Those of you who read Dave Humpherys' article last week know that from now on, he and I will be splitting Design Vs. Development in half. (For those of you who didn’t read his article, from now on Dave Humpherys and I will be splitting Design Vs. Development in half. Also, I applaud your good taste.)

I’ll be doing the design half, and he’ll have the development half. This makes a lot of sense because A.) I’ve always fancied myself more of a designer than a developer, and B.) Dave’s old articles were really lousy, so we figure with a new topic, he can only improve. (I’m just kidding. No one expects him to improve.) And best of all, C.) It will finally really be Design versus Development. Like for real. As in, I tell you guys how cool designers are, and Dave says a lot of stuff that you just ignore because he’s so lousy.

Let’s get started. For the past couple of months, I’ve been saving up some emails I’ve received so I could answer them in a public forum. This was because A.) I can answer specific questions that are probably similar to ones you might have, B.) Seeing other people get their emails posted might encourage more of you to email me (which will lead to more “mailbag” style articles down the road, thus saving me from having to come up with interesting topics each week because let’s face it—I have no idea what’s going on), and C.) I really like organizing things into A-B-C groupings.

Now, I’ve decided to put all the spoiler-type questions at the bottom, so you might be tempted to scroll down there immediately to check out the goods, but let me warn you—I’ve set up this page to induce a complete computer shut down if you scroll down too quickly. Okay, that’s a lie. But just think of all the mean things I’ll say about Humpherys that you’ll miss if you skip to the end. Plus, I’m not actually going to give anything away about the later sets because Omeed will physically kill me and/or steal my iPod. (Seriously, sometimes he sneaks into the R&D room when I’m not around and turns my mouse upside down just because-he-can.)

This first email is pretty long. As such, I’ll be putting reply sections all through it rather than at the end.

Hello from the Philippines, Mr. Mandel!

I suppose I should begin by congratulating you and the rest of the Vs. design and development team for creating such an innovative and enjoyable game system, and an equally entertaining set of licenses with which to launch said system. I quit TCGs about four years ago, and your excellent game has lured me back in (and helped empty my wallet substantially in the process, since I'm an avid DC comic book fan).

Thanks! We’re glad you like it. Now as long as you don’t bring up any complex issues—especially not ones about how the DC set stacks up power-level wise against Marvel—we’ll get along just fine.

I have noticed thus far that DC's characters do make up in slick mechanics what they seem to lack overall in heft. I just don't think it would have hurt the set to have had some larger 5 or 7-drops in the mix, using Thing, Heavy Hitter as an example for the 5-drops and the 16 ATK/DEF-ups for the 7-drops. The abilities granted a number of characters (such as the 7-drop The Joker) don't seem to be commensurate to the penalty in stats that they are forced to suffer.

Hey! We had a deal . . . Anyway, the short answer is that we set a character’s ATK and DEF based on several factors including (here I go again)

A.) How we want them to interact with other characters around their cost. In the comics, the Joker is an absolute homicidal maniac when he’s running the show (which translates to when you have the initiative), but when Batman shows up and confronts him face to face, he pretty much gets pummeled.

B.) How strong their powers are in-game. For example, sometimes a character’s power is heavily tied into its DEF. Raven’s power is so devastating that we needed to make it challenging—but not impossible—for her controller to keep her around till the recovery phase.

C.) How a team should fit in with other teams. For example, if every team had its one signature dude with big stats, it would make cards like Thing and Sabretooth less special.

Like I said, that’s the short answer—there are lots of other factors involved, but it’s easier to talk about things on a case-by-case basis (which will come later).

But I'm digressing.

What I am more interested in is how you folks determine the rarity of the cards in a particular set. What I observe from other TCGs is that the rare cards are usually the ones with more game-altering effects, or would be able to secure victory almost by themselves. This does not appear to be the case in Vs., where, if the distribution of the DC Origins set is posted correctly, there appear to be some commons that function almost as well as rares like Savage Beatdown (such as Mega-Blast), and rares of dubious value even if you were to really work to build them into your deck (like Mr. Zsasz). I realize that a fair number of the "must-have" cards have to be rare to induce our constant purchase of the product. I just wonder why there is a need to create "unplayable" or extremely limited rares.

To a lesser extent, I'm also curious about what makes a card uncommon as opposed to a common.

Wow. Great questions. In fact, I like these questions so much, they’re going to be the entire focus of my next article. So tune in next week for a rare—oh, wait. That comes later.

Oh, and was Sabretooth, Feral Rage a mistake on the part of the game designers or was the decision to make a 4-drop with an 11 ATK and a minor drawback deliberate? I notice that all the characters with abnormally high stats for their costs in DC Origins come with substantially crippling drawbacks (Mammoth comes to mind).

Yeah, actually Sabretooth was a mistake. You see, in the card file we had his ATK listed as 7, but when it went to print they screwed up and made it 11. We tried crossing out the 11 on each card with a Sharpie, but it kept smearing. Then we tried White-Out, but Mike Hummel, who had spent two years of his life living in a railroad park eating nothing but baked beans and liquid paper, freaked out. Humpherys suggested leaving it 11 because, and I quote, “The Brotherhood don’t really have a lot going for them—they can’t even beat my Skrull/Black Tom deck.”

Seriously though, Sabretooth was intentional. Characters like 'Tooth or Thing that essentially jump the curve help set up the boundaries or parameters of how large characters can get. As for DC’s characters, well sure, Mammoth has big drawback. But then again, he’s Mammoth. (On a coolness scale from Unus to Sabretooth, Mammoth is Wyatt Wingfoot.)

I also notice that there aren't quite as many DEF bonus cards as there are ATK bonus cards. The defensive cards that do exist require high costs, drop ATK values, or do not give DEF bonuses as substantial as the ATK bonuses generated by, say, Savage Beatdown. What is the reason for this? Why is an ironclad defense via DEF increases not a viable option as of yet? I was considering that with an ATK-oriented team like the Brotherhood, there would also be a defense-oriented team with the ability to gain +5 DEF when defending.

Another great question. Stop it already. To best explain why things are the way they are, I’ve got a little fable to share with you.

Once upon a time there were four combat modifiers, Savage Beatdown, Nasty Surprise, From the Shadows, and Antonio Banderas (you see, we always use actors who have played Zorro as placeholder names for cards). Each of the four modifiers pumped up a character's stat by 5. Savage Beatdown (or “Money” to his friends) pumped an attacker’s ATK, Nasty Surprise pumped a defender’s ATK, From the Shadows pumped an attacker’s DEF, and Antonio Banderas pumped a defender’s DEF. One day, the four modifiers were riding in a hot air balloon high over the canal city of Venice, Italy when suddenly the balloon sprung a leak and began sinking rapidly. Panicking, the combat modifiers quickly threw all of their belongings overboard to slow their descent. It wasn’t enough. They decided to draw straws. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any straws, but it turned out not to matter, because a second and larger hot air balloon drifted by and towed them to safety. Then, later that evening after a night of drinking and rabble-rousing, Savage Beatdown, Nasty Surprise, and From the Shadows murdered Antonio Banderas with knives.

And that’s why there is no defensive modifier that pumps a defender’s DEF by 5.

Also, a card like that would be freakin’ busted! There are certain features built into the Vs. combat engine, and one of them is that when you have initiative, you are pretty much on offense while your opponent is on defense. Anything that alters the basic “I smash you, you smash you” rhythm of the game is really powerful. I’m not saying we won’t make cards like Mystical Paralysis or Spider-Senses (in fact, we did make 'em), I’m just saying that we won’t be doling out game-swingers like the above as generics.

Whew! I guess that's far too much curiosity from anyone. Again, keep up the brilliant work, and I eagerly await the creation of Wonder Woman (who my girlfriend adores) and the rest of the JLA.

