Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes Vision Design Handoff, Part 2
Last week, I started showing off the vision design handoff document for Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes. Today, I'll pick up where I left off. All the text is the actual document with my commentary in the boxes below.
The Hero and Villain Mechanic – Team Up
Baron Helmut Zemo
3B
Legendary Creature — Human Villain
3/3
Whenever you cast a Rogue, Villain, or Minion spell, create a 2/1 black Minion creature token with menace.
Team up 4: Rogues, Villains, and Minions you control get +2/+2 until end of turn. (To team up 4, tap any number of other untapped creatures you control with total power 4 or greater.)
Hurl a Car [Wonder Man]
4R
Instant
As an additional cost to cast CARDNAME, you may team up 2. (To team up 2, tap any number of untapped creatures you control with total power 2 or greater.)
CARDNAME deals 5 damage to target creature. If you teamed up, CARDNAME also deals 3 damage to that creature's controller.
Captain America
2WU
Legendary Creature — Human Soldier Hero
3/3
Vigilance
When CARDNAME attacks, you may team up 2. When you do, CARDNAME gains lifelink until end of turn. (To team up 2, tap any number of other untapped creatures you control with total power 2 or greater.)
Whenever you team up, draw a card. This ability only triggers once each turn.
Team up is a cost that can go on a spell or activation that requires you to tap creatures of a combined power. It works similarly to how crew works on Vehicles. Some of the feedback that we've gotten on team up is that it works best on spells or on attack triggers of creatures. We need to be careful not to make team up engines that can't be disrupted.
While the mechanic mostly stayed the same, there were two changes. First, "team up" became teamwork, as another mechanic in the set was power-up. Second, as my examples above showed, we tried using teamwork in different spots other than just casting a spell. We had activated and triggered abilities using it. Set Design decided to simplify it.
"Hurl a Car" is an example of how we noted what character was going to appear on the card. It was our intent that Wonder Man was hurling the car.
The Villain Mechanic – Connive
Attuma
3UU
Legendary Creature — Merfolk Noble Villain
4/4
Ward 2
Whenever CARDNAME attacks, it connives.
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on a Merfolk you control, create that many 1/1 blue Merfolk Warrior creature tokens. This ability only triggers once each turn.
Arcade
1B
Legendary Creature — Human Villain
2/2
1, Sacrifice another creature or artifact: CARDNAME connives. (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.) Activate only as a sorcery.
Kang
1UB
Legendary Creature — Human Villain
3/2
Whenever CARDNAME enters the battlefield or attacks, it connives.
Whenever a creature you control connives, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain 1 life.
Connive is a returning mechanic from Streets of New Capenna. When a creature connives, you draw and discard a card. If you discard a nonland, you put a +1/+1 counter on the creature. It shows up in blue, black, and red. We got notes from the Vision Summit to be careful about how often we're conniving above 1 or repeatedly. The mechanic can start to get complicated when you do either. Because the set has a high number of legendary creatures, connive (along with a slightly higher amount of scry effects in green and white) will serve as a valve for drawing duplicates of the same character.
Connive didn't change much at all. It was flavorful and fit the set well. We had to include mechanical outlets that deal with drawing multiple copies of a legendary creature as a side effect of increasing the number of legends. Connive really helped with this.
The Hero Mechanic – Signal
Rick Jones
2G
Legendary Creature — Human
1/1
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, signal 4. (Look at the top five cards of your library and choose up to one creature from among them. If its mana value is equal to or less than the signal number, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.)
The Forever Sidekick — Heroes you control enter the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter.
Avengers Identicard
3
Artifact
T: Add one mana of any color.
5, T, Sacrifice CARDNAME: Signal 5. Activate only as a sorcery. (Look at the top five cards of your library and choose up to one creature from among them. If its mana value is equal to or less than the signal number, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.)
Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell)
5W
Legendary Creature — Kree Hero
4/4
Flying
Cosmic Awareness — Whenever CARDNAME enters the battlefield or attacks, you may pay 1W. If you do, signal 3. (Look at the top five cards of your library and choose up to one creature from among them. If its mana value is equal to or less than the signal number, you may put it onto the battlefield. Otherwise, put it in your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.)
Signal N, where N is a number, is a keyword action that lets you look at the top five cards in your library and put a creature among those five cards into your hand. You may then choose to put the creature on the battlefield if its mana value is N or less (although you are not required to do this). Afterward, the rest of the cards go on the bottom of your library in a random order. This is the Hero mechanic and goes into white, red, and green.
This mechanic got the harshest reviews from the Vision Summit (the variance was too high and we couldn't make cards that looked good to play), so the team spent some time brainstorming possible tweaks and replacements.
I liked the flavor space this was hitting, but the mechanic just proved to be too hard to properly balance and prevented the cards from looking good to play.
Possible Tweaks
Signal N = Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card. If it has mana value N or less, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. If you don't cast it, put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
Signal N = Look at the top N cards of your library. You may exile one of them face-down. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order. You may look at that card and you may cast that card for as long as this permanent is on the battlefield. This is a keyword action, so you can make an instant that says, "Target permanent you control signals 3."
