This is a fan project reimagining the out-of-print Marvel OverPower card game that was being produced from 1995 to 1999. This project is called “Power Balance”, which includes remakes of the old cards, as well as introduction of new cards from the never released The Marvels and Absolute Evils, as well as some from a self-titled Power Balance expansion. We’ve made a complete card list in the style of GDMJR - click here to view. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know at oppowerbalance@gmail.com!
We’ve even tried to print some of these ourselves - see how it turned out below:
Balance
The primary driving force for this project is balance - hence the overarching name “Power Balance”.
The original card game is essentially a game of resources. Generally speaking, useful characters are ones that have the ability to play higher values or have access to a greater pool of cards. Given this fact, useful characters should proportionally have a higher point value allocation to restrict use of too many useful characters on a team, but unfortunately this is not the case. The original official point value system was implemented for the sake of simplicity and not balance, which has led to some (if not most) characters being virtually not useable and thus never seeing the light of day (e.g. most max 6 characters). A more mathematically accurate point value system has been implemented.
Again, generally speaking, useful card effects need to either be of higher value or increase the pool of cards available to the player. Many Special cards in the earlier expansions, and many Universe/Tactic cards, do neither of the above and this make it very hard to justify using them. Cards have been updated to make them all more useful and see some competitive play.
Card Identification
Unfortunately, the original card game isn’t very user friendly. New players to the game are often confused about which cards are which - how does a new player identify whether a card is a Power card, Event card, Special card, Aspect card, Activator card without having to refer to various segmented manuals? The Power Balance remakes and expansions aim to correct this - having each card type is clearly labelled, and still done so that follows distinct established stylistic elements from other cards so they look like they were always meant to be there.
Card Effect Descriptions
Another problem alienating new players is the very often ambiguous or unclear descriptions in the card’s text. For Special and Aspect cards, just a sample of regular issues that new players face with descriptions includes:
- never indicating whether it can be played offensively or defensively;
- never detailing who/what the card is supposed to be targeting;
- whether the card acts as an attack that can be avoided;
- extremely ambiguous wording that could be interpreted in several different ways;
- lack of explanation of what certain terms mean (e.g. negate).
This list is by no means exhaustive, and isn’t limited to Specials and Aspects. Take a look at your average Teamwork card’s bonuses. Are those bonuses applied to attacks from any type of card, like a Special? Do both bonuses need to be used to play the card? Are all the attacks made in one turn, or does the opponent to react to one attack before the next attack is made? Do the bonuses contribute to Venture total?
The Power Balance remakes and expansions aim to re-write n every single card to make every card’s use, effects, conditions, etc. as clear as possible without being overbearing.
Stylistic Continuity
The original game has unfortunately always had an issue with maintaining a unified style between expansions. For example, X-Men character and Location cards do not match the same style as all other preceding expansions. The artwork was changed from semi-realistic to traditional black outline comic book, and the Character name font is completely different.
Borders for any given card type between expansions also have no consistency - Specials cards have been various colours (yellow, brown, off-white, etc.) and various textures. Border colours for Double Shot cards, Teamwork cards, Training card borders have never been the same.
Even the border type is inconsistent. Ally cards look more Tactic cards rather than Universe.
The Power Balance remakes and expansions aim to bring continuity to the styles between all the expansions, to reduce confusion and aid in quick and easy identification of card type, particularly for newer players.
Completeness
OverPower has never felt finished or complete, particularly from the Monumental expansion onwards. There are Location cards that list characters that don’t exist in the game. Conversely, out of all the characters, many of them don’t appear on Location cards. This means, the characters not listed can never have their difficult-to-collect Specials used by Battlesites. Moreover, not all Location cards have an Aspect card, leaving many Locations feeling like there’s something missing.
Outside of Locations, even the “basic building blocks” cards feels not fully fleshed out, with only two types of Tactic cards while there are four types of Universe cards. Even then, the Tactic: Artifact cards feel like they have no rhyme/reason/pattern to them, seeming very haphazard when compared to all other Power Grid dependent cards (Universe/Double Shot).
The Power Balance remakes and expansions aims to make the game finally feel complete, by introducing new Locations to cover all Characters in the game, creating non-existent Characters listed on Locations, and finally by fleshing out the Tactic cards in more detail.
Team building
Homebases were the original card game’s answer to not being able to create canonically accurate teams that were effective due to the need to have characters with similar Power Grids on the same team. The new Any-Power Power/Universe/Tactic cards that are not One Per Deck now allow teams of any Power Grid to work together, with the trade off that the Sum Deck Rule drops from 80 points to 78 points, and MultiPower Power/Universe/Tactic cards can no longer be used.
Homebases are no longer necessary and therefore Aspect cards are now played by Battlesites instead.
Have a look at our reimagining of each expansion and the core mechanic cards below.
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