Um, we also adore Wonder Woman.

AF
Manila, Philippines

Thanks, AF.


One of the reasons I wanted to do an article like this is to give everyone some insight into the kinds of emails I get. Many, such as the following one, involve some general questions or comments about the game as well as possibly a rules question. I especially like it when the writer numbers or letters his questions as PH did. Okay, you know the drill.

Hi, I just read your metagame article, and I have a few questions. I currently run an Arkham Inmates deck and love it.

1.Were the Inmates created as a sort of anti-flood to combat the ever popular Wild Vomit deck and the soon to be popular GCPD flood deck?

No. And yes. While we don’t design entire teams as a response to a metagame shift, we are often aware of possible metagame implications based on some of the cards we give a team. For example, we knew Mad Hatter would be very powerful in a small character metagame, but lousy against control decks. In contrast, The Riddler is strong against a slower deck but almost a liability against rush decks. So again, no, we didn’t create the Inmates as a check to the flood decks, but we realized certain cards they were getting would help in those matchups.

2. If I stun a character with Mr.Freeze, when the character is recovered, would it be exhausted?

Yes. A character always recovers to the exhausted state. Mr. Freeze’s power will keep that character exhausted even through the end of turn wrap-up.

3. I also am curious about the chain. I was playing my friend's DoomABomber deck and he on turn 7 played down Beast and flipped over Latveria. I had Firefly in play and choose to wait to activate his effect. Then as soon as we entered the combat phase, he played Gamma Bomb and I chained with Firefly's effect and destroyed Latveria. Would Gamma Bomb still go through? Or since he didn't have enough resources to meet the threshold cost, would he not be able to use it?

“Doomabomber”. I like that. I still like “Turbo-Gamma Bomb” better, but that’s because I made up that name like a million years before the game released. Doomabomber is still nice though. I also like the austere yet elegant “Doom Boom,” but I’m not ready to pick out curtains or anything.

Yes, the Gamma Bomb would still go through. You only check a plot twist’s threshold cost when the plot twist is first played. Once its effect is on the chain, it will resolve (unless it gets negated by an effect that negates things, like Fizzle, or it gets negated by the game rules because its target (or targets) is no longer legal).

Please respond back and if you want you can put these questions in your next article. Thank you and keep up the good work.

-PH

Thanks, PH.

A note on rules questions: While I enjoy answering them (they keep me on my toes), I’ve been admonished by Alex Charsky (our Rules Commissioner and all around scary guy) that I spend too much time answering rules stuff when I should be making up cards or picking up his dry cleaning. So yeah, these days I tend to forward rules questions on to our rules guys.

This next email follows a pattern I’ve grown familiar with:

Card X seems to be really good against deck Y. What were you thinking?

I actually like these kinds of questions a lot. They highlight a player’s passion for the game and particularly a team or deck-type, and they force me to come clean on our thoughts when design/developing the card as well as what its metagame implications were.

Hello, and thanks for taking the time to view this email.

Just got done reading the article, great stuff. Noticed you don't mind people emailing you with comments/concerns. Well I’m a little concerned about a card called Total Anarchy. Reason being is I just came up with this really nice (or at least to me anyways) Gotham Knights Army build, and I’m concerned that this card will replace Flame Trap and make army and/or weenie rushes obsolete. I honestly believe this will be used in almost all decks, specifically stall decks.

Anyhow, just curious, but how was Total Anarchy looked at when the playtesting of DC came about at UDE? Was it meant to counter Army decks? Or perhaps help stall decks?

Any way you can ease my concerns? =) Thanks for taking the time to read, and if I'm lucky enough, reply to this email.

Thank you for your time,

Mike

First of all, let me throw this out there: A lot of people tend to start emails with “Hey, you’re really great” or “Nice job” or “Way to go!” or something like that. This is a very good tactic. You see, designers have giant, room-filling egos, and we need to be told how awesome we are about every eight minutes or else we burst into tears or shatter under the pressure of trying to guess the metagame a year and a half from now.

