recursal/Fanatic-Fandom huggingface dataset:
Sputnik Planitia

## Ability

### Ability

**On Impact****(Draw)** Your Common and Rare The Solar System cards, wherever they are, gain +15 Power until played. Repeat if your deck contains Pluto, Dwarf Planet.

## Did You Know?

It may have been relegated to dwarf planet status, but Pluto’s surface has one thing that no other planets in our solar system have: a France-sized, heart-shaped mysterious formation filled with nitrogen ice on the hemisphere facing away from the big moon Charon.

Known as **Sputnik Planitia**, this large basin astounded astronomers because its surface is crater free (meaning it’s very young), is surrounded by tall water-ice mountain ranges and has glacier-like flows that are on the move.

And here’s the kicker: no one is totally sure how these icy plains appeared. Statistically, there’s only a 5% chance that it formed where it is now - almost precisely opposite Charon. Some say this because Sputnik Planitia dragged the crust of Pluto to the current arrangement - a phenomenon known as “true polar wander.”
WASP-76b

## Ability

### Ability

**Iron Rain****(Play)** If played next to Hydrogen, your Space cards in hand gain +26 Power for 3 turns. Repeat if played next to Helium.

## Did You Know?

Welcome to **WASP-76b**! Before you get settled in, it’s worth knowing a few things. Firstly, you’ll notice it’s light outside! That’s because the planet is tidally locked - meaning that it always shows the same side to its star.

Here on the ‘day’ side, things can get pretty toasty, sometimes reaching around 2,500 degrees celsius, so you won’t need to wrap up warm when you venture outside! On that note, we recommend you… don’t go outside.

The nighttime side is cooler, and it rains a lot! That’s because the temperature on the ‘day’ side is hot enough to vaporise iron. Those iron molecules cool down and turn into ‘rain’ droplets, which get carried on winds of 11,184mph to the ‘night’ side. We hope you enjoy your stay!

'WASP-76b during its night hours' by ESO/M. Kornmesser (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered)
The Vyne Ring

## Ability

### Ability

**The One Ring****(Start)** A random card in your hand gains +14 Power until played and if your deck contains Fomalhaut, an opponent's random card in hand **Burn**s (14) until played.

## Did You Know?

One ring to curse them all and in the darkness bind them. While a lot of *The Lord of the Rings* is pure fantasy, the inspiration for the One Ring may have come from **The Vyne Ring.** No, it doesn’t turn you invisible or send wraiths after you, screaming “Sssshire…Bagginnssss.” Thankfully.

In 1785, a gold ring belonging to a Roman named Silvianus was found in a farmer’s field and it was thought to be connected to a cursed plate found in a temple. The cursed plate was left by Silvianus who claimed that he had had his ring stolen and called upon the god Noden to curse the person who stole it until they returned the ring to him.

Now, that doesn’t really sound like Middle Earth, that sounds more ancient Eastenders. So where does Tolkien come in? Well, in 1929, an archaeologist named Sir Mortimer Wheeler linked the ring and the curse tablet and asked Tolkien to consult on these as he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies at Oxford University. It’s thought that this possibly inspired the One Ring of Tolkien’s fantasy books, *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings* series.

It also means that poor Silvanius never got his ring back. Shame.

 *by Simon Q (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32927898*
White Dwarf

## Ability

### Ability

**Compact Stars****(Play)** Your Common Space cards in hand gain +28 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Like most reality TV stars, **White Dwarfs** are really hot but also super dense. But like, really dense. We’re talking 1,000,000 times the density of water. That’s because the material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions, meaning the star has no source of energy. As a result, it has no fusion-generated heat to support itself against gravitational collapse. But, like we said, they’re also super hot - so there’s that.

After a star has exhausted its nuclear fuel, it expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula. Only the core of the star remains. At this point, it becomes a white dwarf, boasting temperatures exceeding 100,000° Kelvin. For reference, the surface of our Sun is 6000° Kelvin.
Whale Shark

## Did You Know?

The Whale Shark is a type of 'Carpet Shark' - a name given to it because of its ornate patterns, and not because it swims on the floor of the ocean. That said, it does swim on the bottom of the ocean. It could probably be called a Vacuum Cleaner Shark because it is a 'filter feeder' - swimming along with its mouth open (up to 4ft wide!), it filters food from the water as it goes.

In other news - the Whale Shark is the largest fish in the world today.
Tyrannotitan

## Ability

### Ability

**Tyranny****(Play)** Your Carnivores cards, wherever they are, gain +24 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Measuring around 12 metres in length and weighing over 5,000kg, the **Tyrannotitan** was a large theropod that lived in South America during the early Cretaceous period. When an ancient carnivore is so monstrously big that it gets named “Tyrannotitan” meaning Tyrant Titan, you just know it was the nightmare fuel for any animal smaller than it.

Fortunately for them, this bipedal beast’s teeth weren’t that well developed compared to other carcharodontosaurids – yes, they could strip flesh from dead prey, but they probably weren’t great at crunching bones. Your best bet would have been to outrun it, although given its length, that in itself would have been a challenge. Along with Acrocanthosaurus, the Tryannotitan is the oldest known giant carcharodontosaurid in North America!
The Brazen Bull

## Ability

### Ability

**If You Can't Stand the Heat...****(Draw)** A random card in your hand **Burn**s (14) this round and three opponent's random cards in hand **Burn** (14) this round.

