Whoever said you couldn't compare Apples and Oranges? In this column, I'm going to attempt to do exactly that. My mission here, which I've for some reason chosen to accept, is to select cards from different card games, and compare and contrast them. To at least give me some basis for comparison, I've decided to stick with only cards that share the same name, since a lot of the time Decipher likes to reuse the same verb names between games, as a sort of "in joke". For today's card, I'm looking at cards from dead games, with a review of the Star Trek 1E and Austin Powers cards, "Balancing Act".

Star Trek 1E - First Contact Set
Balancing Act
Space/Planet Dilemma
Deadly plasma coolant flooded main engineering through a rupture opened by Data. Survival depended upon balance of skill and strength. Resistance was futile.
Each player whose missions with point boxes are mostly [Sp] or [Pl] (by a difference of 3 or more) loses 50 points (even if playing Borg).
http://www.decipher.com/startrek/cardlists/firstcontact/large/balancingact.html

Star Trek 1E - Voyager Set
Balancing Act
Space/Planet Dilemma
Rarely had Tuvok been in a more precarious position than at a Nazi colony, halfway between the ionosphere and the planet surface, dangling from the bottom of a mag-lev carriage.
Each player whose missions with point boxes are mostly [Sp] or [Pl] (by a difference of 3 or more) loses 50 points (even if playing Borg).
http://www.decipher.com/startrek/cardlists/voyager/large/balancingact.html

Austin Powers - The Spy Who Shagged Me Set
Balancing Act
Evil Happening
$5 Billion
Make an evil pinky smirk. Last player to do the same must discard their entire hand and immediately draw six new cards.
http://shop.decipher.com/TCG/Card.aspx?gameID=4&cardID=1101

Now, to compare the cards in a number of different areas... Because ST1E has two cards of the same name and same text from two different sets, I'll give it the added benefit of using the best card for each category.

Image.
Well, they were definitely consistant here. All three pictures look almost the same. It's three different people, but in very similar situations. The problem with the FC one is that he's not so much balancing as trying to hold on for his life, against somebody else pulling down on him. The lore tries to explain this away but I'm not buying it. For that matter, Tuvok seems to be just clinging instead of balancing as well on the Voyager version. Minime at least looks like an acrobat, giving more emphasis to the "balance" instead of "strength" requirements in the picture. So I'm going to award this point to Austin Powers.

Function.
Both of these cards are quite powerful for their games, but both also have downsides attached to them to balance the power of the card (pun intended). Trek version first (and I'll treat them as one card for the next couple categories, because they're identical for these purposes). The effect of this card is great. You get to dock an opponent 50 points for trying to weaken your dilemma deck with his mission selection. Fabulous effect that can ruin a game for somebody if they aren't prepared for it. What's the downside? It's easy enough to build a deck to not be affected by this, so it could be a wasted card with no effect. But the simple existance of this card changes the whole metagame, causing people to build "balanced" mission piles just incase an opponent happens to stock this one card. Austin Powers, on the other hand, is a comprably minor Happening. It can be a great card to use right before making an Assassination or Shagging attempt, because most players will "stock up" on their Frikin' Bones for several turns to be prepared to attack or defend, and this will clean out their hand and make them start fresh (only drawing on average 2 new Bones into the new hand) so it'll be an easy victory for you. However, the downside of this one is that you don't get to pick who it'll affect. And if one player is getting beat up and doesn't even have any agents in play when you use this, and then he's targetted, it's rather useless for you because it doesn't even let you attack right after. So although both cards are quite good, I think Trek wins this category, for the huge metagame affect it had when it was released.

Cost.
First, lets look at the Trek versions of this card. It costs one seed slot (out of a max of 30 seeds) to get it into the game, and then costs one dilemma encounter to get it into play. However, because this is 1E, encountering a dilemma doesn't have the same "cost" attached to it that 2E has, so really it's only seeding it that's the issue. And one good way of circumventing the cost is by using it as a bluff seed, at a mission that you intend to steal from the opponent (if you're into that), or just being one of a large pile at a big mission of your opponents, to encourage him not to attempt that one. Just make sure that it's the first one, so that if he uses something like Senior Staff Meeting he'll be nullifying the useless dilemma anyway, and so get no benefit from it (it will protect your other ones, in that case). As to the cost of the AP card? Well, it counts as one of your 2 plays per turn, so that's a built in play cost in the game. But you do get $5 Billion right away, which is one of the few times you get an immediate return on your investment (without relying on winning an Assassination/Shag attempt). And you always get to drop somebodies hand, even if it's not who who'd like to. So for best return on cost, I'll give this category to Austin Powers.

Timing.
Timing is a bit of a tricky subject for both of these cards... Trek you have to either wait for your opponent to spring it, or go and spring it yourself to get any affect... and even before that you probably want to be sure to time the seeding of it properly against your opponent, so that if you're going to spring it yourself it's the last dilemma seeded somewhere so that you can reach it easily. Austin Powers on the other hand has no timing rules... the card is played on your turn, either as your first action or your second. However, there is a very subtle timing issue involved with this card... built into the action of the "pinky smirk". If there's on particular player that you want to attack this turn, and you want to dump their hand first, than you need VERY meticulous timing to make sure you make your pinky smirk at the exact moment they're looking away from you, in the hopes that everybody else will imitate before the target catches on. As many times as not this is luck instead of timing, because even if they notice the motion out of the corner of their eye, or see any other player make the smirk, a good player will immediately respond. So although the timing can be tricky on both of these cards, I'll award the category to Star Trek for having at least some degree of certainty in it's timing.

Lore.
Well, here I have a problem... Austin Powers cards don't come with any lore. So, especially with two cards to choose between, I guess Trek wins this category, because either of them is better than having no lore at all!

In summary...
With a final score of Trek 1E - 3, Austin Powers - 2, sorry Austin, you've been out-shagged. *Evil pinky smirk* Next time... more dead games, this time focussing on the stars...