When a set is handed off for set design after vision design, the vision design lead creates a vision design handoff document outlining the larger goals, themes, mechanics, and structure of the set. This helps Set Design better understand the vision for the set. Today, I'm looking at the vision design handoff document for Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes.

I've published a bunch of handoff documents over the years, as they're always pretty popular. Here are the ones I've previously done:

As with all my vision design handoff articles, most of what I'm showing you is the actual document (in this case, written by me), and the boxes contain my contextual notes and commentary. This document was long enough that I've broken it into three parts. For this document, I will occasionally have to redact some pieces that reveal future information. Normally, I just black out the parts that we can't let you see. This document had a number of things that would have given away future information had I simply blacked them out, so I have instead removed that text.

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Vision Design Handoff Document

Vision Design Team

Mark Rosewater (Lead)
Jeremy Geist (Strong Second)
Aaron Mesburne
Dave Humpherys
Jacob Mooney
JC Tao
Lukas Litzsinger

Creative Worldbuilding and Story

Aaron Mesburne (Worldbuilding Vision Lead)
Matt Cavotta (Lead Art Director)
Traci Gibson (Worldbuilding Producer)
Mike Thomas (Art Director)
Dillon Deveney (Worldbuilding Initial Vision Lead)

As always, I begin my handoff document by listing the Vision Design and Worldbuilding teams.

Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes is the first draftable, large Marvel booster product. It focuses on various Earth-based Super Heroes. Here are the main goals for the set:

1. Let The Characters Shine

Marvel's strength as an intellectual property is its wealth of characters. We wanted to include as many as possible and structure the set in a way that maximizes top-down design. We believe that awesome, flavorful designs of characters people already adore will make this set exciting. This meant choosing mechanics that could focus on creatures without having to live solely on creatures. We also decided to make every creature a legend with the exception of commons. We then swapped six creatures for fifteen spell slots to allow us a wider breadth of characters without changing the as-fan. As part of the feedback from the Vision Summit, Set Design should examine raising the as-fan of creatures at common a little.

Most expansions have a preset number of creature slots and spell slots at each rarity. These combine to create a certain as-fan for creatures and spells (usually close to 55% for creatures and 45% for spells). We decided to not include any common legendary creatures, but we still wanted to maximize how many different legendary creatures we could put in the set, as this slice of the Marvel Universe had so many characters we wanted to portray on cards. But it was a challenge to raise the number of legendary creatures in the set without making common legendary creatures or raising the as-fan of creatures as a whole.

We came up with a novel solution. We traded a number of uncommon spell slots for common creature slots. Remember, common cards appear at a higher rate than uncommon cards. By putting more creatures at uncommon, we could keep the same as-fan for creatures but have more individual cards. That's why we traded uncommon spell slots for six common creature slots. This change meant the set would have less variety on spells and more variety on creatures while keeping each at the same as-fan.

To get more characters in front of players, we tied most common and uncommon spells to a specific character that will show up in the card's art. The reference for the spell is often talking about a power or ability of that character. You will see those character's names in carrots ([Character Name]) after the card name.

It was important for us to make sure a wide variety of characters showed up in art other than their own creature cards. To help do this, we tagged spells with characters who we expected to be in the art. This helped us keep a sense of how often people would see individual characters. We would write titles as such "Title [Character Shown in Art]." This also allowed us to pick slots to show off the powers of specific characters. One of the cool things about the Marvel Universe is that many characters have names for specific powers.

Finally, for this set, we have the rights to the comics versions of the characters. In most cases, the comics, movie, and television versions of a character are the same, but I will point out when that isn't true.

One of the interesting things about working on this set was that Marvel has had such an impact on pop culture that different people working on the set were more familiar with it in different mediums. Our sets were all using the comic books as the source material. Most of the time, the portrayal of the Marvel Universe in other mediums was pretty close to the comics, but when they weren't, I would specifically point it out because, as someone familiar with all the different portrayals, I was aware when there was a discrepancy.

