Many of you may remember the scandal three years ago when Awaken Realms announced they would be providing to backers of ISS Vanguard a special card honoring entrepreneur and space pioneer Elon Musk for his contributions to space exploration. A very nice gesture, with no politics involved. Just an appropriate recognition that fit well with the game and its timeline. Well it only took a few hours for the ne’er’-do-well woke mob to pounce on the company and threaten to unleash their CancelEvil on the project. Seems these folks have imagined many offenses that Musk has done, all unrelated to the reason he was being honored with this card, so their will must be obeyed at all costs!

Entering 2021, the world was in chaos, with the COVID panic and other social uproars. So what did Awaken Realms do? Citing that they did not want to be “political”, they removed the card from the design…

we didn’t realize there is a lot of controversy surrounding Elon – our intent was only on recognizing the big impact on space exploration development. We DEFINIETELY [sic], don’t want to bring so much discussion / polarization (or politics) into our Board Game (in either way) so we are just removing the whole thing – it just was supposed to be small Easter egg with one card. Let us just focus on the Board Game and making sure it will be an amazing adventure! 😉

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/awaken-realms/iss-vanguard/updates/16

So while claiming they didn’t want to be political, they actually took a political position. They caved to a squeaky small wheel, sided with them against the many who found the card to be a positive thing, and did their bidding. To be fair, they are a business and the negative publicity could have hurt their underlying goal: make money. However, like not negotiating with terrorists, the bullying of the woke mob should not be tolerated. Once they made the decision to make the card, they probably should have stood by it or at least not claimed to not be taking a position on so-called politics* when in fact they were actually choosing the side that is intolerant, threatening and as stated are bullies. Notice their pulling the card didn’t result in any boycotts of their game. Rational people don’t behave that way.

* January 2021 was long before Musk stepped in and rescued X (formerly Twitter) from the oppressive forces that were controlling it. If only he’d do the same for Board Game Gulag (BGG)

Fortunately the card image was already out there on the internet (where things go to never die), so it was simply matter of keeping a copy of the card for the day the game would finally arrive. Which it did and the card is again available, adjusted from the original design to match the existing cards. Now you can download a copy of the Elon Musk recruit card to add to your game. If you want to. If he bothers you then don’t. Freedom of choice is never a bad thing provided it violates the rights of no one else.

Download the Elon Musk Recruit Card

Print the PDF onto card stock, score on the red line, then cut out on the solid black line. Glue and fold together. Add the card to your recruits group and introduce to your team as you see fit.

Disclaimer: Awaken Realms has nothing to do with this release. Their original Elon Musk artwork is being utilized under fair use copyright laws. No money is being made from this free download.