Face front, true believers!

We're hosting an AMA (Ask Me Anything) for Marvel Champions: The Card Game with developer Michael Boggs on May 14—streamed live on our Twitch channel at 1:00 PM Central Time.

Whether you've got questions about favorite heroes, designing this super-powered Living Card Game, or what might be coming in the future, now's the chance to ask! We'll be drawing questions from the posts below, as well as live questions from the chat stream during the show.

Post your questions below, and we hope to see you there!

Any chance they might release 2 heroes at once like they did with captain america and ms. Marvel?

on Hawkeye's Quiver, after searching do you put the other cards back in any order you choose?

Edit: changed bow to quiver

As a rough order of magnitude, how many comics do you think you've read while preparing and designing cards for this game?

32 minutes ago, kwickland said:

on Hawkeye's bow, after searching do you put the other cards back in any order you choose?

Along this tangent, I believe some people are wondering if you’re supposed to shuffle his deck after searching the top 5. (The rules only say you have to shuffle after searching your whole deck; many cards tell you to shuffle, anyways).

8 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

Along this tangent, I believe some people are wondering if you’re supposed to shuffle his deck after searching the top 5. (The rules only say you have to shuffle after searching your whole deck; many cards tell you to shuffle, anyways).

that's a good question too, also I misspoke, it should be on Hawkeye's Quiver

1) Of all the cards you’ve designed for MC, what’s your favorite?
2) Which card do you wish you’d done differently? Why?

3) When the X-Men and Fantastic Four come to MC, which heroes from each group will you call dibs on designing? (Tangentially, are there any special mechanics you’re most interested to explore?)

4) Which of the silhouetted packs from the end of the Red Skull article did you design, Kang, Ant-Man, Wasp, Quicksilver, or Scarlet Witch? (Side prediction question: how many did I get right? 😉 )

End Comment: I hope you’re all staying safe and are well.

1. What alter-ego will you design for The Captain when Nextwave is added to the game?

2. Which Guardians of the Galaxy member do you think would be most challenging to design?

3. How soon before we see repeat heroes? (eg Monica or Mar-Vell as Captain Marvel)

1. In competitive card games you often see keywords and mechanics introduced to help drive a game forward. What role do you feel new keywords have in the design of Marvel Champions and how much does that inform future hero or scenario design. More broadly what factors go into determining the design space for already present mechanics or card types (such as building upon villain upgrades and environments as shown through Crossbones and Absorbing Man in Rise of The Red Skull)?

2. Who is your favourite villain of the new campaign box and what's your favourite mechanic introduced in the campaign box? Thanks for all the hard work Caleb and yourself do on the game along with your broader team!

3. If you were to open this box right now which hero would you chose as your first hero through the campaign?

When assigning heroes to their starting aspect is it more about mechanics or more about theme? Is this in mind early in the process when heroes are being decided or later after general mechanics for a hero have already been established?

How many heroes are currently in development or just waiting to be released (beyond the Red Skull box)? Any hints about the next story box?

How are you choosing the groups of heroes you are going to work on for each "cycle"?

Will we ever see different versions of the same hero/alter-ego combinations (like what has been done in LOTR LCG with heroes like Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn, etc.)?

I love this game and seriously appreciate the amount of work that goes into thematic gameplay! That said, I've gotta say it feels like the devs are fairly often not on the same page when it comes to Interaction Rulings/Card Intentions. The recent Rules Reference update to "Defense" cards in particular seems extremely restrictive, and some "Defense" cards don't feel like they were intended to work that way.

The best example to me is "Warning," which says "When a hero would take any amount of damage, reduce that amount by 1" (emphasis mine). Between that phrasing, and the flavor of Iron Man calling out "Incoming!", it certainly seems as though this card was intended to play to help out another hero, where the current "Defense" ruling restricts this card to only protecting your own hero, outside of some extremely edge cases.

To boil this down into a distinct question: is there any effort being put into cleaning up some frankly messy rulings, templating, and/or keyword usage on cards?

Is there any chance we can get an alternate art hero identity card for Hawkeye featuring his classic costume?

With all the heroes, aspects, villains and modular sets the game has great variety and replayability.

But I often find most games follow a similar arc: players trying to get out of the early game as quick as possible, whilst not losing, heroes build up their supports and upgrades and the final act is about dealing a ton of damage to win.

Much of the encounter deck design space so far is tempo hits - minions, side schemes, additional attacks and schemes from the villain - which is what creates this gameplay arc.

Do you have plans for more varied encounter cards and effects, that disrupts the current gameplay arc of heroes building up and then smashing down the villain?

How much do you value balance when creating a game like this? Obviously you play test a lot but is the focus on balancing all the heroes, or making sure they are all fun to play and unique. Given its a co op game, one card being stronger than the other is not the end of the world provided both are fun and add to the experience.

Related question, do you believe all heroes released so far are balanced and some are just more difficult to learn and play well?

Many of the game's side schemes are simply a combination of a threat amount and a crisis, hazard or acceleration symbol. For example: Taskmaster's side scheme isn't functionally different to Whiplash's.

As the game progresses do you intend to have side schemes with more flavour or additional rules text?

Were there any other names considered for the game besides Marvel Champions? What were they?

(I kinda wish it had a different name, just because when searching for news on Marvel Champions I usually get way more links for Marvel Contest of Champions.)

Ooo, I’ve got another!

Why have we been punished with The Heroic-3-Klaw-with-MODOK? I would never have ever tried this scenario like this if it weren’t a direct challenge! 😂

19 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

Ooo, I’ve got another!

Why have we been punished with The Heroic-3-Klaw-with-MODOK? I would never have ever tried this scenario like this if it weren’t a direct challenge! 😂

Setup instructions might as well include "Put entire encounter deck into discard pile." 😂 😂 😂

Is there any possibility of some of the cards having background cameos of Stan Lee? It would be hilarious to see that MCU nod.

Good idea. It was always interesting to see Stan in the movies. Was he in almost all of them?

Thank you.

With regards to the MCU everything but the last Spiderman film (Far from Home). Thank you Stan, you gave us a great world to play in.

I suspect there’s a very different licence to include Stan Lee’s likeness than the Marvel Licence. I know CMON we’re asked about it a lot during the Marvel United Kickstarter...

Tell us about your favourite new Keyword we haven’t seen yet from Rise of the Red Skull! (We’ve seen Ranged and Piercing so far)

Any chance we can see another play through like when Cap Thor and Ms Marvel were previewed?