Hi, I’m Captain Spud, and this is all my fault.
I volunteered to work on the DCU set waaaaaay back at the start, and then vanished. I had various work and personal commitments, and simply couldn’t help for the majority of that set’s development cycle. I finally popped my head in a month before they were ready to ship, and basically just stirred everything up just as they were getting it all settled. I harassed them about balance and templating, and just generally insulted everything they’d worked to accomplish.
So of course, when the decision came down to make a second set, I was a natural choice for Design Lead. Oh, sure, the lead designer gets to have fun guiding theme development and building the first 5% of each team (ie, the exciting part), but it’s also my job to give the final “OK” on… well… everything. I had final approval on all themes and card wordings, so if anything is wrong, it’s my fault. I figure that’s why they chose me… I insulted their work, so my penance is absorbing all blame for the next set.
You guys are dicks.
I have many things to apologize for with this set, but today I’ll just focus on one: the Legionnaires. The Legion were the team I had the heaviest hand in designing; while I assisted and advised on the other teams, I was the main guy writing card text for the little future folks. I’ve never read a Legion comic in my life, though, so the rest of the kids had to walk me through the characters and storylines I’d be setting up in card form. That freed my hands quite a bit—I just had to worry about the mechanics, and they’d make sure the fluff worked out at the end.
When we set about theming the teams in the set, we looked at their previous incarnations and did a quick evaluation for each. First, we just asked ourselves: was the team any good? If they were, that left two choices—expand their old theme if they were “good, but not an inch away from broken”; or give them a whole new theme if adding to their card pool would tip the scales too much.
For teams that kinda sucked in their first incarnation, we had to try to figure out the reason for their sucking. Does the theme just plain not work? Are their cards just underpowered? Are they too easy to tech against? We’d run through the various reasons that it seemed the team wasn’t performing well, and make a similar decision to the good teams: do we keep their old theme (reworking it to eliminate the bugs), or scrap it and build something new?
The answers for Legion weren’t hard to figure out: No, their old incarnation wasn’t very good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a strong Legion deck; you don’t even see them popping up often in goofy combo decks. When we tried to figure out why, we concluded that their theme wasn’t useless—we know Cosmic Weenies can work (after all, the Inhumans did pretty well!), so the Legion just needed better cards within that theme.
With that basic information in mind, I sat down with Wikipedia, Comicvine, and DocX’s search engine, and tried to figure out what to do with them. We’d already cut the New Gods from the roster because we just couldn’t think of anything interesting enough to do with them—Cosmic is a good mechanic, but it’s kind of been done to death at this point. I drafted up a list of every team that had ever featured Cosmic, and identified the major twist each one applied to it. Some teams, like Superman and the old New Gods, addressed its need to be protected; the Titans used the synergy with Substitute to refresh counters; a few teams in MHG used it to justify large pump on little beaters; and the old version of Legion used Cosmic counters as ammunition. It had been used in almost every way I could conceive of it being useful; I really needed to come up with something fresh. As I went over almost a dozen different ways the mechanic had been used, I kept referring back to their old cards, hoping something would click.
In the end, what clicked wasn’t something new; it was something old, and something exclusively at home in the Legion. It started as a really silly idea, but as I started drafting test cards, a huge grin grew on my face. I’d finally found something interesting for the team to do, and it was both a wholly new way to play, and at the same time, exactly what the Legion had always done.
The card that made it click for me was one of the most neglected Legion cards in DLS, a card so vanilla in theme and mechanics that I’d simply ignored it on all my read-throughs to date. It was really, objectively, a terrible card. But I figured that since he’d been the inspiration for the theme, he deserved to be the Legion’s only (nearly) straight reprint in DFC.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a round of applause for Star Boy.
Five No-Points to anyone who’s figured out the theme. Anyone? No? Oh, alrighty. I guess it’s time for some exposition.
DFC’s Legionnaires don’t need no stinkin’ plot twists.
The basic concept is two-sided. Bear with me here.
