You Call it Lying, I Call it the Prodigious Mismanagement of the Truth

One Year Ago (My life is like a DC comic.):

Billy: Since we’re not doing the Fantastic Four as a main team, we could do them as the fifth team. And I think we can squeeze them into the other teams as dual affiliated legacy, thus leaving more room for generic cards (your favorite!). Thoughts?

Andrew: Well, with all that extra room, why settle for the fifth team when they could be the sixth team?

B: How many teams do you want in the set?

A: How many can you thematically and logically fit?

B: You shouldn’t ask me questions like that. Questions like that create actual work. Are you sure you want to go down this road, brother?

A: Hmm, it is a well known fact that I do not like “the work”. But . . . you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.

For the sake of clarity, we’ll call the four main teams from MHG teams 1-4. The Infinity Watch, Skrull, Negative Zone, and Fantastic Four teams will be from now on known as the fifth teams, or teams 5-8.

(When it comes to cramming extra teams into a set, TBS will invariably try to outdo us. He will most assuredly fail.)

The Fantastic Nine

Determining the size and nature of the fifth teams had a significant impact on the thematic design of the entire set. Once we knew that the Fantastic Four would be a dual affiliated legacy team, it helped us narrow down the field for potential main teams. We used the FF to draw three of the four main teams into a loose “storyline” with which to tell the story of the set. With the exception of the Kree (who make the cut based on their close connections to the Inhumans), the FF had played a pivotal role in the personal histories of the Inhumans, Doom, and Galactus. All of these characters made their first appearances in the pages of Fantastic Four.  

Technically, we could have had a lot more FF characters in this set by utilizing the dual affiliation tool. On the Heralds team, we might have dual affiliated a version of Frankie Raye, Silver Surfer, or even Galan (that’s stretching it, I know). For the Inhumans, Crystal, Lockjaw, or Medusa could have taken dual affiliation. With Doom I played with the idea of suggesting a Fantastic Four affiliation for Dr. Doom, Richards’s Rival and, of course, there was Sub-Mariner, Illuminati. In the end, Andrew and I agreed that using too much dual affiliation would dilute the teams and, by extension, the set. Limiting the FF affiliation to nine characters clearly delineated who we considered to be core members of the team: Sue, Reed, Johnny, Ben, Franklin, and Valeria.

It also allowed us to focus more on the “main four” by guest-starring them in the art of fourteen other cards in the set, such as: Ultimate Nullifier (Heralds of Galactus/Reed); Improper Burial (Kree/Thing); Extended Family (Inhumans/Johnny); and The Devil We Know (Doom/Sue).

Since this is going to be a rather long article, I’ll just throw out the most wallpaper-worthy pieces for each team. I won’t bore you with self-indulgent art descriptions.

I actually hate “pose” art. It’s boring to the max. So what did I want to see Thing do? Smash, of course. I enjoyed copying myself by having another character do the same thing on another card. Exploiting the Flaw, anyone?

When I wrote this one I envisioned a much grander execution than the 3-drop character he turned out to be. I know it’s a good card; I’m not stupid. That said, you would think that a “supernova’d” Torch would need to be at least a 7- or 8-drop, right?

This was another one of those “we need more action scenes” cards, and I think it turned out much nicer than it had any right to be. That is the value of hiring A-level talent like Michael Golden.

It’s the standard Galactus/FF action scene brilliantly executed by the fabulous Duncan Fegredo. It’s guys like this that make our jobs look easy. Well, easier.

A sweet little piece about a girl and her almost-brother. The majority of Vs. fans have “the love” for all things Andrew Robinson, so why not throw one of them in here?

Finally, we come to my absolute favorite card in the set. Oh, what this card could have been. Your respect for the Vs. design team would increase by the power of a googolplex if you only knew the awesomeness of the 1-drop Puppet Master. At least it’s still a good card (infinite combo notwithstanding). Ty Templeton gets extra points for illustrating the sweat beads on his forehead.

The “Opposite of Positive” Zone

B: Since we’re trying to get that Origins feel, should we redo the Negative Zone?

A: “Annihilus, The Living Death That Walks!” That has to be his version.