Hi Mike,

You’ve pretty much nailed our intention for Total Anarchy. We wanted to create a weapon for stall decks (which, in turn, can act as a counter to Army decks). One of the things I really like about this card (and given that this card was designed solely by Mike Hummel, it’s surprising that I like anything about it) is that the card does nothing by itself. A player has to couple it with an effect that stuns little dudes, or he or she has to play out his or her own dudes, which means either waiting until turn 4, or playing out little drops that are themselves vulnerable to Total Anarchy.

As for this card getting played in every deck . . . I think the metagame would have to be completely dominated by weenie decks for this card to get that popular, and if that were to occur it seems unlikely that the weenie decks themselves would play it.

There is a larger question here as well, which I’ll touch on for a moment. The Vs. System (like all games) is built on certain tensions, or axes of interaction. For example, in a beatdown matchup, endurance totals matter whole big bunches, but in the Doom Boom mirror, endurance takes a back seat to who’s got a more powerful late game. Probably the classic matchup is rush versus stall, where the stall deck wants to assume board control while the rush deck just wants to crack heads. Parameter-defining cards like Flame Trap or Total Anarchy or Savage Beatdown or Surprise Attack will create the skeleton of the metagame, with players’ preferences fleshing it out. After the metagame takes form, players' reactions to the current popular decks will cause it to shift along various axes such as rush versus stall or combo versus disruption.


Okay, this next email is similar to the last, but it’s targeted at an entire team rather than a specific card. It’s rather long, so it looks like we’re back on the me-inserting-my-comments-in-the-middle-and-pretending-it’s-a-dialogue routine.

I'm writing to complain about the power of the League of Assassins team in the Vs. System game. I'm sure you get all sorts of people writing to you about all sorts of things, and I apologize if you're not the person I should be sending this to. If that is the case, would you be so kind as to pass this email along to the correct person? Or just let me know the email address, and I'll send it to them myself.

Nah, I’m totally the right person you should be complaining to. I tend to show these kinds of emails to Mike and Matt (the other two guys who designed DC) and Humpherys (the lead developer who is also very tall) anyway, so go ahead and fire 'em off to me.

You guys probably hear all sorts of bitching and complaining about cards, but I guess I just want to vent and to see what you think about what I have to say (if you have the time to respond—I understand you've likely got much better things to do).

Actually . . . nope. Other than cleaning out the storm drains on Charsky’s apartment, I’m pretty much free.

Anyway . . .

Do you guys realize how powerful the League of Assassins team is? It's absolutely ridiculous trying to play against this deck. Even inexperienced players that just throw a bunch of LoA cards into a deck can manage to have a decent, competitive deck. My biggest beef with these cards is that there are so many of them that just shut down the basic functions of the game. The 4-drop Ra's keeps players from playing locations. Ubu negates the flight ability. Lazarus Pit makes it so characters can't be KO'd and recovers stunned characters. Then on turn 7, Lady Shiva comes out and can simply KO any character. Any character!!! Superman? Lady Shiva can take him. And it's not that she stuns them, she KO's them! That's it! As if this weren't enough, the supreme insult comes out on turn 8 with the big Ra's Al Ghul, who essentially shuts down the whole game! AND he's 17 ATK/17 DEF!!! No payment powers, no team attacking, no reinforcing, no using anything that even mentions your team's name, nothing! I might as well not even play against LoA, because I'm not going to be able to actually use any of my strategies against them. It's nearly impossible to get rid of Ra's unless you have another big character, because you can't team attack him. And you better hope that character doesn't have loyalty, because you won't be able to play him. Oh wait, what's that? OH YEAH, I FORGOT. If you have a character who can actually take down Ra's, Lady Shiva will just KO IT!!!

