Welcome back to Part 5 of the Galactus Design Diary with your hosts Andrew Yip and Billy Zonos. What do we have this week? What could possibly be left? Skrulls? Heh, no. Not yet. Doom perhaps? Anyone want some Doom? DOOM!

So Maybe I Told a Few Lies, but This Time is Different

One Year Ago:

Andrew: Okay, so what about Doom? How do we make it different? Thoughts?

Billy: Hmm . . . I’m out. Call me in a month.

A: Wait, the character files are due in two weeks!

B: Oh.

A: You got nothing?

B: How about we make Dr. Doom like Kang? But this time we have like twenty-five Dooms!

(Silence)

A: You’re fired.

To date, Andrew has fired me at least twenty-five times.

Dr. Doom and the Super-Villain All-Stars

Up until now, I’ve stayed away from explaining too much about character histories and instead focused more on overall team mythologies and themes. Character histories have long been the province of other writers here on Metagame.com. It’s not that I don’t know them; it just doesn’t seem fair to hog all the fun.

This week, I have to make an exception. First, I love Dr. Doom. Second, and more importantly, Doom is one of the oddest “teams” in Vs. System. I mean, really, it’s not much of a team at all. That’s why character selection can get kind of messy. Who can we comfortably fit on a team named after one guy? (Especially one as massively egotistical as Dr. Doom.) Can any character really be comfortable in Doom’s service? Reviewing the members introduced in Doom’s first outing in the Marvel Origins set, we can see two main themes: evil robots and discarded lackeys.

Evil robots seemed simple, since introducing new Doom Army characters was something we wanted to examine and it jived with my antisocial need for more 5-drop Army guys.

Marvel Origins: Evil Robots  

1. Dragon Man
2. Doom-Bot
3. Robot Destroyer
4. Robot Enforcer
5. Robot Seeker
6. Robot Sentry

How to expand on this? What other evil automatons were left? Well, we didn’t want to go too heavy into the Army theme; it was always a secondary theme. The “Doom Matters” theme needed to be kept intact, so we couldn’t have a gaggle of crazy robots upstage the big man himself. Here’s what we have so far:

Doom Re-Feature: Evil Robots

1.      Doom-Bot ◊ Dr. Doom, Cosmic Thief

2.      Doom-Bot Corps

3.      Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army

Andrew wanted new Doom-Bot Army characters. I wanted a Doom-Bot ◊ Dr. Doom. So we did both. Doom-Bot ◊ Dr. Doom would represent a Doom-Bot who took his programming to the extreme. Because this was a cosmic set, I used the Doom-Bot that stole the Silver Surfer’s power cosmic (and then went “crazy” and tried to return to Earth to destroy his master).

Ultron was born of my frustration with his previous incarnations; we should be able to have multiple Ultrons in play. Army was the easiest way to do this. This is an example of me abusing R&D with my fanboyishness.

Initially, that’s all I had. Pretty weak. I soon realized that trying to design an Army theme featuring only robots was going to be impossible without just making these guys up or redoing all the old ones. Dr. Doom likes to betray his friends, so why wouldn’t he do the same to his soldiers? We added some Elite Doom Guards (hey, they took some classes), and this is when the line between robots and lackeys started to blur.

There really wasn’t any reason not to mix these two themes. In fact, does Doom even need more than one theme? I’ll leave that to R&D. For me, it became a simple matter of tying everything to a “Doom Needs Only Doom” theme. What really tied these allies to Dr. Doom other than his clandestine manipulations and ultimate betrayals? Nothing! That’s exactly what Doom does—he uses you up and spits you out. Is there anyone in the Marvel universe that Doom hasn’t used? It must be very lonely in that castle.

If every character on his team would end up a “discarded lackey,” then which characters (suckers) from the first set were worth re-featuring?

Marvel Origins: Discarded Lackeys

1. Boris, Personal Servant of Dr. Doom
2. Darkoth, Major Desmund Pitt
3. Kristoff Von Doom, The Boy Who Would Be Doom
4. Rama-Tut, Pharaoh from the 30th Century
5. Sub-Mariner, Ally of Doom
6. Tibetan Monks
7. Titania, Mary MacPherran
8. Victor Von Doom II, Son of Doom
9. Volcana, Marsha Rosenberg

Every one of these characters has been done at least twice save for the Monks. Blah. That’s boring. Does that mean I’m actually going to have to work for it? I guess I could actually search through old issues of Super-Villain Team-Up for these pawns of Doom. The Doom team was going to get what has come to be known in R&D as the “All-Star” treatment.