The main members of the Legion—your Cosmic Boys, your Saturn Girls, and the rest of “those ones”—count your counters. Similarly to the DLS incarnation, DFC’s Legion doesn’t really care who has cosmic counters, as long as SOMEONE has them. Unlike DLS, though, the DFC Legion doesn’t want to throw them away. It wants to hang onto as many as it possibly can.
So, you’ll have a few key characters who do your heavy lifting, but who need the support of their friends, in the form of Cosmic-wearing weenies. It’s the same curve and tactical structure as before (off-curve team attacking), but with different mechanics for using the counters.
That part’s pretty straightforward.
The thing is, having a body sit around as purely a Cosmic storage silo leaves one hell of a lot of empty card space. This is where the second side of the team casts Star Boy as its hero and idol.
90% of the Legion team follows a standard three-item template: first, they’re Cosmic. Second, they’re Reservists. And third, they do their heaviest lifting when not in play. Some of them fire powers from your hand, others from other zones; but the key thing here is that your deck is going to be unbelievably light on support cards. As in, you could easily play nothing but characters.
The theme works with itself on a lot of levels. The biggest problem swarm decks run into is running out of warm bodies to drop on the field; it’ll be turn 6 and your init, and all you can muster is a pair of 1-drops, due to your beefy hand of plot twists and locations. With the Legion, you can simply drop those support cards on the field—you may be playing Timber Wolf for his discard power, but he makes a pretty decent beater, too! The heavy character count in the decks will make the team very consistent to play—you won’t always get the character you wanted, but I’d be pretty shocked if you ever had to let a resource point go unspent.
I could go on for a while here… nothing makes me happier than to wax poetic about my own design prowess. I’m going to mostly leave it to the preview cards to speak for the set, though. I will, however, take the time to address one concern that a lot of you probably have by this point in the article. See, plot twists are pretty powerful in our little game, and that power is generally held in check by the fact that, unlike characters, they’re really hard to specifically hunt out, and once you spend them, they’re kinda gone. With our plot twists on legs, these balance issues are tipped over; our “Savage Beatdowns” can be searched, and out “Acrobatic Dodges” can be recurred. Worry not, children… we were conscious of this from the start, and took what steps we could to ensure they didn’t become problems. The recursion issue was a pretty moot one—after our initial panic about easily bouncing the best pseudo-Plots repeatedly to hand, someone remembered an important fact: Silver has, like, zero recursion. Any Silver play that includes DFC would bump Heralds out of legality, leaving only two easy recursion cards—Remote Facility, which is team-stamped to a team with zero synergy to the Legion, and Asgard, which doesn’t immediately return anything to hand. Some combos are still possible, of course; but our mad scientist playtesting crew couldn’t find any glaringly disgusting ones, so we’re not too worried about them.
The Search issue is a tricky one… I can’t get into a lot of details yet, but suffice it to say, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Search cards are plot twists, and playing plot twists in a Legion deck makes some of their best cards stop working.
Anyway, I’m on page 5 in Word, and while I’d love to keep going and hit my usual 3,000 word quota, I can’t really say much more without spoiling things, so I suppose I’ll sign off here. Andrew Bircher will have a key Legion card today, and tomorrow will bring a multitool and my favourite art of the set from DemoN and OSM, respectively.
As always, we welcome your feedback, and I welcome your scorn, blame, and abuse.
Good day, and I am so very sorry.
When you put “pseudo-plot-twist” and “search” together, why does my brain immediately think “Brainiac 5″?
And you have nothing to be sorry for.
Spud, I haven’t gotten past your intro yet. But you’re on to us. We set you up.
Unfortunately, our plan backfired because you succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.
Damn you!
I love you guys. I love the Legion. And stuff like this makes me continue to love this game! Great work on what I’ve seen so far.
Messiah Complex will be a 4 of must in this deck. Easy way to get back your characters and if you need it to gain some life at the same time.
Legionaires are already my favorite team in this set. I don’t need to see anything else!
One question on Live Wire… He says, “…for each Cosmic Counter you control.”
Should he not say, “…for each Cosmic Counter on a character you control.”?
I only ask because of UDE cards that have come before have often read, “remove a Cosmic Counter from a character you control…” not, “remove a Cosmic Counter you control.”
