1. Roadmap
A.
The first ever 3 threat on a 65mm base! And oh my what a 3 threat that is. A good builder that can choose to be physical or energy is followed by a great spender that has a throw and an extract steal (not just drop but actually stealing) trigger, as well has a place, rerolls and damage reduction. He is confirmed to be a member of the Criminal Syndicate and will be an absolute staple there.
A.
Rescue is the games first dedicated Healer according to Shick, and it's true in the sense that even her main attack can be used to heal moreso than to actually dish out damage. And the active superpower Medevac sound very strong. I think she'll have a huge impact when she is used in the right situation with the right squad but has a very low floor and high ceiling.
B+.
We didn't get to see Kang's stat card yet but instead got two TTCs that both he and Iron Lad can use as they are both for Nathaniel Richards. Both cards are extremely hard to evaluate and seems pretty complicated. I think I will just revisit them when we have Kang's card. As is they don't seem too strong to me but I may be horribly wrong here.
If you follow this Blog regularly you can probably guess that this is by far the most important card shown for me personally. Adam Warlock is the games 3rd 7 threat and does deliver for that cost with great attacks, good superpowers including Being of Immeasurable Power and an on demand Recal on the card. His special just for him Bonded Soul Gem is also straight up incredible and is free to take for him and thus will basically always be on him. And he can use a second one, too. Interestingly in post Adepticon Interviews Will Shick has stated that Adam will the the second Guardians leader and even named the Leadership as "Infinity Watch" but it's nowhere to be found on his card. Which hopefully means it's going to be on a TTC and not gone completely. I'm very excited to try out Adam Warlock and can absolutely not wait to have the box in my hands.
A.
I had predicted we'd see Adams card but also all of the reworked Infinity Gems which means I was half right here.
Valkyrie on Elendil (it's a typo on the slide) is very fast, with good durability and attacks. She also looks fantastic.
B+.
Here we've gotten the info, that Bastion will have a leadership.
Prime Sentinels will be included in the next crisis card pack and they will both have the same stat card of which you can use two just like with the Sentinel MK4s.
Not shown here is the Sentinels affiliation pack which consists of the two MK4s, Prime MK4 and Cassandra Nova. No fixed dates for any of these though. And of course the X-Factor pack with Danny Moonstar, Havoc (leadership), Jubilee and Multiple Man (leadership) that we could see fully painted in the cool Sentinels trailer video.
In my predictions I had the Members of the Brotherhood, X-Fiends and Foes and Hard to Hit character pack all exactly as they are shown here but had guessed a different combination of characters with Sam and an A-Force pack with She-Hulk. I'm very sure I'm still right about the SHIELD affiliation pack with Fury, Hawkeye and Widow 2. It also leaves Ms. Marvel, Gwenpool and Squirrel Girl as another three pack that will fit together.
And we basically have confirmation that the characters on these images are listed in their respective packs:
The new information here is that Red Hulk and not the Leader will have a leadership which now makes me think it's most likely going to introduce the Thunderbolts instead of a Gamma Affiliation.
Onslaught is coming to the game. The mini looks cool I guess.
The new Dark Dimension Terrain (coming in 3 different packs) looks extremely awesome 👍
For some reason all of the new packs now have a box number of "MCP" instead of the older CP that some of the next releases still have. Probably some internal Asmodee reason for that.
Blackheart is a character I predicted to show up but the other two are even more extreme deep cuts. Great looking box!
New Avengers (with capital N just like with the New Mutants)! And Wiccan could finally be a new Convocation member as well.
And even more New Avengers.
I didn't anticipate these six or Onslaught and instead predicted Wonder Man, Scorpion and Forge. Maybe Adepticon is their time, who knows?
2. Character Updates
I did predict we would see the updates of the 2026 re releases today and I believe I was partly right in that (or at least I hope so). We got 13 updates to characters, 11 of which get a re release in 2026. But many of the characters on the re release schedule I would consider in desperate need of an update don't show up here yet, so I believe they might still be in testing and we get the rest closer to their dates. Many of these are just HP buffs however.