First, we start with the standard three versions of Doom. The first two Dooms, Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant and Dr. Doom, Latverian Monarch, were stolen directly from the Marvel Origins cards Mystical Paralysis and The Power Cosmic. The third, Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival, was pulled from a mostly forgotten story titled “Doom’s Day,” which chronicled Doom’s return to Earth from his exile on Counter-Earth. “Doom’s Day” gave us the Generals of Doom: Lancer, Shakti, Dorma, Divinity, and Technarx (another evil robot!). “Doom’s Day” also led us back to “Heroes Reborn,” which tied into the Fantastic Four re-feature and gifted us with the lovely dual-affiliated Valeria Von Doom; Invisible Woman, Baroness Von Doom; and Mr. Fantastic, Doom’s Adversary. All of a sudden, Common Enemy is brand new!

Another storyline I wanted to mine was the original Secret Wars. I love Titania, Temper Tantrum, so she made the cut from the original teammates. Plus, we needed more women in this set. We could also pull Klaw, Sonic Construct, Ultron (a previously established evil robot), and Molecule Man from that much-beloved story. All four of these characters earnestly believed in Dr. Doom and his plans, and all four eventually suffered for their ignorance.

What about all the randoms that Dr. Doom messed with over the years? This is where it gets kind of crazy and anything goes. R&D was totally in sync with me on this, which allowed me to go wild with lackey possibilities. Mole Man, Moloid Master and some Moloids? Done! Magneto, Acts of Vengeance was manipulated a couple times in issues of Super-Villain Team-Up and the “Acts of Vengeance” crossover—you would think that the Master of Magnetism would be able to handle a guy covered head to toe in reinforced steel. Purple Man, Subtle Manipulator debuted in the Web of Spider-Man set, but since then, he has been featured prominently in comics like Alias, Avengers, and Thunderbolts. It seemed like he deserved a bigger presence in Vs. System. The guy is pretty evil. If you don’t believe me, go pick up a couple of Alias trades and find out how horribly he tortured Jessica Jones.

Iron Man. How in the big blue sky does Iron Man get on the Doom team? Remember, Doom is all about using situations and people to his advantage. If you were stuck back in time with one of the smartest men in history, wouldn’t you at least pretend to be friends until you got back to the future? That’s exactly what happened way back in Iron Man Vol. 1 #149-150. And to make sure that there was no confusion, I even pulled the art description directly from that story. What more do you want?

Oh, you want more Kang! Sure. I’m pretty certain Kang was the first, second, third, and fourth guy on the Team Doom list. Kang is kool. Andrew agreed. When I told him that Kang fit the Doom theme, he was ecstatic. Not all of the Kangs made the final cut, but they did get a pretty useful 2-drop (Kang, One of Many) and a nifty search card (Time Thief).

Wait, we’re missing someone. I almost skipped over the biggest dupe in Doom history. Poor Namor, he never learns. How many times have these guys teamed up? Infinite. And how many times has their relationship ended with a death match? Every time. I wish they would go back to that old explanation for Namor’s erratic behavior. You know, that thing about him going insane if he spent too much time on the surface or underwater? At least then, his infantile gullibility would make sense.

We now had a pretty good roster full of archetypes of evil, but they weren’t quite evil enough to rule their own Baltic nation. Perfect fodder for lethal downsizing. (Given Doom’s spotty record when it comes to alliances, why would you ever—and I mean ever—agree to anything he says? These guys deserved it.). Doom is the man on his team. It won’t do to be showed up by upstarts like Kang or Magneto.

For those of you keeping score, I pulled characters and plot twists from four major storylines: “Doom’s Day,” the Secret Wars, Fantastic Four: Unthinkable, and Fantastic Four: Authoritative Action trade paperbacks. With the other teams in the set, I focused on stories in order to find characters. With Doom, I searched out the characters first and then wrapped the stories around the team. A little backwards, but I think it all made sense in the end.

Art of Betrayal

Dr. Doom sacrifices/betrays/murders/manipulates/deep-fries his allies. How do we show that in the art? Simple—you show Dr. Doom sacrificing/betraying/murdering/manipulating/deep-frying his allies. Is this your first day?

