Over the last couple of years, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has been hard at work creating its Universe Beyond sets for its trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. For those unaware, Universe Beyond is when WotC collaborates with another well-known IP to create a set for the card game.
It’s been done in the past for various sets, including known franchises such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Final Fantasy, and even Assassin’s Creed. The latest set, set to release later this month on June 26, is no different, as it is based on Marvel Comics.
Ahead of the set’s full release, I sat down and got a quick game using the Marvel Super Heroes cards. Despite only being able to play one game with a mono-white Captain America deck, I couldn’t help but smile while playing. It was largely because of how fun it was to use such iconic heroes in a new format. One thing I appreciated about this set was how easy it was to understand, and if you’re looking to get someone into the hobby, Marvel Super Heroes may be a great introduction.
During Summer Game Fest, I sat down with the design lead, Dave Humpherys; the play design lead, Jadine Klomparens; and the senior game designer and lead of the Commander Deck, Daniel Holt, who all worked on the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes set. Throughout our interview, we chatted about why they landed on the Commander Decks we have, some of their favorite combos, and what to expect in the future.
MonsterVine: What are some standout moments that you all are proud of about this set?
Humpherys: I’ve heard a whole talk about how we like Thanos as a card. Thanos is having everything come together, right? Thanos has the power-up mechanic, which is a mechanic I’m really proud of. Something we worked on a lot. His power up cost to activate is one colorless and one of each color, those representing or alluding to the six Infinity Stones.
When you power him up, the effect from the power up, besides the counters that he gets, is that he chooses odd or even, and then he destroys each other creature that has that characteristic. Pretty on the nose interpretation of wiping out half of the population.
Klomparens: I really like the mythic, rare transform. We also did them in the Spider-Man set. Half of the card is more of the civilian identity, and then it transforms into the superhero side. I think those cards all turned out really well.
MonsterVine: How far ahead do you all work on each set? Just because it is interesting that you worked on Spider-Man before jumping headfirst into Marvel as a whole. It seemed as if Spider-Man was a tester to see how people would respond.
Humpherys: We very much had a plan of how we wanted to roll things out and work with Marvel as a partner in terms of their suggestions and desires in terms of what will work best for them as well. What’s the best way to build the hype?
So it was very much all built out. We do it on a license side. We do end up needing more time working on those sets longer. For example, we often do the art a lot earlier so that we have time to have approvals from the partner on the art.
I think we’ve been talking about how, like, in some way, shape, and form. We worked on this set for, like, four years, as the set design lead. I feel like I had ownership of the set for, like, at least two years.
I’ve often been asked here a number of times. What did you learn from? The Spider-Man set, like, we had mostly gone completely pen down and finished the set before Spider-Man even came out, so we weren’t adapting to that, I think. Those are just very different.
This has the full product suite because we know it has a much more robust lineup. This is Avengers and characters related to Avengers-centric stuff. In this case, we have the welcome decks and the commander decks and the jump start and all that. We knew that this was going to be a much bigger endeavor than the last set
MonsterVine: To shift lanes a little bit. I wanted to ask about the Avatar set. Similar to what you did with Spider-Man and Marvel, are there plans to maybe make a set around The Legend of Korra?
Humpherys: We definitely can’t talk about any specifics, but we always look at this, and we’re interested to see how sets do and we respond to that. If the fans show a lot of interest in the set, we certainly are gonna look at stuff like that, but we can’t talk about any details.
MonsterVine: I wanted to ask about how you release the Secret Lair cards. Is it viewed as a way to test the water to see if it’d be popular enough for a full set?
Humpherys: It is a good way to test the waters. I will say Secret Lair is a really good way for us to also highlight things that maybe don’t have a complete build-out, like a full draftable set. So I think that is, that is a place where we’re looking for stuff where, like, it might be hard to fill out a full set, but we can, like, certainly deliver on a smaller size secret layer offering.
I think it’s not always easy to understand exactly how many people might be drawn into the game through a given brand, or how popular that brand is with our fans, and it is a good way for us to learn that and to come back.
MonsterVine: Are there any infinite combos that you guys are proud of? Like the Fantastic Four combo.
Klomparens: Figuring out what the strong things to do with the cards are and how they’re gonna interact is a lot of my job. That’s something we spend a lot of time on. So, the Fantastic Four kind of deliberate infinite was a very special case.
You know, we try to iron that stuff out a little bit more, but here we were. Like, all right, this will be a really cool thing for those characters. So we’re going to put it at the appropriate cost. Make sure it feels fair and is rare enough and difficult enough to assemble.
Most of the time. Powerful interactions don’t go infinite. It’s not usually the most satisfying way for games to end, just kind of, like, hey, I did it. Now, the game’s over; it takes a very special case, but there are all sorts of really cool interactions, even if it’s just like the Iron Man armor card counting all your artifacts.
