recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Walking Italy

## Ability

### Ability

**Courage is a Practice****(Play)** If you are losing the round, your Angela Maxwell's Walking the World cards, wherever they are, gain +15 Power for 3 turns.

## Did You Know?

**10,439 km from home. (7,705 mi.)**

Most people from the USA don’t know where Sardegna (Sardinia 40.18433720372508, 9.005864056248647) is or that it’s part of Italy. It is the northwest sister of Sicily, almost 400 km west of Naples and if you ask a locals if they’re Italian, they boldly shout, “NO. We are Sardo.” The Kingdom of Sardinia was subsumed by Italy in the 19th century and they have been seeking autonomy ever since.

Though they seem very Italian, they make different wines and their dialect can be very difficult to understand, even by mainland Italians.

I walked the pristine east coast from Olbia and finished by dipping my toes on the southern beach of Villasimius.

I continued by crossing the bougainvilla-lined streets of northern Sicily until I crossed to the ‘boot’ of Italy, Calabria.

I found the easiest places to sleep were olive groves and persimmon\* orchards, always taking my trash with me and never stealing from the land.

Before leaving I learned how to tell locals what I was up to. "Il tutto mundo a piede", which means the whole world on foot.

* A bright orange fruit sometimes known as Kaki or Sharon-fruit.

**About Angela**

In 2013 Angela Maxwell decided to turn her perfectly normal life upside down. She was in a relationship and running a successful business, but after overhearing a conversation at her art class about a man who had walked around the world, everything was about to change. In less than nine months she had left her home in Bend, Oregon to travel the world alone with nothing but a few supplies and her trusty two-wheeled cart Athena.

She walked for nearly seven years across four continents, over 32,000km (20,000 miles) and 14 countries. During the journey, Angela discovered her innate strength, conviction, and courage. A novice adventurer when she began, Angela faced the odds of surviving the outback in Western Australia, dengue fever in Vietnam and the sheer challenge of being a lone woman traveling and sleeping wherever she could lay her head for the night.
Thermometer

## Ability

### Ability

**Mercurial Temperament****(Draw)** A random card in your hand loses -15 Power this round

## Did You Know?

We all know what a **Thermometer** is, right? It measures the temperature of a body. So instead of explaining the obvious, we will give you a brief history lesson of the thermometer. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin!

Air expands and contracts with temperature. So does water and metals like mercury. Before Galileo, who understood that science began with meticulous measurement, savants and physicians had worked out that it ought to be possible to invent a ruler using air and water that would mark the grades from cold to hot and back again. They experimented with Thermoscopes involving a column of air in a tube with one end in a container of coloured water.

In 1610 Galileo tried it with wine instead, and so is credited with the first alcohol thermometer, and most probably had a good swig of it afterwards…

The first sealed thermometer was designed in 1641 for the grand duke of Tuscany; it used alcohol and had degree marks. But the man credited with using the freezing point of water as the "zero" or starting point was a Londoner, Robert Hooke.

Fast forward to 1724, and a German instrument maker called Gabriel Fahrenheit settled on mercury as the most suitable liquid for measuring temperature. Mercury has a high coefficient of expansion, which means that it changes the most in reaction to temperature and is, therefore, able to give the most accurate readings.

Fahrenheit's first thermometer was calibrated using a mixture of water and ice, with water and sea salt as his zero. But there was a fly in the ointment; saltwater has a much lower freezing point than ordinary water, so for his purposes, he chose his freezing point as 30, and the temperature inside the mouth of a healthy human as 96. He counted 180 degrees between boiling and freezing, at sea level.

Alas, 180 was seen as a pretty awkward number. So, fast forward *another* two decades, where Linnaeus - and a Swedish astronomer called Anders Celsius - separately worked out a scale of just one hundred degrees between freezing and boiling points. Because there were 100 steps between the two states, it was called a "centigrade" scale.

Another century later, Lord Kelvin used the centigrade scale but started from absolute zero, the point at which all molecular motion stops - the actual lowest conceivable temperature in the universe.

In 1948, an international conference on weights and measures adopted the Celsius scale as the standard measure, but Fahrenheit is still widely used in the United States.
The Sirens

## Ability

### Ability

**Fatal Attraction****(Draw)** Three opponent's random cards in hand lose -5 Power until played and this card gains +15 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

For many of you, **The Sirens** may conjure up visions of beautiful women beckoning from the shoreline - they were, after all, renowned for preying on hapless sailors by luring them onto rocks.

However, they did this with their singing, not their looks. The Sirens in the Odyssey were hybrid beasties with the body of a bird (sometimes with human arms) and the head of a woman.

*"The **Sirens** ... beguile all men that approach them. Whoever encounters them unawares and listens to their voices will never joy at reaching home, his wife and children to greet him. Instead the Sirens’ tempt him with their limpid song, as they sit there in the meadow with a vast heap of mouldering corpses, bones on which hangs the shrivelled skin. "*
(Circe’s advice, **The Odyssey**)

Homer never really got into the motivation of these characters or explained why they wanted to be surrounded by *"mouldering skeletons"* Guess that's just their particular fetish.

