Welcome to the start of Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes previews! Today, I will introduce the set’s design teams, talk about how the set was made, and show off a cool preview card. I’m a giant fan of Marvel, so getting a chance to lead this set design was a huge treat. I can’t wait to finally talk all about it.
Assemble the Team
Before I get into the story of the set’s design, I want to introduce you to the design teams that created it. I will have the lead of each team do the introductions. For the Exploratory Design and Vision Design teams, that will be me. For the Set Design team, that will be Dave Humpherys. For the Commander Design team, that will be Daniel Holt.
▲ Click Here to Meet the Design Teams
I’ll begin with the members of the Exploratory Design and Vision Design teams.
Mark Rosewater
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design – Lead)
I served as the lead for the set’s exploratory design and vision design. I was also one of the Marvel subject-matter experts (SMEs). I started reading comics at a young age, and Marvel holds a special place in my heart, so it was very exciting to get to work on this set. My goals were to make sure the set did a good job of representing this corner of the Marvel Universe and make sure every design choice was as flavorful as possible while supporting great gameplay.
Jeremy Geist
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design – Strong Second)
Jeremy first grabbed our attention when he came in 2nd place in the Great Designer Search 3. He is a massive source of ideas, and I always love having him on my design teams. For this set, Jeremy served as my strong second. This is a position that oversees the file, and it has proven to be a great training opportunity. Jeremy did so well that we had him lead the Vision Design team for “Dublin.”
Dave Humpherys
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Dave likes to join Vision Design for the sets he’s going to lead. I’m a big fan of leads joining Vision Design, as it helps them understand the vision of the set and allows them to question ideas early to make sure we’re handing off the best version of the set for completion. I believe Dave has led more set designs than any other designer (save for maybe Erik Lauer) and is at the top of his game. It’s always a pleasure to hand a design to Dave because I know he will do great things with it.
Jacob Mooney
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Jacob was on the Casual Play Design team and had worked on a number of vision designs with me. Jacob had a good eye for casual play and would always talk through ramifications of decisions as it would affect things like Commander.
Aaron Mesburne
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Aaron was the creative lead for this set and is also a Marvel subject-matter expert. He and I had endless conversations about what the best execution was to capture the essence of all the Marvel characters in the set. Make sure you look carefully at the background of all the art in the set. There are a lot of Easter eggs that Aaron and the artists put there.
Lukas Litzsinger
(Exploratory Design and Vision Design)
Lukas is another Marvel subject-matter expert. I have worked with him on numerous design teams. Lukas has a good holistic eye and always asked questions that made me think through why I intuitively wanted to do something.
JC Tao
(Vision Design)
JC has a great sense of play balance and helped balance the mana costs of our playtest cards. He made sure we were making mechanics that could be properly balanced. JC had this very intuitive sense of when something wasn’t right structurally, which was very helpful.
Dillon Deveney
(Vision Design)
Dillon is another Marvel subject-matter expert from the Creative team and served on the Vision Design team when Aaron wasn’t available. He’s the creative lead on an upcoming Marvel set.
Next is the Set Design team. Dave Humpherys, the set design lead for Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes, will introduce this team (with the one exception that I will be introducing Dave).
Dave Humpherys
(Set Design – Lead)
I have had the pleasure of handing off a lot of sets to Dave (Unstable, Dominaria, War of the Spark, Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths, Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, March of the Machine, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction), and it’s always a pleasure to do so. Dave has a great knack for taking the vision I’ve set out and creating the best possible version of it. This set was no different. He and I were both passionate in making the first full-size Marvel set be the best it could be.
Corey Bowen
Corey was the set design lead for Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel’s Spider-Man. Besides providing a lot of fresh and charming ideas for Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes, he was my go-to designer for helping solve any of the throughlines and foundations for our Marvel sets and making sure they speak well to each other. For example, we worked together extensively on the structure of the Infinity Stone designs.