B: Yeah, seriously. Let’s do it. We can do some Army guys too. A new Negative Zone and I think we can dual affiliate some of the Inhumans. It’s going to be sick.  

A: Word.

Initially, we had ten Negative Zone cards planned. I don’t want to reveal that list of cards because we may end up using them in the future, but I assure you that list does exist. After a few weeks, we came to our senses and dropped it down to three characters and a new Zone. It wasn’t until right before we turned in the art descriptions that Andrew decided:

A: Syphonn is much cooler than Annihilus.

B: You’re kidding?

A: Syphonn! (He really did yell his name like that. On multiple occasions. In public.)

Keep in mind this was way before we knew anything about the upcoming “Annihilation” storyline. If we had that storyline to work with I’m almost positive the Negative Zone would have made a much bigger impact on Heralds of Galactus. We probably would have called the set Marvel Annihilation Wave. I guess you’ll have to wait for Marvel Team-Up to see if the N-Zoners get more love.

The Infinity Watch is Not Something You Wear

B: I have an idea for the real fifth team. It’s actually quite brilliant. Want to hear it?

A: I was going to take a shower.  

B: The Infinity Watch!

A: Is that like one of those nuclear clocks?

When I think of cosmic Marvel, I think Thanos. I think Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet. When I think of The Infinity Gauntlet, I think the Infinity Watch. I’m not sure they actually fit in a Galactus set, but if not here then where?

The initial plan was to do each member and his or her respective gem, with the gem’s game text having synergy with the character’s abilities. We wanted a fifth team in the spirit of the Fearsome Five: characters that were garbage when played together, but worked well on other teams. Although the design of the cards changed quite frequently during development, I think the Fearsome Five spirit remained intact. They got a cool The Underworld Star-style search card in Gathering the Watch, a couple of other utility cards like Soul World, and of course The Infinity Gauntlet.

Since this was the first set that Andrew lead designed, he was a bit overwhelmed. (That is the norm for him; life in general is enough to overwhelm him. I think it’s because he’s short.**) Normally, a Vs. set contains four and a half teams, and they all need to have different play patterns. With this set, we were pushing seven or eight main teams. It got a little confusing trying to keep all these teams playing in different ways. So he says to me one fine day in November:

A: Hey, I have no idea what I’m doing here. Design the Infinity Watch.

B: Dude, I’m a writer . . . not a designer.

A: What does that matter? I used to be a computer programmer, moron. Get to work!

So I did. Or at least I tried. Would you like to know why I don’t work at UDE full time? Keep reading.

Now, none of this is going to be “card ready.” I told Andrew I would try to design them; however, I was not even going to attempt to template them properly. These designs are pulled directly from a file dated 11/12/05.

Infinity Gems

• Mind — pay X resource points: steal a character less than X.
• Power — can’t be stunned while attacking.
• Reality — replace # of resources equal to the highest cost character in play.
• Soul — remove target stunned character from the game.
• Space — ready target character.
• Time — negate target plot twist effect.

Gem Characteristics: One per deck. All the powers would be discard from hand effects, like the equipment from Avengers, and the gems can’t be equipped.

Ok, so some of these are obviously too powerful. Yeah, I knew that. But that’s development’s job. Plus, I made them “one per deck” (A: We’re not running “one per deck.” Negative.). The discard-from-hand thing was my way to try and make them useful in Draft without being too powerful. Not allowing them to be equipped was a thematic choice that had something to do with what I had planned for The Infinity Gauntlet. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Infinity Watch:

• Pip the Troll — 1-cost 1 ATK / 1 DEF
• comes into play: search for a character; concealed; cosmic — activate: return to hand.
• Moondragon — 3-cost 2 ATK / 8 DEF
• cosmic — activate: exhaust target character.
• Gamora — 4-cost 12 ATK / 8 DEF
• concealed; cosmic — activate: remove counter and KO target character.
• Adam Warlock — 5-cost 9 ATK / 9 DEF
• cosmic — activate: remove counter and stun target character.
• Drax – 6-cost 13 ATK / 13 DEF
• cosmic — pay 5 endurance: +3 ATK / +3 DEF while attacking this turn.
• Thanos — 7-cost 18 ATK / 18 DEF
• cosmic — pay X resource points: remove counter and return X cards from your KO pile to your hand.

