Concord’s SOTM deck is officially wrapped up. I’ve got the cards on order and they should arrive before Christmas time. Since it’s a bit of a weird day, let’s break down the deck and talk about the cards.
CHARACTER CARD
The art for this one has been locked in for a while. The first iteration of this was drawn in early 2023, though I redid both the front and back art this year just to bring everything in line with how I was making my art. As we’ll see later I don’t generally worry about that too much, but with this being the key card that will be out for the entire game, it felt fitting to go the extra mile.
The art for both sides of the card could easily be cover art from various issues throughout the series. The Incapacitated side might be for something post-Issue 27 when Adam lost Solaris or could be from around Issue 47 when the team returned from the future and Adam got in trouble with his parents for disappearing for a week.
The front is easier just because it had to occur from a very narrow window. I use the scarf to represent Concord’s link to Concordance and more specifically Solaris, so Concord would only be in his more adult form post-Issue 20 after the Christmas Invasion and only still be bonded to Solaris until Issue 27, giving us ~8 issues that this could fit into.
Mechanics wise, Concord’s deck cards about two things: filling up his trash and playing Flare cards, and his base power helps with both of those. For Incapacitated Abilities, there’s a simple rubric that we use for determining these:
- One of the following: One player draw a card, one player uses a power, or one player play a card.
- One of the above not already used.
- An ability that calls to some of the mechanics of the deck and may or may not be more situational than the other two.
Since Concord’s Flare cards destroy themselves for power, I figured that would be an interesting thing to be able to share with the whole group.
ASTRAL AEGIS
In each deck I like to flag a couple of cards as cameo slots for the characters of other creators from the SOTM Custom Deck Discord and this is the one for Concord’s deck. I put out the call for cosmic heroes and Atom Lass (middle left) and Spaceflame! (bottom left) were two of the first called out and belong to two of my favorite creators: GoldChevron and YakGuardian.
Coming up for issue names for cameos like this is always a bit difficult, but fortunately Bill gave me two boons in that regard: the ASIST concept and the Blot Invasion. Having a comic series in the vein of Marvel Team-up fits ASIST perfectly so that gave me the name A.S.I.S.T Archive, while the Blot Invasion gave me the excuse to have some threat that required three cosmic heroes take on together.
Mechanics-wise, you might be asking “why does this card that looks like a shield heal instead of blocking damage?” and that is a very good question with a very simple answer: tracking one-off damage reduction sucks. In fact, tracking any effect that doesn’t have a card that’s going to stick around on the table kind of sucks, but at least with damage bonuses they’re likely to be used during your next turn. Reducing the next damage dealt to a specific hero may stick around for several rounds (an issue that frequently occurs with Charade’s deck) so I wanted to avoid it going forward. It may not be a perfect ludic fit to what’s happening, but HP is already something you’re tracking and it feels a lot better in practice.
CONCORDANT SHARD
This is the first of pieces of art I drew for Concord’s deck back in 2020 and the name stuck around since then too. Solaris was too integral to the concept of Concord as a character to leave them out of the deck, so they’ve often been a keystone card in the deck.
Mechanically, Sol lets you do the thing Concord wants to do: play Flare cards. Like we saw with Astral Aegis, those give small bonuses when played and can be BURNed for bigger effects later, so having something to play them out more quickly can set up your future turns.
This is also the first of several cards we’ll see that cares about Concord’s trash. I settled on eight for that because:
- It was a fifth of your overall deck, so not an insignificant amount.
- Not so many that it wouldn’t come up until the late game.
- And helps show Concord starting out unsteady but growing into his power as you play the game. (That was not an original intent, but someone on the playtest server said it as feedback to the deck and I loved the idea, so I’ve retroactively included it as a reason.)
Trials of the Concordance (as referenced in the quote) is something I’ve had milling around in the back of my head for a while. The name has that campy, Silver Age feel that I thought fit Concord well and I knew Concord’s backstory since the Menagerie game: he was empowered by Sol, kidnapped by aliens, and then had to rescue himself when Sol was damaged (an origin that has been referenced during Phase Three), so that became the name of Concord’s origin story.
