Card of the Week: Harsh Conditions
by Evan "Heimlich" Lorentz

It was in late 2006 that Stargate TCG was finally starting to look like the final version that was released in print and online. The cards had all been written and were in the midst of careful playtesting. The designers were waiting to hear about "image approval" from a number of the actors from the show. I was betting that Amanda Tapping wouldn't say yes to images like this one and Blood of Sokar. But to her credit, she's proven very willing to be pictured in not-altogether-flattering settings. (You'd be surprised, but in the work I've done on various other TCGs, I've learned that many actors don't always like to be shown... well, actually acting like this.)

December of 2006 was also one of the snowiest months in years in the designers' home city of Denver, with two major blizzards barely a week apart. By January, when we were back from our holiday break, all of us around the office had taken to calling this card "Denver in December."

"Denver in December" actually turned out to be a pivotal card in the development of the game. It taught us just how much more valuable it is for an obstacle to have 3 difficulty in one skill rather than split difficulties in multiple skills (as, for example, on Parasitic Insects). Believe it or not, in early playtesting, Harsh Conditions (and its companion card, Language Barrier) actually had game text in addition to the 3 difficulty for 1 power. The original design assumption had been that being restricted to just one skill type was much more of a "penalty" than it actually proved to be. The obvious power of this card in playtesting helped set the record straight, as it remained very playable even after it had been stripped of game text.

Armed with the evidence that 3 was significantly "more better" than 2 than 2 was compared to 1, many stats on obstacles, characters, and adversaries were revised, greatly improving the final balance of the game.