What Does God Need With A Reprint?

by Paddy Tye, Creative Team Manager and Hand of God

22nd June 2022

Back when we were planning out a Motion Pictures block, I suggested a full reprint of The Motion Pictures, not expecting the Art team to agree! Original Series block could see players acquire product relatively cheaply as Trouble With Tribbles and Mirror Mirror were still in plentiful supply, but the Classic Film era crew were not so easy to get hold of. A full reprint would allow players easy access to high-resolution prints of hard to acquire cards so money would no longer be an obstacle to playing with the Classic Film era!

But in doing this reprint, it allowed us to adjust certain parts which had never worked as smoothly as intended, which you will soon see developed further in Paradise Lost. In particular, cleaning up the whole Sybok mechanic!

One of the big changes you'll see in The Motion Pictures Remastered (and one which was spoiled on Spock Son of Sarek in Second Star to the Right) is the new Sha Ka Ree icon . Originally, the trio of General Korrd, Caithlin Dar and St. John Talbot had gametext specifying that they could all work with Sybok (despite his restriction box), but they couldn't necessarily mix with the personnel you play Release This Pain on. While the CC fixed this, it used a fairly unusual approach of adding phantom words to the lore, which is not a preferred approach from Rules. When we tried to expand this group with cards such as Spock Son of Sarek, we needed a new solution. Hence the Sha Ka Ree icon was proposed, and end up being used widely across this faction.

• Sybok's restriction box now allows him to mix with Sha Ka Ree personnel, regardless of affiliations (still need to be careful with ships though)!
• The trio of General Korrd, Caithlin Dar and St. John Talbot use a simpler special skill of “Compatible with cards.” The same is on Spock Son of Sarek, and a few others still to come in Paradise Lost.
• Release This Pain has now changed to a 3-lines of lore / 3-lines of gametext template (similar to the one introduced on Take Us Out in Second Star to the Right). The original had lore within the gametext, and the new icon and some re-arrangement allowed the gametext to fit on 3 lines, and now no-one falls through any holes in terms of compatibility.

J'Onn has also undergone some radical changes. Rather than allowing you to play an Incident as an Interrupt (which wasn't clear if it overcame the once each turn limit, and required you to remember to do actions during the opponent's turn), he now allows an additional free play of Release This Pain during your own turn, so long as he's with Sybok. But what about turn 1 I hear you ask? Don't I have to fetch him with Defend Homeworld, so can't use that skill until turn 2? Maybe Paradise Lost will have some different tricks to use!

The Discovery of Sha Ka Ree also uses the new icon to help define the mission points. But up to a limit of 60 points – we don't want to make Sha Ka Ree too big a beast! And like the original, Sybok isn't counted in mission point count. We also changed the location name so that the planet mission “The Discovery of Sha Ka Ree” now takes place on the planet Sha Ka Ree and not in the surrounding “Great Barrier” location used previously – we've saved that for a space mission instead!

And while the last card relating to Sybok's quest doesn't use the new icon, it's good to see the return of What Does God Need With a Starship? Toned down in power, but still very useful, it's a welcome reprieve from the ban list!

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