Setting: Castle Doom, Latveria
Action: In the background, Doom, arms crossed, stands on a low balcony overlooking the parade grounds. In the foreground, full battalions of his soldiers march in perfect step. They are outfitted in hi-tech gear and green uniforms. Doom’s royal crest adorns their sleeves. They are ready for interstellar war.
Focus: The Soldiers

Keywords: Crack Troops, Battle-hardened

This piece was originally intended to be a low-cost Army character. Instead, it turned into an Army deck enabler. These guys represent Dr. Doom’s willingness to sacrifice his own men for his goals. I thought it would be cool to have Doom mirror the Kree’s militaristic theme, but have Dr. Doom execute it in his own unique way. While the Kree believe in overwhelming force (as represented in the press mechanic), Doom is all about Doom (as evidenced by his KO mechanic). Including two teams (Doom and Kree) bent toward amassing large armies and a team that embodies an entire race (Inhumans) pushed the idea that it takes an interstellar alliance to stop the Devourer of Worlds.

Setting: Open Battlefield, United States
Action: Wide Shot: Doom’s armies engage a US Tank Division. Doom’s army consists of various mercenary types but mostly Atlantean Elite Soldiers. They are led by Dorma, the Atlantean General of Doom. The Atlanteans are supported by an assortment of hi-tech tanks and fighters. The US troops are easily overrun.
Focus: Dorma
Keywords: Unstoppable Force
References: “Heroes Reborn: Doom #1”

Here again we show Dr. Doom’s command of his ground forces. By the title and card text we can see the ruthless manipulations of, in this case, an entire race of people for the glory of Doom.

Setting: Castle Doom
Action: Dr. Doom pulls one of his soldiers in front of him with one hand, trying to block an incoming energy blast. The soldier’s face is awash with pain as he’s hit by the blast square in the chest. Doom fires back a green energy blast at his unseen assailant with his free hand.
Focus: Dr. Doom
Keywords: Don’t Trust Doom

Like the keyword says, “Don’t trust Doom.” The energy blast ended up a little lower than I’d intended, but not low enough to be silly or vulgar.

Setting: Doom’s Lab, Castle Doom
Action: Dr. Doom is in the center. With one hand, Doom is frying a scientist who dared to voice his opinion. The scientist is in the classic “I’m being burned alive” pose: hands up, mouth agape, and probably screaming. Beneath Doom’s mask, we can see that his eyes are on fire. How dare this imbecile question Doom?
Focus: The burning scientist
Keywords: Lethal Down-Sizing
References: Fantastic Four: Trial of Galactus TPB

The last time we saw Dr. Hauptman, he was clogging up trade binders with his unplayability. I bet he wishes he stayed put now. But seriously, if you’re going to work for Doom, you should keep your mouth shut.

Setting: Castle Doom
Action: Dr. Doom stands over his former lover, Valeria, who is little more than bones. Her body has just been skinned to make his armor. Dr. Doom is wearing his brand-spanking-new skin; his eyes are on fire with the newfound power. Her bones are smoking with green mystical energies.
Focus: Dr. Doom
Keywords: Hellish, Horrific
References: Fantastic Four: Unthinkable TPB

Setting: The air above Castle Doom in Latveria. There is a hole in the roof where we can see Doom’s laboratory, with Dr. Frankenstein–style scientific instruments viewable through the hole.
Action: The piece depicts the story where Dr. Doom robs the Silver Surfer of his power cosmic. Dr. Doom hovers above the highest point of Castle Doom. His back is arched and head is tilted toward the sky as if he has just burst through the roof of his castle. Green energy explodes from his gauntlets, leaving crackling energy trails and casting highlights on his armor. His eyes are wide, indicating a maniacal laughter hidden beneath his solid steel mask.
Focus: Dr. Doom
Keywords: Frenzied, Ultimate Power
References: “Fantastic Four Vol. 1, Issue #57”

This is where Doom just gets silly. This piece represents one of my favorite Doom moments of all time: the theft of the power cosmic. Check out this actual dialogue from “Fantastic Four #57”:

“Flee, you mortal fools! Flee before the matchless might, the awesome majesty, of the new master of all mankind!” – Dr. Doom, Drunk with Power

And then like ten pages later, he loses it. Wow. Awkward.

Setting: The control room, The Magus’s Sanctuary
Action: Kang and Dr. Doom charge the viewer. Kang is in the center with Doom in the background. They are firing their laser guns, which are connected to tech-packs on their backs. The lasers shoot green and purple energy. The costumes they are wearing are from the Infinity War storyline.
Focus: Kang
Keywords: Tech-Pack, Uneasy Allies
References: “Infinity War #5”

Just look at Doom’s face and you’ll know exactly what he’s thinking: “Oh, Kang, I am so gonna shoot you in the back the first chance I get.” And guess what? He does. Good ol' Dr. Doom.

