Reading over a number of the fan sites after the release of the X-Men set, I came across a series of questions raised by players about certain character-related design and development decisions. I thought it might be a good idea to dedicate one of my weekly Metagame articles to reviewing the R&D process that went into the set’s final direction.

As an industry professional, I’m obligated to provide readers with honest, insightful answers to these questions. As a fanboy, however, all bets are off. So, I decided to allow both aspects of my personality to share their unique versions of what really happened.

Why wasn’t Omega Red in the set?

The Professional: As I’ve mentioned in past articles, the R&D team has upcoming sets internally scheduled for the next two years. When determining the character roster for the X-Men set, I took a peek at what we had planned for later down the road. At some point in the future, there will be a set in which Omega Red serves a higher design purpose than simply being a non-aligned X-Men villain. We can only introduce a character once in the game, so there’s a fair amount of consideration for maximizing the “wow” value when we do it. I’m currently on the schedule to design that upcoming set, and I have big plans for Mr. Red’s Vs. System debut. Along the same lines, this also helps to explain why Cable wasn’t in the set, either.

The Fanboy: Lies, all lies. Oh, I designed an Omega Red card for this X-Men set. It didn’t matter that he was a non-aligned character—he was my most perfect creation. I turned the card over to development and waited to see what would happen. Dave Humpherys typically reviews the file starting with the first hero team of the set and then works his way down to the non-aligned characters. While he was distracted, Patrick Sullivan skipped ahead to Omega Red; his eyes grew wide and an evil smile spread across his face. Within minutes, Patrick had constructed a test deck and challenged others to play against his invention. A few turns later, Omega Red hit the table and Patrick let out an unholy howl of delight. Then things started getting really strange. 

Reality began to bend inward on itself and Omega Red started to change the rules of the game. Then, time reversed its flow and R&D watched helplessly as the first PC was won by a non-affiliated deck. Mere seconds before the universe reverted to the big bang, Dave Humpherys stopped reviewing the proposed mechanics for Gambit and used his godly developer powers to attempt to rewrite Omega Red’s game text. He furiously adjusted costs, ATK/DEF values, and play conditionals. Even with all his nerfing skills, Dave was unable to balance Omega Red. In the end, there was only one solution that would save known existence. Dave moved Omega Red from the active design file to the unused mechanics file—the graveyard file for all card designs that cannot be balanced.

And that’s the real story of what happened to Omega Red in this set. Strangely, late at night when I leave the office, I occasionally find Patrick at Humpherys’s desk, gazing at the password-protected entry screen of the unused mechanics file. Listlessly, he rocks back and forth in Dave’s chair, chanting, “His time is coming. The master will soon return . . .”

Why wasn’t Sub-Mariner a Mutant? 

The Professional: In the very earliest design files, he was a Mutant. Later in the process, we started looking at big-picture deck builds that incorporated the Mutant traits. Reviewing the Avengers team, I evaluated how useful it would be for one of their characters to have the Mutant trait. Would one character be enough to open up a deck design that would use the trait mechanics? I also looked at the visual play presentation of having Sub-Mariner as a Mutant when previously printed mutant Avengers characters like Beast, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch did not have the trait bar. I also knew we would eventually re-feature the Avengers team in a future set. I determined that it would be better to feature Sub-Mariner as a Mutant when we brought the team back and could include him in a team that supported other Mutant characters. As a legacy character in The X-Men, I wanted his mechanics to build on the reservist mechanics that were introduced in The Avengers. The next time we print him, we can have his mechanic more naturally support a Mutant trait strategy.

The Fanboy: Sub-Mariner was a Mutant in the file up until the very last day R&D was allowed to make changes. Early that morning, Antonino cleaned up the play tables, putting loose test cards from several sets into a single pile. Later, while Justin was busy explaining his early design concepts for the Infinite Crisis set, Ant absentmindedly shuffled the stack of assorted test cards. Just as Justin finished laying out the design direction for the Shadowpact team, Antonino looked down at the stack of cards in his hand and cried out, “My god, what have we done?”

Ant rushed to the play tables and began to challenge everyone in R&D. He won every game. He consistently beat decks on turn 2 and frequently won on turn 1. R&D tried every deck against the build, including the pre-errata’d Dr. Light/Rama-Tut deck. Nothing could beat it. It was at this point that Dave Humpherys stepped in and reviewed the deck. As R&D watched, Dave took the four copies of Sub-Mariner in the deck and crossed off the Mutant trait. After this single change, Ant was lucky to win by turn 8 (and then only thirty percent of the time). Personally, I have no idea how this change could have had that level of impact on the deck, but then again, I couldn’t figure out how a 5-drop was contributing to a turn 2 kill, either.

