Today’s Preview is Brought to You by the Number “2”.

The preview itself is split into two parts: the first part discuses ongoing plot twists (which are sort of like two cards put together), and the second looks at today’s preview card: Heroes United (which makes two teams into one team).

For those of you who just want to skip the rules and design info and just read about the new card, skip down to the heading “All for One…”

It Keeps Going and Going and Going…

Ongoing plot twists are a sub-type of regular plot twists. This means that anything that affects a plot twist will also affect an ongoing plot twist. The big difference is that in addition to the usual “one-shot modifier” that regular plot twists produce (such as stunning a character or drawing a card), ongoing plot twists also have a “continuous modifier” (like giving a constant ATK bonus to all X-Men). 

Here’s how it works. When you play a regular plot twist, first follow the directions on the card, and then either put it into your KO’d pile (if played from hand) or leave it in your resource row (if played from your resource row). While face up in your resource row, a regular plot twist has no game interaction other than it still counts as a resource.

When you play an ongoing plot twist, first you follow the directions on the card before the word “ongoing” exactly as if it were a regular plot twist. If you played it from your hand, you’re done. Just put the card into your KO’d pile the same way you would a regular plot twist.

I repeat: When you play an ongoing plot twist from your hand, you only follow the instructions before the word “ongoing”. Then you put the card into your KO’d pile.

But if you played it from your resource row— oh, man that’s when things get really cool. While face up in your resource row, any game text after the word “ongoing” is active and will remain active until the card leaves play or is somehow turned face down. In some sense, you can think of the game text after the word “ongoing” the same way you think of text on a location.

Here are a few more interesting notes about ongoing plot twists:

n      You can quickly spot an ongoing plot twist by that cute little clock in the icons section.

n      The clock also serves as a reminder. After you’ve played a few games of Marvel you’ll get used to paying attention to cards in your opponents’ resource row that have green borders (locations) while ignoring cards in your opponents’ resource rows that have blue borders (plot twists). The clock icon is there to remind you not to ignore ongoing plot twists.

n      Only the part of an ongoing plot twist before the word “ongoing” uses the chain (for more on the timing chain check out the rulebook <link to rulebook>). Anything after the word “ongoing” takes place immediately – the same way a location works.

We’re Watching

I spend time each day scrolling through the forums at the various Vs System fan sites, and one of the questions that keeps coming up has to do with building a deck using more than one team. Here’s an example from one of the message boards that pretty much sums it up.

“What about some reassurance that decks can be mixed teams and still compete? So far we have all seen the advantages of team decks, and I am sure that the designers have developed a game with lots of options, I would just like a definite answer and maybe some examples to support my hope.”

One of our goals is to allow a player to build any kind of deck with any mix of characters. Some of the reasons for this are the following:

A. When a player buys his first few packs, he or she may not have enough characters to play his favorite team. Not having restrictions on what you can put in your deck allows a new player to get right into the action.

B. It opens up more deck building options for players. If every deck had to be “team pure” (e.g. If you have X-Men in your deck, you can’t have other team’s characters), you would sit down to build, let’s say, a Fantastic Four deck, and you would have to immediately set aside every other team’s collection of characters. Allowing mixed team decks lets players find combos and synergies between different factions’ cards, which opens up more options.

C. It’s thematically cool! While there’s definitely an aesthetic charm to playing a pure X-Men or Doom deck, it can be even cooler to mix your favorite characters across different teams. Personally, I like mixing heroes and villains. Are the X-Men and Brotherhood working together to stop the Sentinels? Has Dr. Doom brainwashed the Fantastic Four into helping him?

Okay, so we want you to be able to build mixed team decks. But, the question was: Will they be competitive?  Continuing the “2” theme, I’ve got two answers, one short, the other long.

The Short Answer

Yes.

They will be competitive. While there are advantages to playing single team decks in the game engine (team attacks and reinforcement) and in the card pool (cards like Children of the Atom, which only work for X-Men), there are also lots of natural synergies between characters of different teams, as well as certain cards that reward you for playing two or more teams.

The Long Answer

Also yes.

The long answer deals with whether or not mixed decks will be competitive specifically in tournaments. This is a complex issue that has to do with the “metagame” (as in metagame.com). The metagame is the game outside the game. Basically, given a set card pool (like the 220 cards in Marvel Origins), players will build all sorts of decks. Some will be really good, some won’t. After a while, players will know which decks are the best and those decks will define the tournament metagame. Then, of course, some savvy players will try to predict the metagame and build decks that work especially well against the defining decks, and a round and round we go.

