Oh god, AEG's Black Box this year is Phase, a game they designed in 2006 and wanted to release in 2010. I am going to have to buy it out of morbid curiosity.
The original idea was to sell it as a CCG, and create the "ultimate" collectible game. Make cards double-sided, but marry the sides randomly. So a "Good" Faction Card named "Charge!" had ~150 different versions, because it's back-side could be any of the other ~150 "Neutral" or "Evil" cards in the planned base-set. So you'd have to hunt down your ideal "combination" cards to create your deck. Cards would flip back and forth as part of paying action costs/combat/etc, and you'd treat them as whatever their current "up" side was.
Since this is in the black box, I assume they've abandoned that and the cards are intentionally married front and back with some attempt at design rational.
Although it would be hilarious if it wasn't that way, and was instead how they originally planned it, so that each black box contains a "unique" set of cards for deck-building.