Andrew Brown
Andrew has a well-rounded background, having previously been the lead of balance for Play Design and now leading set designs on such sets as Edge of Eternities. He’s very active internally in the architecture and planning between all our sets and makes sure each of our cards find a home. Andrew helped lead the Limited focus down the stretch.
Tori Spurling
As a member of the Casual Play Design team, Tori helped bring focus to Commander play. She helped us design cards with Commander in mind by creating new cards and adjusting existing cards to prioritize what would be fun and appealing there. One specific contribution I recall was when she suggested that the members of the Fantastic Four should play together like the Fifth Dawn Stations.
Oliver Tiu
Oliver has a great eye for balance in 40- and 60-card formats. As a member of the Play Design team, he helped me stay up to speed on these formats and any new developments there. He had a great sense of what would play well, what would be fun, what we could fix, and what we’d be better off starting over on.
Lukas Litzsinger
Lukas was a fountain of ideas and designs for individual card designs and bigger-picture items. He helped me piece together the vibe and strategies of each of the color pairs early in the process and continued to brainstorm themes and cycles we should try throughout the process.
Ian Duke
After myself, Ian is the most experienced set designer who is still taking sets to the finish line. I relied on him to find my blind spots as he came in to take fresh looks at the set. I have a lot of faith in his ability to improve and focus designs; something you might be able to appreciate from his work on leading sets like Bloomburrow.
Reggie Valk
Reggie has a love and understanding of a variety of competitive formats. He brings a constructively critical eye to sets that I appreciate. As the Secrets of Strixhaven set design lead, he would work with me to avoid stepping on each other’s designs and keep each other aware of current best practices.
Aaron Mesburne
While not officially on the Set Design team, I wanted to give a shout out to Aaron who was a constant sounding board for ideas on my card designs as the creative lead. He was great at letting me know when we hadn’t adequately captured the spirit of the character, moment, or item. He’d articulate what was off, often with some ideas for text that directly led us to better designs.
Finally, here are the bios for the Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Commander Design team, written by the design lead Daniel Holt:
Daniel Holt
(Lead)
Daniel is a senior game designer and design lead of the four commander decks in Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes. Leading previous products like the Magic: The Gathering®—FINAL FANTASY™ Commander decks, he continues building his legacy as a designer who bridges creative flavor and thematic gameplay. Top-down designs are his favorite part of making Magic cards, and he got to do that here with his favorite heroes (and villains) from the Marvel Universe. The Fantastic Four in particular holds a special place in his heart.
Lukas Litzsinger
(Exploratory Commander Design – Lead)
As his first time leading a Magic design, Lukas kicked off the Commander decks in exploratory design with his signature “what if” style. He tested several directions for the decks in the early stages and explored what could be done in Commander. While not every idea stays the same, Lukas’s choices in colors and face commanders stuck.
Daniel Xu
(Commander Exploratory Design)
While Daniel Xu is known for his competitive mindset and MTG Arena designs, he contributed to his first Commander Design team with the Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes Commander decks. His role in exploratory design was to help playtest and ideate directions alongside the rest of the group when much was still unknown about the final shapes of the decks.
Ethan Fleischer
(Commander Vision Design – Lead, Commander Design)
Ethan took over from Lukas and ran a short vision design sprint to help solidify themes and get the decks ready for the first wave of art concepting. Afterward, Ethan stayed on the team as an experienced member familiar with best practices for Universes Beyond and Marvel subject-matter expert.
Tori Spelling
Tori was a back-to-back hero just coming off of the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander decks. She is a joy to have in any playtest and keeps a focused mindset on the problem at hand. When it comes to filling the file with fun and exciting designs, Tori is great at providing blue-sky ideas and thinking outside the box.
Megan Smith
A returning villain, Megan was also on the Secrets of Strixhaven Commander Design team. She is a strong team member that is able to navigate tough debates on card design rates and play patterns. If you’ve enjoyed her work on other projects like the Tarkir: Dragonstorm Commander decks, you’ll know she’s likely behind some of the powerful and exciting cards in these decks.
A Tale to Astonish
When Aaron Forsythe first came up with the idea of Universes Beyond, he collected his ideas in a presentation. I was one of the first people he showed it to. When Aaron asked what I thought, my response was, “Dibs on Marvel.” It was about a year and a half later when Aaron came to me with exciting news. We had a meeting set up with Marvel and needed some card designs to show them. He felt I was the perfect person to design the cards.
My assignment was as follows: Design seven cards. They should all be top-down designs meant to illustrate what Magic could do with the Marvel Universe. The designs should be spread across colors, card types, and rarities. Most of them should be high-profile characters and elements of the Marvel Universe, but I should make one “deep cut” that demonstrated we were fans of their property.
Here are the cards, as I handed them over, save my deep cut which I will get to in a second:
Bruce Banner (uncommon)
2U
Legendary Creature — Human Scientist
2/2
1U, T: Draw two cards, then discard two cards. If two cards that share a card type were discarded this way, untap Bruce Banner and transform him.
“You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
///
Hulk (green)
Legendary Creature — Beast
5/5
Trample
At the beginning of your end step, if Hulk didn’t attack this turn, tap Hulk, then transform him.
“Hulk SMASH!”
Scarlet Witch (rare)
1RR
Legendary Creature — Human Wizard
2/2Flying
Whenever Scarlet Witch deals combat damage to a player, exile the top card of your library. You may play that card this turn. 3RR, T: You may put a permanent card from your hand onto the battlefield. If it’s a creature, it gains haste until end of turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.
Rocket (uncommon)
2B
Legendary Creature — Raccoon
1/1
Equip abilities you activate that target Rocket cost 2 less to activate.
Whenever Rocket deals damage to a player, put a +1/+1 counter on him and you gain 2 life.
“Aw, what the hell. I don’t have that long a lifespan anyway.”
Thanos (mythic rare)
2WUB
Legendary Creature — Mutant Eternal
5/5
First strike, menace, ward 3
Whenever Thanos deals combat damage to a player, gain control of up to one target artifact or creature that player controls.
CWUBRG, T: Flip a coin for each creature. Exile each creature whose coin comes up heads.
Cap’s Shield (rare)
1
Legendary Artifact — Equipment
Indestructible
Equipped creature gets +0/+2 and has hexproof.
2, Unequip Cap’s Shield: It deals 2 damage to any target.
Equip 2
Equip Captain America 0
S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent (common)
1W
Creature — Human Soldier
2/2
Vigilance
S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
These designs were from before we had any discussions about the larger picture of doing Marvel sets, so the Hero and Villain creature types hadn’t been discussed yet. Many of these concepts made it into the set, and a few even had influences from my original designs.
For my deep cut, I decided to focus on a character that I was a huge fan of which I thought would be a great fit for both the set and Magic in general. One of the things I believed strongly about Marvel was that there were many lesser-known characters that would make wonderful Magic cards, regardless of whether the audience already knew the character. The character I chose to design a card for has had her own comic book and is definitely popular among more enfranchised Marvel fans, but at the time she had scarcely shown up outside the comics. Her name is Doreen Green, better known as Squirrel Girl. Here’s my design:
Squirrel Girl (rare)
2GG
Legendary Creature — Squirrel Human
3/4
Whenever Squirrel Girl enters the battlefield or attacks, create a 1/1 green Squirrel creature token.
2GG: For each Squirrel you control, create a 1/1 green Squirrel creature token.
Eats nuts, kicks butts.
It happens that my preview card today is The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, so let’s see how she turned out.
▲ Click Here to See Squirrel Girl
0193_MTGMSH_Main: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
0371_MTGMSH_BoldLogo: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
I came pretty close to the final card during design. Here are all the changes:
- Squirrel Girl became The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: That’s the name of her comic.
- became : She was strong in playtesting, so they added a little more green; they kept her mana value at 4.
