Print Sheets
Most CCGs use a separate print plate to print a sheet of cards for each rarity level, with each sheet for each rarity level being printed a different number of times. For instance, for every Rare sheet there might be four Uncommon sheets and ten Common sheets printed. Typically companies have print plates with 10x10 (100), 10x11 (110), or 11x11 (121) cards on a single plate. This varied from company to company and sometimes from expansion to expansion, depending on which printing company the game producer used for a given expansion. As one example of how cards are typically printed, a standard deck of playing cards has 13 cards of four suits, for 52 cards, plus 2 Jokers and 1 Rules card for a total of 55 cards. Thus two decks of playing cards are usually printed on a single 10x11 print sheet.
For most, if not all, of its run Galactic Empires used a 10x10 print sheet. For smaller sets the cards would be printed twice on a single sheet. For larger sets each was prited only once on a print sheet. The exact layout varied from set to set. Entities were typically printed once on a Very Rare sheet while Very Rare cards were printed twice on the same sheet, resulting in Entities being twice as rare as Very Rare cards within the set.
One other thing that I will note is that in offset printing (large printing presses) the most expensive part of the process is in setting up the printer for a run. Especially on 4 or 7 color printing presses, where each color needs its own set of plates, so it is cheaper to try to lay the cards out in a way where you reduce the total number of different print runs you must do. Most CCGs need at least one run for each rarity, but it is possible to "cheat" a little by printing some cards from a lower rarity multiple times on a higher rarity sheet. For instance, if you print 3 or 4 copies of a card on a Rare sheet then you've effctively decreased the rarity of that card to an Uncommon.
All of the print plate/print sheet layout descriptions I give here are purely conjectual, which I've discerned using my knowledge of the printing process and rarity levels of Galactic Empires cards. It is possible I am incorrect on some of the information presented below.
The earlier sets (Primary Edition, New Empires, Powers of the Mind) and the core set (Universe Edition) all have up to six levels of rarity - Very Common (VC), Common (C), Uncommmon (U), Rare (R), Very Rare (V), and Entity (E). Very Rare cards generally come 1 per booster pack and Rares 2 per booster pack, while Entities come 1 per booster box (though some sets have a chance of 2 Entitites per booster box). Later sets have only 3 levels of rarity, Uncommon, Very Rare, and Entity (usually only 1 per booster box).
The earlier set starters came with 50 fixed (non-random) Common cards. This included the Series 1 Basic Deck (Alpha/Beta), Basic Deck A and Basic Deck B (Primary Edition), and Basic Deck C (New Empires); Primary Edition starters each had 5 random Uncommon cards in addition to the 50 fixed cards.
There are ten Universe Edition (UE) starters each themed for one specific empire. Each has 20 fixed cards for that empire plus 80 random cards (detailed below). In UE Starters the fixed cards are given rarities based on how many copies come in a starter; Common (4x copies in the starter), Uncommon (3x), Rare (2x), and Very Rare (1x).
Galactic Invaders (GI) Starters are set up like UE starters, but have 21 fixed Empire specific cards. The 80 random cards are filled from Universe Edition stock. Allied Forces (AF) Starters are set up like UE & GI starters, with 20 fixed cards and 80 random Universe Edition cards.
Primary Edition
Very Common & Common
Uncommon
Rare
Very Rare 1 & Entity
Very Rare 2
German Gold Border
Powers of the Mind
Time Gates
Universe Edition
Advanced Technologies
Galactic Invaders
| Alpha/Beta Starter Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
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| Beta Starter Basic Deck 1 |
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Both sets were sold in Starters and Boosters. The starters were labeled the Series 1 Basic Deck and contained 50 fixed cards while the boosters had 10 cards. While the two sets were largely identical, there were several cards that were only printed in one set or the other and there were a few cards with major artwork changes..
I recently came across an eBay listing for some uncut Alpha print sheets, which clued me in on a few facts of how Alpha and Beta were printed. First, these sets were printed on sheets of 5x10 cards instead of the 10x10 cards of later sets. Next, there were two print sheets, one of Commons (used in Starters also) and the other contained the Uncommons and Very Rares. Last is that several of the cards were printed twice on a sheet.