COSMIC EMPOWERMENT
Now we have a two-fer: a card I drew back in 2020 AND one that references another deck.
Folks may recall that Ghost Girl’s deck has a card referencing the detonation of the Vyortovian bomb in Issue 27 and this immediately proceeding that: Adam powering up Charlotte so she can magic the bomb. My only regret is that the two cards don’t really interact. There was an earlier version that did, but it didn’t really mesh with the Flare/Burn dynamic and was changed for game play reasons. You hate to see it, but giving a good play experience is a higher priority to me than perfect verisimilitude (see my comments about Astral Aegis and healing vs. reducing damage).
EMPATHIC ACUITY
I’ve got to thank Bill for his suggestion that led to the art of this card. Worked out great for the feel of this.
This being attributed to Issue 37 means that it is in response to the upcoming card “Sorry, Sorry!” We’ll talk more about that when we get to it.
GUARDIAN-CLASS AGENT
This is another card that Bill helped with the art on, specifically having Adam’s face in the background to balance out the image and let us get a better look at his determined expression.
I liked how much this one turned out to reuse it as the trading card and Concord’s deck divider.
This is one of cases where the quote does not come from where the image did and is more about vibes. I attributed the art to Issue 12 (which would presumably be the issue that caps off the end of the first year of Menagerie comics) and so the art is Concord facing down each foe he faced in the previous issues (in clockwise order starting at the top: Ego Trip in Issues 1-3, Ambra Nerach in Issues 10-11, Space Bug in Issue 9, and Grand Cataloguer Cracklesnap from Trials of the Concordance). I could have included one of Netherwarden’s ghosts too, but I felt those would go better on a Charlotte-focused version of the cover.
The quote, however, comes from Issue 25 during the kerfuffle with the Rook Corp Mook Squad before the Vyortovians showed up for their second invasion. If you remember, Concord has bubbled Fractal and I imagine this interaction happened right as the Vyortovians showed up, necessitating Concord stow her in a pocket dimension for a bit so he could deal with that until he could hand her off to the authorities.
Mechanically, my one disappointment with this card is that it is the only one of Concord’s ongoings that doesn’t care about his trash, things being destroyed, or destroys itself for power, but generally a hero’s “reduce damage taken by 1” card is already among their most powerful, so doesn’t’ really need too much of a bonus to make it worth playing.
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
This was one of the cards that took the longest to lock down the mechanics on. Ending your turn is a bit of a big deal, so I wanted the effect to be worth it. That said, given the rate you’re going through Flare cards, you’re likely going to end up with a handful of them even after you play two, so hopefully it works out.
This is the second time we’ve seen Keri in SOTM cards, both times as Super Chica and hanging out with Adam. This is one of those pieces where I had the image in mind for a long time before I drew it. I wanted at least a handful of cards in each set to highlight the idea that it’s cool that these kids have superpowers and they’re probably going to use them to do stupid kids would do, like in this case flying up to the top of an electric pole to take their lunch break. Safe? Probably not, but it does make for a fun visual.
LITTLE KID, BIG WORLD
This one was inspired by a set of covers from the Boom! Studios Go Go Power Rangers series that I thought was fun and let you get a look at the personality of the character. I probably could have pushed that more here, but I didn’t want to detract from the focus—namely that Adam can barely reach the locker. In fact the biggest edit that happened to this one was continually lowering where Adam was positioned in the shot. I’m pretty sure in the original you could see his mouth. XD
Quote-wise, it felt wrong to not have some Adam/Leo interactions so I made sure to get one in here. After all, James went through all the effort of making that Linkord tumblr blog, it’d be inconsiderate to not have the two interact in Concord’s deck.
MAJESTIC AURA
This was the last piece I did for the deck and is the only one where Concord isn’t front and center in the art. Really wanted to highlight the concept that Concord has shown off enough power throughout the series that some of the C-tier baddies are going to react to him showing up as “ah crap” instead of “get him!”
