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1. Make some cards specific to one figure, some
to a group or type of figure, and some that apply to everything.
Variety helps make them entertaining.
Beside, you don’t want the opponent to immediately figure out, “Oh, he must have the ‘regenerate Aquaman’
card or he wouldn’t have put him on his team.” There should ideally be a number of cards that could be the reason
why your opponent put that mysterious rookie Penguin on his team…and that should drive you crazy!
2. Similarly, vary the type of things the cards do.
Make
some cards that just add regular powers or increase values, some that add them under certain conditions, some that grant an
altered version of a tradition power (e.g. "half-wit"), and some that are WAY OUT from the standard powers (like the Two-Face
cards are!).
3. All cards should provide a benefit for doing
something a particular way, never a penalty.
People don't like being restricted by additional rules
but they love getting something for free or a special bonus just for them! (“Ooo…Easy Co. Soldiers have stealth
if they’re on my team? Where did I put those…?”)
4.
Decide which figures and powers are lousy, then create cards that will compensate.
Batman's AV too low?
Utility Belt adds plus 2! Smoke cloud, Leadership, and Mastermind too useless? Make cards to change their meaning! No one
will play Beast Boy? B/C/F will fix that!
5. Determine who can
NOT do the things they do in comics and make cards to let them do it.
The “real” Mad Hatter's
mind-pawns don't "wake up" after a turn...and they become superstrong! Make a card! Where the heck are Wonder Woman's lasso
and bracelets represented on her dial? Cards! Two-Face’s special blurring of good and evil not captured by stats and
colors? Flip a coin, then make a card!
6. Make what the cards
do logical extensions of the characters.
Cards that give Flash mind control or Harley Quin imperviousness
are just not fun. But shouldn’t the Riddler, who is all about perplex, have more of it than his dial allows? Give it
to him with a card! Our card #119 (entitled “???”) lets the Riddler perplex everyone he can see…all at the
same time!
7. Make lots of cards.
Six cards?
Not so much fun. “Oh, I just got the card you got last game…” 150 cards? Hilarity and unpredictable hijinx
ensue! 150 cards with each of 4 players getting a different one each game makes the possible number of combinations…um…really
large! Beside, you’ll find they are like potato chips; once you get started, you just can’t stop.
8. Don't make cards that depend on the opponent having a particular
figure.
It’s no fun getting a "Kryptonite" card that only works on Superman if your opponent doesn't
put Superman on his team. But you can make cards that affect all figures but have a larger effect on some. For example, with
my new “Fire” card (which lets certain figures start fires, kind of like Smoke Cloud) the fire harms figures that
pass through it, but has special, worse effects on the Martian Manhunter.
9. Make most of the cards “secrets” that get revealed during the game, not before it.
Some of our cards are “discount” cards, i.e., you get extra build points if you build your team
in certain ways. To get the extra points for building a “JLI” themed team, you have to show your “Maxwell
Lord” card before the game even begins. This lessens suspense. Most of your cards should be hideous revelations that
stun your opponents; “Well, yes, my Hal Jordan IS almost kayoed…but, oh, look, here’s a “Power Battery”
card! How fortunate…for me!”
10. Always allow
for exceptions for certain figures to make it more "realistic".
For example, the “Fire”
card just mentioned lets figures with RCE and EE start fires. But Killer Frost has RCE to represent her freezing power and
Black Canary has EE to represent her scream; it would be idiotic to let them start fires that way, so I make an exception
for them in the rule. Exceptions like that are easy for comic book readers to remember! Or, “the Riddler perplexing
everyone” card works on everyone except, of course, Batman Allies, who are too smart to fall for those shenanigans!
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11. Work in special relationships and situations from
the comic books you read.
Robin should be a bigger help to Batman than to other figures; so, the “Boy
Wonder” card gives him Perplex (but ONLY when he’s adjacent to the B-man and ONLY toward Batman or figures Batman
is attacking). Green Arrow and Black Canary often work, um, closely together, so let them share AV and DV when they are adjacent.
The Lana Lang token = stupid; Queen Bee figure = dumb; having the Lana Lang token turn INTO the Queen Bee figure when a Legionnaire
is attacked, recalling the zany Silver Age “Insect Queen” stories = FUNNY!