## Did You Know?

No torture device is ever going to be pleasant, but **The Brazen Bull** has to be one of the most horrifying devices ever created.
Legend has it that the tyrant Phalaris who ruled a seaside colony in ancient Greece had his court sculptor make a brass replica of a bull. Hollow on the inside, the bull was placed over a fire and victims were placed inside. As if that wasn't enough to simply bake your victims to death, the bull contained a system of tubes to convert and resonate the screams of the unfortunate occupant into something that sounded like an enraged bull. Legend has it that the court sculptor was among its first victims.
There are no contemporary accounts of the Brazen Bull leading to a degree to scepticism around the existence of such a device.
The Jurassic Period

## Ability

### Ability

**Life Finds A Way****(Return)** Your Life on Land cards, wherever they are, gain +10 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

Taking place over 144 million years ago and lasting for 56 million years. **The Jurassic Era** was the second of the three major epochs of the Mesozoic era - the time when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It's the middle child, and as such it's the one most affected by Earth's growing pains.

Pangaea, the super-continent from which all of today's landmasses broke off, had begun to separate before the **Jurassic Era**, but during it, they accelerated. Because of all that tectonic activity, mountains rose up from the seafloor which pushed sea levels higher.

All that extra water changed the climate - where the Triassic Era before had been dry and arid, the sudden (and by "sudden", we mean "over millennia") increase in moisture meant that plant life was able to thrive, and the **Jurassic Era** is characterised by lush jungles and greenery all across the planet.

There was also a rise in the number of sea creatures - the waters between the drifting landmasses were shallow, so new forms of aquatic life could evolve because of the increased exposure to sunlight. Many of the creatures in our Monsters of the Deep collection came to prominence in this time frame.
The World Tree

## Ability

### Ability

**Planar Branches****(Play)** Your cards from collections with "Mythology" in their name, wherever they are, gain +30 Power for 2 turns.

## Did You Know?

Many mythologies and religions share the concept of **The World Tree** – a tree at the centre of the world that supports the Earth, the cosmos and, through its roots, the underworld.

In Norse Mythology, of course, the world tree is known as Yggdrasil. In Greek Mythology, although there are several sacred trees including the apple tree that bloomed golden apples and the oak tree, considered to be the sacred tree of Zeus, the World Tree itself was the olive, named Moriai.

According to mythology, when Acropolis was founded, Poseidon and Athena both tried to claim the city, where a contest before the two Olympians was held. The two were asked to present the most useful gift to the city, and Poseidon impressed all by striking a rock with his trident, causing saltwater to spurt from it. Not really thinking it through there though mate. Can you drink saltwater? Sort it out.

Athena steps up to the plate with her spear, thrusting it into the ground to create the first-ever olive tree. Having had the foresight to provide an actually useful gift, she is crowned the patron of the city, and the olive tree is now considered to be a property of the state in Greece because of their religious significance.
The Snow Queen

## Ability

### Ability

**Let it Go****(Play)** If it's the last turn of a round, gain +10 Power/Turn permanently and give your opponent -10 Power/Turn permanently.

## Did You Know?

Long before Elsa was the It Girl of ice magic, **The Snow Queen** was the one to watch in the world of winter fairytales. Written by Hans Christian Anderson, the seven-part-story was first published in the run up to Christmas, 1845. In the story, a girl named Gerda must cross mountains, forests and hills to reach the Snow Kingdom to save her friend Kay who has been kidnapped by the Snow Queen.

Legend has it that the author was inspired by Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, who he met in 1840. Andersen confessed his love to Lind, but she was not interested in him romantically. The ice-cold rejection led the author to model the Snow Queen on the singer, although Lind never kidnapped any children (that we know of.)
Thick-headed Fly

## Did You Know?

The Thick-headed Fly is so named not because they're particularly stupid, but because their heads are larger than their thoraxes. They seem fairly docile, but don't be fooled - their method of egg incubation can only be described as, er, hit and run.

Females will wait on flowers for bees to come nearby, using themselves as bait. When the bee attacks, the Fly strikes back and injects a single egg into its abdominal section. The larva hatches and feeds on the bee's blood until it's a bit bigger - then, it starts eating its host. The bee dies, often in flight, and the larva pupates within its corpse over winter.
Tiara of Saitaferne

## Ability

### Ability

**Scandalous****(Draw)** Gain +10 Power/Turn for 5 turns. **(Return)** Lose -5 Power/Turn permanently.

## Did You Know?

You’re a well-known goldsmith making a decent whack of cash from your work in Odessa. One day, two art dealers ask you to make a dodgy gift for a friend. It’s a solid gold Greek-themed tiara, and it’s supposed to look as authentic as possible, complete with an inscription honouring “the great and invincible King Saitaphernes". You make it, get paid and think nothing of it.

