Thermal Detonator Revealed
By T. B. McCrow

From the darkest corner of Jabba's palace to the seediest of cantinas, the galaxy is full of the lowest breeds of scum and villainy. Bounty hunters, assassins, and spies, all are part of the criminal underworld. Either by slinking in the shadows or displaying powerful weapons, these beings are for hire. Only this time, you're in control.

The first and only time Wizard of the Coast allowed Star Wars TCG players world-wide to help develop a card for the TCG was for the Empire Strikes Back expansion. After seven online polls, Mara Jade (A) was created. In three years and ten WOTC expansions, the TCG fan got to help make one card. We at the IDC hoped to rectify this oversight. So, over the past few weeks, YOU, the loyal TCG player, helped us create a card for our next expansion, Scum and Villainy. Today, we want to show you that card!

Before we introduce you to the first IDC YMTC, lets go over the process that was used to create this joint venture.

Step One - Choose the Card Type
In this stage of the process, you were given the option to choose what type of Card you wanted to create from the list of the already available card types: Character Unit, Ground Unit, Space Unit, Mission Card, Battle Card or Equipment Card. With 43% of the vote, you chose to make an Equipment card.

Step Two - Choose the Affiliation
In the second stage of the process, you were given the opportunity to select whether your Equipment card would be affiliated with the Light Side, the Dark Side, or would be Neutral. In a landslide victory, the first IDC YMTC became Neutral.

Step Three - Choose a Name
In stage three of the IDC YMTC process, players were given a list of Card Names to select their Neutral Equipment from. The SW TCG IDC Card Development Sub-Committee selected a short list of potential Neutral Equipment and presented it for players to vote on. Here is the list you voted from: Boba Fett's Armor, Flame Thrower, Han Solo's Blaster, Slugthrower, Thermal Detonator and Vibro-Ax. After Boba Fett's Armor took an early lead, Thermal Detonator won the vote in the closest poll to date.

Step Four - Submit Card Text
Determining the card text proved to be one of the more difficult stages in creating the IDC YMTC. We were flooded with card text ideas for the Thermal Detonator. Card Development narrowed down the submissions to five different ideas for you to vote on and passed it by Rules for text corrections.

Step Five - Choose the Card Text
Here are the five card texts you voted on:

Version A
Pay F 'Equip
Equipped Character gets "Tap, detach a Thermal Detonator from this unit ' Roll a die. Do X damage to each unit in the Character arena (yours and your opponent's), where X is equal to the die roll result. Play only when no unit is attacking."

Version B
Pay F ' Equip
Equipped Character gets "When this unit does damage to another unit, you may pay F and discard a Thermal Detonator from this unit. If you do, Thermal Detonator does 3 damage to each untapped unit in the Character arena."

Version C
Pay F ' Equip
Equipped Character gets "Tap ' Do 2 damage to each unit (yours and your opponent's) in the Character arena. Play only once per turn."

Version D
Pay F ' Equip
Equipped Character gets "Tap, discard a Thermal Detonator from this unit ' Put 2 damage counters on each unit in the Character arena. Play only when this unit would attack."

Version E
Pay F ' Equip
Equipped Character gets "When this unit attacks and does damage, you may do an additional 2 damage to the defending unit. If you do, put 1 damage counter on this unit." And "Discard a Thermal Detonator from this unit ' Choose a unit in the Character arena. Put 3 damage counters on that unit and 1 damage counter on this unit. Play only when this unit would attack."

Step Six - Filling in the Blanks
Once you had chosen Version A to be the Card Text for Thermal Detonator, the power in this process was turned over to the SW TCG IDC where 3 Sub-Committees worked to finalize the first IDC YMTC! So without further ado here is YOUR card!

Thoughts or comments? Visit the message board thread for this article here.

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About the Author
After working in the Graphical Design Sub-Committee for the FOTR set Trent has moved on to the Card Development Sub-Committee and is working as an associate on the IDC's next project. He just recently moved to the Public Affairs Sub-committee. He is a member of Rebelbasers.com and is currently the organizer of the DCCR.