Submitted by Telak on Fri, 04/08/2011 - 20:00
Son'a Observatory
Non-aligned Seeds on Ba'ku Planet. Cloaking Device. Your Son'a cards may report here (for free, once each turn). Twice per game, you may download a Son'a personnel OR Matthew Dougherty here. Characteristics: The logging for the game text of this card is not completed. Please help us with this task and visit our interactive ST1E card-database to validate the game text of this card (actual state: Changed). |  |
- StationThis Card-Review article was written by openCards user Dukat and was published first on "The Continuing Committee (trekcc.org)" at Apr 8th, 2011.
One of the prizes for winning the First Edition World Championship is the right to design a card of their choice. Their cards are subject to all of the normal rules and restrictions of design, and go through the same testing process as every other card. Sometimes, the winner's card doesn't make it through testing, and they're invited to try again. In the case of 2010 First Edition World Champion Andreas Rheinlander's card, it became one of the signature cards of Shades of Gray and we think it will be one of the most popular cards of the entire expansion.
We asked Andreas (a.k.a. Dukat) to say more about this card, and his reasons for making it, in his own words, and are proud to present that to you here.
The Son'a. A beasty race - I like them. Granted, they could need a good piece of advice on dressing and skin care, but their ships are ugly and big. As Londo Mollari would say, "Yes, so they must be both rich and powerful."
I always asked myself why Decipher never took care to give the Son'a some support. Except for Devidian Door
and some hard-to-arrange report-with-crew actions, there was never any way to avoid spending a card play for them. To be honest, except for their two unique personnel cards (Gallatin
& Ru'afo
), the rest of their cards weren't worth a card play.
However, being able to report them for free AND having them safe on a planet changes everything.
They are still not very powerful, but I always liked the ability to take the Ba'ku planet (Insurrection
) and four of the Briar Patch region missions (Analyze Radiation
). "For what?" you might ask. Think about it:
Son'a ships treat those missions as if they were span -2. The Son'a Battleship
has Range 10. This means you get a ship which can pass 3 missions whilst an opponent has to have a RANGE of 15 to do the same. It's like you get some kind of your own personal area where you can always move faster than your opponent.
I hope that many players will have fun with the Son'a - I certainly will.
Congratulations to Andreas again on his big win last October, and our kudos and thanks for making one of the most exciting cards in Shades of Gray!