Years later, you discover that the Louvre has paid 200,000 francs for the **Tiara of Saitaphernes**, believing it to be a genuine artefact from the late 3rd-century BCE. What do you do? In 1903, goldsmith Israel Rouchomovsky set the record straight. Having been well and truly swindled, the Louvre hid the tiara in storage until 1954 when it was included in a “Salon of Fakes”. Cringe.
Viperfish

## Ability

### Ability

**Mighty Bite****(Play)** An opponent's random card in hand loses -100 Power for 2 turns.

## Did You Know?

With a face only a mother can love and a mouth full of needle-like teeth so long that it cannot close its mouth, the **Viperfish** isn’t likely to win any underwater beauty pageants. However, in a prey-catching contest held in the deep dark ocean, Viperfish could emerge victorious.

With glowing photophores, it produces its own light in the darkness, luring in unwitting prey with its bioluminescence. The Viperfish flashes its natural light on and off, moving its dorsal spine around like a living fishing rod while keeping the rest of its body still in the water. Once in close range, it charges towards its victims and impales them with its deadly fangs. In short, the Viperfish is effectively a sentient booby trap.
Thibaud's Treasure

## Ability

### Ability

**Offshore Fortune****(Play)** If your deck has 7 or more Oceans cards, your cards in hand gain +42 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Thibaud de Castillon was a bishop in fourteenth-century Lisbon and one whose corruption amassed him considerable wealth at the cost of strained relations between Portugal and the Vatican. When he died in 1356, the Papal treasurer swooped in and claimed his fortune for the Pope - he argued that it belonged to the Vatican and that Thibaud had been working as their agent. So he loaded it onto a galley - the São Vicente - and set sail for Avignon, where it would go on to the Pope.

Small problem - the French were at war with the Spanish at the time, and Portugal had declared their support to Spain. There was a kind of mutually assured destruction thing going on in the Mediterranean - both sides had huge powerful navies, but neither would deploy them and this meant that there were tons of bored sailors out there with very powerful ships.

The São Vicente was attacked by two of these ships, loyal to Portugal, and when they realised they were both on the same side they split the riches. One ship sailed off with their half of the treasure, and history has lost all record of them. The other ship ran aground in Maguio, not far from Avignon, and its half of the treasure was captured by the local garrison.

The Vatican discovered what had happened and staked their claim over what was left. While they were occupied with cutting through the red tape to get it back, most of the treasure "wandered off"...
Torvosaurus

## Ability

### Ability

**Strongarm****(Play)** All cards in both player's hands with 60 or less Base Power lose -20 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Do you even lift, bro? **Torvosaurus** might have done. It was a large, bipedal carnivore not unlike Allosaurus, and studies on its bone morphology indicated that it would have had very powerful (albeit very short) arms.

Two different species of **Torvosaurus** are currently recognised; *T. tanneri* and *T.gurneyi*, found in Wyoming and Portugal respectively. *T.gurneyi* is named after James Gurney, the creator of the Dinotopia book series."
The Veil Nebula

## Did You Know?

The Veil Nebula is the visible part of what is known as the Cygnus Loop - a large but relatively faint supernova remnant. It is believed that the star it is formed from exploded around 8,000 years ago, and that the nebula is over 1,470 light-years away from us which means that we can see it as it looked about 5,500 years after its explosion. Check back in 1,500 years to see what it looks like right now!
Stampede

## Ability

### Ability

**Ready to Rumble****(Play)** Your Life on Land cards, wherever they are, gain +25 Power and you lose -2:energy/turn: this round

## Did You Know?

A **Stampede** is the result of a mass impulse to run, usually away from a real or perceived threat, and it occurs with herd animals and - unfortunately - humans.

Herd animal stampedes you will be familiar with from nature documentaries, and of course from the death of Mufasa in The Lion King (the one that did a mean Darth Vader impression).

Human stampedes still occur with depressing frequency - five with mass fatalities in 2020 alone. One particularly heart-breaking stampede was the Victoria Hall Disaster of 1883, where 183 children died in a rush to collect a prize after a show, only to run into a bolted door. If it is any consolation, the event led to the invention of the push-bar emergency door - which has saved countless lives since.

## Trivia

* This ultra fusion card is taken down along with the Ultra Fusion Stampede Pack hours after its introduction due to a bug that prevents the original fusion card from being created. As a result, the **Cool Cats** Pack and **Ocean Reptiles** Pack are introduced for 2 days as compensation.
The Juniper Tree

## Ability

### Ability

**Sacrificial Stew****(Draw)** A random card from either player's hand loses -40 Power this turn and your Curious Cuisine cards in hand gain +30 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Murder, child abuse, cannibalism: The Juniper Tree has got all the elements of a classic fairytale. Collected by the Brothers Grimm in ‘Children’s and Household Tales,’ the story begins with a happy couple who want for a child. But when they eventually do have a son, the mother literally dies of happiness. She is buried under the **Juniper Tree**.

When the man later remarries and has a second child, the new wife becomes possessed by evil. In a horrifying turn of events, she snaps the boys head off, convinces her daughter the murder was of her doing, cooks the boy in vinegar and feeds him to his father. It’s no wonder the story was deemed unsuitable by critics.
The Volga

## Did You Know?

Although it has no natural access to any open seas, more than 500 channels, streams and smaller rivers branch off **The Volga**. The mother of all rivers, the Volga is the longest river in Europe, running 3692 kilometres from the Valdai Hills to the Caspian Sea.