Of note is that three of the Common, five of the Uncommons, and one of the Rare cards appear twice each on these sheets.
Starter ($8.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
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Starter ($8.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
Set Totals |
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| Primary Edition Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Primary Edition (PE) had two starters, Basic Deck A and Basic Deck B. Each deck has 50 fixed cards, including ships that belong to two of the Major Empires. Deck A featured Argonian and Krebiz while Deck B featured Corporate and Mechad.
This set has Very Common (VC) cards. These would have appeared twice on the Common print sheet, while other cards appeared once. The company also took into account the starter deck cards when figuring rarity, so while boosters have fewer Common cards than Uncommon cards, the entire print run had more Common cards printed.
PE had two distinct groupings of Very Rare cards, designated V1 and V2. These two groupings were each printed on individual card sheets. V2 had 100 unique cards on a single print sheet. A second print sheet contained the 45 V1 cards, each appearing twice on the sheet while each of the 9 Entities appeared once, with the last card slot likely being a promotional card. Booster boxes, perhaps erroneously, only contained Very Rare cards from one grouping or the other in the entire box. V2 booster boxes seem to be rarer to find today.
Entities normally replace the Very Rare in one pack per box, though they may have replaced one of the Uncommons in some packs.
| Primary Edition Starter Basic Deck A |
| Primary Edition Starter Basic Deck B |
| Primary Edition Starter Box Left Side |
| Primary Edition Starter Box Front Cover |
| Primary Edition Starter Box Right Side |
Primary Edition Starters have a fixed set of 50 cards each, plus 5 random Uncommon cards. These fixed cards were considered Common cards by Companion Games, and taken into consideration when determining which cards were designated as Common for the entire set. This means that a large chunk of the Common cards were packaged into the two starter decks, with relatively fewer being packaged into the Booster Packs. In Booster Packs these cards were slightly less common than the Uncommon cards, and were intermixed with Uncommon cards in the pack position.
Booster Packs each have 12 cards. Starting with position #1 with the cards face up, Uncommons were in position 1-6, Commons in position 7-9, Rares in position 10-11, and Very-Rares or (1 per box) an Entity in position 12. Booster Boxes contained 36 packs, so you should get 35 VR and 1 Entity per box, though some packs seem to have replaced an Uncommon with the Entity, meaning you could get 36 VR per box plus the Entity.
On the cards lists on my site cards marked as CA were Common cards found only in Basic Deck A. Cards marked as CB were Common cards found only in Basic Deck B. Cards marked as VCAB were Very Common cards found in both Basic Decks A & B.
The original card list from Galactic Inercom #2 listed 15 cards as Very Common (VC) and 70 cards as Common (C). If the Very Common cards each appeared twice on a print sheet and the Common each appear once this would make a 100 card print sheet. This is kind of odd, since the Very Common cards mostly, but don't comletely, line up with the CAB cards found in both Basic Decks. The easiest way to make the two decks would have been to print all 50 cards for each deck on a single sheet, then split the sheet with 50 cards going in to Deck A and 50 into Deck B.
There were 100 of each of the Uncommon and Rare cards, meaning they were certainly each printed on their own sheet.
In Primary Edition the Very Rare cards were produced in two distinct groupings. Each booster box would contain Very Rare cards from only one grouping or the other. Group 1, designated V1 by me in my card lists, consists of 100 Very Rare cards which contained almost all of the more powerful empire specific ships and some other empire specific support cards in the set. Group 2, designated V2, consists of 45 Very Rare cards containing mostly non-empire specific cards.
The booster boxes containing VR cards from only one grouping was likely caused by a number of miscommunications between Companion Games and the company that printed the cards. The cards were printed using printing plates which contained 10x10 cards on them, for a total of 100 cards on a sheet. Group 1 contained 100 unique cards, but Group 2 cards were printed on a sheet which contained two copies of each of the 45 V2, the 9 Entity cards, and most likely the C4 War Veteran filling the last spot on the sheet. When the cards were cut the Entities and War Veteran were set aside. At this point the two groupings of Very Rare cards should have been mixed together before packaging them into booster boxes, but instead the printer packaged booster boxes with Very Rare cards from only one grouping or the other in them.