Wow. Ridiculous, right? Well, I guess my thoughts back then were that each member would be pretty strong by him- or herself, and it would make you want to splash them or draft them even though they were off-team. Wait, it gets so much worse—I gave them boost, too . . .

Boost Ideas:

• Pip — boost 1: search for a location.
• Moondragon — boost 2: steal a character with cost 5 or less.
• Gamora — boost 2: opponents may not play plot twists this turn.
• Warlock — boost 3: remove a character from the game.
• Drax — boost 1: stun a character.
• Thanos — boost 2: characters you control can’t be stunned this turn.

They seem really strong, but I had the answer for that; all the characters would get loyalty—reveal. That should totally solve any balance issues and also provide excellent tension. Wait, there’s still something missing—I know, lets have them search out their respective gems when they come into play! Thematic home run.

Even without the blatant Crisis-level power of these designs, Andrew reminded me that we only had so much room in the game text area of the card. The text I wanted just would not fit. He was gracious enough to start with that . . . and then he laid into me about how ridiculous I was. His vision is narrow, his scope limited. I forgave him his ignorance and then he said something like:

A: Literally. The. Worst. Am I talking to TBZ or TBS? I don’t even know you anymore.

So he fired me. Again. Not before I tossed out my idea for The Infinity Gauntlet though:

B: It’s a 10-cost plot twist that says “Reveal six different gems >>> you win the game.”

A: Look up fired in the dictionary. Better yet, I bet Wiki has an entry on it.   

Andrew has no vision! The reveal thing works because it’s like you, the player, have collected the gems and attained godhood! You assemble them on turn 10 and destroy the world! Get it? C’mon!

Anyway, after seeing what might have been, the final versions can’t be half as bad as you thought. My ego is forcing me to point out that some of my drastic designs were actually used in the final, printed cards . . . after a fashion. The Infinity Watch was never meant to work together, so I would wager it all turned out perfectly in the end. You know what else turned out perfectly? The Infinity Watch art. Ding!

 

This is one of the four stackers, and my favorite in terms of execution. Jonboy Meyers definitely deserves a shout-out for his fantastic work on Heralds.

Adam Warlock

 

I like Michael Golden; he does good work. In this piece, he perfectly captures the majesty of the Savior of the Universe.

Soul World

 

When I look at this piece, I see myself in the four-armed Judge Kray-Tor and Andrew Yip in the blue alien, Autolycus. It’s not because I have additional appendages or Andrew is blue, it’s because they look happy. Just good friends. A big brown monster guy and his little blue sidekick. A sidekick who probably lives in a small shoebox under the bed and eats dead mice or chocolate covered cockroaches. Whichever one is on sale that week at the local pet store.

Massive Green Stains

Skrulls, Skrulls, Skrulls. I should just phone this section in since I already admitted, in a previous article, to hating the Skrulls. Then I am reminded of my unparalleled professionalism. Don’t worry, readers—we’ll push through it together.

A: We got the green light to do the Kree over the Skrulls. Are you happy now, Baby McBabesters?

B: We can still make some Skrull legacy guys. Nenora could be dual affiliated and we could always find room for a new Super Skrull.

A: Yeah, whatever. Just get on with it already. I’m so beyond caring. Hey, do you think my head is too big for my frame?

B: You know I’m saving these conversations for the inevitable design articles, right?

A: . . .

Before Heralds, we had three Skrulls: Super Skrull, Skrull Soldier, and Lyja. When design started on Heralds, it seemed like a perfect time to bring them back in full force. Well, you all know how that turned out—I killed the heck out of that idea. I didn’t let it completely bleed out, though. I had plans for the Skrulls. They were going to fill a very specific role in my overall set design. I don’t want to get into what that was here, because I have to save some stuff for next week’s article, but suffice it to say that in my mind, their dual affiliation friendliness was their greatest asset.

How could I pull off the dual affiliation super secret idea?

·         Skrull characters could be dual affiliated with main teams from the set, or;

·         Skrull characters could be dual affiliated with legacy teams.

