Saturday, March 31, 2012

1994 Decipher Star Trek: The Next Generation Customizable Card Game White Border Edition

Greetings!

According to the Blogger tool I use to upload my posts, we have recently surpassed 1000 posts.  Congrats to everyone who has ever posted for making this possible.  Here's to the next 1000!

Anyway, to commemorate the occasion, I decided to bust out a find at the old Dollar Tree.  Man, if old Me could travel back in time and talk to college freshman Me, I'd first say study harder so I could get a better degree so I can get a better job and so I don't have to work two jobs later in life.  I'd then say to not eat so much.  I'd then say to not buy so many of these packs because I can get them for a dollar later.  Then I'd probably go to the bars.  Or something like that.  Here's a pack of Star Trek:  The Next Generation CCG!



I'll try to recap this release.  In 1994, Decipher decided to hop on board the relatively new CCG market and partnered with Paramount to release a Next Generation CCG.  The first printing was black bordered and was pretty popular.  When it went through the second printing, the cards were white bordered.  Obviously, the black bordered cards are more valuable.  Subsequent sets were only released with a black border, as the popularity started to wain and the need for a second printing was not there.

60-card starter decks were $10, while the Expansion packs were $3.  As a result, my baseball and basketball card purchases took a hit, as virtually all of my allotted funds for the hobby went to buying these cards as well as the Star Wars CCG Decipher released around the same time.

I'll try to explain the game as we go along, but here are the cards from the pack:
   

Personnel - Mirok
Dilemma - Cosmic String Fragment
Mission - Expose Covert Supply

The top three cards in the pack were always Uncommon cards.

The 2 players would assemble a deck of 60 cards, and you would either be the Federation, the Romulans, or the Klingons (later sets would allow you to play as the Bajorans, the Ferengi, and even the Borg).  The players would then establish a line of Missions, like the Expose Covert Supply mission above  The opponent would then seed your missions with various Dilemmas, and vice versa.  The players then deploy their ships, have personnel staff the ships and off they go to solve the Missions and Dilemmas.  Solve them, and you get the points.  Get to 100 points and you are victorious.

So as you can see from the cards above, Mirok, from "The Next Phase", could defeat the Dilemma (from "The Loss") but cannot assist in completing the Mission, as he does not have the skills to complete it (although he can be part of the landing party, because the Mission can only be attempted by Romulans). 


My friends and I always played this mini-game when buying packs, slowly revealing the top-left corner of the fourth card.  This was because the fourth card was always the Rare card.  Blue is good, because in the Premiere set, the Federation was stacked.  You could get the Enterprise, or Picard, or Data.  Who / what did I get?


Personnel - Geordi La Forge

Nice pull to get a member of the Bridge crew.  Could have been worse, the other pack I picked up had Geordi's dad.  Yes, "Chicken" George played Kunte Kinte's dad in the world of Trek.

The remainder of the cards in the pack were always Common cards:


Interrupt - Long Range Scan
Equipment - Tricorder
Personnel - K'Tesh
Interrupt - Escape Pod
Interrupt - Palor Toff - Alien Trader
Interrupt - Loss of Orbital Stability

You could play Interrupts at any time to try to affect the game play.  The majority of the pictures were taken from actual Next Generation episodes.  The K'Tesh card is from the episode "The Icarus Factor".  The character had no name in the episode, but since John Tesh played the character, they named the Klingon after him.


Ship - U.S.S Miranda
Equipment - Engineering Padd
Personnel - Mendon
Dilemma - Anaphasic Organism (Yes, that's J. Peterman's mom)
Interrupt - Particle Fountain
* - What the back of the cards look like

In order for the ship to move, you needed to staff it with personnel.  The minimum staffing requirements are represented by the little star logo.  Therefore, all you need is Mendon, from "A Matter Of Honor", to properly staff and fly the U.S.S. Miranda.  And give Mendon the Engineering Padd and he becomes an Engineer, to help Geordi with the Particle Fountain Interrupt and snag you 5 points when you complete a Mission.

Anyway, that's the pack.  I think I have a some of the other Expansion packs lying around, so you all may get to learn more about a game that's no longer around down the road.  Good times.

Have a great weekend!  Thanks for reading!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

1998 Score


 Here's a quickie. No skin-tight fighting suits, this time. Sorry about that.


 251 - Todd Helton (I'm not sure what qualifies this as an "Official Pinnacle Rookie Card" as opposed to the rookies that don't have this faux-stamp.)


 PP122 - Javier Lopez Showcase Series (This is a 1:13 foil-ish insert.)


176 - David Segui (Segui is NOT, I repeat, NOT drinking a cup of liquid 'roids.)


