Comica: Design Philosophy
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Comica Origins
Comica started out many years ago as a MTG Salvation thread that petered out as my collaborators and I became to busy to finish the project. Many of the core concepts from that old set are still here, but they've spent many years kicking around in my head.
Three Heroes and a Villain
The design goal of Comica is to make you feel like a super hero, while also delivering on a top-down style set that remixes resonant tropes as we've come to expect from Magic's recent past. Right off the bat, we identified three major "archetypes" of heroes we thought needed to be represented: Naturals, Mutants, and Gadget users.
Gadget users were the easiest, as they obviously wanted to be based on equipment. Though the original team went through many trials, it was the release of Shadows over Innistrad's Investigate mechanic that led me to the mechanic now called Gear Up. Not only were equipment fun and flavorful, but being able to suit up any random creature and make them a respectable threat played directly into the power fantasy of a gadget using super hero.
Mutants were a bit trickier. We tried a number of different mechanics, but the one I remember us liking best involved a sort of limited Level Up, which put +1/+1 counters on a creature up to a maximum of three. It was fun, but the wording never felt right. Luckily, the release of Amonkhet brought us cards like Exemplar of Strength, which inspired the more elegant version of Mutation we see today. Mutants not only represent one of the major tropes of comic books, but also let players live the "young hero must master their powers" story line through gameplay.
Naturals were the hardest to crack, and went through a wide array of different mechanics. The "solution" came to me when I did a quick survey of my friends and family on facebook and asked them to come up with words they associated with "super hero". To my slight surprise, the vast majority of responses weren't about powers or fighting, but things "justice", "morality", and "protection". Though it's far from a scientific survey, it definitely reminded me that super heroes represent values and ideals as much as they represented power fantasies. This led to a number of different additions to the set, including the Defender matters theme (to drive home a sense of protection), the addition of a few more flash creatures (to play up the "saving the day" moment) and Convoke, which allows big expensive beaters to feel connected to "their people" in a more direct way.
With all of this said, we also knew that villains were an incredibly popular aspect of comics (sometimes even more popular than their respective hero), and even though we put the heroes in the spotlight we wanted to make sure villains got some love too. This led us to Traps, which is a staple of comic books and a flavor home run.
More to come when I find the time...