Last week, I introduced the major players of the design team for Marvel Team-Up. Patrick Sullivan and I led the main card design push, while Billy Zonos picked up the creative side of things. Put another way, Billy picked the characters, and Patrick and I decided what they’d do. Beyond our little design family, the rest of R&D toiled continuously and were responsible for as many of the final cards as we were (if not more of them). This week, the focus falls on the premier team of the set, Spider-Friends. As the name implies, the team historically had its roots in Spider-Man himself. I’ll reflect on my memories of Spider-Man’s design as well as the team design, Pat will correct me, and Billy undoubtedly will provide a retelling that’s less than five percent true.
Andrew
Spider-Man and his Spider-Friends were perhaps one of the most educated designs I have ever undertaken. While the Kree press mechanic and terraform were each inspired largely by a single motivation (Goblin Glider and the Inhumans, respectfully), Spider-Man was a combination of several distinct objectives.
The Past:
Spider-Man’s first big feature in Vs. System (back in 2005’s Web of Spider-Man) made fewer waves than many expected, but nonetheless, the team’s themes were well defined. The first of two evasion teams, the Spider-Friends excelled at in-combat control and protecting their characters from incoming effects with cards like Ricochet and Nice Try!. Combined with some light team attacking and character survivability, the Spider-Friends were a “team” team that coalesced around Spider-Man. The Scarlet Spider–driven clone deck pulled the team in a very different direction that focused on using different versions of Spider-Man. In reviewing the team, the obvious main feature of each archetype was that it was all about feeling like Spider-Man; even if he didn’t appear in the deck, his compatriots took up the slack, evading (Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman) and protecting (Spider-Tracer) to victory.
The Present:
Coming off of two sets with a host of new keywords, there was plenty of new action to capitalize on. While we assumed that players would receive their fill of cosmic after consecutive sets featuring it, newer keywords like terraform and substitute arguably still needed more time in the sun. Substitute in particular seemed ripe to burst, as it had only had a single appearance in Legion of Super Heroes. The terrestrial nature of Marvel Team-Up compared to Heralds of Galactus and Legion of Super Heroes made me shy away from using terraform in abundance for a third set. While we were confident of the mechanics’ popularity, it just wasn’t as easy thematically to justify Midtown High showing up on the moon as it was for an Inhuman moon base.
The Re-feature:
After reflecting on where the team had been and where the game currently was, it was clear that Spider-Man needed to matter on his team and that his team needed to be good at controlling the pace of the game through combat. One of my most frequently referenced designs in Vs. is the original Dr. Doom design—I loved the flavor created by simply changing a card that referred to Doom to refer to Dr. Doom. The move to refer to characters specifically had already begun in Heralds of Galactus, with Big G periodically appearing from players’ hands for cards like Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation and I Must Obey. We also already had an inkling of what Marvel Legends was going to do, so the Spider-Man design seemed a likely playground for new ways to highlight an individual character and reinforce mechanics throughout the year. Before substitute even entered the picture, some of the first “Spider-Man matters” cards that were designed looked eerily similar to the substitute mechanic:
Costume Changes
Plot Twist
Ongoing: Return a ready Spider-Man you control to your hand >>> You may put a Spider-Man with equal or lesser cost from your hand into play. Use only once per turn.
(Funny aside: Up until the very last minute, substitute was known under a different name that was more thematic for the Legion of Super Heroes set: teleport. Once everyone realized how much design space the mechanic offered, a more generic keyword name was chosen.)
Costume Changes ignited a series of designs that led to the ultimate vision for Spider-Man: making several versions of Spider-Man appear at the same cost. In doing so, design found a simple answer to the age-old “character matters” question, “What’s the easiest way for design to ensure that a given character appears in decks for a team?” Designing nearly every 4-drop Spider-Friend as Spider-Man ensured Spidey’s appearance. With the (newly named) substitute mechanic appearing in Legion of Super Heroes, Spider-Man’s multi-versioned new hotness provided a fitting thematic representation of his agility and flexibility as well, with each version representing a different facet of his abilities.