As with other characters in The Odyssey, Homer likely didn't invent them. Plato is alleged to have said that there were several types of **Siren** - celestial (heavenly), under the governance of Jupiter; generative ( reproduction) under Neptune; and purificatory, under the government of Hades.

Regardless, they're best avoided - particularly if you captain a ship.

'Ulysses and the Sirens, an 1891 painting by John William Waterhouse' by John William Waterhouse (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under Public Domain (original image resized, cropped and altered)
The South Pole

## Ability

### Ability

**North in All Directions****(Draw)** This card gains +30 Power and costs +2 Energy permanently.

## Did You Know?

**The South Pole**, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is the southernmost point on the Earth. Although land at the South Pole is only about a hundred metres above sea level, the ice sheet above it is roughly 2,700 meters thick. This elevation makes the South Pole much colder than the North Pole. The warmest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole was -12.3 degrees Celsius.

Rumour has it that the people staying at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station over the winter have an annual tradition of watching “The Thing from Another World (1951)”, “The Thing (1982)” and “The Thing (2011)” back-to-back after the last plane leaves for the season. Way to tempt fate…
Tropical Indigo

## Ability

### Ability

**Spectrum of Color****(Play)** If you have played Egyptian Blue this game, your Electric Violet card, wherever it is, gains +60 Power permanently. **(Return)** If you have played Egyptian Blue this game, your Electric Violet card, wherever it is, costs +3 Energy until played.

## Did You Know?

Sitting at 270 degrees between purple and blue on the colour wheel, Indigo is named after the dye derived from the plant Indigofera tintoria. It’s one of the oldest dyes in the world, with the oldest example being an indigo-dyed cloth found in a Peruvian burial ground dating back 6,000 years.

Over in India, the Indigofera tinctoria plant was growing in abundance thanks to the hot and humid climate. As a result, indigo dye from India became one of the most expensive and valuable imports to Europe during the Middle Ages, known at the time as ‘Blue Gold’.

And yet, in modern physics, Indigo is often omitted from the visible spectrum of colour, because most people, even if they see color well, can't distinguish indigo from blue or violet.

**Tropical Indigo** is a softer blue than many other shades of Indigo. This specific shade was listed in the Guide to Colorations in 2005 as *añil* (Indigo) and it actually looks a lot more purple than blue once it’s become faded in sunlight.
USS Plunger (SS-2)

## Ability

### Ability

**Torpedo Boat****(Return)** If your deck has 2 or more Forces of Nature cards, your Riding the Waves! cards, wherever they are, gain +25 Power next turn.

## Did You Know?

As the first submarine torpedo boat to be built for the Navy, the **USS Plunger** was launched on 1 February 1902, and commissioned at the Holland Torpedo Boat Company yard in New York on 19 September 1903. As well as experimental torpedo tests, the boat served as a training ship for the crews of new submersibles.

When President Theodore Roosevelt visited and spent around 3 hours aboard the USS Plunger, he is reported to have said he had never experienced "such a diverting day ... nor so much enjoyment in so few hours." High praise for a military vessel, but this wasn’t just any old war boat. When it was designated an A-type submarine, the USS Plunger was renamed A-1 - life as a submarine doesn’t get much better than that.
Warren Field

## Ability

### Ability

**Earliest Calendar****(Play)** If it's the first turn of a round, your Moon In Motion cards, wherever they are, gain +16 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

As far as archeology goes, discovering the beginning of measured time as we know it is a pretty big deal. So, when a team found what is now considered the world’s oldest calendar in **Warren Field**, Aberdeendhsire, it was pretty news-worthy.

Built around 8,000 BCE, the monument includes 12 pits thought to correlate with phases of the Moon to be used as a lunisolar calendar. Clearly, hunter-gatherers in Scotland had a need to track time and carefully note the seasons to prepare for particular food sources, and they found a way to do it nearly 5,000 years before the first formal time-measuring monuments appeared in the East.

So, along with the television, the refrigerator and the flush toilet, Scottish folk basically invented time itself. Oan yersels!
Unintelligent Design

## Ability

### Ability

**Inherited Mistakes****(Return)** If your deck has 2 or more Brilliant Human Body cards, your opponent's History cards, wherever they are, cost +1 Energy until played.

## Did You Know?

Some people point to the human body as the model of perfection, or a marvel of design. In fact, every aspect of human body shows that it is very poorly designed, with lots of things that don’t work well or can even kill us!

We have useless organs like the appendix or the tonsils, which can become dangerous if they are infected. Our eyes are constructed backwards, with the rods and cones in the retina pointed away from the light and covered by a network of nerves and blood vessels that make our eyes inferior to that of an octopus. We are poorly adapted to walk on two legs, because we eventually get lots of back problems, hip problems, knee problems, and ankle and foot problems from walking and running, rather than moving on all four limbs. If you want an animal better designed for walking on two legs, look at an ostrich.

Finally, our genes are full of useless “junk DNA” that is never used, and only 2% of our DNA is different from the DNA of a chimpanzee or a gorilla. In short, the human body is full of non-functional or poorly adapted anatomical and genetic features, that show that we were not perfectly designed, but instead are a haphazard jury-rigged collection of features that only occur because we were once walking on four legs and have many other features inherited from our ancestors.

Learn more at donaldprothero.com.

Donald Prothero has taught college geology and paleontology for 35 years at Caltech, Columbia among others. He earned his B.A. in geology and biology from the University of California Riverside in 1976, and his M.A. (1978), M.Phil. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) in geological sciences from Columbia University.

He is the author of over 40 books and over 300 scientific papers, mostly on the evolution of fossil mammals (especially rhinos, camels, and horses) and on using the earth's magnetic field changes to date fossil-bearing strata. He has also been on the editorial boards of journals such as Geology, Paleobiology, Journal of Paleontology, and Skeptic magazine.

In 2015 he received the Joseph T. Gregory Award for service to vertebrate paleontology and in 2016, he received the "Friend of Darwin" award from the National Center for Science Education.

He has been featured on numerous TV documentaries, including Paleoworld, Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, Prehistoric Monsters Revealed, Monsterquest, Prehistoric Predators: Entelodon and Hyaenodon, Conspiracy Road Trip: Creationism, as well as Jeopardy!
The Skull of St. Valentine

## Ability

### Ability

**Secret Admirer****(Draw)** An opponent's random card in hand gains +15 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

For a time it wasn't at all unusual for a canonized individual to be stripped down to their various component parts and distributed across the catholic world to be admired by locals and pilgrims alike. Not all these relics have particularly good provenance. Lucky St Valentine ended up in Basilica di Santa Maria, Rome. Or his head did...well, someone's head did anyway...

No one seems to be quite sure which St Valentine it is as the Catholic Church acknowledges at least two different saints called Valentine or Valentinus. The origin of St Valentine is sketchy to say the least, although it is thought he was a clergyman sometime around 270 A.D. An account from the 1400s (some 1100 years later) suggests that he was beheaded by the emperor Claudius II for helping Christian couples get married, which could explain the love connection.

One thing we do know for sure is that eight other churches and cathedrals across eight different countries have body-based relics from him, including fragments from his skull in the parish church of Saint Mary’s Assumption, Poland.

'Relic of St. Valentine in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome, Italy' by Dnalor 01 (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered) Color correction
Vinicunca

## Ability

### Ability

**Mountain of Seven Colours****(Draw)** If your deck contains at least one card from each Album, your Majestic Mountains, Natural Monuments and Hidden Gems cards, wherever they are, gain +22 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

All right, we're gonna use a fan brush here and dip it into some Alizarin Crimson, and just drag it across the canvas in a happy little triangle. Next, we’ll take some phthalo blue and create a beautiful little stripe across this Rainbow Mountain. Finally, we’ll add some yellow ochre to complete the scene.

Okay, so Bob Ross didn’t paint **Vinicunca** - but it wouldn’t be hard to believe. The mountain is made up of 14 different minerals that give it this colourful effect - the red created by clay, the turquoise from phyllite compounds and the yellow from calcareous sandstone and limestone rich in sulphurous minerals.

Found in the Andes of Peru, Vinicunca has an unpredictable climate. In the space of an hour, weather can switch from snow to rain to blistering sunshine.
Tulips

## Ability

### Ability

**Tulip Field****(Play)** If played next to Amstel, your Plant Life cards, wherever they are, gain +18 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

When thinking of the **Tulip**, it’s hard not to imagine a beautiful Dutch field full of the flowers, and that’s for good reason. Although they were originally the symbol of the Ottomans, it wasn’t until the sixteenth century until the flowers were introduced to the West, but when they did, they went down like Theranos shares to naive investors!

They were so liked that their prices skyrocketed, referred to as Tulip Mania and considered as the first asset bubble in history, with a recorded sale of 40 bulbs for 100,000 florins in 1635, a cost which a skilled labourer of the time would still be paying off today.

Thanks to the Tulip Breaking Virus that caused the petals to form beautiful, colorful patterns, those flowers were admired among all others. Today, this kind of tulip is referred to as the Rembrandt, thanks to his numerous paintings of the broken flowers.
Truman Capote

## Ability

### Ability

**In Cold Blood****(Draw)** Your opponent's cards in hand lose -10 Power this turn and your The Write Stuff cards, wherever they are, gain +18 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

He was born Truman Streckfus Persons, but the world would later know him as **Truman Capote** - the trailblazing American author who gave us 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and 'In Cold Blood.’ ‘Capote’ wasn’t a pen name, though - he adopted it from his stepfather, Joseph Capote, in 1935.

Talking of name-changes, the protagonist of his novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s wasn’t always called Holly Golightly, either. Originally, Capote called her “Connie Gustafson”. Later, he adjusted this, opting for “Holiday Golightly” before toning down the pizazz a little.

Although he died at the young age of 59, Truman Capote wasted no time when he was alive. Before he even started school, he had taught himself to read and write. By age 12, his short stories had earned him recognition from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers Organization.
Valkyrie

## Ability

### Ability

**Ride of the Valkyries****(Draw)** If you are losing the round, your cards in hand cost -1 Energy this round.

## Did You Know?

In Norse mythology, a **Valkyrie** is one of a host of female figures who choose who lives and dies in a battle. It may sound a little unfair, but Odin only wanted the best warriors for his army, and this was his mode of selection.

The Valkyrie were also known for brewing magical mead that could make men stronger or heal their wounds – but let’s be honest, it was probably just a bit of Norse courage.

## Trivia

* "Ride of the Valkyries" is the title of an opera by Richard Wagner.
Vacuum Energy

## Ability

### Ability

**Suck It Up****(Return)** If you won the turn, gain +19 Power/Turn for 2 turns.

## Did You Know?

Place two metal sheets very close together in a vacuum and you’ll notice they attract each other with a small but considerable force. The reason is thought to be something known as zero-point energy, the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system can have. In space, a special case of zero-point energy exists throughout the Universe. This is called **Vacuum Energy**.

We do not know why space contains energy, yet it does. The current theory suggests that the energy in the vacuum is “dark” energy, which makes up 60% of space. If we knew more about vacuum energy, we could ultimately know whether the universe is set to keep blowing up forever or eventually collapse into a reverse big bang.

Whatever the case is, I think we can be forgiven for being quite so literal on the front of this card!
Trajan

## Ability

### Ability

**Optimus Princeps****(Draw)** Your The Roman Empire cards, wherever they are, gain +15 Power until played and if your deck has 9 or more The Roman Empire cards, your The Roman Empire cards, wherever they are, cost -1 Energy until played.

## Did You Know?

**Trajan** is an iconic Roman emperor for several reasons – not only was he the first Roman emperor to be born outside of Italy, but he was also one of the first to be chosen, rather than inheriting power as part of a ruling family.

During the 19 years that he was in power, Trajan expanded the Roman Empire to its farthest territorial limits. Under his orders, the empire stretched from Scotland to North Africa and swept across the Mediterranean to modern-day Iraq.

With great power comes great social responsibility; Trajan used his reign to formalise the ‘alimenta’ a welfare program that helped orphans and poor children by giving them access to financial support, food and subsidised education.
Vlad the Impaler

## Ability

### Ability

**Stake Your Reputation****(Play)** If your deck has 4 or more Horrible Halloween cards, the card opposite this loses -80 Power (if it has 25 or more Base Power) this turn. **(Return)** Your Horrible Halloween cards, wherever they are, gain +13 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Although he was partial to disembowelling, beheading and skinning his victims alive, Wallachian ruler Vlad III Dracula had a particular penchant for impalement, because it was also a form of torture.

But let’s back it up a bit, because Vlad wasn’t born a violent man. During a mission to the Ottoman Empire, he, his father and his brother were captured and held hostage by Ottoman diplomats for five years.

After finally being freed, Vlad II was overthrown by a coup and killed, as was his eldest son. Vlad III was freed shortly after these events, but by this point, he was enraged and hungry for revenge. In one account, **Vlad the Impaler** once dined among a “forest” of spikes topped with bodies of his rivals.
Weightlifting

## Ability

### Ability

**Need a Lift?****(Play)** If you are losing the round, a random card in your hand gains +28 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Next time someone asks if you even lift, bro, tell them there’s more to **Weightlifting** than hitting up the gym and getting “swole”. Research on the sport suggests 60% of people who weight train get an average of 7 hours or more of sleep per night.

In 2020, Icelandic actor and strongman Hafthor Bjornsson, who plays Ser Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane in Game of Thrones, set the world record for the deadlift when he lifted 502kg. Olympic weightlifting involves an athlete getting three attempts of a maximum-weight single lift of a barbell loaded with weight plates.
USS Constitution

## Ability

### Ability

**"Old Ironsides" Rides Again****(Return)** If you won the turn, gain +3 Energy.

## Did You Know?

The world's oldest commissioned warship is USS Constitution, a vessel that has been in almost continuous service since it was launched in 1797.

It earned its nickname - "Old Ironsides" - during the War of 1812 against the British. In a battle against HMS Guerriere, the crew of the Constitution reported seeing enemy cannonballs simply bouncing off the hull of their ship. Constitution won the battle decisively.

At that point, Constitution was already outliving its lifespan - ships of that era were only expected to be in action for 10-15 years but it continued being involved in military operations for a hundred years. In the 20th century, it spent most of its time being restored as a museum ship and today it's harboured in Boston, Massachusetts, where it serves as a Naval education facility.
UY Scuti

## Ability

### Ability

**Super Sun****(Return)** Your opponent's remaining Space cards in hand **Burn** (10) until played.

## Did You Know?

Classified as a red supergiant, **UY Scuti** is the largest known star in the galaxy. Amazingly it has a radius approximately 1,700 times larger than our Sun but with a mass a mere 30 times more. You could fit 3.69 BILLION of our suns into it!

That not enough to demonstrate how hypermassive this thing is? Imagine a thing that can travel at the speed of light made a trip around its circumference - it would take it seven hours to get all the way around. For comparison, the same thing would orbit our sun in 14.5 seconds.
Tio de Nadal

## Ability

### Ability

**Christmas Log****(Draw)** Your Festive Traditions cards in hand gain +7 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Is there something in the water in Catalonia? This is one of two cards in this collection about a festive Catalan tradition that revolves around defecation.

That jolly fellow on the front of this card is a Tio, a hollow log about 30 centimetres long, which children are meant to "feed" and keep warm starting after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8th).

