In his handful of appearances in season nine of Stargate SG-1, the character of Gerak seemed to be a personification of the doctrine that "might makes right." He rose to power by having more resources than any of his potential rivals, and was unafraid to use that power any way he saw fit. The designers were keen to capture this attitude on his card.

The original function his card was given was: "While you have more experience than your opponent has, Gerak has skills +1." This was arguably more successful at conveying that sense of superiority than what was ultimately printed. It proved to be pretty fun to play, too. So what happened along the way? The rulebook.

Early on in the design and testing of every TCG I've worked on, the rules begin life as almost more of an "oral tradition" than a codified set of laws. What's actually written down only fills maybe one or two pages, and really just serves as the rough skeleton to get people playing. As the cards themselves benefit from playtesting, so does the rulebook. Players almost immediately start coming up with questions while they play that demand specific answers, and that's how a more fleshed out set of rules is created.

In the nebulous "pre-rulebook" rules, we always had the concept that you play hero cards on your turn and villain cards on your opponent's turn. Between the specific questions coming from testers and our own experiences trying to write card game text as precisely and concisely as possible, we soon came to realize that the best way to handle this from a rules perspective was to say in no uncertain terms: your hero cards in play are completely ignored during your opponent's turn, as are your own villain cards during yours. This was a clean and easy-to-understand rule to govern a potentially thorny area of the game.

But it also meant that technically, Gerak didn't work. Your experience comes from missions, which are not only "scored" beneath characters, but are hero cards themselves. That means they aren't even around during your opponent's turn, which in turn meant that Gerak really had no way to legally compare your opponent's experience total to yours, and needed new game text. Perhaps we could have fudged things a bit, but it being the first set for the game, we decided to stick with a rigid interpretation. (Later on in System Lords, we'd relax things a bit to allow Grogan to change your team's point total during your turn, which would "trickle over" permanently into opponents' turns, affecting his victory requirements.)

Though Gerak's printed game text was in fact the "second choice," I for one think it still does the job of capturing his behavior from the show. And since the card was used in starter decks -- many players' first taste of the game -- I believe it was the right choice not to bend the rules for the original design.