190 - Shane Reynolds


126 - Mike Mussina (Mussina bookends the small pack with stars. Nice.)

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

1994 Collect-A-Card Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Series 2


Yeah!


71 - Super Heroes (Zoom!)


32 - Rescue Time (Ka-pow!)


7 - Goldar (Whaaaaa?)


20 - Surrounded (Okay, this card is pretty amazing.)


49 - The Blue Ranger (Woo!)


48 - The Pink Ranger (Chicka!)


62 - Outnumbered (Yowza!)


40 - Command Center (Dino... zord? This is what the all of the card backs look like.)


9 - Jason (Just posin' on the beach.)


70 - The Rad Bug (Uhh... is this the Power Rangers version of the Ghostbusters Mobile?)


26 - Power Rangers Day (EVERY DAY IS POWER RANGERS DAY, GUYS!)


2 - Rope Climb (Rough day at the office.)


Yes, this is a real thing. It's plastic. I guess you use it to "decode" the answers to the questions on the back. Amazing!


4 - Rita's Prison Power Foil Subset (Huh.)

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

1991-92 O-Pee-Chee Hockey

Here's another junk wax pack that I picked up at the hobby shop this Saturday, on the same trip as the 1991 Fleer Football pack I just posted. I'm kind of surprised to see that nobody has covered this one yet. Let's dig in, aside from a nasty stick of gum I got 10 cards for my 50 cents:

#43R - Mikhail Shtalenkov

I used to think these inserts, featuring some of the top talent from Russia, were great. Russian players like Sergei Fedorov and Pavel Bure were just becoming NHL superstars around this time and as a young, impressionable kid I thought everyone in this set was the next Wayne Gretzky.

On a really odd note, I didn't know much about Shtalenkov, and when looking him up online just now I've learned that he apparently disappeared this past Sunday. Seems like some pretty odd circumstances there...

#125 - Kevin Miller

Brother of Kelly and Kip Miller, and cousin of current Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller.

#281 - Gino Cavallini

#11 - Mike Richter Super Rookie

Richter captured a Stanley Cup with New York just a couple of years after this set came out. I like the design for the base cards in this set, but the Super Rookies? Not so much...

#324 - Mike Krushelnyski

In my mind, Mike is most famous for being one of two players that Wayne Gretzky requested be traded with him to the Los Angeles Kings from Edmonton (Marty McSorley being the other).

#96 - Quebec Nordiques

My favorite card in the pack, featuring a young Joe Sakic and a whole lotta Fleur-de-lis!

#340 - Greg Adams

For the longest time I didn't even realize there was a skate hidden inside that mess of a Canucks logo.

#278 - Johan Garpenlov

Johan was dealt from Detroit to the new San Jose Sharks franchise during the 1991-92 season.

Here's a look at the card backs. Awfully busy.

#480 - Igor Larionov

Finally, a Hall-of-Famer! Pictured here with Vancouver, I always think of Igor in a Detroit sweater. Larionov played on the 1997, 1998, and 2002 Cup-winning teams in Detroit.

#190 - Brett Hull - Goals Leader

Back-to-back Hall-of-Famers at the end to save this otherwise dud of a pack. This card is pretty cool, as it symbolizes Brett Hull's amazing 86-goal 1990-91 season! I don't think we'll see a total like that again anytime soon.

Nothing too spectacular here but was it worth two quarters? I'd say so.

Monday, March 26, 2012

1991 Fleer Football

Was at the hobby shop picking up some supplies and decided to grab a couple of junk packs to rip. I don't collect football cards, in fact I wasn't even a football fan at all in 1991. For 50 cents though I figured I'd at least get a blog post out of this.

Here's the full wrapper, including the collector's pin offer. My 14 cards:

#8 - Andre Reed

At least I got somebody I recognize right out of the gate, but let me just say this design is awful. I was never a fan of putting the year right smack on the front of the card, and from a design perspective if this isn't mailing it in then I don't know what is.

#360 - Joe Montana

Interesting, this made the pack worth it I guess. I think I like the card backs better than the fronts:

After Reed and Montana this pack goes downhill fast, I don't recognize most of the rest of these guys...

#221 - Jay Hilgenberg

#98 - Kevin Porter

#430 - Checklist

#347 - Timm Rosenbach

#208 - Andre Rison

A name I do recognize...

#300 - Rueben Mayes

A franchise that's been in the news recently...

#351 - Lonnie Young

#194 - Chris Warren

#332 - Clyde Simmons

#68 - Johnny Meads

#200 - Tory Epps

#425 - Chris Smith

Does anyone out there actually collect this set? If so, you're more than welcome to these...