I know people have been wondering whether or not the campaign boxes would contain new heroes or not. Well I just noticed on the product page this:

Quote

Story Boxes – The larger Story Boxes introduce a series of three to five linked scenarios that let you live out your favorite comic book stories! These boxes contain both new heroes and villains to expand your game of Marvel Champions !

I knew I read that somewhere.

Yeah, so on that basis I think I’d expect that sort of thing to be ‘themed’ around other Marvel groups - like a Fantastic Four vs Dr Doom (or Galactus?) or X-Men vs Magneto. It seems like a good idea to add multiple characters at once for some of those.

Considering recent movies, I wouldn't be surprised if the first story box was Thanos/Black Order with Guardians.

On a related note, if/when they do put out Guardians, I hope Rocket and Groot are separate decks that synergize well together, and not a single deck.

On the other hand, if they did combine them, that'd be a good way to do their hero/alter ego card

Hoping the first two will cover the Fantastic Four vs Doom and X-Men vs Magneto.

I would guess Guardians of the Galaxy before X-men or Fantastic Four, probably with a couple of Guardians from the MCU movies and a couple of lesser known Guardians thrown in much like She-Hulk in the core set. But I would not argue with any of these groups getting picked as I would like to play with as many characters as I can.

I'm sure Bug will be left out as usual. Poor guy can't catch a break. If only Rocket would return his calls. I'd be happy if they put Phyla Vell and/or Moondragon in since they just brought them back for the Donny Cates run. If they don't do Thanos they could always do something interesting with Adam Warlock/Magus and the Universal Church Of Truth.

Some predicted story box contents (heroes/villains):

Fantastic Four

Heroes/Alter Egos
Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic
Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
Johnny Storm/The Human Torch
Ben Grim/The Thing
Norrin Radd/The Silver Surfer

Enemies
Mole Man
Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom
Silver Surfer/Galactus

X-Men

some possible Heroes/Alter Egos
Scott Summers/Cyclops
Hank McCoy/Beast
Anna Marie LeBeau/Rogue
Bobby Drake/Ice Man
Ororo Munroe/Storm
James Howlett/Wolverine
Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin/Colossus
Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler

Some Possible Nemeses:
Sabretooth, Mystique, Juggernaut,

Hellfire Club
Magneto & The Brotherhood of Mutants
Bolivar Trask (Sentinels)
Apocalypse
Dark Phoenix

This makes me think... Who are the nemeses going to be for the Fantastic Four? Obviously Doom deserves his own scenario, so he's out. Will they each get a different member of the Frightful Four? Will they all share a single Super-Skrull enemy, with different treacheries representing different copied powers? Perhaps they'll instead get their own unrelated nemeses: Say, Human Torch vs The Trapster, Thing vs Puppet Master, Invisible Woman vs Namor, and Mr Fantastic vs Mole Man?

3 hours ago, rsdockery said:

This makes me think... Who are the nemeses going to be for the Fantastic Four? Obviously Doom deserves his own scenario, so he's out. Will they each get a different member of the Frightful Four? Will they all share a single Super-Skrull enemy, with different treacheries representing different copied powers? Perhaps they'll instead get their own unrelated nemeses: Say, Human Torch vs The Trapster, Thing vs Puppet Master, Invisible Woman vs Namor, and Mr Fantastic vs Mole Man?

Isn’t Namor friendly with Invisible Woman specifically though? I hesitated to list him only because he seemed like a likely ally for her.

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

Isn’t Namor friendly with Invisible Woman specifically though? I hesitated to list him only because he seemed like  a likely ally for her.

I figured the side plot could be along the lines of "Namor is trying to wreak vengeance on the surface-worlders again. You're the only one he listens to; you have to deal with him."

15 hours ago, FearLord said:

Yeah, so on that basis I think I’d expect that sort of thing to be ‘themed’ around other Marvel groups - like a Fantastic Four vs Dr Doom (or Galactus?) or X-Men vs Magneto. It seems like a good idea to add multiple characters at once for some of those.