Fancy a spot of ice-skating? The temperature in Russia drops so low in the winter months that the Volga freezes for most of its length for three months every year.
The Wheel

## Did You Know?

As long as there have been heavy things, there has been a need to move those heavy things. It's unknown exactly which humans discovered that round things move much more easily than not-round things, but they surely wish they'd registered the patent.

Once the concept of "round things roll" was discovered, the more resourceful Paleolithic man began to use logs as rollers to transport stone. Over time, as man learned to use tools, stone was fashioned into circles with holes in the middle to put those logs through, and thus the wheel and axle was born.

The first wheels have been dated to only around 3,500 years ago - by then, humans were casting metals and making boats to cross oceans. It seems we invented the *harp* before we figured out we need an easier way to move our crops!
Thunderbird

## Ability

### Ability

**F.A.B.****(Play)** Your Awesome Aviation, Beautiful Butterflies and Fancy Fashions cards in hand gain +24 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Imagine a bird so big it could pick up whales with its talons; a bird with wings so massive that their flapping sounded like thunder. In Native American mythology, there is such a beast, and its powers include creating rainstorms to water the earth and using lightning snakes as a tool or a weapon.

Known as the **Thunderbird**, this mighty mythological creature was said to be capable of taking human form by opening up his head like a mask and removing his feathers like a blanket. Long ago, indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast pleaded with the Thunderbird for help during a food shortage. The bird helped but requested that he be depicted at the top of a totem pole with his wings outstretched in return.
Togo

## Ability

### Ability

**Leader of the Pack****(Draw)** Your Dogs cards in hand gain +20 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

On his very first day in harness at 8 months old, legendary sled dog **Togo** covered an astonishing 75 miles, defying all assumptions for a young pup. Although he had a mischievous reputation and a scruffy coat, his owner Leonard Seppala saw through the troublemaker façade, recognising the potential within. Seppala was right.

In 1925, Togo led the charge in the heroic serum run to Nome, braving treacherous terrain in Alaska to deliver life-saving diphtheria serum. Despite his remarkable achievements, the headlines were stolen by Balto, the dog who happened to run the last leg in the race. Fortunately, the record was set straight, and this brave boy became known as the hero of the serum run, instrumental in shaping the Seppala Siberian sled dog line and the beloved Siberian Husky breed.
VW Schwimmwagen

## Ability

### Ability

**Over Land and Sea****(Play)** Your Oceans and Seas and Life on Land cards in hand gain +16 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

It remains the most mass-produced amphibious car in history and one of the most intriguing vehicles ever designed. The **VW Schwimmwagen** was designed by Ferdinand Porsche for the German Army in WWII – because, when a four-wheel drive isn’t enough, making it swim is the next logical step, right?

The VW Schwimmwagen was powered by a 1.2-litre air-cooled flat-four, which drove a retractable water propeller. Using front wheels as rudders, this vehicle was effectively a boat on wheels that also rolled on land (they see me floatin’… they hatin’). The Schwimmwagen never saw much action, but its mere existence was enough to inspire the design of amphibious cars across the world. Hey, maybe if sea levels keep rising, they’ll make a comeback.

'Carinhall, Göring begrüßt SS-Führer' by Bundesarchiv (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered)
Trojan Horse

## Ability

### Ability

**Greeks Bearing GIfts****(Play)** All cards in both player's hands with 3 or less Base Energy gain +20 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

The Siege of Troy is a battle infamous throughout history, thanks largely to its ending because of an act of subterfuge. Take everything here with a pinch of salt, because although history records conflict taking place around the same time, a lot of sources may have been fictionalised or embellished up ("Take everything here with a pinch of salt" should be a disclaimer we put on the back of all the cards - Ed). So, SUPPOSEDLY...

You probably know how the siege began - Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, falls in love with the Trojan Paris who steals her away to Troy. Menelaus, understandably miffed, gathers an army and they lay siege to Troy for a decade in an effort to rescue her.

Somehow it takes ten years for the Greeks to realise they're not winning a war of attrition, so they try a new strategy - giving up. The Trojans are astonished to see the Greek army pack up and sail home. They leave a giant wooden horse behind as a gift to the victorious Trojans - Troy accepts by wheeling it inside the city walls and having a massive party to celebrate.

When they're all asleep, a hatch opens on the horse and somewhere between 9 and 40 Greek soldiers (sources disagree on how many there were) climb out, presumably delighted to no longer be in a cramped space with that many sweaty men for like twelve hours. Under the cover of darkness, this detachment destroys the city, winning the war.

The story is so resonant, true or not, that the **Trojan Horse** is still marvelled at to this day. In the modern era, it's the colloquial name for a new threat - malicious computer software, that tricks users into running it, is often called a "Trojan".
V1400 Centauri

## Ability

### Ability

**Immense Ring System****(Return)** If your deck has 10 or more Exploring the Stars cards, this card gains +60 Power permanently.