To make matters worse Booster Boxes filled with Very Rare cards from Group 1 seem to be more rare than Booster Boxes from Group 2. It is possible this was caused by a number of factors, first being that the Printer may have printed an incorrect number of each grouping. Since Group 2 had two sets of each Very Rare on it this group should have been printed in half the quantity as Group 1 was, but it looks like the two groups may have been printed in equal numbers, making V2 cards twice as common as V1 cards. If this did indeed happen it is likely that Companion Games kept the two groupings of Booster Boxes separate and tried to sell them at a rate that kept the two groupings of Very Rare cards equal when the game was new. This would have resulted in their Warehouse having considerably more Group 2 boxes than Group 1 Boxes when the company went Bankrupt. This may have been further exacerbated by the liquidators and buyers of the remaining stock not realizing there were two groupings. In the late 1990's and early 2000's a number of suppliers dumped Primary Edition Booster Boxes and Cases on eBay for a very cheap price, and it is likely that whomever picked up most of the Group 1 booster boxes were the ones who sold cheap back then. The cheapest case I bought in 2006 was from a vendor selling Group 1 booster boxes for around $36 including shipping. This seems to have resulted in a situation where most resellers today, in the year 2022, have Booster Boxes which contain only Group 2 Very Rare cards.
Note that the distribution of other cards - Common, Uncommon, regular Rare, and Entity cards - was not affected by this bifurcation of the Very Rare cards.
Starter ($8.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
Set Totals |
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*Basic Deck A sometimes |
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| German Gold Border Starter Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
German Gold Border (GGB) used only four rarity levels, doing away with Very Rares. Except for the Promo C4 War Veteran all of the cards were reprints from Primary Edition. Since there were only 299 cards, 140 cards had to be cut from this set. The largest two groups of cards cut were Ability cards and all of the Dragon empire cards.
| German Gold Border Starter Basic Deck A |
| German Gold Border Starter Basic Deck B |
| German Gold Border Starter Box Front |
| German Gold Border Starter Box Sides |
Basic Deck A & B were set up very similar to Primary Edition, each containing 50 fixed Common cards and 5 random Uncommons. The Common sheet was thus divided into two halves, one which filled each Basic Deck. The Uncommon sheet seems to have had 99 cards (one card listed elsewhere as Uncommon was definately Common; I found it in both Starters and Boosters in Common slots). The last card on the sheet may have been the C4 War Veteran promo. The Rare sheet contained the 93 Rare cards and likely also had the 7 Entities, which would have been separated and packaged at a rate of 1 per booster box, with each being about half as common Rares.
Starter ($6.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
Set Totals |
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| New Empires Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
New Empires (NE) used the standard 5 rarity levels with nothing out of the ordinary. Like Primary Edition the company took into account Starter Decks when determining rarity levels, so while there are only slightly more Commons than Uncommons in a booster packs there were a lot more Commons overall.
Basic Deck C was a starter released for this set. It has just 50 fixed Common cards and included ships for three Major Empires – the P.O.T., Scorpead, and Tufor.
| New Empires Starter Basic Deck C |
| New Empires Starter (Left) |
| New Empires Starter (Front) |
| New Empires Starter (Right) |
Each of the four base rarity levels (Common/Uncommon/Rare/Very Rare) in New Empires had exactly 50 cards, meaning that the print sheets likely contained two copies of each of the 50 cards. This leaves the Entities to be placed on their own print sheet; this sheet likely also contained many of the 29 Promotional cards that were printed in this time frame, some of which were printed with differing "rarities," for example a couple were given away with magazines with 7 out of 8 being one lower strength card and the 8th being an entity strength version of that card; 1 of 3 different cards were packaged with a magazine. Or they may have prined one copy of the Very Rare cards, one copy of each Entity, and filled the other 40 slots with Promotional cards. It's impossible to know now without either talking to somebody to worked there or finding an uncut print sheet for the set.
Starter $6.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
Set Totals |
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| Powers of the Mind Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Powers of the Mind (PoM) had just 4 rarity levels, doing away with Common cards. The 4 Entities were printed on the Very Rare sheet, once each, while the 48 VR cards were printed twice each. So Entities appear 1 out of every 25 cards on the VR sheet. This allowed them to fill booster packs and boxes without needing to separate then mix them back in, they simply cut and mixed them with the other VR cards and every box was guaranteed an Entity, with 11 out of 25 boxes having two Entities (44% chance).
