When it came time put cards for the old teams into Web of Spider-Man, many decisions had to be made. Not only did we seek to balance out the power levels of the old teams, we were also concerned with filling out the themes within a team. We didn’t want there to be only one way to build the best deck for a team. During most of the time period we were working on Web of Spider-Man, The New Brotherhood made quite a strong showing. At the tail end of our work on the set, Big Brotherhood decks were starting to emerge in tournaments around the world.

It might be helpful to keep that setting in mind as a backdrop for our decisions as we looked at the X-Men in Marvel Origins. While the X-Men arguably had some of the best 2 and 3 cost characters in the game, the team would clearly benefit from the addition of a combat oriented 5 cost character. A large 4 cost character wouldn’t hurt either. It’s no coincidence that those “holes” were filled in¾we were fairly confident that the X-Men needed some help.

I think it might have been interesting to leave certain team deficiencies. Doing so might give players a reason to look to other teams to fill in the gaps. This would be one way to increase deck diversity and possibly enhance game play. Still, we realized people would want to build competitive mono-team decks and, at any rate, the X-Men wasn’t a team we wanted to treat this way. We decided to foster teaming-up in other ways, like team synergy and complimentary cross-team features.

We didn’t just want to supply 4 and 5 cost character alternatives when designing Web of Spider-Man.  In fact, we were more interested in filling out themes and strengths of the old teams. The following were some of the concepts we wanted to further foster within the X-Men: Weenie-Swarm, Unstunnable, Discard, Recovery, Direct Stun, and Aerial Supremacy. I’ll take you through each of these themes and the evolution of the related cards during the development of Web of Spider-Man. I’ll give you a glimpse of the cards through three snapshots in time during development so you can see which cards improved and which cards suffered.

Weenie-Swarm

As I mentioned above, the X-men had plenty of solid 2 cost characters and the biggest 3-drop around, Wolverine, Logan. They also had access to one of the most effective means of pumping up all characters on both attack and defense, thanks to The Blackbird. You can take a look at an example of the type of deck I’m referring to, detailed here by Brian Kibler way back in April.

We figured another good small character wouldn’t hurt this theme. We also wanted to give the fans of Shadowcat something to get excited about. The new version, Shadowcat, Pride of the X-Men, was set at a cost of 3. This left the “typical” cost gap of two between this copy and her other version, Shadowcat, Kitty Pryde. I mean, you aren’t going to draw Wolverine, Logan every game, right? Shadowcat, Pride of the X-Men’s initial game text was: “Evasion. X-Men characters in Shadowcat's row have evasion.” She had 3 ATK and 5 DEF all the way through testing. We wanted to give the X-Men weenie swarm a means of staying out on the board, and this seemed to fit very well. From the outset of testing evasion, I’d expressed a great concern about letting just any character gain evasion. Handing out evasion to the likes of Alicia Masters, who had limitations based on fundamental assumptions like “You will be able to attack a character”, seemed to get around balances we’d placed on existing cards and might want on future cards. In the end, we did not allow any character without evasion to gain this power. In need of another power for Shadowcat, we gave her the current power to return a character to hand. This, among other options, allows you to return stunned members of your horde back to your hand to be replayed on later turns. If you don’t want to recruit those characters later, maybe they can be used for the X-Men’s many discard costs. She also provided another solid target for Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Madripoor didn’t change throughout development. It was another card like Danger Room, benefiting multiple characters and keeping your opponent constantly guessing what might be lurking in your resource row. Now players might only need to run two copies of each card, making it less likely to be stuck with multiple locations of the same name.

You might not have guessed it, but Power Nexus was probably the most debated card for this team. You didn’t see the initial version, though: “As an additional cost to play, exhaust five X-Men characters you control >>> KO target character.” (You may see a resemblance to another card, Get Him My Petsss, when you look at our original version of Power Nexus). This card was challenging to pull off, but once you got it off¾especially on your opponent’s initiative¾there wouldn’t be much chance for him or her to pull out a win. What if it were somehow recurred with Dr. Doom, Diabolic Genius or Garth? I don’t even want to think about it. Then came: “Play only during your attack step. As an additional cost to play, exhaust four X-Men characters you control. KO target character.” Well, at least now you couldn’t steal the initiative away from you opponent by taking down his or her largest character. However, this still wasn’t quite what we were looking for. Like the original version, the final version is strong on your opponent’s initiative, but you really have to work for it now: “As an additional cost to play Power Nexus, exhaust any number of X-Men characters you control. Stun target character if its cost is less than the number of X-Men characters you exhausted this way.”

