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All Hands On Deck At Gen Con

Trent Pitts and Ann Harkey wrote from Gen Con;

Gen Con is the annual gathering of gamers of all shapes and sorts in Indianapolis, Indiana. If there's a game you're passionate about then there's a great chance it's represented at the convention. With a wide range of gamers and games represented at the convention there is naturally some games featuring your favorite comic book characters.

Currently the company putting out the most comic book related games is Cryptozoic Entertainment. Cryptozoic currently puts out games based on DC comics, Batman: Arkham City, The Walking Dead, Locke and Key and Penny Arcade as well as genre based games such as Lord of the Rings.

"DC Heroes Unite is the follow up to the set we released last year and last year's game was one of our most well received games yet," said Mike Rosenberg of Cryptozoic. "This is one of our most anticipated expansions for this year as well. It introduces seven new heroes and a couple new takes on all the game strategies that exist."

[Rich adds – and, yes, these are the same figures that we hinted at maybe creating a new Justice League International for DC. Turns out that, yes, they were being designed for this game instead.]

The game offers new characters as well as new advantages.

"The premise of the game is generally the same as the DC Comics Deck Building Game, there is just more going on with some of the cards and they're all brand new cards as well. The advantage of this game is that it can also be played as a stand-alone. So you can play it as-is but it can also be integrated with the original game," said Rosenberg.

When asked why the company has focused on so many comic based properties he is quick to answer, "Interest."

The employees at Cryptozoic like comics and want to do them justice in the gaming area. The games are designed to be picked up and played easily on a trip to your local comic shop. "We wanted to something very playable in a comic book shop," said Mike Hyra of Cryptozoic. Hyra's extensive resume includes a tenure at Wizards of the Coast developing rules for Magic the Gathering and Star Wars as well as content creation for Star Wars online; moving from there to Upper Deck Entertainment to work on Versus and development of World of Warcraft trading cards and miniatures; before moving to Cryptozoic to develop the Cerebus Engine.

"We wanted to make the set up quick and we wanted there to be a lot of surprises at every turn," he said.

Fans also won't have to worry about learning any new rules or keywords with the set.

"For our DC expansion we have not added any new specific mechanics. We add new play patterns, but not anything new you have to learn," he said.

This shouldn't be a cause of concern of growing stale though as he points out, "As long as there are DC characters and different cool things they can do, we can make changes to the characters and create different kinds of combos,"

"Until DC runs out of characters, we're good to go," he said.

Hyra and Rosenberg are eager to add a few more of their beloved DC characters to the card game.

"I would like a playable Catwoman hero. For the person who hasn't been in at all I would have to say Mxyzptlk."

Being a fan of Gotham based characters, Rosenberg says, "I would have to go with Talia al-Ghul."

Nothing like parents who murder their own children for a family friendly board game, is there?

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