- She gained the Hero creature type: As I said above, we hadn’t yet discussed having the Hero and Villain creature types when I made this.
- She gained flavor words: One of the flavor words is a nod to a Squirrel card from Unstable, so thumbs up from me.
- The templates slightly changed: For example, “enter the battlefield” became “enters.”
- Her activation went from to : Again, this was done for power-level reasons.
- Her flavor text slightly changed: It’s a line she likes to say a lot in the comics, so I got the important part.
- She went from 3/4 to 4/4: I think this was to offset the mana changes.
It’s remarkable to me how close my initial design was to the printed card. It’s why I asked for it to be my preview card. My goal was to make both Marvel fans and Magic Squirrel fans happy. The card did very well in our internal rare poll, and I hope it’s a big hit with all of you.
Obviously, our presentation with Marvel went well. It went so well that we decided they should be our first Universes Beyond partner where we would make a suite of sets rather than just one. Marvel has been publishing for over six decades and has a lot of material, especially characters, that we could make sweet cards out of.
This led to a big meeting where we talked through how we wanted to divide things up. One of the slices was focused on the Avengers, their allies, street-level Super Heroes, and their enemies. Knowing what we were planning allowed us to figure out how to divvy up the content.
This is where I called in my dibs. This set was going to be our initial big Marvel set (Magic: The Gathering | Marvel’s Spider-Man was the first, but it was smaller), so I was chosen to lead the Exploratory Design and Vision Design teams before handing it off to Dave Humpherys for Set Design.
In Exploratory Design, we started by making a list of every possible character, object, place, and event that made sense in this slice of the Marvel Universe. As a Marvel subject-matter expert, I was well equipped to figure out what would make Marvel fans happy and lead to the best Magic card designs.
Something I realized early was that the key to making this a beloved Marvel set was ensuring that we had the opportunity to make great top-down designs, especially for well-known characters. That meant whatever mechanics we included had to reinforce this mission.
We examined what mechanical themes we felt were the most resonant. We decided we wanted to find a Hero mechanic, a Villain mechanic, and a Hero and Villain mechanic.
For our Hero mechanic, we leaned on the idea that they are in constant contact with one another. If a Super Hero gets into trouble, they can call a team member to help. Members of the Avengers, for example, have an Avengers Identicard that shows that they are a member and allows them to communicate with one another.
The mechanic we came up with to represent this concept was “signal.” “Signal” was a keyword action which always came with a number. It allowed you to look at that many cards from the top of the library. You could then reveal a creature card and put it into your hand or onto the battlefield if its mana value was equal to or less than the “signal” number. The rest of the cards went to the bottom of the library in a random order.
“Signal” was the worst-received mechanic at the Vision Design Summit and was cut early in set design. I’ll talk about its replacement later in the article.
0087_MTGMSH_Main: Baron Helmut Zemo
The Villain mechanic was connive, a returning mechanic. Connive is a keyword action. You draw a card, discard a card, then put a +1/+1 counter on the creature conniving if a nonland card was discarded. Connive was originally the Obscura mechanic from Streets of New Capenna. It had been used on Transformers cards, in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander, and in Modern Horizons 3, but at the time it hadn’t returned in a premiere set.
The flavor was spot on, and we needed a mechanic to help with the high as-fan of legendary creatures in the set (every uncommon, rare, and mythic rare creature is legendary). If you got a duplicate legendary creature, we wanted ways for it to not be a dead card in your hand.
We were so happy with connive that we showed it to Corey Bowen, who ended up putting it into Magic The Gathering | Marvel’s Spider-Man. That helped blend themes in the two sets and was a nice throw-forward. While we want each Marvel set to stand alone, we also wanted a sense of continuity between them.
0168_MTGMSH_Main: Go Nuts!