## Did You Know?

343 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus is a star with a mass around 90% that of our Sun’s. Known as **V1400 Centauri**, this star isn’t visible to the naked eye. But, if you happen to be a space-farer (or have a telescope), we recommend checking it out.

16 million years old may seem ancient to humans, but in star years, V1400 Centauri is but a teenager. And yet, for such a young star, it already has a pretty big reputation. In 2007, V1400 Centauri was observed to be eclipsed and orbited by a major body: 1SWASP J1407b, thought to be a large exoplanet.

Described as “Saturn on Steroids” or “Super Saturn”, this expoplanet has a massive ring system with a radius of about 90 million kilometres.

'J1407b transit seen from its hypothetical exomoon' by Tiouraren (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 (original image resized, cropped and altered)
Virtual Reality

## Ability

### Ability

**Alternate Reality****(Play)** Your cards in hand gain +15 Power this turn. **(Return)** Your remaining cards in hand cost -2 Energy next turn.

## Did You Know?

**Virtual Reality** is a very strange technology, in that it's something that still feels like the preserve of science fiction, but you could go out and buy a decent virtual reality headset right now. If you wanted to, you could drop a grand and discover what it's like to sit in a racing car, watch movies in a digital theatre, or throw up in an X-Wing cockpit, today!

The idea of using equipment to visit other worlds has been around for decades, but the technology that forms the core of virtual reality as we know it today, known as stereopsis, dates back to the 1830s. Sir Charles Wheatstone was among the first to realise that our brains combine two images (each provided by either of our eyes) to make them appear to have depth, and built a device to demonstrate it. The user would look through two eyeholes, each one containing a mirror that reflected a slightly different image - and indeed, the brain perceived them as a single three-dimensional object.

Leonardo da Vinci is thought to have had notions of stereopsis first but, come on dude, let the other scientists have something.

Fast forward to 1956, and we get Morton Heilig's Sensorama - a large booth that could fit four people at a time that combined video, audio, vibration and scent-dispersers to create the "cinema of the future". Fortunately, this didn't take off, and we have been spared the full sensory experience of John Carpenter's The Thing, but Heilig pursued stereopsis and developed the Telesphere Mask in 1960, the first-ever head-mounted display.

The technology developed from there and, barring a few stumbles (looking at you, Virtual Boy), has led to the high-fidelity virtual reality we can enjoy in our own homes today. The next step? Full immersion...
Toxodon

## Ability

### Ability

**Bow Tooth****(Return)** If your deck has 9 or more Paleontology cards, gain +25 Power/Turn this round.

## Did You Know?

Dubbed “one of the strangest animals ever discovered,” by Charles Darwin, the **Toxodon**  is a type of extinct mammal from South America. This large-bodied hoofed mammal is estimated to have weighed over a tonne and would likely have been similar in size to the American bison.

So, what’s so strange about the Toxodon? Well, once assembled, the beast’s skeleton was a confusing mishmash of traits: it was as big as a rhino’s skill but had the chiselling incisors of a rodent. High-up eyes and nostrils weren’t unlike those found on aquatic mammals like manatees. For one creature to possess traits from so many different mammals was strange, to say the least – in fact, the origin of the animal continues to plague scientists today.

Image by Roman Uchytel, https://prehistoric-fauna.com
Vaquita

## Ability

### Ability

**Act with Porpoise****(Play)** If it's the first turn of a round, this card gains +20 Power.

## Did You Know?

The **Vaquita**, which means "little cow" in Spanish, is a species of porpoise endemic to the Gulf of California. Averaging 150cm or 140cm in length, it is the smallest of all living cetaceans.

The species is on the brink of extinction -recent research estimates the population at fewer than 19 individual Vaquitas. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto declared an emergency two-year ban on gillnets, which can catch Vaquitas, in 2015.

The Mexican government has taken other steps to protect them since 2004, including establishing a Vaquita refuge in the northern Gulf of California, plus compensating local fisherman who used this fishing area to make a living.

## Trivia

* The quote "Act with Porpoise" is a play on "act with purpose".
Tie-Dye

## Ability

### Ability

**Splash of Color****(Play)** If your deck has exactly 1 card from an album, give that card, wherever it is, +22 Power for 3 turns.

## Did You Know?

**Tie-Dye** has long been intertwined with free-spirited hippies, but its origins predate the counterculture movement. Records trace back to the T'ang Dynasty in China and the Nara Period in Japan during the 6th century. These early practitioners, while not engaged in protests or psychedelic experiences, experimented with natural dyes sourced from berries, roots, and flowers to infuse vibrant hues into garments.

Fast forward to 1920s America, where the Monroe Chemical Company released a booklet titled "The Art of Tied Dyeing," marking a pivotal moment in the art's evolution and its adoption as a fun pastime for thrifty housewives. By the ‘60s, making your own psychedelic clothes was a way to say no to the capitalist system and look groovy in the process.
Vincent van Gogh

## Ability

### Ability

**Starry Night****(Play)** Your Space cards, wherever they are, gain +12 Power this round. **(Return)** If you won the turn, your Space cards, wherever they are, gain +10 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

In less than ten years, **Vincent van Gogh** painted 900 paintings – yet he sold only one painting while he was alive: The Red Vineyard. On the plus side, after slicing off half his ear, he probably had a harder time hearing the haters. Interestingly, some historians believe that he didn’t cut it off himself but lost it while fencing with his friend, Paul Gauguin. But that could just be hearsay.
Treaty of Versailles

## Ability

### Ability

**Peace Terms****(Draw)** Your cards in hand gain +10 Power this round. **(Return)** Your opponent's Machines of War cards, wherever they are, **Lock** this round.