In the meta of a theoretical Menagerie series, I put four Menagerie Annuals throughout the run of the game that give sort of OVA-levels of adherence to the continuity of the series. They don’t disagree with anything that happens throughout the series, but some “wait, when did this happen?” vibes. In this case, Menagerie Annual #1 would focus on a massive crime spree by previous villains that would turn out to be a diversion by Rook to pull some other scheme. It would be revealed at the end that this was all just a report being read off to Rosa Rook about the projections of the plan working (with little hints sprinkled throughout that something was up, like no one using Adam’s real name through the issue and him not appearing except as Concord and other inter-personal details that Rook wouldn’t know about) before ultimately deciding to not go with it. (Instead, she’s leak the info about Pneuma’s capture to provoke the team into doing something rash that would give the team’s public image a black eye, which occurred in Issue 13. [Yes, a lot of this is explaining motivations with the power of hindsight. There’s going to be a lot of that.])
NEON ERUPTION
This is the first of several Burn enablers, this one doing what Concord does best: lots of damage. The damage on the AOE is a little lower than I would normally do for one with a conditional number of targets, but given that you could activate Majestic Aura’s burn text to hit all the baddies for 2 damage and then follow up with 2 more damage from this card means Concord has a lot of versatility that necessitates reining in that power a bit.
The art for this one was decided because I wanted to represent Concord in his Keynome/World Seed empowered state (a future variant character card for Concord!) at least once so folks weren’t surprised by that look.
We also get our first quote from one of the Rainbow Warriors, Agent Honesty. They originally made an appearance elsewhere in Concord’s deck, but was retrofitted here when that card’s art changed. This also lets us reference some of Concord’s storyline and Sol’s doomed by the narrative nature.
RAINBOW WARRIOR
Was it wrong for me to count this as an appearance of Concord’s parents in my stats because their outlines are in the window? Maybe, but I did it anyway.
This the second of three Burn enablers for Concord’s deck and probably the most likely to be used, so we’ll talk a bit about Flares now.
I really wanted to capture the feel of Nova playbook’s burn mechanic in Concord’s deck and I think the Flares help with that. For those who don’t remember, the Nova’s main mechanic was that they could Burn themselves (possibly taking new conditions) to accumulate Burn that be spent to activate Flares: moves that let you do something powerful without making a roll, or at least heavily tipping the roll in your favor.
Here you play Flares that give you a little bit of an effect, but the rest of it on layaway until you can activate it, which destroys the Flare in the process. In a lot of ways, this a bit the other way around from the Nova’s mechanics, but remember what I said earlier about verisimilitude. It plays well and in my experience lets a player feel powerful when they have this power on standby even if they can’t immediately make use of it.
REBUKING FORCE
Concord’s key Flare card and why I was very much against putting a straight search card that let you get whichever Flare care you wanted from the deck: 90% of the time it was this one and other 10% it was Majestic Aura.
This is our second appearance of Grand Cataloguer Cracklesnap, so I think it’s time to talk about him a bit.
In an earlier version of one of Concord’s card (which would eventually became Majestic Aura) I drew a pair of weird alien creatures in metal suits with cube-shaped heads that I just called Blockheads. Bill helped me flesh them out into the Blockheads that appeared in Phase Three, but they needed a leader—the Megatron to their Decepticons—which led to the creation Cracklesnap. For more about these guys, you can go read Planet of Dread, but long story short the Grand Cataloguer is responsible for collecting Concordance shards for someone and has anti-Concordance weaponry which are responsible for why Solaris was broken at the beginning of the Menagerie game.
“SORRY, SORRY!”
Now time for us to get back to what we were talking about with Empathic Acuity earlier. One of the most important points I wanted to make with Concord that he frequently causes unintentional collateral damage and this card’s unconditional start of turn trigger means that while it will solve your problems now, it will eventually cause you problems later on. Maybe it will destroy something dangerous… but it’s just as likely to destroy something helpful.