Then there's Mountain Stronghold, which tutors for any LoA character, so LoA players don't even have to play with four of each of these kill cards in their decks. They can play one 8-drop Ra's and one Lady Shiva and just SEARCH FOR THEM!!! Oh, yeah, but the Stronghold is a location, so if they want to flip another one they'll have to KO the first one, so at least it sets them back on resources . . . wait . . . no . . . MOUNTAIN STRONGHOLD IS NOT UNIQUE!!!

The entire DC sets seems to be more focused on making the games last a little longer (as opposed to the Marvel set, which often didn't see games lasting until turns 7, 8, or 9 unless there was a stall deck involved, like Doom). But LoA cards seem to completely dominate the late game, so unless you are playing a deck that can win before turn 7 or 8, you might as well scoop. I've seen games where, on turn 8, the LoA player is at 7 endurance and the other player is at 41, and sure enough LoA wins because it shuts down the entire team strategy of the other deck! This game revolves entirely around team affiliations and the strategies inherent to those affiliations. But LoA takes all that away, and I just don't think the team as a whole is very balanced compared to the other teams.

Any comments?

Wow. You really are venting. Yes, we have a pretty good idea of where the League is on the power scale, although we never know entirely what’s going to happen once players get their hands on the cards.

I’d rather not defend the balance of all of the above individual cards for several reasons.

A.) It would take a long time and likely not be that satisfying since I would just be explaining what our goals were for each card and not offering empirical fact that they are not in part or all together broken.

B.) I don’t want to pollute players’ debating cards’ relative power levels—if a designer thinks a card is too good or too bad (whether he’s right or wrong) it will affect player’s opinions and we don’t want that (unless we’re talking about Unus. Unus is awesome! Yay Unus!!!). However, I do love it when players debate cards/teams, so anyone who agrees or disagrees with the above comments on the League should let me know, and I promise to revisit this topic down the road.

C.) It’s very early in the new metagame to be passing judgment on the League, given that we have yet to have a major tournament where the League cards have been legal. If they handily win the Pro Circuit two weeks from now, then you can start throwing things (at Humpherys).

And finally, while I felt this email was articulate and passionate and therefore a good one to choose for this article, it should be made clear that for every email or post I read that says how broken the League is, I also see one that says the opposite or one that says how broken Gotham (or any other team) is.

Rock 'n' Roll,
—JP

I do have to say that “Rock ‘n’ Roll’ is a pretty cool way to close an email. I mean, if I were cool, I would end all my emails with “Rock ‘n’ Roll." JP, it’s been about three weeks since I got this email, and I was wondering if your take on the League has changed at all. Let me know. And of course, thanks.

A while back, I posted an email from “Sentinel Fan” about how the Daily Bugle could invalidate Sentinel strategies. This is the email I received after that article went up, which was also around when the DC Comics Origins released.

It's me, Sentinel Fan again. Just saw that you quoted our email conversation in your last article. You should have told me then that if I didn't like The Daily Bugle then there was a certain character soon to be revealed from DC Origins that I would despise even more. Scarecrow is just insane against any deck running a decent chunk of 1-drop Army characters. I run a variant of the Wild Vomit deck type and it's not uncommon for me to have anywhere from three to six Wild Sentinels out on turn 6 along with my Mark IVs. If Scarecrow drops when I've got five out, then Scarecrow becomes an 18 ATK/18 DEF on turn 6 and I lose about half of my board with no possible way of preventing it. He doesn't even have loyalty or a discard restriction so that only Arkham Inmates decks can run him reliably. Even if he only bounces one or two characters on turn 6, he's still a 10 ATK/10 DEF or a 12 ATK/12 DEF, which is what you would be getting anyway.

