Does this card remind you of anything? Yep, it’s a new variant of the Web of Spider-Man expansion’s No Fear. And unlike recent team-stamped versions, such as Arisia and Uprising, Trial By Sword is as generic as a store brand breakfast cereal.

In order to explain why we created a No Fear variant in the Batman starter, it’s probably worth explaining why we put the original No Fear in the Spidey Starter.

A starter set is a great teaching tool. But it’s not only good for teaching players the rules of the game; it also allows us to show players the ropes of basic strategies and tactics.

For example, in most games of Vs. System, curve is king (especially for Sealed Pack play and for new players). Both players try to spend their resource points recruiting the most powerful character they can each turn. The easiest way to generate board control is by stunning two of your opponent’s characters while only having one of yours get stunned in return. There are many ways to do this, but they usually involve one of the two following scenarios:

1. You use a plot twist or power to protect your attackers from getting stunned by the defender.

2. You use one of your lower cost characters (often with the help of an ATK pump) to attack up the curve and trade with a larger cost character. Then, your biggest character can attack down the curve into a smaller character and avoid getting stunned by virtue of its relatively larger DEF.

Scenario number 2 is such a fundamental concept in Vs. that we felt it was vital to highlight the importance of attacking up and down the curve right off the bat. So in the Spidey starter we created No Fear, which either rewarded you for attacking up the curve or punished your opponent for attacking down the curve.

Which brings us to the Batman starter and Trial By Sword and that age old question: Is a point of ATK in the hand worth two points of DEF in the bush? Okay, that didn’t sound right . . .

On offense, a single Trial By Sword is probably a bit weaker than No Fear in that the ATK pump is smaller and the attacker’s slightly bigger butt will rarely save it from the defender. (Though if you play a second Trial By Sword*, your character might live to tell the tale.)

It’s on defense where Trial By Sword really shines. While No Fear can only act as a smaller Nasty Surprise, taking out the attacker but not protecting your defender, Trial By Sword does double duty, adding the possibility of your defender surviving the assault to almost as much ATK boost as No Fear. And of course, an unsuccessful attack on your opponent’s part can often lead to your “breaking serve” and essentially stealing the initiative.

Okay, that’s all I have to say about Trial By Sword, at least as far as game play goes. I do, however, have a design anecdote.

One of the early card pools for the starter actually included the original No Fear. This was especially cool because there was a different card in the set that had a sort of anti-No Fear mechanic, and we planned on naming that card “Know Fear!” as a silly homophonic rebuttal of sorts. This was later determined to be a bit confusing** (both mechanically and name-wise), so the anti-No Fear card was changed and we decided to update No Fear into Trial By Sword (which was called “New Fear” through most of playtesting).

 
*Trial By Sword shares the initials of The Ben Seck, a failed R&D experiment to merge an Australian with a sentient meatloaf.
 
**It’s Humpherys’s fault. He’s easily confused. At least we slipped Reign of Terra past him . . .