Powers of the Mind had three base rarity levels. Uncommon and Rare each had 50 cards, with each appearing twice on their respective print sheets.
There were 48 Very Rare cards, each of which appeared twice on the VR sheet, leaving space for the 4 Entities. This made distributing the Entities much easier, as you could just package cards on a VR sheet into boosters in order and for every 100 cards you'd fill 100 boosters, which filled 2.77 booster boxes ensuring that every booster box had at least one entity, with some boxes having two. In fact, 11 out of every 25 boxes should have contained two Entities.
Booster Packs have 12 cards. The Very Rare or Entity are in Position 1. Uncommons are in Position 2-8. Rares are in Position 9-12. This means that the ratio of cards printed are 1E:2V:8R:14U. That is, for each copy of each Entity printed there were two copies of each Very Rare, eight copies of each Rare, and fourteen copies of each Uncommon. There were no Common cards in the set.
I came across a photo of the Rare uncut sheet (see below). While the quality isn't great, it is good enough to recognize all of the cards on the sheet. You can see they're arranged semi-randomly, with columns containing similar cards - Aility cards in the 1st & 6th column, Psy's down the 3rd column & 9th columns, Equipment down the 4th column, Field cards down the 5th column, Bases in the 7th column, and Crew in the 10th column. Assumingnthe sheet would be cut by across the rows this would spread out the similar cards if they were just packaged into boosters without any additional mixing.
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
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| Time Gates Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Like PoM, Time Gates (TG) had just 4 rarity levels, doing away with Common cards. The 4 Entities were printed on the Very Rare sheet, once each, while the 48 VR cards were printed twice each. So Entities appear 1 out of every 25 cards on the VR sheet. This allowed them to fill booster packs and boxes without needing to separate then mix them back in, they simply cut and mixed them with the other VR cards and every box was guaranteed an Entity, with 11 out of 25 boxes getting two Entities (44% chance).
One Rare card, R/O2 Shipping Delays, had 10 versions each with the same rules but a different image. These cards formed a flip-book style animation. These 10 cards appeared once each on the Rare print sheet, while the other 45 Rare cards appear twice on the sheet. Thus, each individual Shipping Delays is twice as rare as other Rare cards, but the card as a whole is 2.5x as common as the other Rare cards. These 10 cards are listed as Rare 1 (R1), which the other Rare cards are listed as R2. This means that in booster packs 1 in 10 Rares will be a Shipping Delays.
Like the other sets, Time Gates was printed on sheets of 100 cards. Common and Uncommon each had 50 cards, meaning that each card appeared twice on a print sheet. For the Rare cards 45 of the cards were printed twice, while 10 of the cards appeared only once making them Extra Rare compared to the other Rare cards. These 10 cards were the 10 versions of the Shipping Delays card; so while each individual card is twice as Rare as the other Rare cards, the card as a whole was 5x more common than the other Rare cards. These cards are designated as R1 in my card list because they appear once on the print sheet; the other 45 Rare cards are designated as R2 because they appear twice.
There were 48 Very Rare cards, each of which appeared twice on the VR sheet, leaving space for the 4 Entities. This made distributing the Entities much easier, as you could just package cards on a VR sheet into boosters in order and for every 100 cards you'd fill 100 boosters, which filled 2.77 booster boxes ensuring that every booster box had at least one entity, with some boxes having two. In fact, 11 out of every 25 boxes should have contained two Entities.
Booster Packs have 12 cards. The Very Rare or Entity are in Position 1. Uncommons are in Position 2-8. Rares are in Position 9-12. This means that the ratio of cards printed are 1E:2V:4R1:8R2:14U.
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
Set Totals |
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| Universe Edition Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
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| Universe Edition Starters (Random) | |
Universe Edition has one of the most complex rarity systems. Like previous sets it has one sheet of Commons, one sheet of Uncommons, one sheet of Rares, and two sheets of Very Rares plus Entities; 100 V0 on one sheet, 45 V0 appearing twice each plus the 10 Entities on the other sheet. Cards from these sheets are designated as "Group 0" and have a 0 listed after their rarity (e.g. U0). However, it had three extra sheets which were moslty used to pack Starters, but also filled theme slots in booster packs.
