Several weeks ago in one of my articles, I answered an email from A.F. all the way in Manila, the Philippines. The following excerpt is a chunk of it that I put off answering because I felt it deserved a long enough answer to make it a whole article by itself. You see, I have very few good ideas of my own, so whenever one rolls my way, I have to milk it as much as possible. It’s similar to how I fill up space with all sorts of information-free asides, like this one.

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 the ones that would be able to secure victory almost by themselves. This does not appear to be the case in Vs. System, 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 work hard 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.


First, let me address the idea presented by this email that some rares are intended to be game breaking and some are intended to be bad and unplayable. Actually, while these issues are framed in the rarity question, they’re really asking a different one altogether. Does R&D purposely make some cards good and some cards bad, with “purposely” being the operative word?

You see, it might jump out at you more when a rare ends up being bad then when a common is just as bad, but the axis of good cards and bad cards exists at all rarities. And, while there has to be a gradient between good and bad cards (I’ll explain why in a future article, but the short answer is that everything’s relative) the real question is how heavy-handed R&D is in influencing the power levels of these good and bad cards. Though I occasionally mention this issue (like how we really enjoyed hosing Unus—take that, Concerned Unus Fan!), I should probably cover it in a future article as well . . .

 . . .All right, here’s a short answer to tide you over. While we usually set a card’s power level where development feels comfortable, there are often cards that could go either way. In these cases, there are several questions that we ask ourselves, such as, “Does this team need some help in this area?” or, “How popular is this character?” or, “Are we afraid of this mechanic?” and we set the card’s strength according to those answers. As far as R&D purposely making a card unplayable, notice that, “Hey, should we make this card so incredibly bad it will be ridiculed, mocked, and torn up to be used as counters on other cards?” is not one of the questions we ask ourselves when designing cards.

Enough about good cards and bad cards—let’s talk about rarities.

The way we handle things is actually pretty complex. I’m going to cover several issues, but before I begin, I want to throw something out there. These are just guidelines. They’re the basic concepts we consider when assigning rarities.

I’ve divided things up into three main issues. First I’ll go over each of them, and then I’ll specifically summarize each rarity level. The three issues are:

Complexity
Splash Value
Sealed Pack and Draft Play


Complexity, or “Wait, let me read that card again . . .”

By complexity, I mean how difficult it is for a player to understand what a card does. There a couple of different reasons a player might not understand just how a card works. Sometimes it’s hard to understand a card simply because its text is really long. For example, Mattie Franklin ◊ Spider-Woman is quite a read. By the time you get to the bottom of her text box, your left eye is twitching and you have to run outside put another quarter in the parking meter.

Other times, a card is hard to understand because the wording on the card is just plain confusing. A good example is Poison Ivy. Even though her templating is technically accurate, it sure is hard on the old noggin.

As a general rule, the harder a card is to understand, the more likely it is to be an uncommon or rare. I’m not saying that all rares are more complicated than all commons (in fact, there are cross-cutting factors such as splash value which can lead to simple-to-understand yet extremely powerful rares), just that the more complicated a card is, the rarer it usually is.

It’s important to note that a basic understanding of the individual cards is also a large issue when it comes to new or prospective players. If Joe Bubblegumhead is like “Wow, what’s this cool Super Hero game?” and he picks up a handful of cards that make absolutely no sense* to him, then he’s unlikely to join the Vs. System community, and then he’ll never teach his family how to play, and then I’ll never end up dating his sister, and then I’ll never get married and have babies, and my mom will be so disappointed.

The point is, a newer player usually starts by buying only a few packs. The fewer packs he or she buys, the fewer uncommons and rares he or she pulls, and the fewer crazy, complicated cards he or she sees. That way, the new player can enjoy the basics of the game at first, and slowly work up to playing with more complex cards.

There are a few other complexity issues. For example, while we were designing Marvel Origins, Mike** made it clear that any card that used counters should be rare. This is because counters are an “external” (something a player needs other than the cards in order to play the game), and because a new player might not understand what a counter is. This is why Mr. Zsasz