Nenora fit into the first category and that was pretty much it. The second category took some digging. The most obvious one to me (because of my odd love for all things Cap) was to make a Vs. card out of the Skrull that tried to impersonate Captain America. Then I remembered the time a Skrull impersonated Wolverine. So far, my list included three characters that were very fond of impersonations. Was that going to be our new take on them? Not your standard Army theme, but instead Skrulls masquerading as your favorite Marvel super heroes? At the time, Ethan Edwards was making his debut in the pages of Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, so he was added to the second category. Now I had four Skrulls, with three of them covering legacy spots . . . could I get away with hiding a seventh team in the legacy section of the set? Why not? If it’s good enough for the Fantastic Four . . .

• Nenora — Skrull/Kree
• Captain America, Skrull Imposter — Skrull/Marvel Knights
• Ethan Edwards — Skrull/Spider-Friends
• Rogue, Total Transformation — Skrull/X-Men

When I added Rogue, I subtracted Wolverine. My two reasons were (1) it was redundant to have two legacy X-Men characters, and (2) we just had a pile of new Wolverines in the X-Men expansion (and I know how much you all hate Wolverine). He was axed before Andrew even saw the first draft of the character file. So how did he get back in the set? We’ll get back to that.

We had four dual affiliated Skrulls now, which should have been enough. It still felt awkward somehow. They’re all Skrulls, but not “pure” Skrulls. In the interest of balance I threw in a new Super Skrull and Titannus, who was this new character kicking up a ton of sand over in Marvel Team-Up. He seemed cool, and I loved that he just wrecked fools. How was I to know Robert Kirkman was going to have the character commit suicide? It was surprising and unfortunate, but we were too far into design at that point to cut him from the set. 

It still wasn’t quite right. Then Andrew started to get into the whole Skrull thing. He got very excited, like an eight-year-old who had too many Pixy Stix:

A: I need more Skrulls!

B: They won’t fit. We would have to cut the unaffiliated guys.

A: Forget ‘em! Hyra did infinite unaffiliated dudes in JLA. It’s our time now—it’s the Skrulls time!

B: What about Magus and Goddess? Impossible Man? The Watcher? The Dreaming Celestial? Beta Ray Bill!

A: SKRULLS!!!

(He says he hates my excessive use of exclamations, but that really is how he types. He even makes them with his finger when we talk in person. It’s weird.)

So we got more Skrulls. Warskrull was thrown in as an Army character (which should have been enough), and we added some plot twists like Alien Insurrection and Interstellar Offensive to flesh the team out. This is about the time I was writing the Skrulls into every piece of art that needed a victim, and victimize them I did on cards like Conquered Planet; Kree Soldiers; Dr. Minerva; and Firelord, Harbinger of Havoc. My anger at losing what I believed to be key characters in the unaffiliated section heavily influenced their eventual underdog status and the introduction of a Team-Up like Act of Defiance by R&D.

Now we had seven characters and three plot twists. That’s it. We’re done. No, not quite.

A: Man, #$%@ Super Skrull, lets do Paibok!

Here’s the part where I tell you the complicated Wolverine story: I turned in the character file without Wolverine. A week goes by, then two. Then, one day, I’m randomly chewed out about how stupid it was not to have a Wolverine in the set. Apparently, someone had been doing some independent research. The ego was bruised. They said things like, “Hey genius, how could you miss that?” and “You’re fired.” My response:

B: #^@%&*#@%&*^#@!  

Eight characters. Three plot twists. Infinite synergy. Incredible combo power. Best team in the set? I don’t know. Best fifth team ever? Heck, yes! Skrulls!

Let’s get some art in here before Andrew jumps out of the closet.

A Johnny-come-lately, but I’m glad he made the cut. This guy has it all—an insane ability, fantastic art, carnies, and green vomit. What a fine day to visit the fair.

I’m not sure how anatomically correct her pose is, but who really cares? Ryan Kinnaird did an excellent job by truly capturing this version of Rogue. He includes all the little details we asked for: bone claws, organic armor, and blood brothers.

Titannus

The black and white for this one is museum-worthy. Wouldn’t it be cool if UDE put out some black and white chaser cards with every set? Originally I think this guy was a 16 ATK / 16 DEF. Then Humphreys jumped in and ruined it. Boo.            