Moments before going to press, we removed the Mutant trait from Sub-Mariner. I later reminded Dave, “You know, we do have cards in the set that can give non-Mutants a Mutant trait. Won’t someone just figure out how to build this deck anyway?” Dave’s response was, “We’ve run some initial calculations. Assuming that people only know four cards of the sixty-card deck, combined with the number of cards already in print and the number of each card that could be put into the deck, we estimate it will take players 1,567.4 years to recreate it, assuming that they tested 24/7/365.” That made me feel a little better, but just to be safe, I made Dave create an erratum and put it into the web posting queue for the year 3573.
 

I noticed that in the pictures of Erg, it shows his Electric Eye Mutant power coming from the eye under his eye patch. In the comics, it is shown coming from his good eye. Why the reversal in the art?

The Professional: We screwed up. No easy answer here. It was caught by Kate on our editing staff very late in the review process, but by then, the grids were already at the print stage. It got past me, the product manager group, and the art department, and even Marvel approved the images. It happens from time to time.

The Fanboy: The original images were correctly submitted to Marvel for approval. Shortly after, Vs. System Product Manager Dan Bojanowski received a call from Erg’s agent. Apparently, Erg is currently in negotiations with Chris Claremont and Joss Whedon to be brought back in one of the future X-Men titles. His agent also claimed that his camp is having talks with Avi Arid about a possible Morlocks movie in ’07. The agent further explained that they were attempting to update his client’s image. Initial testing showed that switching eyes resonated better with the coveted eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old male demographic. So, in exchange for future considerations and the use of Erg’s private yacht, Dan instructed our art department to invert the existing images so that his electric blast would be shown coming from his other eye.
 

What’s the deal with DC having a card named Beautiful Dreamer and Marvel having a card named The Beautiful Dreamer? 

The Professional: I banged my head against the wall many times trying to solve this one. This actually isn’t the first time that this has happened in the game. There’s a Marvel character named The Rose and a DC character named Rose. Still, I wanted to find a better solution this time around. I asked Hyrum Savage to call our contact at Marvel to see if the character had a birth name or if they’d be willing to make one up for us. That way, I could use the identity mechanic and call her Real Name ◊ Beautiful Dreamer. No such luck. However, they did tell Hyrum that we could make up a name for her. I was so happy when Hyrum delivered that message. Not only would it solve the problem, but I was also actually being given the chance to contribute to official Marvel cannon (even though we’ll most likely never see this character again in the comics).

Hyrum had initially suggested his daughter’s name, Emily Savage. Savage is a super cool last name (his son’s name is Jack Savage), but it was a tad too aggressive in my mind for this specific character, plus there were potential issues with the Vandal Savage DC character. I ended up settling on Emily Play, which was a pun of an old Pink Floyd song, “See Emily Play.” Hyrum submitted the name and everything looked good . . . that is, until the Marvel legal department reviewed the grids. They nixed the idea and suggested we use the name “Name Not Revealed.” Lame! Lame, lame, lame, lame. And that’s the story behind The Beautiful Dreamer.

The Professional: Back when I started writing weekly articles for the Avengers set, Toby asked me for an image to use. As I was about to shoot him an email with a picture, I started to think that it would be cool if I did something different from the norm. (It’s thinking like this that brought you things like the alternate art Emma Frost in the X-Men set.) I always liked how the fan website forums supported character image avatars from the sets. I asked Toby if it were possible for each of my weekly articles to feature a new character avatar from the current set. This is why my first article featured the Avengers Iron Man avatar. As it turns out, Toby explained that it takes a fair amount of work for the web developers to alternate the image on a weekly basis. The time was better spent incorporating cool graphics into the body of the articles. When it came time to write my weekly X-Men articles, I told Toby to update the image and use the Vs. System logo.

The Fanboy: Speaking of the Vs. System logo, OP Manager Scott Elliott and I have a running agreement to get Vs. System tattoos. Many, many months ago at a cross-functional meeting, Scott declared that he was getting a Vs. tattoo. I usually try to squash my ego when it rears its ugly head, but as the game’s designer, there was no way I was letting him get a Vs. tattoo before I got one. So we both agreed to go on the same day and get our tattoos. Reviewing all the different incarnations of the logo, I chose the flame logo that appeared on the Ghost Rider Marvel Knights t-shirt. We even got Jeff Donais to put the expense into the yearly budget. Every month or so, it comes up at a meeting and people ask to see our tattoos . . . which we haven’t gotten yet. If you ever see Scott Elliott, ask him to show you his Vs. tattoo. Maybe if people bug him enough, he’ll actually follow through on his promise.