Oh yeah, Doom’s color focus was green. Hah! Never would have guessed, right? It’s okay; I get paid to be smarter than you a small percentage of the time.

Thematically, Doom would sacrifice his own sister in order to achieve his ends. Mechanically, this translated into KO’ing your own characters in order to get nifty bonuses. For more on that and the ultimate role of Army characters on the Doom team, I’ll sling you over to Andrew.

I Hate His Excessive Use of Exclamations

Ah, Doom. When the R&D team first chose to feature Doom as one of the legacy teams in the Heralds of Galactus set, the department was thrown into upheaval. Nostalgia for Dr. Doom’s past assortment of tricks quickly fueled anticipation for a shiny new Doom, even though it wasn’t immediately clear what he would do. Developmentally, R&D had concerns about increasing the power level of the team in Golden Age, while the design team was scratching its head trying to find any space that might have been left by his powerhouse suite of old cards (Mystical Paralysis, Reign of Terror, Boris, and Doomstadt among them). In the end, Doom and his accompanying robots made their return to Vs. System with a set of tricks that revealed a different side of the evil doctor. My beat muse Ben Seck is on another sojourn abroad, so join me for a trip down memory lane, insult-free and unfunny.

Something Old

Legacy teams offer additional considerations for set design; there is always the expectation of old themes and effects returning in a new light. Unfortunately for the Doom team, some of those effects were so powerful that development was skeptical about providing legitimate legacy content for the team, let alone re-featuring Doom as a main team. Thankfully, teams are featured largely based on their popularity and not their power level. If it were otherwise, the design and development issues that arose with Doom might have discouraged R&D from featuring the team again for some time. Despite concerns over the power level, design strongly felt that there needed to be ties between Dr. Doom’s new cards and his old ones. And thus, when it came to designing the new Doom, the first place we looked for inspiration was the team’s Marvel Origins cards.

Looking past the powerful effects, the most obvious facet of the Doom team was that Dr. Doom himself mattered. Doom’s machinations provided him with some of the most powerful plot twists in the game available exclusively to him. Dr. Doom’s name ran through the majority of his memorable cards, which in my mind made him one of the most successful “single character” teams in Vs. System. Clearly, the new Doom team would also need some number of cards that referred to the man himself:

 

 

Cards like Time Thief continued the idea of Dr. Doom providing the team with its most powerful effects. The design, however, soon strayed from showing off Dr. Doom himself.

Something New

Since the set’s center was Galactus, it would be awkward if Dr. Doom was again the most significant individual. Instead, Doom needed to appear nearly insignificant compared to Galactus. Sadly, this meant pushing some of Dr. Doom’s most powerful legacy effects, such as off-initiative exhaustion, over to the Heralds team. Since Heralds would be the marquee stall team, little of Doom’s original play patterns could be preserved without intruding on the Heralds design. This meant that Doom needed a new strategy, the inspiration for which was found in an oft-overlooked legacy card.

 

Dr. Hauptmann implied an aggressive Army strategy that Dr. Doom rarely executed in practice. While Doom-Bots were once a popular mainstay in Doom decks, the other robots (and monks) rarely made appearances anymore. From Dr. Hauptmann’s unlikely brain grew the seeds of the new Doom team: aggressive, off-curve, and . . . mechanical. Having decided on a new theme for Doom, Billy and I had a conversation about additional flavor and mechanic ideas for the team:

A: Okay, so what do the Doom robots do?

B: Well, they pretend they’re Doom, and they blow up a lot.

A: . . .

Doom-Bot Corps

. . .

Doom-Bot ◊ Dr. Doom

. . .

Several conversations later, I was still left with a nearly blank sheet of cards. It was time to delve into the Doom legacy cards for more ideas. What I found in this second dig was one of the most abused cards in all of Vs. System, though it rarely appeared in a deck with Dr. Doom: Devil’s Due

The flavor behind the card was pretty powerful. More importantly, the card reminded me of the useless conversations Billy and I had about the explosive tendencies of Doom’s robots; the incorrect stereotypes of the overall robot community that those tendencies generated; and what we, as human beings, could do to fight those stereotypes. Several beverages and silent moments yielded no answers, so instead we continued down the path to find new ways to blow up robots:

Doom Army Dude 1

When cardname is KO’d, target player loses 3 endurance

Doom Army Dude 2

When cardname is KO’d, target player chooses and discards a card from his hand.

