Hi, and welcome to the first sneak preview card for the new Vs. System set, Justice League of America. My name is Matt Hyra and I was the lead designer for JLA. I also used to write a column on Metagame.com called “Wicked Clever.” For those who never found me or my column to be particularly clever, perhaps this card will make you reconsider . . .

No, you don’t need to have your eyes checked. Supes has two team affiliations—he is equally a member of the JLA and of Team Superman. But we’ll get back to that. After the initial shock and awe, you probably noticed a new keyword, ally. I came up with a mundane explanation of the keyword that I think says it all: “Ally characters help those who help themselves.”

Ally characters have powers that trigger off of powering-up. Ally, like willpower, doesn’t do anything inherently, but is affected by other cards. The effect of the ally power will always be spelled out after the keyword appears.

So, if a protected attacker or defender you control becomes powered-up while you control Superman, Avatar of Peace, his ally power will trigger and give that character invulnerability for the duration of the attack.

A character’s ally power will trigger even if it is the character being powered-up. So, a protected Superman has the ability to make himself invulnerable. If you control multiple ally characters, a single power-up will trigger each ally power that applies. An ally power triggers when a power-up effect resolves off the chain. You may resolve ally powers in the order of your choice.

If a power-up is negated, the character does not become powered-up and no ally powers will trigger. An ally card is a character card with the ally keyword.

That’s all I’m going to say about ally now, but there will be more on it next week. And before you ask . . . yes, ally is the only new keyword in the set. Fear not! You’ll find plenty of bolded words gracing some of your favorite heroes in JLA. You might’ve noticed that Superman has leader. Before moving on, be sure to take a second look at his impressive stats.

Now Back to That Dual Affiliation Thing

Nice, huh? The JLA set seemed like the perfect place to introduce the dual affiliation concept. Because so many of the characters in the set have been on more than one team in the comics, it was a natural fit.

Creating legacy content (cards for older teams) is not an easy endeavor. Historically, such cards have been either nearly worthless in Sealed Pack play or so barely team-stamped as to be hardly dedicated to the intended team. Often, rare legacy cards are the last pick out of a pack, as there is no way to get any use out of them because of team stamping. Superman, Avatar of Peace is numbered among the JLA characters, but his mere presence makes the “dedicated” legacy content up around the low 200s rather usable. Need to discard a Team Superman character to pay the cost of a legacy plot twist? You’ll have a few different characters lining up to take the plunge. In the past, there might have been one Team Superman character in the set, and it being uncommon or rare, your chances of getting it in Sealed play would have been very low, making both cards essentially useless.

With the introduction of dual-affiliated characters, legacy content gets a shot in the arm and makes all legacy cards in the set that much more playable. Some teams have thrived with legacy content (Sentinels). Some have yet to make a dent in the metagame, despite their legacy content (Arkham Inmates). With dual-affiliated characters, we can offer a lot more legacy content without taking up valuable space that the new teams deserve.

Mind you, not every character that could be dual-affiliated will be. Sometimes a character won’t be simply because his or her mechanic on the new team would be worthless in any conceivable build of the character’s original team. Others won’t get it for flavor, continuity, or we-just-didn’t-feel-like-it reasons.

Next week is R&D’s chance to show you a little something about each of the new teams.

Justice League of America

Justice League International

Injustice Gang

Secret Society of Super-Villains

During the last full week of October, you will be led still further into the set by the Metagame.com writers. And be sure to visit top Vs. fan sites around the world for additional preview cards throughout the next two weeks. We’ll send them the cards, and they’ll do their own writing.

But More About Me

Why haven’t I continued writing “Wicked Clever”? Well, I’ve been busy. While I have worked on every Vs. set to date, I have also spent a lot of time over the past year working on other games. I was the lead designer of Super Hero Showdown, which is a cross between an action figure (4” figures) combat game and a semi-collectable (only a few randoms) card game. Wolverine moves to Doc Ock’s Lab and uses his Nasty Surprise against Dr. Doom, who takes his revenge with a Reign of Terror. (Yeah, I stole a heckuva lot of Vs. card names.) It’s a joint project between Marvel’s ToyBiz and Upper Deck Entertainment. You can find it at Toys “R” Us and some comic book shops.

There are three or four other games I’ve been working on, as well. You might see a couple of them in 2006. But rest assured that even though my other responsibilities take up a lot of my workday, I’m in all of the Vs. test drafts and go to lunch every day with the Vs. crew. Lunch is where all of the important decisions are made. But we are so inept at answering the daily questions of where to eat and who’s driving that I’m surprised we haven’t starved or come to blows.

Since there will not be a rulebook accompanying this booster set, I’d like to take this opportunity to write my own abridged credits page. It takes a lot of work to produce a set, and these people deserve some recognition.

Justice League of America

Design Lead: Matt Hyra

Design and Development Team: Justin Gary, Brian Kibler, Patrick Sullivan, Andrew Yip

Additional Design and Development: Ben Seck

Vs. System Rules Team: David Delaney, Paul Ross, Mitchell Waldbauer

Product Manager: David Hewitt

Associate Product Manager: R. Hyrum Savage

Art Direction: Mark Irwin

Art Requests: Ben Kalman

Graphic Design: David Lomeli, Brian Bateman, Anita Olmos, Scott Reyes, Gordon Tucker

Packaging Art: Alex Ross

Creative Text Lead: John Wick

Creative Text: Josh Bennett, Omeed Dariani, Matt Hyra, Kate Sullivan

Editing: Kate Sullivan

And many more!