I understand that the card abilities are very flavorful for the character and I appreciate that, but it just seems that he's a little bit over the top as far as hosing decks that run a lot of 1 or 2 drops. I could maybe understand if the Army mechanic was really powerful and out there winning 10Ks and PCQs left and right, but it's not. Kinda makes me wonder why these anti-Army cards keep rolling out. One of the main tournament strategies seems to be to have single characters get pumped through the roof and cause large chunks of breakthrough damage. I wouldn't be surprised to see more cards along the lines of Overload for this reason, but I'm not seeing that.

You said before that the Wild Sentinel–heavy Sentinel deck isn't the only way to go with that team, but unless we get some more Sentinel character cards in the Spidey set, then I think I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Sentinels are most powerful when they've got a lot of characters on the board, no matter how big or small. They work best in numbers, and with the current character pool, that means you have to run a lot of Wild Sentinels and tricks to draw extras of those cards to be competitive. I don't mind Flame Trap as it hits both players and has a decent cost. Most decks don't run it outside of one copy in some Doom decks. I can deal with that kind of hate. If I'm playing my Sentinel horde and Scarecrow drops on turn 6, I don't have much to do except scoop up my cards and move on to the next game. I really don't like that.

Perhaps I'm over-reacting some but I just gotta wonder what you guys have against the little purple horde? Why you trying to keep my robots from ever conquering the world?

Thanks for your time,
Sentinel Fan

Hi again, Sentinel Fan. You make some excellent points and insights about the format. While I still think you’ll be pretty happy with what the Spidey expansion offers the Sentinels, I can see why Scarecrow is so scary. Let me reiterate a point I made in the above article


Occasionally we print cards that are good against specific teams or strategies, and sometimes deck types or concepts can get caught in the crossfire. Just as we sometimes make cards that are inadvertently strong against army, we also print cards that are inadvertently strong for Army.

Cards like Scarecrow (or Flame Trap or Total Anarchy) might be strong against the Sentinels, but perhaps they are weak against other strategies. Optimally the metagame will shift back and forth, changing the relative value of the more situationally powerful cards.

But that’s not really the issue here, is it? What you (and everyone else) really want to know is what we at R&D have against the Sentinels. To answer this question, let me turn things over for today’s guest writer, Matt Hyra*.

Hi everyone. My name’s Matt Hyra. I also write a column for Metagame—it’s a little something I like to call Wicked Clever. I call it that because I’m Wicked Clever, so my writing’s Wicked Clever. In fact everything about me is Wicked Clever. I rule!

Anyway, Danny asked me to explain why R&D hates the Sentinels so much, so here goes. The truth is, R&D doesn’t hate the Sentinels at all. I mean, here’s a card Danny suggested for the Spider-Man set.

Guy Williams
Character, Sentinel, Recruit 3
4 ATK/7 DEF
Activate >>> KO all non-Sentinel characters. Draw 3 cards. Use this power only during the combat phase.

See, he loves the Sentinels. In fact, all of R&D does. Except me! Hahahaha! That’s right, I’m the one who hates them! Since the cat’s out of the bag, it’s probably safe for me to show you something.

Whenever there a hole in the set I need to fill, I just use my patented idea-comer-upper-with-chart. All you do is roll a ten-sided die and let your imagination take over.

Idea-Comer-Upper-With-Chart

1 – Generic Combat Plot Twist
2 – Generic Location
3 – Broken X-Men card
4 – Sentinel MK III
5 – Dr. Bong
6 – Reprint Savage Beatdown
7 – Something Crippling to the Sentinels
8 – Something Crippling to the Sentinels
9 – Something Helpful Crippling to the Sentinels
10 – Dr. Bong

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into my Wicked Clever psyche. And remember, my name’s Matt Hyra.

*Due to illness, the part of Matt Hyra will be played by Danny Mandel.

Well, gee would you look at the time . . . This whole answering mail thing sure is taking a lot longer than I thought. I guess this means I’ll be continuing it next week with the spoiler-y stuff along with some stuff about rarities.

So yeah, to be continued. Send questions or comments to dmandel@metagame.com.

Until next time—Rock ‘N’ Roll,

Danny Mandel