1. Why the Key Note didn't show us anything actually new
AMG has realized that showing us stuff that's not going to be available for 12 to 18 months and due to the state of the world maybe even longer isn't great. It kind of kills the hype when you have to wait for that long. I totally agree with that and would've been fully onboard if they didn't hype up the presentation this year so much. Communication is a big point of improvement for AMG.
That is all well and good but if you do that maybe show a bit more of the stuff you actually can. Shick talked about a Sentinels (I think specifically Bastion) TTC that, if you achieve certain conditions automatically wins you the game after round 5 (it's going to be very hard to ever achieve and he doesn't expect it to ever see competitive play). Why not show that? Why not give us one of the X-Factor leaders card. Even front side only? In short if you can't show something new why not show more of what is coming soon?
Apparently the Thor 2 readjusting was seen on the slide with the Asgardian Starter Set bit so small that no one could make anything out. That's probably intentional with the updates supposed to come out together as we see in the next point.
2. The Updates
Shick confirmed again that about 85 % of characters will be changed, most of them Stamina buff. 6/6 is the new base line for 3 threats and 7/6 base line for 4 threats. Loki 1 specifically will also not stay 5/5 (but no more details if he stays under the curve or gets a huge buff). It's a reset for the baseline survivability of the game. What also plays into that in the future is that we can expect less dice fixing to keep the variance up.
All characters will be in the print and play document regardless of whether they have any changes or not. Hopefully there's more Patrick Brown goodness to go round even to the characters without bigger updates. If nothing else everything will now be landscape orientation.
Will mentioned Hulkbuster as one of his favorite reworks. They did try to have him be a 5 threat but decided to keep him at 6 and change him more. No details on how exactly.
Apocalypse has been looked at and apparently his leadership will get a "small but meaningful" nerf.
We already knew but it was again confirmed that She-Hulk gets injured side. No information if there's going to be more changes.
Shang-Chi as said before will get a slap on the wrist. It's going to be interesting if that includes keeping his stamina below the curve or not.
3. Additional information on the new releases this year
The Orbs stat card will have an Eye pun on every attack and superpower on his card and Shick is very happy about it. The only exception is the Return of "Arch Nemesis" (Ghost Rider) which was supposed to be called "Arch nEYEmesis" but Will Pagani wouldn't allow it (and we are supposed to call him out for hating fun 😉).
The Thunderbolts Affiliation list is heavily focused on the Ross led team and the leadership is called: By Any Means Necessary. We can pretty safely assume the following characters to be affiliated:
Agent Venom
Deadpool
Elektra
Ghost Rider
Punisher
And possibly Leader
Further potentially in could be
Taskmaster, Winter Soldier, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Luke Cage.
More or less confirmed to not be in is Zemo aka Citizen V. Shick said that he'd like to do a dedicated Citizen V sometime though he is not currently on the schedule.
Red Hulk himself will be very offensive and set his surroundings on fire (Incinerate) and not be control focused as regular Hulk is.
For Leader Shick said (rightly so) that the community would've rioted if he didn't lead anything. He also said that Cabal and Criminal Syndicate already have loads of options for leaders and that they picked Intelligencia because of that reason. I would definitely agree with that assessment. He said that in MCP we can expect the members you'd see ok their Wikipedia page, so probably Klaw, MODOK and maybe Mr. Sinister, but also more of the evil brain trust in the game. My first guess here would be Iron Monger. Maximus the Mad could qualify, Crimson Dynamo and Doctor Octopus could also be options.
4. Dallas Kemps special Magneto
Kind of as he did with Mephisto did last year Dallas Kemp had let the designers do a special Magneto for him for Adepticon. There's no set plan to use it as a Con Exclusive next year but it is definitely not out of the question.
5. Alliances
Shick confirmed that the game was his idea and came from him wanting to play with his family, friends and neighbors who maybe aren't interested in getting into the hobby as a whole. It started as a variant that would allow any MCP character to be played but quickly developed into what we will be getting now.
Surprisingly F.A.S.T. assembly was not specifically created for it but just so happens to align. It's going to be interesting to see whether MCP packs will start using the method as well.
As we've known before the heroes and the main villain of Night of the Goblin and The Once and Future Kang will be usable in MCP. For Attack of the Sentinels it's going to be the Prime Sentinels. So anyone interested in that set not immediately in need of those maybe don't buy Operation Zero Tolerance. The Sentinels, as expected will be too small.
Immortus and Ramutat will not have MCP Rules and their bases are too small to be alternate Kang sculpts (you can just use a base adapter of course). Shick said it's not unlikely that they could do non tournament legal stat cards for the minions.
In Attack of the Sentinels Master Mold is the main villain and is basically the game board itself.
The heroes in The Once and Future Kang are stand ins for Steve 1, OG Iron Man, Core Set Black Widow and Hawkeye (which, yeah who else? 😅)
There will be about 3 Alliances packs per year. Each is completely self contained but every hero and minion type can be used in every game. There's also going to be print and play content for the game. Wakanda, Knowhere (yeah that one would be a day one buy for me) and Defenders vs. Wilson Fisk were mentioned in potential future sets.
Also Shick confirmed, as I expected, that they decided to play it safe with the first two in using Spider-Man and the Spider-Verse characters in the first because there's nothing safer than Spider-Man and X-Men as one of the main pulls for the main target audience (90s kids).
6. 2027 will be a "fantastic" year
This kind of goes exactly against point 1 but what can you do?
That's it for today.
Cheers from Germany 🍻
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