Unstunnable

The X-Men had an unstunnable-while-attacking theme running with Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner and Cyclops, Scott Summers. I always enjoyed the feeling such impunity afforded¾no worries about being stunned when I toss a couple Savage Beatdowns on my attacker, and no worries about Overload or any number of other cards. This theme is also fun in combination with the Brotherhood if you team-up and use cards like Savage Land. So Bamf! was brought onto the scene! At first it looked like: “If an X-Men character you control would becomes stunned while attacking this turn, you may pay 2 endurance. If you do, the character is not stunned.” A little later it was increased to 3 endurance. Then one day, the payment of endurance vanished altogether, and we were left with a card that appears to be a fan favorite: “X-Men attackers you control cannot be stunned this turn.”

Discard

I wonder how many of you have actually built an X-Men discard deck? The deck certainly has some weaknesses, but it can accomplish its mission. You have Psylocke and Professor X, Charles Xavier, who pair up with Rogue, Power Absorption and then Professor Xavier's Mansion. You can branch out to other teams for more craziness along those lines. To add to this lineup, we introduced Emma Frost. Only a few changes occurred during the development of this card. In the end, she gained Loyalty and lost a point of DEF. We also hoped she’d provide a little card drawing for decks that frequently discarded X-Men character cards for various effects.

Recovery

In many ways, we viewed recovery as one of the X-Men core themes. We wanted Children of the Atom to be a real powerhouse. Additionally, the X-Men had Muir Island for a strong recovery effect. We wanted to continue the trend of giving the X-men some exciting recovery options.

As with many of the cards discussed here, Ultimate Sacrifice could have been grouped in this article into another section¾the weenie-swarm strategy¾since it really helps out on the turns when a bunch of your characters are stunned. Ultimate Sacrifice survived development intact. We engaged in a little haggling over Siege Perilous. The first line remained a constant: “Whenever an X-Men character you control recovers, put a rebirth counter on Siege Perilous.” The rest changed from an initial “Remove two rebirth counters from Siege Perilous Draw a card.” to the final “Remove three rebirth counters from Siege Perilous Draw 2 cards.” Hopefully, the addition of these two recovery cards leaves you with plenty of options for optimizing your particular deck.

Now we arrive at one of our characters with impressive stats, John Proudstar. He is in no way lacking ATK or DEF, but he does have a large drawback. However, with all of these recovery effects, it shouldn’t be too much work getting around that drawback. John Proudstar also escaped any changes during development.

Direct Stun

In the tradition of Gambit, who could really give an opposing weenie deck some headaches, we followed up with Sunfire as a nice one-two punch. Sunfire initially had an ATK of 9, but that seemed a little higher than we wanted on a character with flight, range, and such a nice power. The team theme is still a fledgling one. You’ll have to let us know if you want to see more direct stund in this team.

 

Aerial Supremacy

 

Another tiny theme gained two additions. We built upon Storm, Ororo Munroe’s power to help your team rule the skies. Aerial Supremacy was the thematic card that led the charge. I believe the functionality of this card was unchanged during the play testing.

 

Archangel didn’t actually begin as part of this theme. His initial power was: “Activate >>> Exhaust target character with a cost of 5 or less. That character cannot ready during the recovery phase this turn. Use this power only during your attack step.” Eventually he was redesigned into his final form to help tie in with our emerging Aerial Supremacy decks. It didn’t hurt that he could also work along with the unstunable theme. Additionally, I hope he also pleases those of you who just like large ATK values.

 

The Other Teams

We went through a similar process (to varying degrees) with the other teams in Marvel Origins. We tried to make it easier to build decks with themes and strategies that weren’t effective using just the original set. The more we could encourage new approaches, the better. We also tried to patch up some holes in the other teams. For example, we tried to give the Sentinels a couple more tools to complement powerhouses like Nimrod and Bastion, as well as give them interesting cards to combat cards that make them cringe, like Flame Trap. But that’s another story . . .

 

Comments welcome at DHumpherys@metagame.com.