On Christmas Day, children are encouraged to put the Tio partly in the fireplace and beat it with sticks like it's a pinata, ordering it to defecate as they do. Then they are meant to leave the room to pray for a while, during which CHRISTMAS MAGIC HAPPENS and the Tio has disappeared, leaving presents for the whole family behind.
Titanomachy

## Ability

### Ability

**Myths vs Legends****(Draw)** Your Mythic cards, wherever they are, lose -50 Power until played and your opponent's Legendary cards, wherever they are, lose -25 Power for 2 turns.

## Did You Know?

Wherever you go on the internet, you’ll find boomers warring with Gen Z or millennials beefing with Gen X. Intergenerational conflict is nothing new. In fact, the same thing happened in Greek mythology, when Zeus and the new Olympian gods rose up to overthrow the old generation of Greek gods - the Titans.

Known as the **Titanomachy**, this ten-year war was fought to decide which generation of gods would have dominion over the universe. It all kicked off after the youngest Titan Cronus overthrew his own father, Uranus, with the help of his mother Gaia. In the end, the Olympians won - of course, it probably helped that they had three Hecatonchires (giants with 50 heads and 100 arms) and three Cyclopes (one-eyed giants) on their side.
Whiplash Planet

## Ability

### Ability

**Wide Orbit****(Draw)** This card loses -30 Power and costs +2 Energy for 2 turns.

## Did You Know?

It’s three times more massive than Jupiter and has an extraordinary, egg-shaped orbit around its host star: **The Whiplash Planet** (also known as HR5183 b) moves in a way that astronomers have never seen before. When it orbits around its host star, this giant planet speeds up near the star’s gravitation, slowing as it moves away – hence its name “whiplash”.

Contrary to previous theories it’s possible that the giant whiplash planet, with its wild orbit, could be a neighbour to an Earth-like planet. In fact, astronomers from the University of California Riverside now think that the star system that the whiplash planet comes from could definitely have a planet in it capable of harbouring life. Does anyone fancy a move to HR5183?
Travertine Deposits

## Did You Know?

Mother Nature’s own-brand infinity pools, the **Travertine Deposits** of Pamukkale, Turkey, are created by limestone deposits that build up to form turquoise pools encased in snowy white calcium cascade terraces.

Legend has it that the rocks in Pamukkale can make you more beautiful – we say it’s what’s inside that counts. Specifically, the minerals in the water, which can help with a number of health conditions.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi

## Ability

### Ability

**Great Unifier****(Return)** Your opponent's cards, wherever they are, lose -5 Power this round.

## Did You Know?

There is surely something ironic about the ‘Three Great Unifiers’ of Japan: Oda Nobunaga, **Toyotomi Hideyoshi**, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Each took over from the one before, and had to wage war to unify the country again…

Surely if they were that great, just the *one* unification would do?

Maybe we’re just feeling cynical today - but regardless of whether he was great at unifying, Hideyoshi was incredibly good at social climbing. Starting life as a peasant, he rose to the position of Sandal-Bearer (yes, that means what you think it means) to Nobunaga - and from there to Chancellor of the Realm and Imperial Regent (effectively the leader of Japan). Small acorns, mighty oaks, and all that.
Wallaby

## Ability

### Ability

**Wallaby Wobbly****(Return)** If you lost the turn, your opponent's cards in hand lose -10 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Wallabies are herbivores, and the bulk of their diet is grasses and plants.

Hey, why the long face guys? Well, their elongated faces actually leave plenty of jaw room for their large, flat teeth which they need to chew their veggie meals!

They can range from the size of a small rabbit to 6ft tall and different species of these animals live in different habitat types. Some Wallabies inhabit open grasslands and plains while others live in dense forests. Most wallabies are nocturnal, meaning that they will be out looking for food at night.

In the day, they're more likely to be found resting in the shade and catching 40 winks. Random wallaby fact- The Tammar Wallaby breathes through its skin for a few days after birth and Tammar wallabies have clumsy back legs that can only move independently when they swim!
The Rosenbergs

## Ability

### Ability

**Stealing Science****(Draw)** Your opponent's Science cards, wherever they are, cost +1 Energy this round.

## Did You Know?

The story of **The Rosenbergs** has all the makings of a typical spy novel: Cold War hysteria, encrypted messages, heartbreak and family betrayal.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets. The US Government’s key witnesses were none other than Ethel’s brother and sister-in-law, who received favourable treatment in return for testifying against the Rosenbergs, who became the only American spies to be executed during the Cold War.
Vasco da Gama

## Ability

### Ability

**Cape of Good Hope****(Play)** If it's the third turn of a round and if you are winning the round, your Exciting Exploration cards, wherever they are, gain +20 Power for 3 turns.

## Did You Know?

1. ThatAwkwardMoment when you arrive in India and offer their ruler a collection of cheap goods… Yeah, it wasn’t the finest moment for **Vasco da Gama**, the Portuguese sailor who became the first European to discover India in 1498.

Nevertheless, Da Gama helped open a major trade route to Asia and allowed the Europeans to get in on the Eastern spice trade. Still, his record wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. During a subsequent voyage, Da Gama sailed to Kilwa, threatened their leader and forced his people to swear loyalty to the king of Portugal.