One of the jobs of the game’s designers it to keep the metagame healthy, that is, to give a player lots of options when building a deck for a tournament. We have several tools at our disposal. One of these is simply the release of new sets.

While we try to give every team advantages and disadvantages in the hope that they’re of approximately equal power levels, we know that players will come up with combinations and synergies that we never thought of. Keep in mind that this is a good thing. How boring would it be if we hand-fed players decks? Part of the charm of any good TCG is the sense of wonder and discovery a player feels when exploring a new set.

However, one downside to players’ creative deck designs is that one or two teams or a specific combination of teams may come out of a given metagame with the most successful tournament decks. Because one of the keys to keeping a TCG healthy is to challenge the players constantly to come up with new strategies or add new twists to the current strategies, you can bet the next set released will try to even up the playing field.

Another tool at our disposal is supporting different kinds of formats. One of the great things about the Vs. System is how well it translates to multiplayer games. You’ll find that while a particular character or card might not be so great one on one, it’ll really shine in grand melee games or perhaps in two-on-two team games. The same holds true for deck types. Perhaps your pet Doom/X-Men deck hasn’t had much success at the local tourneys, but just wait till you try it in Two-Headed Mutant.

To summarize, at any given time in the life span of the Marvel TCG certain types of decks (team pure, two-team, cherry pick) may dominate the tournament scene, but everything is fluid — what’s great today, may not be in a few weeks. And remember, we may give you the card pool, but you decide which decks will be the best.

All for One…

Today’s preview is of the ongoing plot twist, Heroes United. Ongoing plot twists work just like – oh wait, already did that part. Heroes United is part of a collection of “team-up” cards in the Origins set. Team-up cards are designed to not only encourage multi-team decks, but to reward players for building them. Let’s take a closer look.

“Play only if you control a Fantastic Four character and an X-Men character.”

Okay, you have to have at least one character with each affiliation to play it. That’s not so hard assuming you’re playing both teams.

“Draw a card.”

Nice. If you played it from your hand it just replaces itself, which isn’t that exciting, but at least it digs you further into your deck so you can draw your more powerful characters. If you played it from your resource row, it’s as if you played a resource without spending a card from your hand, which is pretty cool. But wait, there’s more.

Ongoing: Cards you control, as well as cards in your hand, deck, and KO'd pile that have either the Fantastic Four or X-Men team affiliation are considered to have both team affiliations.

That’s a whole lot of text. What does it all mean? Basically, it means that all of your X-Men and Fantastic Four characters count as on being on both teams. They can team attack and reinforce each other and cards that work on either team now work on both teams. For example, now Danger Room gives all your Fantastic Four characters ATK or DEF bonuses, Cosmic Radiation can ready your X-Men, and cards like Cerebro and Signal Flare can search your deck for characters of either team affiliation.

The possibilities go on and on. And don’t forget that if you draw a second copy of Heroes United, rather than take up another slot of your precious resource row for a redundant effect, you can just play it from your hand to draw a new card. 

…And One for All?

Heroes United is a pretty powerful effect… in the right deck. But what if you wanted to play a different combination of teams? I’m sure a lot of you are wondering about that comment I made earlier about Heroes United being part of a collection of team-up cards. Well, that brings us to today’s little challenge. And guess what – there’s two parts.

Part 1

There are 5 “team-up” cards in the Origins set. Each card lets you treat two different teams as if they were the same team. You already know which two teams Heroes United works on. Here are the names of the other four team-up cards.

Common Enemy

Marvel Team-up

Mutant Nation

Unlikely Allies

Your job is to figure out which teams those cards work for. And yes, if there are 5 major teams in Origins there would have to be 10 different team-up cards to make sure you could team-up everyone with everyone else. So there being only five team-up cards must mean that some combinations are left out… or does it?

Part 2

Is a bit easier. All you have to do is answer this question.

Are you more interested in building pure team decks or mixed team decks or do you have no preference (either because you have just have no preference or because you’re more concerned with winning tournaments and don’t care with which kind of deck)?

Send your responses to danielcmandel@excite.com by Monday. Anyone who gets all four cards right (and answers part 2) will win a shiny new no-prize. (For those of you who don’t know, a no-prize is a classic award they used to give out at Marvel comics.)

Be sure to check back Monday for the winners list and for a look at Origin’s mercurial mutant.