Magic: The Gathering Designer Says Creating Marvel Super Heroes Cards Felt Like “Cheating”

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 b