At Calicut, he bombarded the port and caused the death of many Muslim traders. Despite his violent and cruel nature, Da Gama was celebrated in his home country and was appointed Viceroy of Portuguese India in 1524.
The Sun (XIX)

## Did You Know?

If you’re waiting for a sign that things are looking up, The Sun (XIX) is the Tarot’s equivalent of a thumbs-up emoji.

If you’re waiting for a sign that things are looking up, **The Sun (XIX)** is the Tarot’s equivalent of a thumbs-up emoji.  The 19th card in the Major Arcana, this Tarot card radiates vibes of optimism, success, and that feeling you get when you finally find your missing sock.

When drawn, it's like someone turned on the universe's high beams, bringing enlightenment or clarity. It's the spiritual “ah-ha!” moment, akin to finding an extra chip at the bottom of the bag or nailing the high note in your car's solo concert.

The Sun card encapsulates that peace you feel when things just...click. However, if this card is reversed, take this as a cosmic nudge to pause from all the grown-up stuff and channel your inner child.
Torii Gates

## Did You Know?

Torii Gates are usually found at the entrance to a Shinto shrine, marking the transition from the regular world to the sacred. They are typically painted red - a colour believed to ward off evil. Shown here is the famous 'floating' vermillion Torii at Itsukushima Shrine in Miyajima.

The potent symbolism of the Torii Gate is also used to deter people (or their dogs) from urinating in the street. Small Torii are places on lamp-posts and on walls, as most people don't like the idea of peeing on sacred ground...
TrES-2b

## Ability

### Ability

**Absorb the Light****(Play)** Your Sunshine card in hand gains +41 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Darkness falls. Here we witness TrES-2b – which has one hell of a dark side.

Imagine an alien world in the galaxy blacker and darker than anywhere every discovered and you have TrES-2b. This dark and terrifying world (which is the size of Jupiter) was discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, lurking around some 750 light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Draco.

Researchers found this dark abyss reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it one hell of a dark place and darker than any planet or moon ever seen. Just the thought of it has us reaching for our vitamin D tablets and sun lamp.
Titanic

## Ability

### Ability

**Unsinkable?****(Play)** Your Riding the Waves! cards, wherever they are, gain +18 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

The fact that the Titanic was described as "unsinkable" by those who built it is the joke that writes itself, but the ship did indeed sink after striking an iceberg in 1912. Measuring 269 metres in length, the Titanic was among the most ambitious engineering projects of its time.
Uzziah

## Ability

### Ability

**The Tenth King****(Play)** If your deck has exactly 10 Unruly Rulers cards, give them, wherever they are, +12 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

From age 16, **Uzziah** ruled over Jerusalem. He would continue to do so for 52 years. To begin with, everything was under control: food was plentiful, the military was effective and Uzziah had a good grip on agriculture. Of course, it helps when you’ve been blessed by God, as Uzziah had apparently been.

But the success that God gave him would be the king’s undoing. In his pride, Uzziah went directly to the temple and started performing the duties of a priest (a big no no). He fought off 80 priests who tried to stop him before God intervened and plagued Uzziah with leprosy for ignoring his word. Uzziah would be remembered as a leper, living in isolation until his death.
Vígríðr

## Ability

### Ability

**Battlefield****(Play)** Your Greek Mythology cards adjacent to this lose -20 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Looking for somewhere to host a mighty battle? Look no further than **Vígríðr**! This large field was the setting for a battle between the forces of the gods and the forces of Surtr as part of the events of Ragnarok, so you know it’s fight-worthy ground. Plus, what better place to die in battle than here, where the climactic war during the apocalypse in Norse mythology unfolded? Your chances of going to Valhalla would certainly be higher.

According to the Poetic Edda poem Vafþrúðnismál, the god Odin tells the wise jötunn Vafþrúðnir of Vígríðr, stating that the size of the field is 100 leagues in every direction. Given that a league is roughly 3 miles, that’s a pretty massive field, so you best bring a big army.
Tyrannosaurus Rex

## Ability

### Ability

**Jaws of Terror****(Play)** If you are winning the round, this card gains +50 Power.

## Did You Know?

There's a good chance you know a few facts about T. Rex already - its name means tyrant lizard, it has short and quite ineffective arms, it was the largest known dinosaur before Giganotosaurus was discovered in 1993, and of course it famously signed with Spielberg for a starring role in the first Jurassic Park.

BUT DID YOU KNOW that the man who excavated the first T. rex in 1892 was originally going to name it Manospondylus gigax, meaning “giant thin vertebrae”?

Oh, you did? Ok, we give up.
Unidentified Body

## Ability

### Ability

**Skeleton Sequence****(Play)** Your Sue Black's In The Bones cards, wherever they are, gain +5 Power until played. **(Play)** If you have played Human Remains Found this game, your Sex Determination card, wherever it is, gains +10 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Who was the person? What was their name?