Dormammu gets a quality of life change to his leadership moving the damage to the clean up phase to not have characters loose an entire activation anymore. He can now also change his own dice to skulls if the enemy rolled some and his triggers have changed to skulls making it much easier to get to them.
Cassandra has more total Stamina and now gains two power per Power Phase, while her 1 cost spender only advanced short but her Flesh Manipulation spender has decreased to 3 power. All good changes making her more viable.
The biggest and most important update. MK4 Sentinels get a big boost in having 4 physical defense and more total Stamina. And their injured side Gainer now can damage everyone within 2 of them not just themselves. They also got a cool new superpower that allows them to destroy smaller terrain that they would stand on after an advance, weirdly making them interesting to run under Magneto leadership. They can now also be pushed or advanced by allied models so Silver Sable is back on the menu @AtB Jaime!
Prime can't trample terrain (I think he just didn't have the space on the card) but got an important update to his leadership that now also works on KOs and his defense was shifted to 4/4/3 instead of the old 3/4/4 just like with the regular MK4s.
Widow 2 went to 6/6 from 5/5.
I already liked Hawkeye a whole lot and his increase to 5/6 from 4/5 makes him very good and probably a staple in all of his Affiliations.
A buff to Nick Fury kind of blows my mind. He was already an A+ model and this feels like it could push him over the edge in my mind. He should've already been splashed more than he has and this will certainly help his cause.
Emma Frost has gotten a bigger update in how she will play on the table and her normal side definitely took a hit in my opinion. Her spender got worse and lost the throw with the best name in the game ("defenestrate") but gained a superpower that can move enemy models. Comic accurately she also lost her telekinetic deflection but instead can transform into the, now tougher and easier to get out of, Diamond Form. In that she can now throw characters. Overall it will definitely change the play patterns for Emma but I'm not sure it will increase her play rate.
Chuck has gained a point of Stamina on his back side. His biggest buff comes from something else. More on that later.
Psylocke also gained a point of Stamina on the back side. She's already a top tier 4 threat and Apocalypse will be very pleased with another buff to a staple character of his faction.
A very big surprise but a welcome one is a point of Stamina on the backside for my main leader Star-Lord who had been re released earlier in the year without getting touched but I'm not complaining.
And Yondu, who released this year got treated to an increase to 7/6 from 6/5 making an already strong character even better.
As said above I sincerely hope this is just the tip of the iceberg and more updates are coming soon to characters like Mr. Sinister, Shadow King, Omega Red and of course all of the core members of the Winter Guard.
3. Core rules changes
These were completely out of the blue for me and will have a major impact on the game immediately. I'm running a local event on exactly a week and I'm very undecided whether or not well implement them yet because there's fundamental changes to the game that no one will have time to practice until then.
A) All throw damage is a flat 3 now. No matter the size of the terrain or character you are throwing. Making throwing size 1s more effective and 3 and up much less so. And it means Brace for Impact isn't as necessary as it was just a couple hours ago. It also makes having multiple size 4 characters less of a liability to your own team but that can be seen from both ways. I'm very anxious to see this play out on the table. It's certainly a small buff for Magneto, Cable and Exodus who can throw size 1 terrain for just 1 power which now is a very good deal but it also very much helps low physical defense models like Professor X when less damage can pass them guaranteed.
B) Mission Building. You now have to bring 5 extracts and secures each in your roster and for a game you pick 2 at random and your opponent chooses which one they want to play and vice versa.
C) Second Priority roll. After deployment you now have a second priority roll to see who goes first. Meaning you can't plan that into your deployment anymore.
4. New crisis cards
As you've seen above two of the ten crisis cards form the next crisis card pack have been shown off and they are immediately legal for standard play. They introduce new mechanics in Source Extract tokens where to have to interact to get an Extract out but it will vanish in the cleanup phase and Secure tokens that can randomly not score any points in a round.
Overall it was a great Ministravaganza and you should definitely watch it on twitch if you haven't already.
Cheers from Germany 🍻
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