Billy Zonos and Andrew Yip did a great job these past two months showing us the creative thinking involved in designing Heralds of Galactus, one of the best Vs. System sets seen to date. While we’re all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for the new goodies in Legion of Super Heroes, we in R&D will try to show you some of the thinking behind developing the game we all love. John Fiorillo explained how we decide which cards to make rare, uncommon, and common; I tried to explain why our equipment became so good in the latest expansions; and hopefully, you enjoyed Patrick’s article about the behind-the-scenes arguments and discussions we had while deciding how to re-feature a team has powerful and rich in history as Doom.
What I will discuss today are some of the discussions we have every day about off-curve hate. As a player and even as a developer, I am a big fan of curve decks. To me, curve decks seem so pure. They do their own little gimmick well; curve decks play a very similar game every time they get shuffled for a tournament. They emphasize combat, team attacking, and reinforcement. My BFF Patrick Sullivan would sit here and argue that off-curve decks emphasize those three things more than curve decks do. How can you argue with that? He enjoys the opposite of the things I enjoy. Patrick loves it when every game is different. He loves having five or six characters in play, and he loves figuring out attack orders and formations—things that curve players don’t find too exciting.
Having such different play styles and different ideas is what makes the development process so much fun. It’s also the reason why Vs. is such a good game. My job would be boring if everyone agreed with me every time I said something. I would also not enjoy my job if I always agreed with what everyone else said. If everyone always agreed, every time it was time to make an off-curve hate card, I would just make a Flame Trap or a Mikado and Mosha. Luckily, Pat is there to ruin all the fun and keep me in check by reminding me how un-fun and non-interactive those types of cards are. Flame Trap and Mikado and Mosha stun little guys with no questions asked. That’s not very interesting. And when they’re good, they’re really good, which means that your opponent has very few ways to play around those cards. The best way to play around them is to play a deck that doesn’t consist mostly of 2-drops.
When developing the Heralds of Galactus set, we decided that we wanted 9-drops to matter. We wanted curve decks to come back. But with Pat’s development antennae always out and sensing, we needed to make sure that the off-curve hate would be interesting and interactive.
The perfect example of one of my favorite interactive off-curve hate cards is Morg, Slayer. Morg’s interesting aspects come from his discard cost. Every time you want to use his power, you have to decide if bouncing a 1-drop of your opponent’s choice back to his or her hand is worth the card you’re discarding. Morg is also very interactive. Not only can your opponent attack it, but he or she also has a say in which character gets returned to hand. If you really need an important 1-drop to stay in play, then you can play multiple 1-drops or some alternate free 1-drops (like Nenora, Skrull Usurper) to interact with Morg, Slayer’s power. Seeing Pat’s face every time I recruit Morg against him is priceless, but I know it’s fair because his eyes don’t roll around his head the same way they do when I discard a Mikado and Mosha or play a Flame Trap.
My next favorite off-curve hate card in Heralds is Worldship. Worldship is so interesting and wacky that I spent a week just thinking about it during testing. I can play it in my curve deck against off-curve. It can act as a Birthing Chamber in my off-curve deck, but I don’t always want to flip it against opposing off-curve decks because I don’t want to give them a free Birthing Chamber. Not only does Worldship allow you to keep your opponent’s board down by at least one weenie character every turn, it also makes cards like Air-Walker, Gabriel Lan better. I like Worldship more than Total Anarchy (another card that does something no questions asked) mainly because even though they have the same function in most matchups, Worldship is at least interactive. Worldship can also be put in an off-curve deck to function as a card drawing effect. Many off-curve decks lose when they don’t spend all their resource points every turn, and with Worldship in play you will never run out of characters to recruit.
Quicksilver, Inhuman by Marriage is another one of my favorite cards. I know the first thing that people wonder when they see a speedster is how many times they can Flying Kick it and attack with it. My favorite thing about this card is how good it is against off-curve decks. If your opponent has a 1- and a 2-drop and you have Quicksilver, you will always double-stun your opponent and bring parity to the character count. Even on turn 3, if you have a 3-drop and Quicksilver against an opponent who has a 1-, 2-, and 3-drop, you will achieve parity through Quicksilver.
I’ve shown you guys how interesting this card is, but how is this card interactive? I know this is a stretch, but a card like Nasty Surprise interacts with any speedster. A power-up on your 1-drop will usually stun an opposing Quicksilver, preventing your opponent from picking off your second character. Clearly, there is something you can do in deck construction to stop a card like Quicksilver, whereas there isn’t much you can do in deck construction to interact with Mikado and Mosha.
In conclusion, there are plenty of subtle and interesting ways to make off-curve hate. A card doesn’t have to resemble Flame Trap; Mikado and Mosha; or Hawkeye, Clinton Barton to be good. In Heralds of Galactus, we did a good job developing strong, subtle, off-curve hate via effects like the speedster, endurance gain, and bounce. And to a certain extent, press decks are very good at combating off-curve strategies while still playing on curve for most turns of the game.
I really hope you enjoyed this article on some of the thinking that goes on when developing a certain class of cards.
Until Legion of Super Heroes previews,
Cheers
Antonino De Rosa