2. Aim For a More Mass-Market Audience

Of all the Universes Beyond products we've done, we feel that Marvel has the greatest chance to have the broadest appeal due to the popularity of Marvel's characters. As such, we wanted to be careful to keep complexity in check. This product should be more advanced than a core set but be on the lighter side of complexity for a premier set.

This ended up not being true because we expanded the product line to have things like the Beginner Box and Jumpstart Boosters, which serve as an entry-level point for new players.

0851_MTGMSH_BgBoxNmb: Iron Man, Tony Stark 0588_MTGMSH_JumpNew: Captain America, Skybound

3. Be Cognizant of the Other Marvel Sets

This is the first Universes Beyond franchise where we are making a number of separate sets. As such, we want to be very aware of what is the best place for each character. Aaron Mesbourne and I made a tiered system that talks about how much we want to use each character. Here's a brief breakdown:

Tier 1: These characters are the major ones that players know well. We want to use these characters as much as we can without overexposing them. Our rough estimate is that the tier 1 characters will show up on six or so cards over three different sets.

Tier 2: These characters are major players in the comics and are highly recognizable among fans of Marvel comics but less so among the general public because they've shown up less (or not at all) in movies and television. We think these characters want two to three cards spread between two sets.

Tier 3: These are characters that are important enough to the comics that it would be wrong not to have a card of them somewhere. We only expect them to show up on one card in one set each.

Tier 4: These characters are minor and don't necessarily need to have a card, but it might be necessary if nothing in the higher tiers fits in a slot. These characters will mostly not have cards, but if they get one, they'll get no more than one.

An important part of making any Marvel product involves being aware of what characters you're using and making sure your set is the best place for them. Numerous characters were removed from Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes because there was a better home for them in another set.

Marvel has been making comics (and more) for over 60 years. There are a lot of characters. My tier 4 list was far from complete. Maybe there was a tier 5 list with characters who are too obscure for us to even bother writing on a list. Each tier was longer than the one before it. Aaron and I talked to other subject-matter experts (SMEs) about the lists. Some names got moved around. In the end, it did a great job of helping us figure out how best to use each character. Some characters who didn't get their own card still got to appear on cards, either on common creatures that were representative of a large group (so not legendary) or on spells.

Characters that you expected to see but aren't in this set were most likely saved for a different set.

All Marvel sets will have three mechanical elements running through them:

Sagas

Korvac Saga
3GG
Enchantment — Saga
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.)
I, II: Put a +1/+1 counter on target creature you control. Then double its power and toughness until end of turn.
III: You may sacrifice a creature. If you do, draw cards equal to its power.

Dark Avengers
4UB
Enchantment — Saga
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.)
I–II: Create a token that's a copy of target creature you don't control, except its power and toughness are reversed.
III: Until your next turn, whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, sacrifice all creature tokens you control.

Founding of the Avengers
3GW
Enchantment — Saga
(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after IV.)
I–III: Look at the top five cards of your library. Put up to one Hero card from among them into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
IV: Heroes you control get +2/+2 until end of turn.

Sagas will highlight certain story runs from Marvel comics that hit the larger theme of the set. For Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes, there are five uncommon and five rare Sagas that all refer to story runs from the Avengers comics.

The finished set ended up having only six Sagas. They were not cycled and not all solely about the Avengers, with many being about individual characters. There are even more Sagas in the Commander decks and Jumpstart Boosters. Of the above three sample Sagas, only Origin of the Avengers made it to print, and it went through a lot of changes.

0028_MTGMSH_Main: Origin of the Avengers 0298_MTGMSH_ShwPanel: Origin of the Avengers

Double-Faced Cards (DFCs)

The Incredible Hulk
1RRGG
Legendary Creature — Hulk Berserker Hero
5/5
Trample
Enrage — When CARDNAME is dealt damage, double its power and toughness until end of turn. (It has to survive the damage to do this.)
At the beginning of your end step, if CARDNAME wasn't dealt damage this turn, you may pay U. If you do, transform it.
///
Bruce Banner
4U
Legendary Creature — Human Scientist
1/5
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield or transforms into CARDNAME, look at the top five cards of your library. Put up to two into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Enrage — When CARDNAME is dealt damage, you may pay RG. If you do, transform it.

