover them in Second Edition, the Committee opted to make those in black and white as well. In both cases, they are treated as the full color versions of the icons for purposes of reporting, probing, etc.

As luck would have it, today's card, Derelict Robot, has a black and white image! The Voyager episode Prototype had a teaser entirely from the point of view of a Pralor unit and is in black and white. After two decades, we have a dilemma with a black and white image while the rest of the card is in color!

Fast forward years to a card that has a good story but is a little hard to pinpoint where it came from. The expansion, Caretaker, was Voyager focused and there are two dilemmas with fun moments on screen, but they are a bit harder to pin down the onscreen origins of. Take Suspicion as an example. From the episode Cathexis, there are two beings running around processing the crew and in a poignant moment, Kim drifts off for a bit feeding the paranoia. It is a good representation of the situation, but the image is of Kim at Ops, not the easiest to determine the episode it came from. Yeah, Tuvok is there, but that really doesn't help pinpoint where it comes from.

The images in Phage's dilemmas are all pretty clear cut to find out where they come from. Derelict Robot is a shining example, but also consider a card like Security Lockout. Torres in the Transporter Room is not easy to determine which episode it came from, but Seska and Carey will help narrow it down considerably.

We hope you've enjoyed this peek behind the curtain on a couple cards. It is no coincidence that this Vidiian focused set has a lot of early Voyager episodes sourced for the dilemmas. There is one more that will be revealed in the fullness of time, but you won't have too hard of a clash finding out what episode it came from.

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