Those are quite far away. Remember that FFG has content planned for years in advance, while Disney buying Fox is a relatively recent event.

I wouldn't expect X-Men or F4 for a couple of years.

14 minutes ago, xchan said:

Those are quite far away. Remember that FFG has content planned for years in advance, while Disney buying Fox is a relatively recent event.

I wouldn't expect X-Men or F4 for a couple of years.

Acquiring Fox only effects which characters Marvel and Disney can put in their own movies. The rights to the comic characters are retained.

They could be a while off, but there’s no reason X men or Fantastic Four stuff has to be tied to the release of a film.

@rsdockery
"I figured the side plot could be along the lines of "Namor is trying to wreak vengeance on the surface-worlders again. You're the only one he listens to; you have to deal with him."

Oh I like this idea...

To build on it, maybe he could be both an ally 'and' have a nemesis side plot? i.e. Make him a somewhat more powerful/cheaper than usual ally, but he can't come into play as an ally while the plot is in play, and if the plot comes into play, he gets discarded from play (to justify making him more powerful).

Do we know if FFG has limited rights to the IP? I thought I read somewhere here that FFG may not have rights to X-Men and possibly FF, and that as a result they may not appear in the game. I'm hoping this is a false rumor.

Found it here.

Nobody knows anything about the rights.

What we do know is that the rights extend beyond the MCU (because of She Hulk).

I suspect (and I used to be an IP attorney) that FFG's license isn't delineated, but everything has to run past Disney for approval. So, no contracts need to be changed, it can just be a memo. X # years ago, when this deal was being finalized, FFG may have gotten a memo saying "No X-Men". Maybe that's different now. Maybe that memo never went out. Maybe it did go out and it's not different now.

The movie rights are mostly immaterial, because (for example) the She Hulk movie rights aren't owned by Disney. But Marvel has a history of down playing the franchises they don't own to devalue them (see, e.g, Inhumans vs X-Men). The only exception is Spider-Man, because Underoos is just too popular.

I will wager a box of donuts that contractually FFG has the entire Marvel canon. The question of whether Disney is going to approve any given hero is likely to be an ephemeral notion and a moving target.

2 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

I will wager a box of donuts that contractually FFG has the entire Marvel canon. The question of whether Disney is going to approve any given hero is likely to be an ephemeral  notion and a moving target.

Perhaps Disney's hands-on approach may depend largely on how successful Champions is? As they have early success perhaps Disney/Marvel may be more willing to approve more heroes and/or story lines. Do you have an opinion as to how FFG's use of Marvel IP will impact Legendary? I'm thinking back to the days when Decipher had rights for Star Wars and produced an excellent CCG for several years until the rug was pulled out from under them and the IP rights given to WoTC.

The X-Men are coming.

Disney owns the film rights to both X-Men and FF. The X-Men are in the latest video game, they are launching a widely marketed comic revamp with one of the biggest talents in comics right now, etc. It will be like they never left.

1 hour ago, urloony said:

Perhaps Disney's hands-on approach may depend largely on how successful Champions is? As they have early success perhaps Disney/Marvel may be more willing to approve more heroes and/or story lines. Do you have an opinion as to how FFG's use of Marvel IP will impact Legendary? I'm thinking back to the days when Decipher had rights for Star Wars and produced an excellent CCG for several years until the rug was pulled out from under them and the IP rights given to WoTC.

I used to create a licensed card game in the 2000s to early 2010s. Typically, the owner of the IP isn't actually hand's-on. In our contract, anything created had to have prior approval, but that didn't mean they had any real input aside from that. They didn't say, for instance, "She-Hulk isn't featured enough so make this card do twelve damage instead of ten." What they did was similar to CitizenKeen's comment and say this or that was off-limits due to a dispute or some such. We had an instance where there was dispute over using one of the actor's likeness because the actor had worked into his contract where the studio could only reproduce his likeness for marketing the movie, meaning no toys, etc. So, we had to work around that by never showing the guy's face on his cards. Their approval team really just looked for that stuff, and to make sure we weren't infringing on any other copyrights or that we weren't doing anything crude or obscene. While it wasn't an exhaustive process it did take a long time because we clearly were not a priority.

