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Inheritance Treasures

by Ross Fertel, Treasured Writer

3rd January 2020

The latest set, Inheritance, was released a week ago and is tournament legal as of today. This article will serve to take a deeper look at some of the cards in this set, to show how some of the cards progressed through development.

Amarie

Amarie – Early on, it became clear that there were certain concepts the worked in First Edition that weren't so great in Second Edition. Take Mission Specialists. They weren't all that useful until Assign Mission Specialists came out and gave them more use. Second Edition has a formal costing system in place, meaning that when you play a personnel with one skill, you pay less than you would if they had ten. We've had some personnel with one skill prior to Amarie, but design did a great job of making her more useful while keeping her in line with a Mission Specialist.

Edo Probe

Edo Probe – The original card in First Edition had both a gain and loss of points. On the first pass, this was almost a clear cut conversion, albeit more appropriate for Second Edition, but testing ran into a problem. This was limited to one per mission, but it could be encountered at multiple missions. It was possible to have a recurring point loss. It isn't a bad thing; planning for a problem is part of the meta. If it would lead to players needing to solve a fourth mission to win at a not uncommon rate, it creates as issue. Design was able to circumvent this scenario by having your opponent, the owner of the card, gain the five points instead of you facing the prospect of losing them.

Donald Varley U.S.S. Yamamoto Pi

Donald Varley, Pi and U.S.S. Yamato – Regions aren't something design really looks at. The keyword is loaded and while there are some regions that have created their own decktypes, particularly Bajor and Cardassia, others don't really have built in incentives to be used in multiple, beyond the built in range reduction. I'm not sure if these three of these cards will be in the same Patrol Neutral Zone deck, but I'm looking forward to seeing it emerge.

Fontaine

Fontaine – The gametext on this card required a bit of fine tuning to get right. It started off simplistically enough with him getting a benefit from being discarded, until Design looked at Casualties of the Occupation. That card became a little too easy to set up with Fontaine, so design had to find a way around that, which you can see in the final version of the card.

Hippocratic OathPopulation 9 Billion - All Borg

Hippocratic Oath and Population 9 Billion – All Borg – Every now and then, math can be a problem. This set celebrating twenty-five years of this game we love was always conceived as having twenty-five cards. Sets are most easily made in multiples of nine, leaving a pair of slots open. Given the nature of this set, a solution presented itself quickly. We could have two cards appear twice on the final version and since we were making versions of First Edition cards, we could use their Alternate Image promos for images. Ideal candidates would be useful in multiple, leaving unique cards out of consideration. Design wasn't making cards based on their images, but they had happened to make four such cards with alternate images as viable options. From there, a poll was set up for staff to vote on their two favorites and they came up with these two. Will Borg Nanoprobes or Edo Probe receive the same treatment in the future?

Ilon Tandro

Ilon Tandro – The First Edition version of this card had two affiliation icons. Those aren't really a Second Edition thing, although some cards can find a way around that restriction, such as Starfleet Kira or Opportunistic Envoy Quark. For Tandro, design initially put an Earth icon to represent his dual reporting nature. This added capturing to a lot of affiliations, some of which didn't really need it from a gameplay or story reason. It could have been toned it down, but that wouldn't be fair to the Cardassian side of the matter. In the end, the icon simply had to go.

Amarie

Naomi Wildman – As originally conceived, this set was supposed to be Second Edition versions of cards from Premiere. There is some good stuff in that set, but not a whole lot in terms of affiliations to cover. Plus, one staff member is a passionate Voyager fan. It didn't take long to expand the concept to other sets, including this card from pretty late in the physical card run.

Rinnak Pire

Rinnak Pire – A Bajoran matching commander for all non-unique ships? Yes, please. There are some neat tricks you can do with this personnel, but remember that his text isn't active until he is in play. There are tricks you can do with this personnel, but Captain on the Bridge along with How Would You Like a Trip to Romulus won't cut it.

Rules of Obedience

Rules of Obedience – There are certain conventions in First Edition, that even remain to this day, that Second Edition simply doesn't do, or if they do, it is very rare. This card is one such case. It specifically calls out O'Brien by name, though it isn't the only card to do so. I'm not sure if this would appear outside a set with this concept, but that personnel gets a little bit better with this card.

Spot

Spot – Art is awesome. I've made big asks from that team in the past, and our art department is second to none, especially since they work as volunteers. They really went above and beyond with this card. It is important to note that design didn't specifically make the card with that in mind, but it was something we could at least ask for. I'm always eager to see the art on cards and this is Exhibit A in why our Art Department is simply amazing.

Amarie

Timicin – It's only fitting that the last treasure in this set be something that will almost certainly not happen again. This is the first Second Edition card that has special text on the copyright line. It might be the first Virtual card to do so as well. That's quite appropriate for this specific product which were all Second Edition versions of First Edition cards; I would be hard pressed to think of another card that would have something of that nature. Everyone had a warning via Sean's article, but when I sent the proof out for review, someone replied quickly that they saw the Easter Egg. I'm also fairly certain that were it not for this set, we would never have gotten this specific personnel.


Inheritance is tournament legal today. This set would not be possible without the help of Rules, Creative, Art, Proofing and the Programming Teams. Enjoy.


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