If you’re doing a Tony Stark deck and you’ve got a ton of them. You know, you’ve got a huge Iron Man armor here. That’s really cool. Or the Invincible Iron Man, the back side of the Tony Stark MDFC card, where he transforms.
Then, he can put a huge artifact into play, and we’ve got a 10 cost, 10 Rings artifact. That’s a super powerful thing to put into play; you’re going to draw a ton of cards. There’s just a lot of really cool things like that. We set up to make sure there’s content within the set.
MonsterVine: I wanted to ask about the Commander Decks. There are so many teams within Marvel. How did you all land on the decks that we’re going to have?
Holt: So, for picking the Commander decks, the first two were pretty easy. It was going to be heroes and villains. That was pretty straightforward, so we landed on The Avengers for the hero deck.
The villain deck is kind of a catch-all. It’s going to be all the villains from all the other ones, because all the villains show up in this deck, not the others. For the last two, I’m a huge Fantastic Four fan. Invisible Woman is my favorite superhero. So I got to put her on the front, and that was kind of a biased decision.
I’m like, I’m gonna do a fantastic Four deck. Then Wakanda kind of makes this for the last one because they have the whole land power. They have a lot that we’re pulling from that don’t really neatly fit in the other buckets.
But one of my favorite things is with the villain deck, specifically. Like I mentioned, that’s kind of the catch-all, that there’s a villain that is a foil to each of the other decks in that deck. So there’s a villain that is good against the artifacts of Wakanda and punishes the Fantastic Four for playing non-creatures.
MonsterVine: Are there any other Marvel teams that you wish could have been a Commander deck?
Holt: Yes, obviously, there’s way more than we could fit even in this set, but I think the best way to look at the Marvel Superheroes set is this is the like earth-based defender, so anything that’s on the ground level of our sort of like the Wakanda Empire, the Fantastic Four in New York, Avengers kind of cover the area as well. So kind of earth-based.
MonsterVine: Let’s imagine you’re getting Joe Schmo, who doesn’t know anything about Magic: The Gathering, into the hobby with the Marvel set?
Holt: We actually found a lot of people learn through playing Commander, like that’s actually a pretty good avenue for people. I would say, go ahead and take advantage of these beginner products. If you’re Joe Schmo’s friend, maybe get that beginner box and teach them how to play. Because once you go through the tutorial sequence, you kind of have a rough idea of how it works. It literally shows even double blocking and how some more complicated math works out. But I do think Commander is a really good way, especially if you do like a Two-Headed Giant where you’re helping him as a team learn how to play.
MonsterVine: You’ve told me that this set is more or less centered around the Earth-based heroes. But I did notice some cosmic characters in here. How did you go about balancing the two?
Humpherys: It is no secret that we’re not done making Marvel products. So, yeah, like it. If people are sad that their favorite character is not here, there’s still a really good chance that they’re still gonna see them sometime.
Holt: Some tangential, where we do make some exceptions. You know, like, Fantastic Four. You still see Galactus on the main side and some Silver Surfer around because we’re so associated with the Fantastic Four. But yeah, it’s strictly on Earth.
Humpherys: We’ve been very intentional about what is and is not in the set. You can draw what conclusions you will from that.
Holt: Going back to Joe Schmo, who knows nothing about Magic. [Universe Beyond is great because] he kind of understands what these characters are supposed to do whenever he sees a Thor or Iron Man, they’re gonna have flying. Or the Hulk is going to be enraged, so seeing what they expect to see on the cards.
MonsterVine: This is more of a me question now. I’m a huge fan of Warhammer 40:000 and I loved that Commander set. Are there any plans to reprint those decks?
Holt: Yeah, I don’t know about reprints. I worked on those decks with Ethan Fletcher, who was the lead, and I was on the team there. So those were a lot of fun to make. I don’t know Warhammer. I had to learn a lot and obviously, a lot of direction from him.
MonsterVine: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you all would love to spotlight?
Humpherys: I do think one of the coolest things here is just all the fact that we do have so many special variant art and treatments of, like, all these cards. I personally love the comic book covers that you almost don’t even realize that they’re Magic cards when you first see them. They’re almost a little bit like works of art, where they’ve subtly put in the rules, texts, and stats on the cards. But it just looks like a comic book cover.
Holt: I like the Bold character art with the logo in the background, because every character has their own unique logo. I think those are just so clean
Klomparens: I love how many different legendary creatures we were able to get in this set and how much attention was put into making them all feel so true to the character. I think there are just so many cards you see and go. Ah, yes, this is the Thor I love, or this is the Iron Man. I think it’s just really cool. What a wide swath of characters we were able to do that for.
Humpherys: I will say, too, just the whole process on Universe Beyond is fun. This is the 15th strap that I’ve led. I design cards and creative comes up with what that is, and this is very much different, where it’s like these are the cards you need to make, and you have to design them to match that.