Wasp
1GU
Legendary Creature — Human Insect Hero
1/1
Flying, ward 2
Wasp Sting — When CARDNAME attacks, you may pay 2G. When you do, it deals damage equal to its power to target creature defending player controls.
At the beginning of your end step, you may transform CARDNAME.
///
Janet van Dyne, Fashion Icon
GU
Legendary Creature — Human Citizen
2/2
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield or attacks, look at the top five cards of your library. You may reveal an Aura or Equipment spell from among them and put it in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Aura spells that target CARDNAME cost 2 less.
Equip abilities of Equipment that target CARDNAME cost 2 less.
At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may transform CARDNAME.

Black Panther
2WU
Legendary Creature — Human Hero
*/4
CARDNAME's power is equal to the number of cards in your hand.
W: The next time CARDNAME would be dealt combat damage this turn, prevent 1 of that damage and put a +1/+1 counter on CARDNAME.
1W: Transform CARDNAME. Activate only as a sorcery.
///
King T'Challa
2W
Legendary Creature — Human Noble
1/4
3W, T: Each opponent draws a card. You draw cards equal to the number of opponents who drew cards this way.
1WU: Transform CARDNAME. Activate only as a sorcery.

Currently, the DFCs are both transforming and modal, allowing you to cast either side and change back and forth. This might prove to be too complicated, and the Set Design team might want to scale back to TDFCs alone. The DFCs are currently rare and mythic rare, but based on feedback from the Vision Summit, there is some desire to see if we want to do simpler versions at uncommon to help provide more mana sinks.

The version we handed off allowed you to cast either side and transform from either side to the other. Set Design simplified them so the only transformation was from the cheaper side to the more expensive side. Playtesting showed that once you got your more powerful Hero version, you seldom wanted to transform back. Both the Hulk and Black Panther stayed as modal transforming double-faced cards (MTDFCs), although they went through a lot of changes (but kept their colors).

0049a_MTGMSH_Main: Bruce Banner 0390a_MTGMSH_Iconic: Bruce Banner
0219a_MTGMSH_Main: King T'Challa 0399a_MTGMSH_Iconic: King T'Challa

Specific Creature Types

The two most important new creature types will be Hero and Villain, which will be used on all costumed characters that squarely fall into one category. There are some costumed characters that are morally gray that might not get either. Mutant is not new to Magic but will be used on any character that is a mutant. (This is an important designation in the Marvel Universe.) Any creature that gets a Mutant creature type will not get a Human creature type. We will also make use of other signifiers like Inhuman or Eternal and other alien races like Skrull or Kree. We're still figuring out what exactly crosses the line and what doesn't, but all the Marvel sets need to work together to make sure we're on the same page.

Universes Beyond sets have to figure out what creature types they want to support, and it's something we spend a lot of time on. There's a necessary balance between referencing the things fans of the property expect and figuring out when existing creature types are best.

A quick aside on the Mutant creature type. Mutant is an important designator in the Marvel Universe, and we knew we had to have it on the creature type line (Mutant is already an existing creature type). Many Mutants would need to be a Hero or Villain, some of which would also need another creature type. Add to that the need for legendary Mutants, and the card type line starts getting low on space. From a gameplay standpoint there simply wasn't space to fit both Mutant and Human on the type line, even if we wanted it. It also allowed us in the future to make cards that mechanically care about Mutants or Humans in a way that treated the two differently.

Now, let's get to the three mechanics specific to this set. For these mechanics, we chose to make one Hero mechanic, one Villain mechanic, and one mechanic used by both Heroes and Villains.

As I mentioned in my preview article, Set Design decided this structure wasn't necessary. The three main mechanics in the set are on both Hero and Villain cards, except connive, which is just for Villains.

0006_MTGMSH_CmdrFace: Doctor Doom, King of Latveria 0880_MTGMSH_FaceSrge: Doctor Doom, King of Latveria

That's all the time I have for today. As always, if you have any feedback, either on any part of the document or on my commentary, feel free to email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).

Join me next week for part two.

Until then, may you get a chance to work on a project near and dear to your heart.