## Did You Know?

*”This is not peace, this is an armistice for 20 years.”* - Ferdinand Foch, French Marshall, 1919.

Foch wasn’t wrong. **The Treaty of Versailles** might have seemed fair on paper, but in forcing Germany to disarm, concede territory, and pay extensive reparations to the Allied Powers - all in the name of making amends for the First World War - the Treaty punished the ordinary German people.

Over time, this would give rise to strong feelings of injustice among the electorate - the kind that would provide a fervent Nationalist with ideas of a master race with a clear path to power…

'The cover of a publication of the Treaty of Versailles in English' by David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau - Auckland War Memorial Museum (Source: Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under Public Domain (original image resized, cropped and altered)
The Fool (XXII)

## Ability

### Ability

**Unlimited Potential****(Draw)** Your Tarot cards, wherever they are, gain +16 Power permanently.

## Did You Know?

According to the Rider Waite deck *(widely considered as the most popular deck for tarot reading)* **The Fool**, numbered 0 out of the 22 Major Arcada cards, represents new beginnings, innocence and unlimited potential, or reversed, holding back and recklessness. The Major Arcana (the cards which set the core meaning of the Tarot reading) is usually considered as his adventure through life.

Tarot was not originally designed as a tool for divination, but was instead developed for card games such as Italian tarocchini or the Austrian Königrufen *(Call the King)*.

Despite some claims that Tarot had occult links to Ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, Indian Tantra or the I Ching, it wasn’t until the late-18th century that Tarot decks were repurposed for use in divination, following the use of regular playing cards in fortune-telling.

It was cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette who first assigned divinatory meanings to the deck in 1783, believing that the first tarot deck was printed on leaves of golds, and that it is both an account of the creation of the world and a book of eternal medicine.
War

## Ability

### Ability

**Judgment Day****(Draw)** Your Machines of War cards in hand gain +15 Power this round. **(Play)** If you are winning the round, gain +50 Power/Turn this turn. **(Return)** If you won the turn, your Famine card, wherever it is, gains +50 Power next turn.

## Did You Know?

For as long as humans have been on Earth, we’ve been fighting with one another. We can’t help ourselves - no matter what it’s over, we love a bit of war. So, it figures that the Bible would feature **‘War’** as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Look out for a red horse and rider with a sword, taking peace from the earth and causing people to kill one another. It doesn’t sound like a very calm ending - but then again, this is the apocalypse we’re talking about. It’s *supposed* to be dark.

So, when can we expect this? Well, the Bible says “you will hear of wars and rumours of wars” and “nation will rise against nation” - yeah, they’re gonna have to be a bit more specific…
Treehopper

## Did You Know?

If there was a hide and seek worldwide championship then Treehoppers would win time and time again; these Houdini-like bugs are the masters of disguise.

With a sharp, pointed spine on their back, this makes them look exactly like a thorn on a plant. Conniving (and potentially painful), but these camouflages protect them from predators.

There are around 2,500 species of Treehopper in the world and they're mainly found in tropical forests. It's unclear how many of those 2,500 were actually thorns that were counted by mistake.
Uranium

## Ability

### Ability

**Enrichment****(Draw)** If your deck contains Nuclear Power, your cards in hand gain +12 Power this turn and, if you also are behind, your cards in hand gain an additional +9 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

The atom bomb that dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 used one famous element to wreak its havoc: **Uranium**. This radioactive metal is unique in that one of its isotopes, uranium-235, is the only naturally occurring isotope capable of sustaining a nuclear fission reaction.

Found in small amounts in rocks and seawater, one ton of natural uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to burning 16,000 tons of coal. Regardless of how uranium is removed from the rock, the extraction process creates radioactive waste – what’s more, it takes 4.5 billion years for Uranium-238 to decay. To put that into context, the earliest form of life on Earth appeared around 3.8 billion years ago.
Wetsuit

## Ability

### Ability

**Thermal Protection****(Draw)** Your Icefish and Blood Circulation cards, wherever they are, gain +68 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

When you don a **Wetsuit** for intrepid water-based adventures, you’re sporting a design that was invented by one of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project – the research group that produced the first nuclear weapons. The scientist in question is one Hugh Bradner – but Hugh didn’t foresee its mass appeal and never patented the idea.

His introduction of the wetsuit to the U.S. Navy was also spurned, as the Navy were worried that the gas in neoprene – the synthetic rubber used in his wetsuits – would make divers more detectable on sonar. Then, a matter of months later, a man named Jack O’Neill started producing wetsuits in his Santa Cruz garage. His company, O’Neill, started selling these suits in 1959 with the motto “It’s always summer on the inside.”
Tycho Brahe

## Ability

### Ability

**Nearly Correct****(Play)** If your deck has 12 or more Space cards, your Space cards in hand gain +25 Power this turn. **(Return)** This card costs -3 Energy until played.

