by Evan "Heimlich" Lorentz, Game Designer at SOE Denver

It's a running gag in Stargate SG-1 to see Jack O'Neill play with a magnifying glass (often in the background of a more serious scene), one of the many familiar moments the designers hoped to capture on a card. Picking just one freeze frame among the many possible choices posed an odd but fun challenge (even Teal'c has some magnifying glass humor in one episode!), but ultimately the nod went to this moment from the fourth season premiere "Small Victories."

The playtesters also put this card under the magnifying glass, discovering a flaw with the original design almost immediately. Originally, it allowed a player to pick any cards from his discard pile. A common choice? Copies of the same card played earlier in the game (mixed in with one or two "star cards" of the deck). Three copies of Close Inspection, working in rotation, could ultimately allow the same one or two cards to loop through the deck a theoretically limitless number of times. And while this perhaps might have been okay for a higher power cost, the goal was to cost this card the same as the similarly written cards Barter, Suppression Fire, and Tabloid Research.

Thus, "non-event" was introduced to the game text to shut down the "Close Inspection circus." Galaran Memory Device became the only card in the first set capable of returning an event from the discard pile. (Though several more would appear in System Lords to expand player options.)