Signal N = Look at the top three cards of your library. You may cast a card with mana value N or less from among them without paying its mana cost. If you don't, put one of those cards into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in a random order.
When we know something is problematic at handoff, we like to offer solutions. First up are possible ways to tweak the mechanic. Second, we suggest some mechanics that could replace it.
Possible Replacements
Empower (At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may have target Hero gain "ability.")
This ability works like
Hellcat
3G
Legendary Creature — Human Hero
3/3
Empower — Trample (At the beginning of combat on your turn, you may have target Hero gain trample.)
The problem with centering a mechanic on Hero and/or Villain typal was that it makes it too parasitic (meaning it relies too much on having to play it with other cards from the same set). Yes, there was and will be other Marvel sets. Even then, it limits how much use the mechanic will have. In theory, we could have opened up this mechanic to affect any creature (or we could have added some restriction that shows up more frequently like power or mana value).
Signal Tokens (The first Hero or Villain you cast each turn costs 1 less.)
Signal tokens work like the Dragonstorm tokens from "Ultimate," except that they reward you for playing Heroes and Villains. (Again, this requires making team up the Hero mechanic.)
Mockingbird
2W
Legendary Creature — Human Hero
2/2
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, create a Signal token with "The first Hero or Villain you cast each turn costs 1 less."
CARDNAME has first strike when attacking.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm, for a while, had Dragonstorm artifact tokens that made all your Dragons cost
In the end, Set Design looked for other solutions for the third keyword mechanic and came up with power-up.
We also came up with a possible cycle of battles if Set Design feels we need a little more comic book feel.
Battles
These would probably just be a cycle of rares. We had two takes on them.
Siege Battles
Battle for the Cube
3U
Battle — Siege
5
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, scry 2, then draw two cards.
///
The Cosmic Cube
Legendary Artifact
T: You may cast a spell from your hand without paying its mana cost.
The flavor on these is that the back faces represent an important object that the Super Heroes and Super Villains fight over, and you get it when you defeat the battle. Marvel has a lot of unique and powerful objects.
These battles worked just like the ones in March of the Machine.
Non-Siege Battles
Battle for Wakanda
2W
Battle
4
Creatures you control get +0/+2
At the beginning of your end step, if creatures you control have total toughness 15 or greater, exile CARDNAME and cast it transformed.
///
The Vision
Legendary Artifact Creature — Robot Hero
Flying
These battles enter the battlefield on your side, and your opponent tries to stop you before you're able to transform it.
This cycle was something new. It gave you a little goal to complete, and your opponent would try to remove it before you were able to transform it. In the end, we only got so many double-faced cards and decided we preferred the MTDFCs better. As this section shows, battles were available for us to use if we wanted them.
Finally, I'll list all the current legendary characters assigned to slots at this time and explain the core of each character from a design standpoint. Note that you can swap any two characters in the same color between rarities. I will note that when we have the same creature appear twice, we tend to have the lower-rarity one be an uncommon card and the higher-rarity one be mythic rare card.
Note that the file has certain characters representing different people fulfilling the same role. When we need to clarify which version of the hero we're talking about, we list their secret identity in brackets.
One of the cool things about vision design handoff documents is that you can adapt them to the needs of the set you are working on. As an SME, I spent a lot of time figuring out which creatures we wanted, so every slot was tagged. Set Design did change some of these for various reasons; below, I talk about every character that was in the file at handoff. It was key for me to try to hit the core thing we most cared about from a design perspective. What was the essence of the character we wanted to make a top-down design for?
Uncommon
White (11)
Mockingbird: Mockingbird has no inherent superpowers but is a trained soldier and secret agent. Her main weapon is a staff.
Invisible Woman: Invisible Woman is part of the Fantastic Four and can both make herself invisible and create force fields.
Patriot: Patriot is a member of the Young Avengers. He has a lot of the same powers and strategic planning abilities as Captain America.
Falcon: Falcon can fly and has a bird named Redwing that often works with him.
Moon Knight: Moon Knight is a trained fighter, but his most notable trait is that he has three (main) different personalities.
Okoye: Okoye is a leader of soldiers and proficient with many weapons.
Kingpin: Kingpin is a villain who is an expert at exploiting systems to get what he wants. He also is very large, quite strong, and an excellent fighter.
Luke Cage: Luke Cage has super strength and is "nigh-invulnerable," meaning he is hard to damage.
Protector/Marvel Boy (Noh-Varr): Noh-Varr is also in the Young Avengers. He is an enhanced Kree soldier and thus has superhuman strength, speed, and agility.
Valkyrie (Brunnhilde): Valkyrie is an actual Valkyrie from Asgard. As an Asgardian, she has superhuman strength, speed, and agility. Also, she is able to tell when someone is about to die.
Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell): Mar-Vell is an enhanced Kree soldier and thus has superhuman strength, speed, and agility. He is able to fire energy blasts from his hands. He can fly (and teleport), and has something known as cosmic awareness that lets him sense the state of the universe.
Blue (9)
Kid Loki: Kid Loki is a child version of Loki, although missing many of his memories. He joined the Young Avengers for a time, and while he wasn't super reliable, he generally helped them.