The FA will establish features of biological and personal identity that will assist the Police in their investigation. Only when the name of the person is confirmed, can they start to investigate what might have happened to them. An unidentified body is a real challenge for the Police to investigate and is rarely successful in reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

Every person in the world can be classified into four broad categories of biological identification: sex, age, height and ancestral origin. This is the descriptor you hear from the Police who are looking to identify someone – a female, aged between 40 and 50 years, between 5ft and 5ft 2ins in height and black.

We also look for personal identifiers that will separate two individuals who have the same biological description and this might include DNA, fingerprints, dental work, previous diseases, previous fractures etc.

Professor Dame Sue Black is an anatomist and a forensic anthropologist. She led for her discipline in the war crimes investigations in Kosovo and has deployed to many countries around the world including Thailand, Iraq, Sierra Leone and Grenada. She is the author of 14 textbooks and 2 popular science books about her career. She is a Fellow of 5 learned academies and is a cross bench Peer in the House of Lords. She is currently Pro Vice Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University and is President Elect for St. John's College, Oxford.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

## Ability

### Ability

**Free and Equal****(Play)** For every Common and Rare card in your deck, your Epic and Legendary cards, wherever they are, lose -5 Power until played, and for every Epic and Legendary card in your deck, your Common and Rare cards, wherever they are, gain +5 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

You may have noticed life as a human on planet Earth can get pretty chaotic. To stop us straying too far from the light, it’s important we set out some ground rules. So, after the Second World War, in response to the “barbarous acts which outraged the conscience of mankind”, the **Universal Declaration of Human Rights **was adopted by the newly established United Nations.****

****The milestone document recognises human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace and was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 10th December 1948. It includes civil and political rights to be universally protected like the right to life, liberty, free speech and privacy, and has been translated into over 500 languages.****

 ****'Eleanor Roosevelt holding poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in English), Lake Success, New York' by FDR Presidential Library & Museum (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered)****
Venezuelan Rollerblading

## Did You Know?

What a truly joyous tradition. Between the 16th to 24th of December, the good-folk of Venezuela strap on their roller-blades and head to church.

No one is entirely sure when or even how this started, but it's a fair assumption that it was sometime after 1760 when Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin came up with the idea for inline skates. It's more likely to have its origins in the 1970s as an alternative to festive ice skating or sledging, as Venezuela (eight degrees north to the equator) is pretty short on the white stuff.

Around 70% Venezuelans are practising Catholics and it has become so popular that streets are now shut, to ensure the safety of participants, who often dress up, dance and eat with one another after mass.

The tradition continues to evolve with some people showing such devotion to the spectacle, that they tie lengths of string to their toes and dangle them out of their windows, so passers-by can tug on the string and ensure their sleeping neighbour doesn't miss out.
The Tower (XVI)

## Ability

### Ability

**Disruptive Revelation****(Draw)** All cards in both player's hands lose -10 Power until played. **(Play)** If you are winning the round, a random card in your hand gains +100 Power this turn (reveal before scoring). **(Play)** If you are tied or losing the round, a random card in either player's hand gains +100 Power this turn (reveal before scoring).

## Did You Know?

Change! Destruction! Chaos!

The Tower card in the Tarot is a sign that your life is about to be turned upside down – whether it’s a curveball in your career, the loss of a loved one or being suddenly pulled into a car by a spy who tells you that you have 24 hours to save the world.

Okay, real talk - Tarot readings aren’t actually that specific and should be taken with a pinch of salt. But if you did get a Tarot reading in early 2020 and this card came up, the events that followed are exactly the kind of sudden unforeseen change that The Tower represents. If the Tower card is upside down when pulled from the deck, however, it could suggest that the drama is over.
Vitellius

## Ability

### Ability

**8 Months and an Execution****(Play)** If it's after Round 3 Turn 2, this card loses -200 Power.

## Did You Know?

8 months and 6 days: that’s the short span of time that **Vitellius** ruled as Roman emperor. Denied the chance to resign, Vitellius was instead killed and his body thrown in the Tiber.

What did he do to deserve such a fate? Well, you won’t feel too sorry for Vitellius when you learn that he apparently starved his mother to death because of a prophecy that said he would rule for longer if she died. In his quest for a life of excess, Vitellius began borrowing money by the boatload to throw lavish feasts where birds of all kinds were served by the thousands.

Any money lender who demanded repayment was tortured/killed. For an emperor whose blanket solution to every problem was murder, his ending is not totally surprising.
Wadi Bani Khalid

## Ability

### Ability

**Live Forever****(Play)** If played next to Gaussian Function, your Common cards, wherever they are, gain +6 Power permanently.

## Did You Know?

Forget Noel and Liam, Wadi Bani Khalid is the only Oasis you need in your life. With its bright blue skies, emerald green bathing pools and tropical fruit trees, this is a little slice of paradise located 120 km from Sur in the Eastern region of Oman.