Doom Army Dude 3

When cardname is KO’d, target player exhausts a ready character he controls.

The first pass of Doom robots caused explosive effects when they were KO’d, but the timing rules in the recovery phase made these sorts of effects unwieldy in practice. (It’s a relatively unknown fact that powers that trigger when a character is KO’d during the recovery phase don’t go on the chain until the following turn, making Doom Dude 3 a pretty big beating.) Discarding the “booby trap bots” idea, design decided to make more cards like Devil’s Due that used characters to pay costs:

Reign-y Dr. Doom

When cardname comes into play, you may KO a character you control to return any number of target characters with total cost 3 or less to their owners’ hands.

Thematically, the “expendable ally” cards were easy to justify—Dr. Doom used his resources any way he saw fit, including sacrificing allies and minions when the time came. Once the character rosters developed to include the Doom generals, they became the main candidates for KO’ing your own characters:

Divinity, General of Doom

Activate >>> KO target character you control.

Technarx, General of Doom

Activate, KO a character you control >>> Recover stunned character with cost less than the cost of the character you KO’d and move it to your front row.

Dorma, General of Doom

KO a character you control >>> Turn target face-up resource face down. Use this power only once per turn.

Something Borrowed

After Dr. Doom finished sacrificing his own troops, he was still feeling a little lacking. While his new threads certainly fit the overall needs of the set, they weren’t quite fulfilling the nostalgia for the team’s old effects. To fill this void, some cards were designed specifically to look like old cards:

Castle Doomstadt

Characters you control named Dr. Doom get +3 ATK.

Doom-Bot 2

When Doom-Bots is KO’d, you may ready a character named Dr. Doom you control.

Re-faces of Doom                                                    

As an additional cost to play cardname, KO a Doom Army character you control <p> Search your deck for a card named Dr. Doom, reveal it, put it into your hand, and shuffle your deck.

Other Faces

As an additional cost to play cardname, exhaust a character you control named Dr. Doom. Search your deck for a Doom Army character, reveal it, put it into your hand, and shuffle your deck.

Unfortunately, timing clunkiness would ultimately kill Doom-Bot 2, and Other Faces was unnecessary because players could always just increase their Army character count if they needed more consistency. Castle Doomstadt would change names for balance and to provide another example of the new versions for locations. And just like that, another Heralds of Galactus team was wrapped up.

Something Blue?

Let’s take a moment to reflect on a conversation I had with Andrew while cruising at dangerous speeds over the 91 freeway on the elevated 57 interchange in Orange County, California:

A: You remember Greater of Two Evils, Mutant Supremacy, and Bitter Rivals from Marvel Origins?

B: Yeah . . .

A: Yeah! I want to make cards like those in Heralds of Galactus!

B: You want to make bad cards?

A: No! I want to make cards that look really cool and fun—who cares if they’re bad or good? Players will make decks around them.

B: Hmm, why don’t you concentrate on making some good cards first?

A: BAH!

This isn’t just a random conversation I stuck in here to poke fun at Andrew. Consider it an introduction for the forthcoming second half of articles; the Heralds of Galactus set was an opportunity to make a wide range of cards that promoted new decks, whether they were good or bad. If the Infinite Crisis design motto was “Pushing it to the Limit,” then for Heralds of Galactus it could only have been “For Better or Worse, for the Fun of the Game.”

Is it Over Yet?

More random odds and ends:

• In the flavor, we tried to have Doom talk about himself in the third person as much as possible to really drive home the egotistical theme.
• The art for the five Generals of Doom was written to be pieced together to form a panoramic view of a battlefield scene below Castle Doom.
• The latest design files from the Marvel offices revealed that the Doom-Bots’ propulsion units have been moved from their boots to just below the small of the back.
• The flavor text on Kang, Destiny Warrior refers to the imminent betrayal he’ll experience on the art of Kang, One of Many.
• Mole Man, Moloid Master was originally written as a plot twist entitled “It Came From Below!”
• The women on the Purple Man, Subtle Manipulator art were originally submitted nude. I’m not sure what happened with that.
• You guessed it, the driver in the Titania, Temper Tantrum art is indeed Andrew Yip.

I just got back from an Alaskan cruise and I’ve got to tell you, writing this was exhausting. But not just for me; I believe Yip is currently resting it up in ICU. Join us next week (maybe) for another edition of the Galactus Design Diary. Until then, don’t eat the yellow snow.