Group 2 were printed on one sheet of 100 Terrain cards. Very Common cards were duplicated four times each on the sheet, Common cards three times each, Uncommon cards twice each, and Rare cards appeared once on the sheet, Every Starter recieved 24 of these Terrain, semi-randomly, thus quite a few of them were printed for the set. Every booster pack recieved one card, at random, from this sheet in the second position in the pack (thus calling this Group 2).
Group 3 & 4 were each printed on a sheet containing 100 cards. One of the sheets has a Common card printed four times, then each sheet has Uncommon cards printed three times each, Rare cards printed twice each, and Very Rare cards printed once each. Each sheet was divided into five groups of 20 cards, with each group themed with ships and a few other cards for one specific empire. When packaged into a Starter all 20 of the cards for one empire would be packed into a single starter for that empire. When packaged into a booster pack the 3rd card in the pack is one random card taken from the Group 3 sheet, and the 4th card in the pack is one random card from the Group 4 sheet. Thus, these acted as a sort of "Bonus Very Rare" for a booster pack.
In addition, there are only 88 U0 cards on the Uncommon sheet, which likely had 4 C0 Common cards on it, each printed three times, totaling 12 cards to fill the remainder of the sheet. Common and Uncommon cards appear to have been were mixed together before packaging them into boosters or starters, and would show up at a ratio of roughly 2 Commons for every 1 Uncommon. The listings below use an approximate number of each rarity of card, designated with a tilde. e.g. ~10 means approximately 10 cards.
Each starter had 20 fixed cards from Group 3 or 4. The other 80 cards were broken into 8 groups of 10 cards; each group has 1 V0, 2 R0, 4 mixed U0 and C0 (at a ratio of about 1 U0 for every 2 C0), and 3 Terrain taken from Group 2. A full starter has 8 V0, 16 R0, ~12 U0, ~20 C0, and 24 Terrain Sheet cards containing approximately ~5 VC, ~10 C2, ~5 U2, and ~4 R2.
| Universe Edition Starter (Front) | |
| Argonian | Clydon |
| Corporate | Space Dragon |
| Krebiz | Mechad |
| P.O.T. | Scorpead |
| Tufor | Vektrean |
Universe Edition was an extremely large core set, consisting of 565 unique cards printed on 8 separate sheets. To help ensure that cards were more evenly distributed across all booster packs Companion Games set up theme positions within the packs. Each booster box contained 36 packs. Each pack contained 14 cards broken up as follows:
While this seems very complex and potentially problematic, the result was actually a fairly well balanced distribution of cards. Much better than Primary Edition had. This does, however, make it difficult to discern how the print sheets were laid out. However, there is a little that can be figured out:
Starter Decks are divided into two sections of cards; 20 cards which are empire specific, and 80 cards which are a mix of Group 2 Terrain cards and other card from the general pool of Universe Edition. This is true of Galactic Invaders and Allied Forces Starter Decks as well, which also contained Universe Edition cards in the second section.
So to sum things up, Universe Edition has a total of 565 cards on 8 print sheets.
Starter ($12.95) |
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($88.20) |
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| Advanced Technologies Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Advanced Technologies (AT) has only 4 real levels of rarity. There is one Common card, which appears 4x on the Rare sheet; thus it sometimes replaces a Rare in a booster pack. Because of the ratio of Uncommon to Rare sheets printed the Common cards is about 33% more common than the Uncommon cards (that is, for every 3 copies of each Uncommon card there are 4 copies of the Common card). Otherwise the set has the standard four rarity levels: Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, and Entity. It also looks like every booster box has 4 Entities, with about 1:3 boxes having 5 Entities.
Like the other sets, each print sheet held 10x10 cards. The Uncommon print sheet had two copies of each of the 50 Uncommon cards. The Rare print sheet has two copies of each of the 48 Rare cards and four copies of the single Common card in the set; since it was located on the Rare sheet this is why it sometimes replaces a Rare in a booster pack.
The Very Rare sheet had two copies of each of the 47 VR cards and one copy of each of the 6 Entities. This leads me to believe that every booster box contains 4 Entities, with 8 out of every 25 boxes containing 5 Entities (~32%). Booster Boxes had 36 packs of 12 cards. I don't know the pack positions, but each booster has 6 Uncommons, 4 Rares (or Common), and 2 Very Rare (or Entity) cards, with a ratio of 1E:2VR:4R:6U:8C; that is, for every copy of each Entity printed there are two copies of each VR, 4 copies of each Rare, 6 copies of each Uncommon, and 8 copies of the Common.
Booster Pack ($2.45) |
Booster Box ($80.20) |
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| Piracy Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Beginning with Piracy (Pir) the sets go down to having only 3 Rarity levels, Uncommon, Very Rare, and Entity. Booster boxes also go up to 80 packs per box with the cost going down to $0.99/pack. Entities are still 1 per box, but with 80 boosters you get 79 VR cards per box.
| Piracy Booster Box Pirate Stand-up |
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Piracy contained only two rarity levels, each of which had exactly 100 cards and would have each been given their own print sheet. So here, again, the Entities were put on their own print sheet, likely with some of the Promotional cards that were produced in this time period. Piracy changed to having 6 cards per booster, with 1 Very-Rare and 5 Uncommon cards. Booster Boxes contained 80 boosters, with one booster containing an Entity.
All of the Piracy cards used UV reactive ink, resulting in some interesting looking cards when held under a blacklight. In fact, the UV ink looked significantly better than the "night glo" visuals used in Universe Edition. Promotional Set 3 & 4 along with some cards from Comedy Club also had UV ink, so there may have been some cards from those sets printed along with the Piracy Entities.
Booster Pack ($0.99) |
Booster Box ($79.20) |
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| Comedy Club Starter |
Comedy Club (CC) was the first set released only as a Starter. Every starter contains 1 of the 4 Entity cards and 76 fixed cards – 2 copies of the Common card and 74 unique Uncommon cards. The other 24 cards in each stater have 4 variations of each card, with each starter getting one of the variations. The 4 versions are functionally identical, but each has a unique quote on it. These cards are considered Very Rare, except for one card which has only 3 versions, 2 of which are Very Rare and 1 is Rare (I'm assuming it shows up twice as often as the VR).
This set consisted of Starters with 101 cards; 1 Entity and 100 other cards. There are 4 different Entities and 103 functionally different cards. However many of the cards have up to four different versions with differnet quotes on them and one of the cards has two different image versions. These different versions were placed in different starters. It is likely that each Starter had its own print sheet. I do not know whether or not there was any randomization of the entities or other cards between starters, but it seems unlikely as that would introduce more steps (and cost) for what could have been a very simple expansion to print and package.
Starter ($12.95) |
Set Totals |
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| Persona Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Pesona (Per) is packaged virtually the same as Priacy, with has just 3 rarity levels, 5 card packs, and 80 pack boxes.
Like Piracy, the Persona set contained only two regular rarity levels, each of which having exactly 100 cards, which would have each had their own print sheet. So, like Piracy, the Entities were put on their own print sheet, likely with some of the Promotional cards that were produced in this time period. Persona Entities also have UV reactive ink, so it's possible they were produced along with the Piracy Entities.
Booster Pack ($0.99) |
Booster Box ($79.20) |
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| Galactic Invaders Booster Box (Left) and Booster Pack (Right) |
Galactic Invaders (GI) was sold in Starters and Boosters. The starters are laid out just like UE starters, with 21 fixed cards (instead of 20) and an additional 80 random cards which were pulled from the UE card base. The 21 fixed cards are unique to the GI set. They were likely laid out on a single print sheet, with the 5 empires each getting 20 cards. The Sector HQ card seem to have been an afterthought, and were placed in the starters at a different spot than the other 20 cards. The GI starters were produced first and were released in July 1996. Booster boxes would be released in October.
The boosters were stocked similar to Universe Edition boosters, with Galactic Invaders boostes having one themed slot stocked with one random card from the Starter print sheet. The rest of the cards were handled similar to Piracy and Personna boosters, with three rarity levels, and each pack getting 3 Uncommons and 1 VR, with 1 Entity replacing a VR per box. There are only 81 Very Rare cards in the set, aside from the starter cards, so the VR print sheet likely contained a few other cards, including the 6 Entity cards. What the other 13 cards were that filled the Very Rare sheet I don't know, though this is just enough space to fit the Indirigan Touring Promo set 7 (which has 12 cards). Without seeing an uncut sheet or randomly getting a booster box of Invaders I'll never know what was on that sheet.
| Galactic Invaders Starters | |
| Aqaaran | Gekonauak |
| J'xar | Orgon |
| Zedan | Random Starter |
This set was released as Booster Boxes and a set of five Starter Decks, one for each of the five empires introduced in this set.
This set has 2 Common, 105 Uncommon, 21 Rare, 125 Very-Rare, and 6 Entities. This set was produced on three distinct sheets, one specifically for the starters (which were also packed into boosters) and one each for the regular Uncommons and Very Rares in booster packs.
I was able to reconstruct the 21 cards that appear in the Orgon and Zedan starters based on an early list of cards that I had, knowing how many starters of each I had purchsed years ago. I recently opened an Aqaaran and Gekonauak starter, so have a correct list of the cards in those starters. For the J'xar I was able to take a reasonable guess based on the quantity I have (from a lot I bought which appears to be from several starters) and the rarities.
There are 21 empire specific cards in each starter, 20 ships and empire specific equipment and terrain plus the Sector HQ. The other 80 cards in a starter are Universe Edition cards arranged just like the UE starters, with 8 groupings of 10 cards each, each grouping containing 1 VR0, 2 R0, 3 cards from the Group 2 Terrain sheet, and 4 C0 or U0 cards.
On the GI starter sheet there are 2 C2 appearing four times each, 4 U2 appearing three times each, 22 R2 appearing twice each, and 36 V2 appearing once each. The 5 Sector HQ were likely printed on a promo print sheet. These five cards are given a rarity of V1.
The other cards likely appeared only in booster packs. Each booster pack contained 1 Very Rare VR0 card, 3 Uncommons U0, plus 1 card taken from the Starter sheet which could be a Common C2, Uncommon U2, Rare R2, or Very Rare VR2. There are 100 Uncommon cards listed as U0 and 81 Very Rare V0. The Very Rare sheet likely had the 6 Entities. What else could have been on the sheet I'm not sure.
Starter ($12.95) |
Booster Pack ($0.99) |
Booster Box ($78.20) |
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| Allied Forces Starter (Random) | |
Allied Forces (AF) was the final set released by Companion Games. It consisted of 12 starters, 5 for previously exissting empires and 7 for new Minor Empires that are each allied with one of the Major Empires. Three of the previously releaed Empires (Corporate Pirate, Bolaar, & Leopan) had only 2 new cards each released in this set; the other 18 fixed starter cards came from the Piracy expansion. Two other Empires had 20 new cards added in this expansion, despite having been previously released in Persona (Noble) and Galactic Invaders (Treglean)
| Allied Forces Starters | |
| Bolaar | Corporate Pirate |
| Drone | Erodi |
| Leopan | Noble |
| Pakta'don | Paraloid |
| Shon-ti | Tarra'ki |
| Treglean | Trochilidae |
Allied Forces was relesed as a set of 12 Starter Decks, one for each empire in the set. Each starter contained up to 20 empire specific cards. Decks with fewer than 20 empire specific cards were filled out with a number of non-empire Bases, Monster, Occurrences, and Terrain which I'm not sure if they were randomly distributed or if every starter has the same cards. Three of the Decks were based on Empires found in the Piracy expansion – Bolaar, Corporate Pirate, and Leopan. These Empires had only two new cards each in this set; the rest of the empire specific cards were filled out with cards from Piracy.
In most of the starters one of the cards was the Sector HQ and another was a rules cards; The Corporate Pirate deck didn't have a HQ; the Noble empire contained a number of generic ships and a second Sector HQ instead of a rules card. As with other starters Rare cards appeared twice in a starter while Very Rare cards appear once each.
In total there are 55 Rare cards and 90 Very Rare cards. If the Rares appear twice on a sheet and VR appear once this would be a total of 200 cards. One of the cards was supposedly not released (the O6 Fleet Disjunction). However, while the O6 may not have been released as part of Allied Forces it was definatley printed at some point because I have two of them.
