In just a few short days, Magic: The Gathering’s most card-packed year ever continues with a journey deep into the Marvel Universe. Like, “deep, deep,” according to Marvel Super Heroes lead designer Mark Rosewater.
With over 600 unique cards, Marvel Super Heroes is the largest Magic: The Gathering set to date. This staggering number has allowed the team behind the super-sized collaboration to pull a lot of characters, lore, and Easter eggs from throughout Marvel Comic’s nearly 90 years of history–to shine a light not only on the universe’s most beloved of heroes and villains, but its underappreciated characters as well. However, and as all Marvel fans know, with great power comes great responsibility.
In a super-hero-focused set of this size, maintaining balance becomes essential. How do you ensure even the most godly of super heroes–heroes like Thor, for example–aren’t game-breaking? How do you create cards that honor Marvel and its fans, while also guaranteeing that more traditional Magic: The Gathering players aren’t put off by an abundance of fan service? Rosewater provided me with these answers and more at this year’s Summer Game Fest.
GameSpot: You’ve described Marvel as your dream set–that’s it’s the two things you’re the biggest fan of, intersecting. What’s it been like designing this?
Rosewater: Oh, it’s been a blast. Super, super fun. Like I said, when the idea of us doing Universes Beyond was first introduced, I was like, “When we do Marvel, I’m all in. I want to do Marvel.”
I advised [on] Spider-Man, but I actually got to lead the set [on Marvel], and one of the things I did very early on was figure out who all the characters were going to be. The key to doing a good Universe Beyond is you want to make sure the fans of the property feel like you respected the property and that you’re bringing to life all of their favorites. And for all the Magic fans, some of whom don’t even know property at all, you want to just make an awesome Magic set.
So the key here was, how do we make it the most Marvel set we can, but also just make it a good Magic set? I’m really, really happy with where we ended up, because look: If you know Marvel, there’s lots of deep cuts and cool things; we really brought the characters to life in really fun ways. And if you’re not that much a Marvel fan, we still made an awesome Magic set that’s really fun to play. It’s funny because, when we read [the reception] online, the Marvel fans were all geeking out over all the cool stuff we’ve done, and the non-Marvel fans were like, “Okay, I’ll play because it looks so good.”
I’m sure that you have many, many favorites, but are there any cards you worked on where you were immediately like, “I’m making a deck with this?”
Rosewater: When Aaron [Forsythe], my boss, first pitched the idea of doing Universes Beyond, I called dibs on Marvel right away. When it came time to pitch [the idea to] Marvel, he came to me and said, “Okay, I’m going to have you make the [sample] cards.” Basically, when we go to a partner, what we do is we make sample cards and show them to say, “Hey, here’s your property in Magic cards.” One of the things [Forsythe] asked was for me to make a deep cut.
My deep cut was Squirrel Girl, which was a little more deep of a cut six years ago than it is now, but because I love squirrels, I love Squirrel Girl. Doreen Green? Awesome character. I’ve read all her comics. And one of the things that I really like is, [with Squirrel Girl], I could take something that’s awesome to Marvel fans and make something I knew fans of Magic would like. They love squirrels. So, I made that card, and the card we printed–with some number changes–is that card. That’s the very first card I made that made it into the set. That’s probably my emotional favorite.
Squirrel Girl, as depicted by artist Ignatius Budi.
Were there any cards–any other deep cuts, even–where you were like, “Oh, I really want to make this thing, but I don’t know how to make it work in the context of Magic: The Gathering?”
Rosewater: Yeah. There’s a character named Speedball and he’s part of the New Warriors. He’s a fun character, but he has a very, very weird set of powers: He can absorb kinetic energy and redirect it. What does that mean in Magic? But I came up with a design that I really, really liked.
The way he works is any spell that hits him gives him +2/+2 and he can redirect the spell. The idea is you will be able to get hit with kill spells, boost him, and then redirect the kill spells to something else to get a blocker out of the way so that he can attack. It’s a really different type of Magic card–it’s like nothing we’ve ever made. I wouldn’t have gotten there if I wasn’t trying to bring Speedball to life. That’s a lot of the fun with Universes Beyond–it inspires us to make things we might not normally make.