Apparition, for example, reads, “Remove a cosmic counter from a character you control -> Target character you control can attack hidden characters this turn. ”
I don’t think you technically control the counters themselves, just the characters who posses the counters. I could be wrong. Just some food for thought. Maybe herocomplex could weigh in!
Great read Spud!
You do control the counters. You control everything on your side of the In Play zone.
Wow! Thanks for the fast reply! You can ignore the identical PM I sent you. I honestly would not have guessed that’s how it worked, but I love that I’m still learning more about this game well past it’s production!
I find it very interesting that they work without any need of plot twists, but I am sort of concerned about the way the team is mentioned to work. It says that unlike DLS these guys want to keep cosmic counters around. Thats sort of true but some DLS guys just want a counter no matter who has it (which was also stated). So how well do these guys mesh with the Legionnaires that like to pop counters for effects from DLS? Hard to say from the cards seen, do they have good synergy or was this something you guys were willing to risk to provide a different way to play the team? Don’t get me wrong I love the concept, just curious is all.
Not happy with Star Boy, mostly because he isn’t really a reprint yet was treated as one. I have to be honest if the card isn’t a reprint it shouldn’t have the same art or version as the previous one. I understand not wanting to change these things because of a simple Reservist being added, but I don’t think you guys should have done it because that simple Reservist changes the card, and the way it can be played. Simply put, it is not the same card. With cards like Bat-Signal where the way wording the cards changed, or Beast Boy – Garfield Logan where his wording change in order to clarify how he works I am ok, because the cards never changed the way they worked or had their effects altered. In this case however Star Boy changed. Also isn’t Cosmic-Surge supposed to be at the end of the text of the card?
We’ve had cards “reprinted” with extra affiliations. That’s wholly new game function. So, this isn’t without precedent.
Well Spud, adding an affiliation doesn’t change the way the card works does it? A new affiliation is’t like adding a keyword, or power. To make that argument less valid, as far as I can remember that only happened in one card which was Captain Boomerang and he gained an affiliation (The Rouges) that only 1 other character has, a 6th turn Abra Kadabra. Do you think that really alters that much the way the card works? Another thing is that Star Boy doesn’t really need reservist. The character’s effect is only useable when in hand. Last but not least UDE specified in the MVL FAQ that if a card that was reprinted the newer text would be used. With all due respect, I don’t think you can compare the level of influence UDE had over the game with a fan set anyone makes. I’m all for fan sets and everyone knows that, but we can’t really pretend to make changes on reprinted cards like if we were UDE.
Perhaps its just a matter of personal preference, but the way I see it unless its a virtual set cards that UDE made should not be changed like that.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Additional affiliations DO matter. There’s a whole class of cards that count affiliations, and with the addition of the Rogues team, Captain Boomerang went from “unaffected by those cards” to “affected by those cards” without need for a team-up. That changes how the card works and how the game is played. UDE decided it was worth doing for the sake of flavor, and I agree.
The argument that “UDE did that, but we can’t” is utterly devoid of merit. We ARE UDE now. They’re gone,and we’re all that’s left. It’s our job to do everything they used to do for us, and that includes following all precedents they set up. They set up the precedent that it’s okay to change game function on a reprint, and I intend to follow that where it’s appropriate.
I love it
Having an additional affiliation doesn’t change how the card works, it simply changes how the card is affected by other cards. There is a HUGE difference there. You can give 50 affiliations to Captain Boomerang and he still can only be recruited from hand, and bounce back a 2 drop during your attack step. The card still works the same way as UDE first made it to be. I couldn’t even find 5 cards that affected Captain Boomerang by having an additional affiliation. How many will affect Star Boy?
Unfortunately we are not UDE no matter what you think, and the precedent they gave us was adding a new affiliation not adding a keyword. So you didn’t actually follow it, did you?
The precedent was that reprints don’t have to be strictly identical in function to their old wording. It doesn’t matter how broad or narrow the change is. An added team affiliation is new game function, like it or not.
I know you’re enjoying throwing your new weight around, but you’re really not going to convince me here.
