Probably because while the Negative Zone is a linked team of Annihilus, his ladies, and the soldiers, the UF was a pretty mixed group. I suspect a few UF dualies will be printed to help with some legacy... Heralds get a few, at least.

I wonder what your opinion would have been had the vote come down differently.

From what we've seen so far, I'm tempted to call "shenanigans" on this whole process.

I will honestly be surprised if the Illuminati gets more content than the CL/Hydra team, for example.

Illuminati would have Rocked...

That I'd still like Negative Zone to at least get a card or two, but still wouldn't want 6 very small equally sized teams in the set. I'd rather have "Two Wildpacks and 4 one-offs" than "6 Shi'ars", if you understand what I mean.

... because you didn't like the results the vote?

Well, it should, shouldn't it?

Otherwise we can call shenanigans on the whole voting thing, as something that got more votes would have gotten less content than something with less votes.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather see more CL/Hydra than Illuminatii personally, but at this point I'd be disappointed to see more CL/Hydra and them "cherry-picking" and partially throwing-out the results of the vote.

For this whole process to have any integrity, they need to stick to what we vote on.

No. I don't question the outcome. I've been saying all along I thought it would be very close. I've always said any team could win.

That's actually the point I was making. There should be more Illuminati content in the set than for Crime Lords, New Warriors or United Front. But when the set comes out, I'll be surprised if that is the case.

I hope to be pleasantly surprised. I want the majority's wishes to be honored. But based on the first two polls, I'm suspicious. It feels like these polls have been created to give the illusion that we have more impact on the development of the set than we actually do.

Hope I'm wrong.

I think the Illuminati is the first example I can think of where I have not wanted them to be a full team. I personally think that the version treatment they have already seen is more than sufficient, and the space trying to give them a full team would be much better served with featuring a group with a larger roster.


NZ is fine on top, even if I would have prefered that NZ and United Front would have gotten a feature in their own storyline set. Could have introduced the Phalanax(however you spell their name) as well.

Hey guys,

Impact in a set doesn't always come down to sheer numbers - there are other considerations that must be considered. One would never say that Sentinels had a smaller amount of impact to Vs., even though they have almost 1/2 the number of relevant cards than a normal team. The votes of this set will be heavily weighed into the design process - even though there may not be as many Negative Zone cards as some other teams in the set (because there are fewer players in the Negative Zone team and they have less storyline), doesn't lessen the importance they will have to the set.

So in short - the vote doesn't necessarily influence the number of certain cards given to a team, that is controlled by the number of different characters that appear in the comics as well as the importance to the storyline. But what your vote does is to influence the relative importance a team has in the makeup of a set, and how "fleshed out" its themes and mechanics are.

Thanks,
TBS

Very interesting.

Thanks for the insight!

WOOT! New Warriors/Speed Force Team-Up FTW!

First off, thanks for posting. :)

All I want, really, is Negative Zone's taking first to mean something, and not have it been the exact same as if Negative Zone had taken 4th. Even if, in the end, you just end up taking one of the primary Negative Zone guys and giving him +1 ATK than what you otherwise would have, honestly, that's at least something.

I guess what I'm saying is I can come to terms with Negative Zone getting the same amount of cards as the 4th place entrant as long as you can promise that the vote will lead to Negative Zone at least getting "A Little Something Extra", whatever that translates to. 1st has to mean something.

#1 Vote getting LESS cards than #4 though ...

I don't know. NZ should get something REALLY special if that's the case.

(The Above Post has been slight re-edited - Sorry, I post then edit)

True, but the Sentinels also had a curve composed primarily of Army characters, so it only took about 40% - 50% of the set space to create a viable-if-blunt option set for them. Conveniently, much of the Annihilation-era NZ stuff falls into that, so I'd hope we get a decent squeeze in of a 1-to-5 Army curve for them.

Something that I hope you guys do is to follow the trend like with Magic's recent design philosophy of making blocks fit together better. I like the idea of seeing more teams that have similar themes, either directly like with the various Cosmic teams in MHG & DLS, or some less direct ones like 'opponent draws cards' mechanics like with the Injustice Gang and the Thunderbolts. There's also the idea of making stronger cross-team synergy; I know you guys did stuff like that with AI/GK in World's Finest, but we're not all exactly the most probing of players, and when some few power cards are too good, it's easy to forgo trickier synergies that are overshadowed.

You're welcome. =D

It is a good point: even given that Annihilus will have three character cards, and then you have Tenebrous and Aegis (maybe), Ravenous, and Thanos...that pretty much just leaves army cards for the rest of the set, doesn't it? It's been a little while since I read Annihilation, but was there anyone else? And the Illuminati is another one. Say what you want about how 'awesome' the characters in it are...at the end of the day, there are only, what, 5 or 6 of them? Even given multiples AND legend content for each character, it would be hard to reasonably squeeze 30 cards out of the Illuminati.

Still, the news that CL will be present, but not as fleshed out/important as the others...makes me sad. Same with United Front. I can't get no satisfaction, you know? I'm pretty much down to banking on the Runaways being the surprise team at this point.

Yes, there was.

Slightly more comprehensive list:

Annihilus
Thanos
Ravenous
Terrax (plus the others he got deployed with - I forget their name)
Blaastar
Praxagora
Skreet
Extirpia
Aegis
Tenebrous

Potentially Galactus as a location representative of the Galactus-Weapon.

Now Blaastar and Praxagora aren't part of the Annihilus' forces, but particularly with the Avengers being in the set (who were fighting each other at during this time as well), I don't think that it can be disputed that they are deserving of the Negative Zone team affiliation. That might even get you Blaastar's Space Knights - you can always dual affiliate Negative Zone / United Front.

And on TOP of that you have the potential to include Civil-War related Negative Zone content due to the prison.

Access:

Simple question for you, what would your idea of a theme be for Negative Zone in the context of Annihilation?


I loved the story and hope to see some of Conquest in this set as well.