Wolverine, Skrunucklehead

Okay, I can admit when I’m wrong. They were right. I was an idiot to leave out Wolverine. I deserved to be fired for that one. Who knew Skrunucklehead would become one of my all-time favorite Vs. cards? Rest assured, we’re giving all you Wolvie lovers new versions of the old Canucklehead in Marvel Team-Up. You heard it here first.

Hey, Andrew—tag me out, yo!

Are We Done With This Joke Yet? ***

Much like their comic book counterparts, the Skrulls appeared in many different forms during the Heralds of Galactus set design. Though they first appeared with a mechanic all their own, they were also “the other press team,” and ended up being “the team-up team.” Throughout design, the most influential characteristic of the Skrulls was their shapeshifting ability. Many, many times in comics, inexplicable and just plain out of flavor things would happen only to be explained away with a simple: “It wasn’t (insert Big Name Super Hero here)—it was a Skrull!” Much like Dr. Doom, the celebrities of the Marvel universe would not allow their names to be sullied with obvious discontinuities. Instead, explosive robots and misunderstood aliens took the brunt of the punishment like so many quiet school children finally given a chance to do something brave but stupid — such as take the blame for a whoopee cushion prank gone bad. Really, the Skrulls just wanted to be loved.

Shaping the Skrulls

The first Skrulls had a mechanic all their own—a mechanic that not only won’t be described (because it may show up at a later time), but is also unknown to every other member of the design team. The reason for this is that of the hundred design files created during Heralds design, only one has the original Skrull mechanic. This mechanic exists exclusively in my head and on that one design document—which I promptly ate when it became obvious that there were too many mechanics in the set. What’s that? You don’t care? Fine. Let’s move on to topics of greater import and lesser mystery, and leave this one unexplored until a future set.

As the smaller fifth or sixth team in Heralds of Galactus, the Skrulls were constantly in search of a place. Too small to have their own mechanic, too big to be relevant in Sealed only, the Skrulls posed a difficult challenge. It was then that Lead Developer Dave Humpherys embarked on another of his development-fueled design rampages and conceptualized the original Skrull Rebellion:

Skrull Rebellion

If target opponent controls three or more characters that do not share a team affiliation, he exhausts two characters he controls. If you control a Skrull character, instead, he stuns them.

Fresh off of X-Men, the development team was preparing for an expected flood of multi-team decks that played Enemy of My Enemy but didn’t care about teaming-up. To offset this, a Betrayal-based team that punished opponents for not playing with team-ups made a lot of sense. One of the problems that arose with this initial concept was that it made the Skrull team metagame-sensitive; they’d come and go very obviously as multi-team decks grew and shrank in popularity. The design team didn’t want the Skrulls to be so niche in their purpose, especially considering the plans for Marvel Team-Up and World’s Finest at the time. A different concept was preferable.

The theme of affiliations carried over from Skrull Rebellion and inspired the next Skrull theme. To eliminate the metagame sensitivity that required your opponents to play multiple teams, the new Skrulls instead compared opposing characters’ affiliations to their own:

Paibok                   

Whenever Paibok stuns a character, recover that character and move it to your support row if it shares an affiliation with Paibok.

Besides being a cool way to represent the Skrull’s integration into the worlds they were assaulting, there wasn’t much else going for this idea. Naturally, it was going to bungle up mirror matches, and otherwise it required narrow effects that allow you to team-up with your opponent’s characters. This design had a similar problem as the previous one in that it required a fair bit of metagame understanding before the team could be played. So back to the drawing board we went. 

The design team kept returning to the idea of affiliations as a way to represent the Skrull’s shapeshifting and adaptation. Finally, a grumpy Humphreys, who had become increasingly anxious to develop the file and tired of the fickle minds of the designers, once again took it upon himself to provide what would be the final Skrulls direction:

Rogue, Skrull

Whenever Rogue stuns a character, search that character's controller's deck for a copy of that character. You may put that card into your front row exhausted. If you do, KO Rogue.

