Cryptozoic's Shahriar Fouladi Talks DC Deck-Building Game Injustice and Flash Kickstarter, Rebirth Reaction, and More

The DC Deck-Building Game is celebrating 10 years, and Cryptozoic is winding down its successful Kickstarter campaign for the DC Deck-Building Game 10th Anniversary Kickstarter that includes Injustice Gods Among Us and The Flash vs Reverse-Flash Rivals box as well as DC Bombshells Crossover Pack, Multiverse Boxes, and more. The campaign is still adding new elements to enhance the experience, and if you're still on the fence on whether you should jump in, you've come to the right place. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to speak to Cryptozoic Entertainment's Director of Product Development and Marketing Shahriar Fouladi all about the Kickstarter as well as DC Deck-Building Game's 10-year run, how far it's come, why they picked Injustice and The Flash, and more.

The game has evolved quite a bit over the 10-year journey, though the core elements that made it so compelling in the first place have stuck around, including a dedication to the DC Universe and all the beloved characters found within it. "What hasn't changed is we're trying to stay true to the IP. Everyone at Cryptozoic, we're DC super fans. One of our founders, John Nee, he worked for Warner Brothers. He was one of the founders of Wildstorm with Jim Lee. So comic book DNA is just kind of in the building. You walk in, there's like a giant joker statue. We have a Hawkman original painting. So DC is just in our DNA. And I feel like that's never changed with the DC Deck-Building Game," Fouladi said. "We have super fans who are the game designers, and then we have super fans who are working on it, whether editing or whatever else. So it's about just finding new innovations. It's an interesting balance, right? Because you want to give the fans something new, but you don't want to change it too much, which I don't know if you played Rebirth at all or not."

As someone who adored Rebirth's co-op-focused twist on the game, it's a shame to learn that it appears to not have resonated with the larger community, but the good news is there are still products in the pipeline for it for those of us who enjoyed it. "So Rebirth was very hit and miss with people because it was too different for a lot of people. So we had big plans for Rebirth and we still will do more stuff for Rebirth probably, but on a smaller scale, but there were enough fans who adamantly disliked it. They're like, you're trying to turn our Deck Building game into more of a board game and adding these elements that shouldn't be there. We maybe didn't pursue that as much as kind of going back to the drawing board and kind of looking again at what the fans loved about the original games," Fouladi said.

"And our main game designer right now on those games, Nathaniel Yamaguchi, he loves it, and so we're definitely planning on offering some Rebirth-related stuff in the near future," Fouladi said. "It might be just direct sales. It may not be something we sell in stores. It might be a new scenario we sell directly to fans just because we do appreciate people who did love it, and we know they're out there and we know that people kind of hate it too, so."

As for Injustice and The Flash, COVID and the pandemic caused some delays to their plans, and when things got pushed, they saw a chance to enhance both and go all out for them. That resulted in having original art created for some of the cards, totaling 30 original pieces of card art in all. Plus, they went all-in with hard-to-find Promo Cards and slick art for the new Multiverse Boxes.

"They look really cool. I mean, we're using art from the comic books as well. The comic books based on the video game. We had the cover for the Injustice Kickstarter version drawn by an artist named Well-Bee, who has actually worked with Alex Ross and others," Fouladi said. "I've worked with him before on other projects, and the new Multiverse Boxes, we commissioned original box art for those. There's going to be a superheroes version and super villains version, which are basically identical on the inside. But we thought some fans want two Multiverse Boxes, one for maybe the Rivals collection, one for whatever they want to do. So we thought we'd give people some options on that, because the old Multiverse Box, it's out of print essentially. So that was one thing we definitely did for the anniversary. We're like, we need to do a new Multiverse Box and make it bigger and better and listen to the fans."

"And then with Injustice, it was like, we've had like maybe 20 or 30 promo cards ever for DC Deck-Building Game. It's not that many, and with the Kickstarter, we have a lot more than that of just the Kickstarter exclusive cards. They're going to be a lot of cards that you can only get on the Kickstarter via stretch goals. These products are going to retail, but we're kind of blowing it out. There's just going to be so much cool content for the fans, and it's a celebration for the fans. We sort of slowed down for a little bit, but the fans never did. They kept going, when's the next DC Deck-Building Game coming out? When's the next expansion? When are you reprinting this? And then with COVID it made things really complicated and slowed us down, but we wanted a way to thank the fans for sticking with us and to celebrate them and to celebrate that we love DC. We love the game series. I mean, in 10 years, we've had staff change quite a bit. So we have people who work at the company now who were DC Deck-Building Game fans who were then hired years later in life," Fouladi said.

"10 years is a long time, so along with Epic Spell Wars, it's our two biggest franchises," Fouladi said. "Obviously DC Deck-Building Game is our biggest, but Epic Spell Wars is our biggest original IP. But those are the fans that we try to service and we try to create products that they love. So we hope the fans are excited."

You can check out the full Kickstarter campaign right here. Let us know if you're jumping into the Kickstarter in the comments, and as always you can talk all things tabletop, DC, and comics with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!