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Past, Future, Alternate: Fractured "AU" Icons

by Kathy McCracken (Major Rakal)
Web Writer and Star Trek CCG Intelligence Officer

In First Edition, one red "alternate universe" icon tagged all the cards that fell under that umbrella. That included not only time travelers or other characters that belonged to the past or future of the 24th-century Star Trek universe, but also characters from "alternate" realities or timelines (such as the Mirror Universe) and illusions. (It even included a couple of characters who didn't seem to fit the bill at all, notably Major Rakal and Stefan De Seve.) It wasn't just personnel cards, either – the icon was found on ships, equipment cards, dilemmas, events, interrupts... any element taken from these environments. And you had to have an Alternate Universe Door (or some other "enabling" doorway) to play any of these cards.

That was the past. Fast forward to the future of Star Trek CCG, Second Edition (which is now the present). With the overall streamlining of the rules, the necessity for an AU Door was removed, and the red [AU] icon that appeared on a very small number of personnel cards (partly for consistency with First Edition usage – some were backwards-compatible) had no impact on the game. That is, until the designers decided to expand the concept and distinguish cards from the past, future, and alternate universes, so they could potentially interact with other cards in different ways. That's why you'll now find multi-hued "AU" icons on many of the personnel and ships in Fractured Time.

The red, former catch-all "Alternate Universe", icon became the "Past" [Pa] icon. (This was the most expedient assignment, since up to the point of the decision to split the icons, only one of the cards bearing the icon was not a Past card. Jake Sisko, Temporal Anchor was given errata to make his icon Future.)

Cards from the future (relative to the 24th century "present" of Star Trek) receive a blue version, the "Future" [Fut] icon.

Cards from alternate or parallel timelines and universes have a yellow version, the new "Alternate Universe" [AU] icon.

So, now that we have the potential for these different classes of cards to interact with other cards on the basis of their [Pa], [Fut], and [AU] icons, you're probably wondering what you'll be able to do with them. As you might expect, cards with the Temporal keyword can key off the icons, and I have a text spoiler for you of one of the new Temporal events in Fractured Time which does just that.

Cost 0
Temporal Test Subject
Event
Temporal. Discard an [AU], [Fut], or [Pa] personnel from hand to take an [AU], [Fut], or [Pa] personnel from your discard pile into hand. Destroy this event.
"I was sent against my will! I'm not from your part of space. I come from a trans-dimensional realm. ...I don't know why I was sent here."
5 P 15

OK, this card doesn't treat the three icons differently, but some other cards in the set do. This one will be equally useful with all three kinds of your "alternate" characters, including Telek R'Mor, Jake Sisko, Kira Meru, and other previously released cards. Just remember that Jake's icon really should be blue!

August 6, 2004