Shuri: Shuri is a master inventor and sister of T'Challa (the Black Panther). Her card plays up her role as a genius inventor.
Stature: Stature is the daughter of Scott Lang (the second Ant-Man). She has the ability to shrink and grow in size. She is also part of the Young Avengers.
Mister Fantastic: Mister Fantastic is part of the Fantastic Four. His body is super stretchy, and he is one of the smartest people in the world.
Justice: Justice has telekinesis and is able to fly.
Iron Lad: Iron Lad is a young Kang who was one of the founding members of the Young Avengers. He has a super suit, like Iron Man, which gives him enhanced abilities and flight.
Hawkeye (Kate Bishop): Hawkeye is a Young Avenger. She's an excellent marksman.
Wiccan: Wiccan is another member of the Young Avengers. He's a magic-user.
Attuma: Attuma is an Atlantean Merfolk. As an Atlantean he has superhuman strength, speed, and agility. He is known for commanding large armies of merfolk and is an excellent fighter.
Black (10)
Elektra: Elektra is a ninja that's also an assassin. She is an amazing fighter who is proficient in many forms of martial arts. Her trademark weapons are two sai.
Arcade: Arcade is a villain that creates elaborate death traps that he forces Super Heroes to escape from. He's very bright and good with technology.
Grim Reaper: Grim Reaper is a villain that can bring people back from the dead. He also amputated his right hand and replaced it with a scythe.
Iron Monger: Iron Monger is an enemy of Iron Man that built even bigger armor. He is able to fly. He's the villain from the first Iron Man movie.
Madame Hydra/Viper: Madame Hydra runs HYDRA. She is an excellent fighter. She also goes by the name Viper.
Ronin: Ronin is a ninja known for killing criminals. Many people have been Ronin, and he has acted as both Super Hero and Super Villain. Ronin is an excellent fighter and tends to fight with weapons.
Baron Strucker: Baron Strucker is a villain that excels in organizing and running criminal organizations.
Klaw: Klaw is a being of pure sound that uses sonic attacks. He cannot be injured. He's one of the characters that has a greater discrepency between his comic version and his movie version.
Arnim Zola: Arnim Zola is a scientist that put his brain into a robot body. The robot body is extra strong, and Arnim is quite devious.
Crossbones: Crossbones has enhanced strength and is a martial arts expert. He's also an expert strategist.
Red (9)
Speed: Speed is a member of the Young Avengers. He has super speed.
Firestar: Firestar is a mutant with the power to control microwaves (not fire). She can fly.
The Wrecking Crew: The Wrecking Crew consists of four villains who got their hands on magical weapons (which are all items used in construction), which made them super strong and resistant to damage.
Jessica Jones: Jessica Jones is a former Super Hero who went by the name Jewel. She has super strength and enhanced durability. She has since become a private investigator.
America Chavez: America Chavez is another member of the Young Avengers. She's super strong, nearly invulnerable, and has the ability to punch portals between dimensions. Note that she only has the power to travel between dimensions in her cinematic appearances.
Human Torch: Human Torch is a member of the Fantastic Four. He can ignite himself aflame and fly. He can use fire as an aggressive weapon.
Quicksilver: Quicksilver is a mutant with super speed.
Quake: Quake is an inhuman with the ability to create tremors.
Red Hulk: Red Hulk is General Thunderbolt Ross who got turned into a red Hulk. Unlike the normal Hulk, the Red Hulk has all his intelligence. Like all Hulks, he is super strong and durable.
Green (9)
White Tiger: White Tiger has an amulet that grants them enhanced strength, speed, agility, and animal senses. White Tiger can create a giant spirit Tiger. There are numerous versions of White Tiger. We have not decided which version will appear in Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes yet.
Ka-Zar: Ka-Zar is from the Savage Lands, a place that resembles prehistoric times, complete with dinosaurs. He is in prime physical condition and is an excellent fighter and acrobat.
Reptil: Reptil has the ability to turn into any kind of dinosaur. He sometimes just turns parts of himself into a dinosaur.
Shang-Chi: Shang-Chi is a master in many forms of martial arts.
Rick Jones: Rick Jones is an honorary member of the Avengers, although has (mostly) no powers. His life has been strangely entwined with numerous Super Heroes.
Shanna the She-Devil: Shanna lives with Ka-Zar in the Savage Lands and has similar abilities to his.
Hellcat: Hellcat has enhanced abilities that give her superhuman strength, speed, and agility. She is an excellent fighter.
Hulkling: Hulking is a member of the Young Avengers. He is half-Skrull, half-Kree, which gives him both shape-changing powers and super strength.
Mister Hyde: Mister Hyde is a villain that takes a potion to grant himself superhuman strength, speed, and agility, as well as near invulnerability. Side effects include decreased intelligence and increased savageness. Without the formula, he's a genius.
Hercules: Hercules is the Hercules of Greek mythology. He is a demigod with great strength and durability. He has a tendency to get into fights.
I've hit my word count for today, so I'll finish this next week. I hope you're enjoying this peek behind the curtain. If you have any feedback about 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 the third and final part of the document.
Until then, I hope you find your favorite characters in the set.