Shattered Mirror Treasures

by Ross Fertel, Second Edition Brand Manager

14th December 2018

With every set, every card has a story. Some are more interesting than others. Let's take a look at a few of them. If you're looking for strategies, look elsewhere but otherwise, enjoy the look behind the scenes extras.

A History of Collusion – I've posted an article on this already, but the Reader Digest version is that when design was looking at available Klingon decks to give some love to, both the Brand Manager and Design Director gave thumbs up to Klingon Smugglers. Seeing as how two people outside the design process were interested, they obliged.

Axiana, Secure Colony – There are some really nifty tricks you can do with cards at times. This is just a simple mission and that's all it has going f for it. If you look at your Klingon Delta Quadrant deck, you'll see that this fits the skill profile perfectly. There's not a whole lot more to say about it, but in a game with some powerful cards and star power, this stands out just by being there.

Ba'El – Early on in the design process, one of the teams was looking all at of the Klingon decks out there. It was pretty much a thesis with the analysis going on between these two and is one of the highlights of being able to snoop behind the scenes.

One of the things that came up was the Romulan Affiliated Klingons. On the record as 'not being [his] best work,' one designer was eager to see if they could be salvaged. As you can see in the final product, this didn't come to pass, but one of them did get in touch with her Klingon side.

Compromised Experiment – This card and Elemental Instability refer to the opponent on your left. That last word caused huge amounts of consternation among several departments, particularly one that rarely brings such concerns forward. As the guy who ensures communication between said departments, I explained it several times during the course of production.

Have you wondered why so many cards refer to the opponent on your right? Wonder no longer! There are a lot of ways that the opponent on your left can mess with you since they choose the dilemmas you face in your mission attempts. It's a little too powerful if they can also mess with other things to throw off your game as well, so it's balanced by frequently having the opponent on your right mess with you since they can't be as manipulative as the one giving you dilemmas. In this case, there is interaction with your deck. If these referred to the standard opponent on your right, you would depend on another player stocking Decay events in their decks and no one would use this card.

These concerns were also brought up way back in To Boldly Go when the Headquarters dilemmas came out. You're welcome for the history lesson.

Julian Bashir – Finally! Both editions have been clamoring for this for quite some time and here you have him. The skills aren't too much to brag about, neither are the ones he can gain, but when you put them all together, you've got quite a nice little package. What, are you making a Next Generation deck without Data?

K'Rad – If you're a fan of tie-in fiction at all, you've heard of Keith R. A. Decandio. He's a super cool guy who's played in several sandboxes. Beyond his strong Star Trek resume, he's also written Doctor Who, Marvel, Supernatural and a whole lot more.

With all due respect to the community, he's written The Klingon Art of War. Literally. Word is that a copy of it sits on the set of After Trek. This personnel's playtest name was Warrior Poet and I begged Matt to name him K'Rad as a tribute.

Now, if design could make a general human archeologist…

The Shroud of the Sword – One of the games I am beyond obsessed with is Sentinels of the Multiverse. I'm not going to go too far into it, but one of the characters is Ra. Think a Thor knockoff with fire instead of thunder and Egyptian based instead of Norse and you get the idea. At any rate, he has a card called The Staff of Ra. It's a good booster for him to have. There's also a card called Summon Staff which helps you get the staff into your hand and has other goodies. There are a total of seven of these in the preconstructed forty card deck to make sure you can have your fun. The Shroud of the Sword gives your Klingons a boost or you can ditch it to get the Sword. I'll just consider this card to be Summon Sword, thank you very much.

Xenophobic Outburst – This card seems innocuous at first glance. It follows the patters of Mortal Choice with meta nerfing. It is a much riskier version since you can get either three kills or one stop out of it.

If you think that's bad, it started off deadlier. Initially, it compared three pairs of personnel, killing each that didn't match. For a Deep Space Nine deck, they have plenty of speed, but taking out six personnel in one go is quite a lot to overcome. That can pretty much be the entire attempting crew and take over an entire turn to recover from! Granted, each pairing did require the prior to hit (i.e. if the first pair matched, you were solid), but the version e have gives you a much more moderate bite of the apple.

Hope you've enjoyed this look behind the scenes. Shattered Mirror is legal today. Enjoy!

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