## Did You Know?

A naked-eye astronomer with half a nose (sword fighting will do that), **Tycho Brahe** was almost as important as Copernicus in developing our modern understanding of space. Combining the benefits of a Copernican system with those of the Ptolemaic system, he created his own model of the universe. The Tychonic correctly saw the Moon as orbiting Earth and the planets as orbiting the Sun, except for the Earth, which he thought was being orbited by the Sun and not vice versa.

They say manners cost nothing, but politeness sadly cost Tycho his life: according to some sources, he died after holding in his pee during a dinner party. So, next time you’re bursting, think of poor Tycho and just excuse yourself!
Trango Towers

## Ability

### Ability

**Vertical Limit****(Draw)** Your Natural Monuments and Majestic Mountains cards in hand gain +16 Power for 3 turns.

## Did You Know?

No matter how bold you might be when it comes to heights, there’s no way you wouldn’t feel somewhat intimidated when standing atop **Trango Towers**. Situated in the Baltoro Glacier region of northern Pakistan, the Trango Towers are a perilous climb - even for the most experienced rock climbers.

The highest point in the group is the summit of Great Trango Tower at 6,286m. For context, that’s a couple of hundred metres higher than Mount Kilimanjaro. Not only that, but the East face of the Great Trango Tower features the world's greatest nearly vertical drop. Just looking at the peaks of these towers is enough to give the faint-hearted a bout of altitude sickness.
Velcro

## Ability

### Ability

**Sticky Situation****(Play)** If you are losing the round, this card gains +28 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

If you’ve ever wondered how an astronaut can scratch their nose while wearing a helmet, prepare to have your mind blown – or rather, scratched. Inside their helmets is a small patch of **Velcro** that allows them the satisfaction of scratching an awkward itch.

But NASA didn’t invent Velcro. The genius behind the ol’ hook and loop tape is George de Mestral, an electrical engineer from Switzerland. One day, de Mestral was walking in the Alps and found burdock seeds were clinging to his woollen socks and coat. It gave him the idea to invent a fabric strap that could loop around and stick to another strap as a fastening.

De Mestral gave it the name Velcro - a portmanteau of the French words ‘velour’ and ‘crochet’.
Theatre of Epidaurus

## Ability

### Ability

**Are You Not Entertained?****(Play)** Your The Colosseum card in hand gains +15 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Dedicated to the God of Healing, Asklepios, the **Theatre of Epidaurus** is renowned for the quality of its acoustics. Its architect, Polykleitos the Younger, believed that watching drama could have positive effects on patients' mental and physical health.

Polykleitos clearly hadn't seen Starlight Express.
Wasp

## Did You Know?

Ah, the grinch of summertime and the reason for thousands of ruined picnics and barbeques world-wide.

Wasps provide pollination for plants and help with the ecosystem but we can guarantee you won't be waxing lyrical about these accolades if you've been on the wrong side of an angry buzzing horror show. Random top tip - an ordinary wasp sting can be treated with deodorant containing aluminium - so don't sweat it!
The Warminster Thing

## Ability

### Ability

**Sleepy Town Phenomena****(Play)** For every Space card you have played this game, up to a maximum of 15, your Weird World cards in hand gain +5 Power until played. **(Return)** Your Weird World cards, wherever they are, cost +2 Energy permanently.

## Did You Know?

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse. That is, until 1:25am, when Warminster resident Mildred Head awoke with a fright. Her ceiling had come alive with strange sounds - and it certainly wasn’t Santa Claus.

Little did she know, she was witnessing the beginning of a decades-long mystery known as **The Warminster Thing**. Throughout the year of 1965, reports of UFO sightings came thick and fast. Along with sightings of “cigar shaped” flying saucers flashing in the sky, people of the town reported hearing mysterious “savage soundwaves”. On the August bank holiday, an estimated 8,000 people arrived in Warminster in the hope of “seeing them aliens.”
Thermodynamics

## Ability

### Ability

**Bring the Heat****(Draw)** A random card in each player's hand **Burn**s (30) until played and, if you are losing the round, another opponent's random card in hand **Burn**s (30) until played.

## Did You Know?

Picture the scene: you’ve just poured a hot cup of coffee, and the phone rings. Half an hour later, you return to your coffee to find it has cooled down to room temperature. Blame **Thermodynamics**, a branch of physics that deals with heat and other forms of energy.

In this analogy, the system (coffee + room) has become more uniform as the coffee temperature went down and the room temperature went up, causing the ‘entropy’ to increase. There are three laws of thermodynamics, of which this is the second. The first is that you can’t get more energy out of a system that you put into it. The third states atoms stop moving if an object reaches the absolute zero of temperature. To understand thermodynamics, more coffee is needed.
Tikal

## Ability

### Ability

**Ruins of Rebellion****(Play)** If you are losing the round, your cards in hand gain +18 Power this turn and your Shake Up The System cards in hand gain an additional +28 Power this turn.

