I've noticed that there are some cards which reflect the characters or the events on comics correctly, while there are some cards that are specific to the theme of the game.

For example, Emma Frost, Headmistress and Vic Stone as Cyborg fit their comic personas adequately. Radioactive Man and Wonderman, however, have abilities that reflect the theme given to their respective teams.

Of course, for a team to be consistent, the cards would have a very theme-specific build, hopefully being as close as possible to their comic counterparts. However, there are cards which are so comic-specific, that they aren't normally included in a deck, or at least in their team's build. Examples would be the aforementioned Vic Stone, Joystick, Sharon Vance and the entire Fearsome Five team.

Now I was thinking, what would happen if the cards were more comic, less theme or more theme, less comic? If it were the former, we would end up with more Fearsome Five-like teams, but if it were the latter, wouldn't the game be just another card game with recognizable names?

I think the themes that run through vs are very interesting translations of the characters and their abilities.

Wonderman for instance shows how he is quite bluntly a bully in the comics. Rarely if ever did wonderman take on any challenges without his friends to back him up, even though he is as strong as the hulk and he nevers gets tired.

Swimmers have been known so far for their manipulations of the k.o.'ed pile. Frequently referred to as dumpster 'diving' in magic, it makes sense that the 'diving ' theme would remain a carry over in to vs as well, since there are many ex-MAGICians among those in R & D from what i am to understand. In fact, submariner is the only swimmer i know of so far that doesn't go fishing through your k.o. pile. But, since he is a flyer, it makes sense that he'd work more above ground than below, like his Avengers version.

I don't like the 2 recent night crawlers that don't have the teleport ability from origins, though spiral shared that ability then as well. But the representations of nighty have been pretty true to form for the character, showing how he hlps out his friends when he can.

I do think that if the game abandoned more of it's roots in the comics it might lose some of that appeal of throwing down the ff vs the xmen for instance, though the mechanics are mostly all sound and the game probably wouldn't be a worse game for losing it's source material. <cough deciphercough>

Wars could have been a great game, but they opted for broken instead of strategy and that chased away many players that flocked to it due to their love of the original star wars game.