July 12, 2011: One Year Of Color Munchkin

When I became Munchkin Czar in January 2009 I was told that we were planning to update the fantasy Munchkin sets with full-color art. I figured as long as we were doing that, why not take a look at the cards and rules and see where they needed a little polish? Little did I know that I'd set myself a monumental task: updating the cards and rules in every Munchkin core set and expansion to clarify some frequently asked questions, make them more consistent across the entire line, and make the game more fun for everyone. In May 2010 the 19th printing of Munchkin kicked off a months-long effort to reprint the entire Munchkin line.

Now, over a year later, every Munchkin set is in print with updated rules and cards, including errata fixes, clarifications, and, in some cases, entirely new effects. In the process we shuffled some cards around:

• Munchkin Blender, a standalone expansion for mixing multiple Munchkin sets, turned into Munchkin 7 – Cheat With Both Hands, which is a fantasy-style expansion but still works just the same way. CWBH supplanted the former Munchkin 7 – More Good Cards, which was about three-quarters derived from Blender anyway. The cards from MGC that were new to that set were re-released earlier this year as a booster pack, Munchkin Monster Enhancers.
• Since the cost of making the custom 10-sided dice for Munchkin Dice has become prohibitive, we decided to take the cards from Dice and release them as a booster, Munchkin Reloaded! We even threw in an extra Reloaded Die to sweeten the pot.
• To give fans a way to show their friends how to play, we reskinned the Munchkin Rigged Demo with new cards and released it as Munchkin Marked for Death. It's a demo, but it's a new booster as well! (If you haven't done so, be sure to visit the M4D web page to download the, urk, corrected script. My bad.)

Last year was a symphony – and sometimes a cacophony – of reprints, with a few new products (mostly boosters and accessories) shoehorned in where we could spare a couple of weeks. But now that it's done, we're looking forward to LOTS of new releases through the rest of 2011 . . . and beyond!

-- Andrew Hackard