In earlier articles, you've learned how you assemble your SG team and send them on missions in Stargate TCG. But heroic adventures across the galaxy make up only half of the game. Let's face it: it's good to be bad. Which is why, during your opponent's turn, you'll assume the role of the villain and try to prevent him from succeeding at his own missions. Your primary weapons in this will be obstacles.

By now, you're already familiar with the elements shared by all card types. The title is along the top edge, and the collector's information is in the bottom right corner. Obstacles don't have subtitles like characters and missions do.

The pyramid icon at the top left corner of the card appears on all "villain cards" in the game. These are cards you play during your opponent's turn to hinder his missions. The 3 is the cost in power to play this particular obstacle, Endure the Tests. In the first phase of every turn, you and your opponent each receive equal amounts of power to spend on playing cards and performing other actions throughout the turn. This amount is higher the more glyphs the hero player has earned; in fact, in the early stages of the game, a card costing 3 could easily use up everything you have.

Just as characters have skills, obstacles have difficulties. To play an obstacle, you must match one of those difficulties to the skill of the current mission. Endure the Tests, for example, couldn't be played to a Science or Ingenuity mission. Whatever type of mission you do play an obstacle to, it adds its appropriate difficulty to the difficulty of the mission. Endure the Tests could raise a 4 difficulty Combat mission to 6 difficulty, or a 4 difficulty Culture mission to an intimidating 7 difficulty!

The game text on obstacle cards covers quite a wide range. Some obstacles do things immediately when you play them, and from then on are used only for their difficulty numbers. Some place ongoing restrictions on the current mission. Many are like Endure the Tests, and have "Failure text," a penalty that you'll inflict on your opponent should he end up failing the current mission.

If an opponent fails at a mission where you've played Endure the Tests, you'll choose one of his four team characters and incapacitate that character. Normally, the hero player's characters are all "ready" at the start of each turn, able to assist in whatever missions are played. But when you incapacitate a character, he is instead "stopped" as the following turn begins – he can't be assigned to any missions that turn, and won't be ready again until the turn after that! Incapacitating a character is a truly strong effect, which is why an obstacle like this uses up so much of your power in a turn.

As long as your power hasn't run out, though, you can play as many obstacles as you like to a mission. You'll keep on raising the difficulty for your opponent, piling up restrictions on how he can go about the mission, and building penalties he'll face if he fails. All this will hold him at bay while your own team works on your turn, earning glyphs and experience as you race toward victory!