Rogue’s Gallery was in the works for a long time.  A group of the cards were planned to be part of a different sort of product.  In fact, the name for this set is one of the last things decided upon.

Argus Associates came about due to a concern with how easy it has been to deal enough to to remove them.  In my play, Armor 1 has meant a world of difference for keeping a in play.  This card has a hefty price tag due to how it scales, where it’s obviously better the more a captain has in play.  Note that the card is an ally.  When I first came up with the idea based on cards I’ve seen in other card games, I had thematics in mind very different from the card’s printed skin.

The   saw the most attention of any cards in this set.

Ace Turner used to have a far more annoying ability, but the concept has remained much the same.  Infamous is a new way we are trying to balance certain powerful cards while keeping play cost less expensive; it’s interesting in that  mostly work as intended as a drawback, but there are reasons to cultivate one or more.  Dramatic Renegotiation is the sort of thing I could see being played with Ace Turner as a stealth  gainer.

Baron Antold Lexand still had a -related ability in earlier versions, but we wanted to expand on the role of  in the game.  Note how his ability can be used with the Safari to rack up another counter.

Captain Joseph L. Brown V is a clear example of trying to balance more powerful abilities.  The 0 ability was something I got excited by after Jeff proposed it.  0 is harsher than it seems at first, and we had to do something to balance against .  At the same time, having this ability makes for a card someone could do something different with – run all of the 0 cards in one deck.  Not the only card in this set with a lot going on but probably the most blatant about it.

Captain “Redjack” Ryan and Altruistic:  bunch of other , Homesick, Surgical Intervention.  Besides building a base somewhat quicker, both Homesick and Surgical Intervention have 2.  Homesick is one of those cards I want to play more of, but I don’t build a lot of bankruptcy oriented decks.

Captain “Redjack” Ryan and Amiable:  more(!) , a way to give , and 3(!!) .  Diverse Dynamics is likely way underplayed.  While Redjack isn’t providing a weird (though he can cover Human), just ends up being an amusing engine piece to trying to get the DD combo deck to combo off.  Pull Rika Honami, spend for some cost, Freelancer her back, and fire off DD for a one round earlier win.

Deadeye was always similar to how he turned out.  We had to work on the wording a bit as it was hard to parse what his ability was intended to do.  Ah, the weird thematics that card games can end up with.  Let me Deadeye a Fragmentation Grenade to waste Voypa for cheap and punch through some Argus Associates.

Joanna Musacchia is not hard to trigger.  Mercantile is one of the more common traits found on adventure cards.  As gains are a big deal, Jeff’s idea for increasing use costs was something different for us to try as a balancing drawback.  See how often you pay it.  After all, I’ve paid for Mahmoud’s drawback a bunch of times.

Lt. Col. Herbert B. Kraulnik is yet another option.  We have a lot of with .  Why choose one versus another?   with similar skills compete with each other.  Well, besides getting some extra benefit out of expended , his second ability may end up being incredibly important if you see as many Aggravated Assaults as we see played.  Meanwhile, is a skill that may be a bit too uncommon.  Wouldn’t be surprised to see him get a Cognition Wafer in a deck that runs covering both  and .

Stuart Smith, Ph.D. is another option for Captain “Redjack” Ryan to search out for a Diverse Dynamics play.  But, there’s just a lot of interesting things going on with his ability.  It’s actually kind of scary.  It’s easy to give trained skills.  Body Pistol means expert Aggravated Assaults.  I hear there’s a set with a number of gear that give trained levels of skills.  The main thing will be looking for with Stuart is finding ways to ready him to do multiple in a round.

Wellington Co. InfoTron is a very different robot.  See comments above about having more interaction with .  But, besides having an answer to , this is a pretty difficult to get rid of outside of how much Alien Persecutors also hate robots.  Instead of making it a higher priority target by adding  that gives skills, I can see this being a common Crash Course target to get some cheap skill tokens.  Of course, someday there will be the all robot, all of the time deck with Haywire, Mayhem, and …

Subcontracted Consultant was called something else in playtesting.  We wanted to open up more  to more captains, but we didn’t want it to be too easy.  Cash requires captains to pay for cards from their hand, which limits the ability to play this card without set up.  Of course, this is a very Scoutish card until you have so many expensive events in hand that it isn’t.  Works well with 3 cards, which there aren’t a ton of.  Gazelle plus 2 Warfare cards also kind of like this cost.

Burning Bridges has been in the works for quite a while.  have been almost impossible to remove.  While the goal isn’t to make everything easy to get rid of, we don’t want cards that are too hard to get rid of, either.  Harsh against something like Argus Associates, of course.  We tried to make this expensive enough to not be a no-brainer.

Finally, cybernetic(s) with a cost greater than .  Skeletal Replacement is particularly important for protecting Prof. Isaacs so that you can build the cyber deck.  Maybe not the most efficient deck mechanically, but it’s gotten a lot more thematically interesting.

Zappy Gun is intended to be a  that does something besides just jettison .  This card is doing a lot of different things.  It can take out Tactical Display, which is huge for reining in piracy decks.  It can Buffbot to generate tokens much earlier than the little robot normally does so.  It’s an answer to Wellington Co. InfoTron, if you can use it first.  It counters other .  But, it’s not cheap, and a deck full of other are going to probably jettison the that you would put this on, so it’s unclear how things will shake out.

How good is Precognition?  It’s more useful to players like me who have a lot of optional token creation during the resource phase or who may have Freelancer/Just a Little Longer… in hand without knowing that I should recurse something to deal with a .  The trained level requires a good understanding of how cards flow.

Skulduggery is a tool for trying to build bankruptcy decks that don’t just generate huge .  Also something of a way to try to defend against -heavy decks.

Soup Up may see play on a Q-Ship Conversion or even a Missible Barbette even though there’s another card that can make that card less expensive to use, but I see this being played most often with the various capability token producers, e.g. Modular Hold.

Tranqed gives something rather more exciting than what it already had.  We want different skills to have different feels, but having be highly defensive in nature was too narrow.  I had another type of effect in mind for , which we may get around to next time we have an opening for a .  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the trained version get played more than the expert, but who knows?

Adastra Inno Frewfrux was, you may not be surprised by this, not the easiest card to design.  An obvious target for something like Glitch to get more use out of, faster.  I don’t have a good feel for how this card will get used as it has two very different abilities that cannibalize each other.  I do think it has a role in a metagame where captains run less expensive to be less impacted by removal.

Technum LIC Radiation Guard is kind of obviously trying to address how larger  have a lot of advantages over smaller.  While this doesn’t help Bounty Hunter nearly as much as Scout, don’t be surprised to see us try similar concepts with mechanics to try to keep the playing field relatively balanced.  Other than how slots are precious in so many decks, even more so with smaller , I see running this a lot with Scout as it directly addresses an important feature of the Scout.

Whew, lot of things to comment upon.  I could have gone into more detail on certain cards by not trying to comment on everything.  If you want me to do a deeper dive on any specific cards, leave a comment.