As you can see, not much changed with Rogue. Capturing much of the flavor of the second design, Rogue spawned an offshoot of Skrull and Skrull-legacy characters that subtly or explicitly referred to how many affiliations you controlled. In her own way, Rogue gave players another team affiliation—that of the character she turned into. Conceptualizing them as a team that cared about having as many different team affiliations as possible was not only thematic, it also gave the Skrulls a very clear, limited purpose.

I Never Said it Was a Timepiece

One of the most fun groups of cards to design in the Heralds of Galactus set was the Infinity equipment. Not because of their gross power level, but because there is rarely such an obvious match between flavor and the desire to create card cycles. Beyond pandering to Billy Zonos’s awful lies and lackadaisical attitude (he was the reason there was no article last week, I assure you), from time to time I also have to put up with his designs. Even considering that he’s not an R&D member, Billy’s initial concepts for the Infinity Gems captured the essence of the design: they had to work in a similar fashion, and they had to form the Infinity Gauntlet.

One of the consistent criticisms of equipment is its frailty. Unless it’s giving stat bonuses, it tends to be too insignificant for its lifespan. One of the major design challenges for any non-stat-boosting equipment is to make it playable. This takes form in two basic shapes:

• Make the effects more powerful, or;
• Increase the equipment’s lifespan.

Mechanics like concealed and transferable help increase the equipment’s lifespan, while individual equipment receives the former treatment on a case-by-case basis. For the Infinity Gems, a healthy dose of each was in order. To increase lifespan and to represent the fact that the gems had never been destroyed (just lost or untapped), the return to hand clause was designed from the beginning. To complement the bouncing quality, the powers of each gem were designed as come-into-play powers. While each instance of a power was not necessarily better than a normal equipment power, the fact that it occurred repeatedly over the course of the game theoretically pushed the gems towards playability.

Leftover Bits

Flavor Notes:

• Valeria Von Doom and Valeria Richards could technically be the same person. Since Von Doom was from an alternate dimension, however, we thought that it would be cooler, flavor-wise, to be able to have them both in play at the same time. Was this the right choice? Opinions vary.  
• You may have noticed that Sue, Reed, Johnny, and Ben were each treated to a 4-drop character card. Usually, this would have been one of my ideas. As smart as I like to think I am, sometimes I miss the obvious. Likely it was some random designer from R&D—not Yip, probably Hump. That guy is a genius with pretty, soft hair.  
• To make up for the loss of our unaffiliated roster, an idea to make the Infinity Watch unaffiliated was tossed around. “The Infinity Watch” would have been used as their shared versions.
• For the Infinity Gem art, I used the gems as a framing device to depict scenes from The Thanos Quest, the story in which Thanos gathered the six gems, thereby creating the Infinity Gauntlet. We also thought it would be a cool idea to have a different artist draw each gem. 
• We ran into a weird dilemma when it came to giving Wolverine, Skrunucklehead and Captain America, Skrull Imposter their final names and versions. Remember, these guys were actually Skrulls, so would it be in flavor to call them by their imposter names? Or, was Skrull Agent ◊ Wolverine the way to go? You can imagine the problems this caused. Problems like heated debates and broken furniture. In the end, it was decided that these Skrulls had so thoroughly immersed themselves in the impersonation that even they weren’t sure who they were. Sound fishy? Whatever . . . like “Infiltration Operative #736 ◊ Captain America” was any better. 
• Warskrull lost his Army version when Hump decided he was too good.  Thankfully, no one will ever decide Hump is too good.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope we were able to redeem ourselves with this extra long edition, if even just a little. Sadly, next week should be the final article in this long-winded series and, hopefully, we left ourselves with something interesting to talk about. If not, you’ll just have to suffer through it anyway.

A: Whatever dude, I’m done.

B: Dude, we still have to write about the legacy and generics stuff.

A: Yeah, right. Get Hump to do it. I’m going to get a smoothie.

*Yes, we missed a week. I’m sure you were all very disappointed. I would also like to add that I am entirely comfortable passing the buck and laying the blame at Yip’s door.

**Andrew thinks the jokes about him are getting stale. I disagree. They aren’t really jokes. They are more akin to observations of a “Yip in the wild.” They are not meant to entertain, but to teach.

***I told you, it’s not a joke.