by Evan "Heimlich" Lorentz, Game Designer at SOE Denver
Young Jack holds the distinction of being the first card designed for the second set of Stargate TCG, System Lords. This is because he was actually created and tested during the development of the first set, specifically intended for use as a promo card (and as a preview of something from the next set). The image was changed between the promo version and the one included in System Lords itself. (My personal preference is the promo version, which highlights how well young actor Michael Welch captured the mannerisms of Richard Dean Anderson in his performance. But it seems most players seem to prefer the "cool factor" of the sunglasses version.)
The game text of Young Jack actually required a clarification of the rules on how support characters gain skills -- specifically that any bonus to "skills" in general applies only to those skills a support character already has, while bonuses to a skill called out by name (as Science and Combat are here) can go to support characters even if they don't already have them. Because Young Jack was designed during work on the game's first set, we knew about the need for this clarification even while we were writing the very first rulebook for the game. We even tried to put it into that first rulebook.
The trouble was, the rule really seemed to need an example to drive the concept home -- and Young Jack was the only one. The idea of support characters gaining other skills was meant as a "set 2" concept, which is what made it a good choice for a preview card. (The concept would also appear on Garan, Natania, and Ruslan Chernovshev, among others.) Faced with referencing a card that "didn't exist" in the rulebook, we decided to leave the rule out of the first printing, with the intention of updating and inserting it into the rules that would come with System Lords. This did mean, however, the some sharp-eyed players with keen knowledge of the rules were a bit thrown when they first saw the Young Jack promo card, wondering if it was even legal for him to gain Science and Combat in this way.