That being said, Marvel does probably throw in a little input on which characters they want to promote and maybe which artist's work they want featured, but I wouldn't expect them to be too hand's-on aside from that.

20 hours ago, FearLord said:

Acquiring Fox only effects which characters Marvel and Disney can put in their own movies. The rights to the comic characters are retained.

They could be a while off, but there’s no reason X men or Fantastic Four stuff has to be tied to the release of a film.

Marvel issued a merchandise ban for those properties because of the film dispute.

5 hours ago, urloony said:

Do we know if FFG has limited rights to the IP? I thought I read somewhere here that FFG may not have rights to X-Men and possibly FF, and that as a result they may not appear in the game. I'm hoping this is a false rumor.

Found it here.

An artist that did some work for the game said that F4 and X-Men were off limits. I don't know how true his claim is, but knowing how Marvel ban affected things like toys and videogames, I find it likely.

The ban might be lifted now that they have the movie rights. Im sure X-Men and F4 will show up in MC, but I don't expect them soon.

5 hours ago, CitizenKeen said:

Nobody knows anything about the rights.

What we do know is that the rights extend beyond the MCU (because of She Hulk).

I suspect (and I used to be an IP attorney) that FFG's license isn't delineated, but everything has to run past Disney for approval. So, no contracts need to be changed, it can just be a memo. X # years ago, when this deal was being finalized, FFG may have gotten a memo saying "No X-Men". Maybe that's different now. Maybe that memo never went out. Maybe it did go out and it's not different now.

The movie rights are mostly immaterial, because (for example) the She Hulk movie rights aren't owned by Disney. But Marvel has a history of down playing the franchises they don't own to devalue them (see, e.g, Inhumans vs X-Men). The only exception is Spider-Man, because Underoos is just too popular.

I will wager a box of donuts that contractually FFG has the entire Marvel canon. The question of whether Disney is going to approve any given hero is likely to be an ephemeral notion and a moving target.

I believe it wasn't just that Spider-Man was more popular, but also that Marvel also had a better relationship with Sony than they did with Fox. It's been a while since I've read that, though, so I'm not sure if I could track down that source again.

11 hours ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I believe it wasn't just that Spider-Man was more popular, but also that Marvel also had a better relationship with Sony than they did with Fox. It's been a while since I've read that, though, so I'm not sure if I could track down that source again.

Marvel and Fox's relationship went south *years* ago with the battle over the crappy Mutant X TV show. You are correct that the relationship with Sony was muuuch better.

On 8/13/2019 at 5:20 PM, Derrault said:

Some predicted story box contents (heroes/villains):

That's a pretty good list, but I think we're more likely to see:

America Chavez
Squirrel Girl
Hulk/Amadeus Cho
Hawkeye/Kate Bishop
Ironheart/Riri Williams

I would expect FFG has the rights to the comics and not the movies.

And while it would not surprise me if Disney/Marvel have stated a preference for which heroes to include, FFG are ofcourse not unaware of how popular Black Panther, Captain Marvel and some others are and would auto-include them.

On 8/13/2019 at 8:53 PM, Chupacabra52 said:

I would guess Guardians of the Galaxy before X-men or Fantastic Four, probably with a couple of Guardians from the MCU movies and a couple of lesser known Guardians thrown in much like She-Hulk in the core set

Ever since the movies, the Guardians of the Galaxy comics have been crap. Marvel is too busy changing the comics to be like the movies just to get a few extra readers.

Still the best Guardians line-up started in Annihilation Conquest Starlord, with Starlord, Mantis, Rocket, Bug and talking Groot.