Dedication, Devotion or Delusion
By: Trent McCrow

Deep in the under-city of Coruscant, where the economic advancement of the elite few has relegated the unfortunate and unlucky citizens, is the hidden headquarters of a dangerous group of individuals; the Infinite Death Cretins. At their main base of operations they have been formulating their master plan to take over the Silver Warrior Training Camp Grounds. For over a year now they have been working on their dastardly plans and have so far made two successful raids and emerged victorious. The plans are in place. The third raid and the final touches to the plan are being implemented before their latest strike. Within their ranks is a man named Worc Nert, who has been heavily involved in the production of propaganda supporting the Infinite Death Cretins cause. And today marks the end of his year-long initiation, today he becomes an honorable member of the Cretins.

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of my First article for the IDC, Precision Engineering, and all the work I have done in and for the Public Affairs Sub-Committee.

I have been playing the Star Wars Trading Card Game since the days of Attack of the Clones and have been an avid member of the Rebelbasers.com community for coming on five years now. When Wizards of the Coast decided to put the game on ‘indefinite hold’ I was devastated and didn’t understand. I immediately looked to one of my favorite pastimes at RB, Dream Card creation, to alleviate the hurt I was feeling inside.

When I heard about the Independent Development Committee I knew at once I needed to be involved. I needed to help continue this great game. So when the time came to select what members would actually form the IDC, I was campaigning for the area I thought I’d make the most difference; the Card Development and Graphical Design Sub-Committees. At the time I was heavily involved my Dream Card Contest, Dream Card Contest Reborn (DCCR), and I was good at both developing cards from a textual and visual background. But after Mixmaster couldn’t get anyone to help him in the Graphical Design Sub-Committee, I had to decline the offer to be an associate in the Card Development Sub-Committee and took the role as Workgroup Leader in GD.

An Early Dream card Produced from the DCCR

So I began my work within the IDC working with both Mixmaster and Gollum. For some reason, back in the production days of Fall of the Republic (FOTR), the LackeyCCG plugin’s creation was one of the jobs GD was tasked with completion and I was the sucka who ended up in charge of its completion. I had very little experience in Software Development and had to seek a lot of assistance to complete the task assigned to me even then there were many errors in the original plugin. But thankfully, not all the work I did in the GD department went to ruin. I also helped source images for the cards CD was developing. I labored many hours going through Star Wars Episode III looking for the perfect frame for certain cards. For some cards I had up to five different screen-grabs that could possibly be used on the FOTR cards.

Beautiful image Proposed for "So Uncivilized"

Close up proposed for "ARC Fighter"

But not all my work on the LackeyCCG plugin went to waste. While working on the plugin, I discovered that we would need to have booster images for the IDC sets. Mixmaster had a template he had used before for the RB Member Dream Card set, but I thought it was a little too small and that the Booster packs should be as big as big as the cards that go in them. So I created the following template that was used to create the original Booster Packs for the FOTR set.

Draft design for possible FOTR pack

When the IDC’s first expansion, Fall of the Republic, came out, my time in Graphical Design came to an end and I moved into the Card Development Sub-Committee. My stay in the CD department didn’t last that Long because Brian Weeks was finding it hard to look after Public Affairs (he was on his own). Because I had written a few articles for him in the past, I thought I should make the move and give him some much needed help (and besides the guys in CD were a great bunch of talented guys and didn’t really need my help)!!! But while I was in Card Development I was able to help design a lot of cards and 5 of the cards I had originally designed made it through the process to be released in the second official IDC expansion, Scum and Villainy (SAV).

(My Original Text): Imperial Security Escort (Dark Side, Ground - Imperial Squad)
Build: 4
Speed: 20
Power: 3
Health: 3
When you deploy this unit choose one of your opponent's Characters. Unequip all Equipment from that Character.

(My Original Text): Gambler's Luck (Light Side, Battle)
Pay 3 Force --> One of your Characters gets Lucky 2 until end of turn.

(My Original Text): Fett's Determination (Neutral, Battle)
Pay 3 Force --> Untap one of your Bounty Hunters.

(My Original Text): Rebel Scum (Dark Side, Battle)
Pay 1 Force --> Choose one of your opponent's Rebels in any arena. That unit gets -2 power for this attack.

(My Original Text): VAC Suit (Neutral, Equipment - Character)
Build: 1, Pay 1 Force --> Equip
Equipped Pilot gets "When the piloted unit is discarded roll a die. If the result is a 4, 5 or 6 move this Pilot to the build zone."

When I finally made the move to the Public Affairs, the first thing I discovered was that the only topic of discussion was from the FOTR expansion. It was a poll that the original Chairperson (before Brian Weeks) made about theirself. I’ll put it in here just because it made me laugh and that is what has propelled me to mighty things in the PA department.

Who Loves Darth Waffle?

During my time in the Public Affairs department I have had a great time both writing articles and organizing others. I have written over 20 articles for the IDC and have introduced the highly popular Battle Report. Recently, I have also introduced a new type of article, the Community Spotlight. Very soon I’ll be introducing another new article type. I have enjoyed working in this Sub-committee and I am enjoying things a whole lot more as Brian and I bring a new community focus to the IDC and what it does. It has been tough to organize articles and make sure there is new content for you guys every week, but It is something I’m glad I’ve devoted so much time to over the past year.

And just to finish off I want to give you guys a little taste of some of the things you might see coming from the IDC in the future including; podcasts, card competitions, original artwork galleries and lots of other community based stuff and competitions.

Brian (aka Skywlkr) Weeks and I are your link to the IDC and if you have any ideas on how to develop the SWTCG community or have ideas for website content, or if you have any other questions for that matter feel free to get in contact with us via PM at Rebelbasers.com. Alternatively you could drop us a line at idcadmin@skywlkr.net

I hope you guys have enjoyed this little story of this part of my life. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m suffering from delusion, but I guess you guys will decide that! Don’t forget to check out the latest preview of the upcoming Battle of Endor (BOE) expansion and keep checking back as we bring you more BOE goodness! :P

PLAY, LOVE, LIVE the SWTCG!!

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