For our Hero and Villain mechanic, we leaned into something we felt represented the essence of the teams we were showcasing: teaming up. In Vision Design, we called the mechanic “team-up,” but its final name ended up being teamwork. “Team-up,” or teamwork, was an additional cost you could pay on a spell to make it more powerful. That cost was tapping any number of creatures you control with power greater than or equal to the teamwork number. The flavor is that the Super Heroes or Super Villains are teaming up with your creatures. While individual cards changed a lot, the core mechanic basically stayed the same through print.
0049a_MTGMSH_Main: Bruce Banner
There were also a few mechanical things that we had chosen to do as throughlines in Marvel sets. The first was double-faced cards (DFCs) that were a cross between modal and transforming. You can cast either side, but if you cast the front face, you could later transform it to the back face. We had done this in Magic: The Gathering | Marvel’s Spider-Man and wanted to do them again in Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes. Some of them lean into a secret identity. Others were chosen because the character has two different forms or roles. We just picked the best concepts we could for our cycle of five mythic rare MTDFCs.
0212_MTGMSH_Main: The Coming of Galactus
Another element we carried over was the Saga subtype. Sagas are a means to turn stories into cards, and the Marvel Universe is chock full of amazing stories. We made a long list of classic tales featuring characters from the set and designed a lot of takes on how a Saga could capture that story. The stories we did were in constant flux. Early on, we focused on classic Avengers stories, but we ended up widening our reach to include more stories about individual characters.
Ready, Set … Design
The two biggest structural changes during set design was the replacement of “signal” and the addition of a mechanic that helped players feel more like a Super Villain in games.
0148_MTGMSH_Main: Quicksilver, Brash Blur
Set Design made a few tweaks as they replaced “signal.” First, they decided it wasn’t important for it to just be a Hero mechanic. Yes, connive only felt right on Villains, but they didn’t feel there was a need for something on Heroes only. Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes is the first Marvel set to feature Hero typal cards. Second, they realized that they wanted a mana sink mechanic. Neither teamwork nor connive was a mana sink, and Magic sets like to have mana sinks.
The earliest version was a tweaked version of kicker, but kicker always has this tension where you’re reluctant to play the card early, so Set Design tried a version where you could kick it either in your hand or on the battlefield. It was sort of half kicker, half monstrosity. Playtesting showed that if you costed it as a monstrosity-like ability, it was usually too expensive as a kicker cost. This led Set Design to try a version where the cost was reduced by the card’s mana cost on the turn you cast it. They then tweaked it so that it was reduced by its mana cost on the turn it entered, even if it wasn’t cast. In all of these versions, the ability could only be activated as a sorcery. They eventually realized that there wasn’t a need for that restriction and removed it.
Power-up proved to be a perfect fit for the set, because it could be flavored as a character using their powers, and the flexibility of the effect didn’t get in the way of flavorful top-down designs.
0096_MTGMSH_Main: Doom Reigns Supreme
The addition to make you feel more like a Villain in games ended up being an enchantment subtype. Inspired by the Ordeals in Theros and Cases in Murders at Karlov Manor, Set Design came up with Plan, an enchantment subtype. Whenever a specific action happens, the enchantment generates a small effect and gets a plan counter. If you do it a certain amount of times, you sacrifice the Plan and get a larger effect as a reward. Set Design liked how the Plans encouraged people to go down different paths in Limited and build different types of decks in Constructed.
In addition to new mechanics, Set Design looked for various returning mechanics that could cameo on single cards to help highlight top-down design.
0009_MTGMSH_Main: Captain America, Super-Soldier
For example, Captain America, Super-Soldier uses shield counters, the Brokers mechanic from Streets of New Capenna, as he famously uses a shield. There are several other cameo mechanics in the set, all of which helped make cards more flavorful and exciting.
And that brings us to the end of our tale of the design of Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes. As always, I’m eager to hear your thoughts on today’s article, any of the mechanics or mechanical elements I talked about, or the set as a whole. You can email me or contact me through social media (Bluesky, Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter).
Join me next week for the vision design handoff document from Magic: The Gathering | Marvel Super Heroes.
Until then, may you pick your favorite Super Hero or Villain for your next game.