12. Effects should be potentially game-breaking, but never game-winning.
For example, our “Death
of the Endless” card could have said, “kill all opposing figures immediately”. No fun at all. Or “kill
one opposing figure immediately”; better, but still not so fun. But “publically mark one opposing figure for death,
awaiting its owner’s roll of “1” on a single die at the end of his turns”? There’s some fun!
Watch your opponent scramble to get the most out of that figure before it dies; but be careful, he’s got nothing to
lose!
13. Give purpose to the by-stander tokens.
We all have them. We don’t use them (except Alfred to give the Legionnaires stealth and Mary Jane
to heal X-Men…yeah, that’s stuff you see in the comics every day!!! “Miss Watson, please administer this
analgesic to Mister Worthington and knock yourself out in the process while I show young Master Live Wire the proper application
of disguising stage make-up….”). Battlecards are the perfect way to give by-standers purpose; Lana Lang enables
Insect Queen; the Paper Boy can be used as Billy Batson; Ma and Pa Kent can occasionally heal Superman with their home cooking!
The Professor (Carter Hall?) and the Scientist (Bruce Banner?) offer a world of possibilities and the “named tokens”
only need YOUR knowledge of comic stories to bring them to life in the game. A Mary Jane who can make one attempt to heal
Spiderman or a Jonah Jameson who pushes him to gain Willpower? Now that’s comic books!
14. Don’t take it so seriously that you can’t poke a little fun at comics.
The Manhunters?
Yawn! The only thing anyone ever remembers is that silly slogan “No man escapes the Manhunters!” So…we have
a card that makes all Manhunters on your team impossible for opposing figures to break away from…unless they are female!
My personal fave is “R.I.P.”; all opposing figures MUST if possible attack your Troia rather than her teammates;
sorry, Donna!
15. Make sure the set of cards
involves all the figures in some way, but leave the ‘big figs’ alone.
Every figure should
potentially feel the effect of some card, but face it, figures like Amazo and Despero just don’t need lots of help.
In our set of 225 cards, there are none that specifically help them or Martian Manhunter, The General, Silver Swan, Ultrahumanite,
et al.
16. View creating the cards as an intellectual challenge
to your comic-geek-ness.
Naturally, I thought it was impossible to come with cards to represent Ma Hunkle, Snapper Carr, the Thunderbolt,
or Mxyzptlk; and the second I said that to someone, I knew how to do them all! We’ve got Harley Quin’s hyenas,
the Cosmic Treadmill, the Olympians and the Endless, Woozy Winks and Bat-Mite. Challenge yourself to draw on your knowledge
of comics and the game to represent the “missing” characters and elements and you’ll be surprised what you
come up with!
17. Take the time to make the
cards themselves a “work of art”.
In our set, each of the 150 cards has a different number,
an intriguing name, a different appropriate font, and the coolest picture we could find to illustrate it. It’s extra
work, but it makes them much more enjoyable in the long run. The pictures are more fun than the instructions, which don’t
fit on the cards and which belong on a separate sheet so you can change them if you want. Besides, you’ll be surprised
how quickly you have them memorized, if they make “comic book sense”! [Tip; print them out on label paper which
you can then affix to cardstock; very tidy.]
18. Change their
meaning if they don’t work.
The first time we played under the “Cold Snap” card, we
knew it didn’t work. Killer Frost never got a useful opportunity to use Incap and Barrier at the same time. So we’ve
changed it to allow her to make ice Barriers that don’t immediately fade away, but which “melt” as the game
goes on. AH…..much better!
19. Share all your ideas
with all other players!
What inspired my gang to come with ours was all the threads on here about
artifacts and scenarios and such. If YOU guys hadn’t shared those ideas we wouldn’t have had our ideas at all.
I only posted our list originally as a lark; it was only after I started getting requests for help in making Marvel cards
that I realized our work was inspiring those who had inspired us!
20.
Accept that the purpose of the cards is not to be fair but to be fun.
So you got the “Mxyzptlk”
card while I got the “Joker’s Daughter”; c’est la vie! Make the most of whatever wacky card you get
and just be greatful that, if you do lose, you now have something else to blame it on!
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