## Did You Know?

Deep in the rainforests of northern Guatemala, you’ll find **Tikal**: a breath-taking complex of ancient Mayan ruins that stretches out for 575 square kilometres. Historians believe that over 3,000 structures on the site belonged to the Mayan city of Yax Mutal. Between 200 and 900 A.D., Yax Mutal was the beating heart of one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient empire.

By 600 A.D., it had a sports stadium, a school, a hospital and a library stocked with thousands of books (today, only four Mayan books still exist). After thriving for over a thousand years, the city was abandoned – even today, we still don’t know for sure what caused its demise, but historians suggest a combination of drought, disease and deforestation.
Vaccination

## Did You Know?

Vaccinations and vaccines seem to be the buzz words on everyone’s lips at the moment, and for a very good reason. A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease.

It will typically contain an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. Vaccination is then the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop protection from a disease. It keeps you safe and protected, basically.

In the past 60 years, vaccines have helped eradicate one disease (smallpox) and are close to eradicating another (polio). Vaccinations prevent more than 2.5 million deaths each year. They also cause "herd immunity" (not that anyone enjoys being compared to the cows at the local farm) which basically means if the majority of people in a community have been vaccinated against a disease, an unvaccinated person is less likely to get ill because others are less likely to get sick and spread the disease.
Speed of Light

## Did You Know?

The time it took for the words in this passage of text to reach your eyeball and be processed into an image by your eyeball is infinitesimally short. It may seem crazy that, simply by looking around, your eyes are absorbing trillions of beams of light of varying colours that build a picture of the world around you, but it's true, and those beams of light travel at a crazy speed. The **Speed of Light!**

How fast is the **Speed of Light**, exactly? A beam of light travels at 299,792,458 metres per second. That's fast enough to travel around the circumference of Earths Equator nearly 8 times in a single second.

So how do you discover something so fast, or even get the notion that it's there to look for? It was down to Danish astronomer Ole Roemer. In 1676, he studied Jupiter's moons and noted that, when it was closer to Earth, their eclipses occurred sooner than when it was further away. He postulated that it wasn't because they were happening at different times; it was because we on Earth were perceiving them with a delay - the image was taking longer to get to us because the light had to travel further. After that, technology got more advanced and scientists began to measure the speed more accurately.
Titanium

## Ability

### Ability

**Toughen Up****(Play)** If you are losing the round, gain +8 Power/Turn permanently.

## Did You Know?

Titanium gets its name from the Titans who were Greek Gods. Pretty cool huh?! It is the only element that will burn in pure nitrogen gas and Titanium is the first element in the fourth column of the periodic table. Titanium atoms have 22 electrons and 22 protons.

Recognised as a new element by Reverend William Gregor in 1791, the English clergyman studied minerals as a hobby and named the element menachanite. The name was later changed to titanium by German chemist M.H. Kalproth. The first pure titanium was produced by American chemist M. A. Hunter in 1910.

If you’re a fan of golf and ‘a good walk spoiled’ then you’ll be interested to know that Titanium oxide is often used with graphite to make high-end golf clubs and tennis rackets. It can also be found a little further from home, in meteorites, on the Moon, and in some types of stars, oh, and in containers to store nuclear waste. Handy.

Another impressive characteristic of titanium is that it is bio-compatible. This basically means that it will not be rejected by the human body, thus meaning that teamed with its durability, lightweight nature and strength, is often used as a material for medical use and used in dental implants and hip replacements.
Unsinkable Molly Brown

## Ability

### Ability

**She Alive, Dammit!****(Draw)** Gain +10 Power/Turn this round. **(Play)** Your Titanic card in hand gains +50 Power this turn. **(Return)** If you won the turn, your Titanic card, wherever it is, gains +35 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

(We're stretching the definition of "Old West" *slightly* here, but you have to hear about this phenomenal woman!)

If you saw the Titanic sinking, what would you do? If you’re Kate Winslet, you act like there’s no room on the door and say goodbye to a drowning Leo. If you’re **Unsinkable Molly Brown**, you encourage the crew of the lifeboat you’re on to return to the debris field of the sinking RMS Titanic to look for survivors. After several attempts to urge the reluctant quartermaster to turn back, Brown even threatened to throw the crewman overboard.
Virginia Opossum

## Ability

### Ability

**Awesome Opossum****(Play)** Your Marsupials cards, wherever they are, gain +6 Power until played.

## Did You Know?

**Virginia Opossum** is generally known as just the opossum and is North America's only marsupial. Not to be confused with the much less scary possum, another marsupial found in Australia, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Pacific. This gets a bit confusing when you learn that it's the opossum that plays possum (playing dead) and the possum doesn't. Stay with me...

Interestingly, much like fainting goats, the poor **Opossum** has absolutely no control over this defence mechanism which is triggered by the intense fear of becoming somethings dinner. They can remain in this dead-state for hours before getting on with their business again. Amazingly, playing possum is only half of their act; while in this state, they secrete the smell of decay from their anus which puts off all but the most ardent predators.

The **Opossum** can eat thousands of ticks each season, theoretically reducing the number that can spread Lyme Disease. However, we have failed to dig up any research that demonstrates that it has any impact on the likelihood of humans contracting it. But who could fault these little guys for trying!