Throwing my new weight around? Oh boy here we go again. Listen spud, I have every right to comment on the cards that are being previewed just like everyone else. I have a certain point of view that you obviously don’t share with me. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am a member of the council, and if I wasn’t in the council I would still not see to kindly to this change.
UDE added an affiliation, which alters how other cards interact with C. Boomerang, everything about him still works the same way. You guys added a keyword that alters how the card itself works. There really is no comparison, and there is no “whole class of cards” as you make out to believe. Honest, where are all those cards you speak of that affect Captain Boomerang for having The Rogues affiliation that didn’t affect him before getting the affiliation via a team-up with a 6 cost character? Heck I can’t find even find 5 cards that can affect C. Boomerang for having 2 affiliations and ironically 1 of them is a team-up, and the other one gives him affiliations. Go to DOXC and type reservist, put plot twist, and hit search then tell me how many cards can now interact with Star Boy and change the way he is played. Do that with affiliations and see how many cards show up that affect Boomerang in a different way.
I’m not telling you to change it, I am simply telling you how I view the change and how I feel about the card. Bottom line is that like it or not having an extra affiliation doesn’t change how the card works, while adding a keyword does.
As I said, agree to disagree. I see zero problem with adding a minor change to a reprint to make it fit better within its new context. Boomerang fit better with his fellow Rogue, and Star Boy fits better with Reservist. Both changes are minor and appropriate given the context, and do absolutely zilch to harm any current decks already using them. This isn’t to say that I support screwing around with as much as a designer might want to– anything that takes away from previous functionality is a no-no. For example, Star Boy is the ONLY Legionnaire in DFC with Cosmic-Surge. It was never up for debate whether to change that part to put him in line with the rest of the team, as THAT fundamentally alters the behaviour of the card.
Again: Star Boy is still a terrible card, and nobody is going to play him, with OR without the change. Even if they do, nobody in their right mind will row him, as it shuts down his only useful power (as he’s an utter waste of resource points in a swarm deck). There is zero practical change with the addition of that keyword, except that it makes him fit better amongst his new posse.
No difference in his old context + improvement in his new context = not a problem.
Well that was one point I made earlier. Star Boy is useless in the row, so why give him reservist in the first place?
Because other effects on the team key off that keyword. He wouldn’t function in the deck without it.
So then we are in agreement then that by adding Reservist to him you are changing the way other cards interact with him but also the way he works?
I dunno, it seems that if he has Cosmic-Surge instead of Cosmic (as you would of liked him to have), and he lacks reservist (as again you would of liked him to have), wouldn’t it had made more sense to create a new Star Boy from scratch that had reservist and Cosmic with the same power, or a similar one rather than altering a previously created card? He was lacking two things you wanted, why did you settle for an altered version that still lacks something you want instead of creating the card you really wanted to have in the first place?
You could just respect the decision made by the Design team to include Reservist on Star Boy. That would make everything easier. Don’t like Star Boy with reservist? Don’t play him. It’s simple.
“So then we are in agreement then that by adding Reservist to him you are changing the way other cards interact with him but also the way he works?”
I admitted that from the start. But unlike you, I don’t differentiate between the two. Changed is changed, regardless of the scale of the change.
“why did you settle for an altered version that still lacks something you want instead of creating the card you really wanted to have in the first place?”
Reprinting him was me showing my respect for the old card. He inspired the entire new team, so he deserved a slot on the new team. That said, he needed a small (and as we’ve both said, largely inconsequential) modification to fit, so I modified him. I wasn’t going to give him new art and a new version just to re-use the same terrible power as before. If he was getting redesigned, he was getting COMPLETELY redesigned… and I didn’t want that. The old card needed a spot.
I’ve got to 100% agree with Spud on this particular issue. I mean, Prismatic Shield works completely different on the new Boomerang than it did on the original. Tarnax gives the new Boomerang one more attack. There are many examples. Sure more cards target Reservist than multiple affiliations, but the degree of change does not matter. The fact is, UDE did change cards when reprinting them, and so can we.
Edit: Though I do agree with Trooper’s right to disagree and I don’t think we should call it “throwing new weight around”. Being on the council doesn’t mean we disagree with everyone! I don’t see the correlation. Truth is, Troop just likes debates