Perched at an altitude of 600 metres, in the Hajar mountain range, **Wadi Bani Khalid** is one of the most famous wadis in Oman. It may be Half the World Away for many of us, but this natural waterpark is worth the trip. Once upon a time, the wadi was home to the Bedouin tribes, who settled under the huge rocks that protected them from the punishing desert sun. Today, it’s a tourist destination often considered the most relaxing part of the country.
Virginia Hall

## Ability

### Ability

**Running Resistance****(Draw)** Your opponent's cards in hand cost +1 Energy this turn.

## Did You Know?

No one in London gave **Virginia Hall** more than a fifty-fifty chance of survival when she was sent to wartime France to set up a resistance network. But this former American desk clerk would defy expectations, helping to turn the tide of history when hope was almost lost. Dubbed the most dangerous spy in WW2 by the Gestapo, Hall led some of the most successful sabotage missions against the Germans that helped the Allied effort after D-Day.
Tree of Heaven

## Ability

### Ability

**Heaven and Hell****(Play)** Your Devil's Tree card in hand gains +65 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

So-named for its ability to grow skywards at alarming speeds, the **Tree of Heaven** can reach heights of up 24 metres. Native to China, it was brought to the United States as an ornamental plant in the late 1700s, but it quickly became the houseguest that wouldn't leave. With a scent that's reminiscent of a gym locker, it's not hard to see why.

However, while the Tree of Heaven is considered a pest in many places, it does have some uses. The wood is lightweight and has been used for making packing crates, boxes, and furniture. The tree also has some medicinal properties and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of ailments.
Time Machine

## Ability

### Ability

**Future Perfect****(Draw)** If your deck has exactly 9 History cards, your Science cards, wherever they are, gain +15 Power until played, and vice versa.

## Did You Know?

According to scientists, time travel is theoretically possible - but it doesn’t involve a DeLorean, a phone booth or a police box. These forms of **Time Machine** are strictly science fiction - for now, anyway.

Author H.G. Wells first posited the idea of time travel via mechanical means in his 1895 novel ‘The Time Machine’, coining the term in the process. Until then, fictional time travellers tended to just fall asleep.

While we haven’t created a Time Machine big enough for humans, the Large Hadron Collider routinely propels subatomic particles into the future. However, if you do want to visit Earth in the year 3000, all you have to do is get on a spaceship and go 99.995 percent the speed of light. Well, what are you waiting for? <link="https:>Hop in.</link>
Warrior Wasp

## Ability

### Ability

**Sting like a Wasp****(Return)** If you have played Boxing this game, your opponent loses -45 Power/Turn next turn.

## Did You Know?

“Torture. You are chained in the flow of an active volcano.” That’s what it feels like to get stung by a **Warrior Wasp**, a special breed of nightmare known for its aggressive behaviour and peculiar drumming attack.

This threat display involves multiple wasps beating their wings in a synchronised fashion, a terrifying orchestra designed to scare off any predator eyeing up their nest. When they aren’t defending their territory, they’re attacking prey with powerful jaws sharp enough to rip an insect’s head off in one go.

Fortunately for humans, their prey consists mostly of pests that could otherwise wreak havoc on gardens and vegetation. In other words, the warrior wasp’s brutal murder of other bugs is something we can actually be thankful for.
Unicorn

## Did You Know?

The mythical horned white horse that graces the pencil cases of thousands of children world over, and even made a cameo in Blade Runner, is the stuff of many legends.

Some say it has healing powers, some say it brings luck - most agree that it's a truly magical creature. Spoiler alert; it's not proven that this animal actually exists, but various cultures have accounts of its physicality.

The Ancient Greeks were the first to write about unicorns, as part of their historical accounts of nature. Greek historian Ctesias described the unicorn as having ‘blue eyes, a white body, a purple head with one horn protruding in three colours.’ We can’t confirm how much moonshine (or otherwise) that Ctesias had consumed when he had this vision, but it seems he wasn’t alone as Unicorn symbols were also used as seals on clay tablets in 3000 B.C. and heraldic symbols in the Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations.

In the Old Testament of the King James version of the Bible, the unicorn was mentioned nine times as a result of a mis-translation of the Hebrew word 're’em,' which should have been a wild ox… not quite as magical.
Wheel of Fortune (X)

## Ability

### Ability

**Turning Point****(Play)** If you are losing the round, this card gains +30 Power permanently.

## Did You Know?

In a typical tarot reading, the **Wheel of Fortune**, the tenth card of the Major Arcana, when produced upright, represents fortune, luck, happiness and a turning point. Reversed, however, it spells bad luck, abundance and resistance to change.

The Rider Waite deck’s version of this card was key in developing the Tarot alongside the magical-religious system championed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It depicts this wheel inscribed with four Hebrew letters - Yod Heh Vau Heh, the unpronounceable name of God.

The letters TORA also feature - representing either a version of the term law’, Torah, Tarot or even Rota - the Latin for Wheel. Just like the Tarot itself, the depiction is open to interpretation.

The middle wheel shows the alchemy symbols for mercury, sulphur, water and salt, representing formative power.
Tiberius

## Ability

### Ability

**Danube Boy****(Play)** Your The Danube card in hand gains +40 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

They say the best leaders are those who don’t want to be leaders, but emperor **Tiberius** is proof that this theory isn’t always accurate.

Tiberius’ reign started fairly well: he avoided major conflicts and grew the imperial treasury. Things all went pear-shaped pretty quickly after he upped and left to live in Capri. This set the Roman rumour mills in motion with tales of Tiberius’ cruelty and depravity. All in all, he left a fairly grim legacy.