For the people who maybe aren’t super into Marvel, what would you say to encourage them to give it a try?:
Rosewater: If we went to a brand-new world, we would show you things you just don’t know. Most of the time in [Magic: The Gathering], you’re just playing in an unknown world you don’t know. So think of it like that: These are cool characters that you don’t know and that make for cool Magic cards. It’s a very, very fun set and you don’t need to know Marvel to have a fun time playing Magic.
If you do know Marvel, okay, there’s stuff there that you recognize. But if you don’t know Marvel, it’s fine. Take Squirrel Girl as an example. If you own a Squirrel deck, put Squirrel Girl in it. Does it matter if you know who Squirrel Girl is? No. Did you know who Chatterfang was before we made Chatterfang? No, you didn’t. We made him up. She’s a girl who loves squirrels, [and] that’s all you need to know. And she has squirrel friends, so put her in your squirrel deck.
With Squirrel Girl, you’re adding someone who really complements a popular, pre-existing deck type thanks to Bloomburrow. Were there any other characters where you were like, “This is weird, but at the same time, there are so many people who play this type of deck that it kind of fits in?”
Rosewater: Turns out, Marvel does, in fact, have a dragon: Fin Fang Foom. People love dragons. Magic players love dragons. And you might not be aware of this because he’s not the most well-known character, but he’s been in the comics since the ’60s and is pretty famous. If you love dragons– regardless of if you know who this is–Marvel has a dragon for you. Here you go.
How do you balance a set like this–one with all these heroes? I imagine you want them all to feel powerful and viable, but can you do that and avoid making it a complete power set?
Rosewater: One of the cool things is not all Marvel heroes are super powerful. Hawkeye is a really fun character but look, he has a bow and arrow. He’s a guy with a bow and arrow. But like I said, he’s a fun character. So we made a very fun Hawkeye set.
Hawkeye’s not going to take down [Thanos] or anything–he doesn’t have to be super powerful. If we’re making Thor, or any of the characters that are powerful, we do try to balance that. But the Marvel Universe really has a spectrum of characters. There are a lot of low-power heroes and it wasn’t like every hero needed to be super overpowered. A lot of them are not.
Dr. Strange and Thor, as depicted by artist Mateus Manhanni.
What’s funny is I just pulled one of Hawkeye’s cards and it is really fun. It’s really flexible, that was the first thing I noticed. Can you talk a little bit more about that creation process and designing these cards that have more variety than usual?
Rosewater: One of the things that we have to do–more so [with Universes Beyond] than the average set–is we have to figure out what’s the most important thing in the property. What are we capturing? With Marvel, they’re heroes and villains, but their roster of characters is deep–I mean deep, deep. We really wanted to bring that to life.
Marvel just has these amazing characters with amazing powers. And you know what? That makes good Magic cards. We have other properties where there’s lots of people and we have to work to differentiate them. But Marvel’s like, “This guy turns [people] into dinosaurs.” So, okay, I can make a card that turns [people] into dinosaurs. In some ways it’s cheating because they just have really cool powers. It makes it a lot easier.
Are there any things that you feel like people haven’t really touched on yet that you feel passionate about and that you would like to talk about?
Rosewater: We had a lot of really deep Marvel fans who worked on this set, so one of the coolest things I’m really excited about is the artwork–we went deep. So if you are a Marvel fan, look in the backgrounds.
For example, there’s this one card of Ant-Man, and he’s standing on top of a giant soda can. And we could have made whatever generic soda can, but no, no, no, no. It’s Roxxon Cola, like the evil corporation. It’s stuff like that. With everything we do, if we can make a nod to Marvel, we will. That, to me, is one of the most fun things about the set.
And if you don’t know Marvel? Whatever, he’s on a soda can, who cares? But if you do know Marvel, well, it’s not just any soda can. It’s stuff like that.
Magic: The Gathering’s Marvel Super Heroes set hit shelves Friday, June 26, though eager fans can test out the cards prior to their official release date via the game’s mobile app, Magic: The Gathering Arena. Commander decks, booster packs, and more are also still available for preorder, which might be a good idea considering how popular other Universes Beyond sets have been.