We also have another (verbal) appearance by Tasha Starr, who shows up surprisingly often in MOTM cards for someone who only showed up in the first game. I’ve slotted her into the propaganda arm of Rook, which is a useful character to have around to badmouth our heroes. It’s also one way I can explain some of her questions in Session One. 
STAR CHARGE
Another older piece of art, this one drawn back in 2022 after I watched SSSS Gridman and decided that I was going to incorporate some of their visual style choices into Concord. Not a lot to say here other than I know why I dropped a lot of the elements present there in Concord’s design from later drawings.
Also, I love Jordan’s excitement in the quote. I knew from the very beginning if this got cut, that quote was just going to show up somewhere else.
STOLEN STAR-SWORD
Technically this should be a Continuum Sword, but the alliteration was too strong to pass up on. Also, that’s already a lot of text for a title and the title as is gets the concept across well enough. This is the sword Concord took from future Sablestar in the Quillverse (which eventually became a plot point in Phase Three).
It’s another role player in Concord’s deck: it puts cards in the trash, gives you a steady stream of damage when you don’t have Flares to play, and when you get a big enough trash pile causes your damage to eat through damage reduction. Everything a damage dealer like Concord would want.
If I could have, I would have fit three copies into the deck because it’s just that useful, but Concord has enough ways to fish it out of his trash that unless they’re buried on the bottom of your deck, you should see a copy in play throughout a normal game of Sentinels.
UNLEASH THE WORLD SEED
Another piece where the idea for the art existed since the very beginning of the deck. Adam bonding with the Keynome was such a pivotal moment in the game that it had to be part of his deck. This was also one of the first pieces I did after a bout of burnout, so it very much started with “okay, I have this idea, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” which quickly turned into “oh wow, no this is striking.”
On the mechanics side of things, this card fits into a class of cards we on the Discord called Harpy Hexes (after the SOTM card Harpy Hex) which all follow the same basic formal: when you do the deck’s primary mechanic, you deal a target 1 damage. Concord’s version first started as only caring about activating Burn effects, but ended up being quite limited, so I changed it to any card being destroyed, which made it a lot more versatile. Takes the sting out of losing one of your cards if you get to bonk one of the baddies in response.
This is also the last Burn enabler and usually not one you want to use as one, but sometimes you just need a way to start the cascade of Burns going (frequently by using Empathic Acuity to bring something that got binned from one of your powers back into play).
Finally, both Neon Eruption and Unleash the World Seed both got negative feedback for their names (previously Neon Storm and Harness the World Seed) as they both sounded a bit too controlled for what I was going for, which led to their current names and a change I’m happy with.
WORTH FIGHTING FOR
And finally something nice to end on. Worth Fighting For is one of those cards where I knew what I wanted (because Bill suggested a group shot of the Amari family) but I wanted to give it some broader context beyond that. I eventually settled on it being a photo pinned to a cork board in Adam’s room which let everything else fall into place. We’ve even got a sneaky little reference to Ted Waters in the corner.
As I’ve grown as a game designer, I’ve learned a value of having a single card that explains exactly what a deck wants to do to serve as a baseline. For instance, Charade’s Legacy of Terror can (if you’re playing with Charade’s base character card) tuck a card under your character card and immediately get its bonus effect from using her base power or set up for later, showing her ideal play pattern to someone just playing her deck. Worth Fighting For is that for Concord: throw stuff in the trash, get bonuses for having things in the trash, and play Flare cards.
If there’s anything I don’t care for in its design, it’s that it gives two decision points, but they’re both minor: pick one of two cards from the top of your deck, and then decide if you want to play a card or pull a card from your trash. The issue is that the first can effect the second if you draw a Flare off it. It’s a minor issue at its core, but it does give you a cascading decision tree to deal with.
And that finishes up our look at Concord. Some early decisions (such as making a quarter of his deck Flare cards that there are two copies of) necessitated other design decisions (such as not having as many three-of copies of cards as I would like) but that is how these things go.
Concord also wraps up my initial plan of five hero decks, though I still have a villain and an environment I’d like to make before I call the Menagerie of the Multiverse expansion finished (and further ideas still for future expansions).