Pat
The design of Spider-Man was almost exclusively Yip’s baby (although much of the concept was borrowed from the first Spider-Man feature), so my input on this part of the discussion is pretty light. But I do have an amusing anecdote involving everyone’s favorite Asian lead designer:
Andrew: “I really want the teams to have some mechanical link between this set and Heralds. I’m pretty sure I want Spider-Man to exhaust, which would link up nicely with the “can’t ready” theme of the Inhumans.”
Pat: “What “can’t ready” theme?”
Andrew: “Mostly just Waking the Ancestors.”
Pat: “What does that thing do again?”
Andrew: “You know, exhaust a guy, someone can’t ready.”
Pat: “You mean Adhesive X?
Andrew: “What does that do?”
Pat: “Exhaust a guy, a guy can’t ready.”
Andrew: “. . .”
Andrew, unbeknownst to himself, had added what basically amounts to an Adhesive X reprint in Heralds. While this really doesn’t matter for anything, it was quite amusing watching Andrew, who generally has an encyclopedic knowledge of Vs. System, berate himself over reprinting one of the simplest team-stamped plot twists in the game.
As a developer and as a Spider-Man fan, it was awesome watching this part of the set take the form that it has today. Thematically, Spider-Man is where all the action is (all the cards that refer to Spider-Man) as he changes costumes (the substitute suite of Spider-Men) and webs up various villains (all the exhaustion effects). I think Yip’s concept of a “good guy version of Doom” was executed very well here, which wouldn’t have happened without Yip’s vision, creativity, and wide array of knowledge regarding Vs. System—even if the man goes and reprints Adhesive X every once in a while.
Billy
Okay, so now that you’ve had a week or so with the spoiler, some of you are still wondering about dual affiliation, or lack thereof, in Marvel Team-Up. Particularly with the Marvel Knights. Yes, we could have dual affiliated about ten more characters on the team, this is true. The reason we didn’t had more to do with design and function than it did with skimping on one of the community’s favorite mechanics. Marvel Team-Up was defined as a set where teams and teaming-up mattered—that is, we really wanted you to use cards with version “Team-Up.” This assumed that there existed very cleanly defined lines of function between the teams, which dual affiliation necessarily would muddy. We wanted to muddy them, but since dual loyalty was already marked to reappear, dual-loyalty characters were the muddy characters of choice. We also wanted to balance the cost and power of the dual-loyalty characters. In order to make them powerful, we had to make sure they weren’t too easy to get into play. Spreading around in-set dual affiliation love would cheapen the cost of these characters and make them independently less splashy. In essence, fewer affiliations meant more powerful cards.
The last time we did these design diaries, I spammed you guys with Extended Art. This time (since Sullivan enjoys writing), I have limited space.
Andrew
That just about covers the early days of the Spider-Friends. As you’ll see in the coming weeks, Spider-Friends was fairly stable from day one, unlike some of the other teams; its previous themes were clear, and the new direction naturally fit Spider-Man’s character and the existing keyword structure very well. Next week, we’ll take a look at Spider-Man’s villainous counterparts, the Sinister Six and company.
Card Bibliography
- Aunt May, Golden Oldie: Marvel Team-Up #137
- Mattie Franklin, Spider-Man: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2 #5
- Phil Urich ◊ Green Goblin: Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 1 #225
- Spider-Man, Stark’s Protege: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #530
- Spider-Man, Spider-Hulk: Web of Spider-Man #70
- Spider-Man, The Amazing Bag-Man: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #258
- Down, but Not Out: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #33
- Drink This!: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #101
- Indebted: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #504
- Ring of Fire: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #362
- Spider-Signal: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #267
- Spider-Mobile: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #130
- Stark Tower: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #519
- Trial by Jury: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #383