Marvel Champions Retires Two Major Heroes and Addresses Future Returns

Marvel Champions continues to expand and bring more of your favorite Marvel characters to the game, and the good news is that doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Unfortunately there is some other news that fans might not be so excited to hear, which was revealed during Fantasy Flight Games’ latest Fireside Chat. Many had been worried that a few out of stock heroes would not be reprinted, and FFG confirmed that is indeed the case, revealing that Captain America and Doctor Strange are now officially out of print and retired, and they won’t be returning, at least not in their current form.

The team explained what retired actually means in terms of Marvel Champions, and essentially it goes like this. Retired products aren’t going to be available for purchase, and that means any scenarios, cards, or heroes in those products will also not be available for purchase. Those retired products will move to what FFG is calling the Legacy environment, and the good news is future products will be fully compatible with products in the Legacy Environment.

That brings us to what is being called the Current environment, which will essentially include anything released in the past 2 to 3 years. Now they did stress this is a bit fluid, as if a product is incredibly popular and consistently in demand, they will absolutely keep that product in print and included in the current environment.

Now, there is also the issue of certain previous releases including cards that are also utilized by subsequent decks and releases. If a card that fits that description is part of a retired product and out of print, Fantasy Flight will then print those select cards if they feel they are important to the game overall.

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As for if a product or character can return, the answer is yes, but not in the way you might assume. Senior Game Designer Tony Fanchi addressed the possibility of revisiting heroes like Captain America and Doctor Strange down the line, but if they do, it won’t be a straight reprint. “If we are going to be doing revisits of heroes, we aren’t going to make minor changes, tweaks around the edge, and reprint the same kit,” Fanchi said. “We want to give you a brand new experience with Captain America, Doctor Strange, or whoever we are designing for, so that you feel like as a long-term player that it’s still an exciting product for you to pick up and for you to get these heroes back to the table, even if you haven’t played them for years because their other version came out 5 or 4 years ago.”

Fantasy Flight also looks at several other advantages to this system, including letting certain cards that are above the curve or overpowered fall into retirement. They also brought up the possibility of improving on past cards that aren’t good enough to consistently play, as they can retool those cards. They also mentioned that when designing scenarios for current and future products, those new ones won’t suffer from the continuing escalating difficulty due to having to consider and design for every single release since the beginning of the game.

The closed out the chat by noting that if you are looking for some of those older releases, it would be a good idea to target them sooner rather than later, as at some point they will not just be out of print but out of stock at retail stores as well. While we could see perhaps alternate universe versions of Captain America and Doctor Strange down the line, you might want to go snag the originals up soon if you’ve been waiting to add them to your collection. You can find the full fireside chat video above.

What do you think of the changes Fantasy Flight Games is making to Marvel Champions, and do you agree with them? Let us know in the comments, and you can also talk all things Marvel Champions and gaming with me on Bluesky @knightofoa!