December 27, 2017: Munchkin Musings: December 2017 - The Year In Review

Wow, 2017 has been a year.

Kickstarter-ing Down the Door

Probably the biggest story, from a Munchkin perspective, has been the success of our two major Munchkin Kickstarter projects, Munchkin Shakespeare and Munchkin Starfinder. Both of them were very successful and led to the creation of several subsidiary expansions and accessories. Shakespeare shipped to our backers almost on time (in Kickstarter terms, it was practically early!) and Starfinder is completely at print and looks good for an early summer release. Both of these were a lot of work for everyone on Team Munchkin and we thank you backers for making all that work necessary. We also launched (and completed!) our smaller Special Delivery and Holiday Box Kickstarters that found forever homes for a lot of games at a very reasonable price.

Will we continue exploring the opportunities crowdfunding allows us in 2018? Wait and see!

Expanding in Every Direction

Of course, it wouldn't be a year of Munchkin without some new expansions to talk about. Both Munchkin Oz and Munchkin Pathfinder got full expansions – Yellow Brick Raid and Guns and Razzes, respectively – and we had several new mini-expansions: Gets Promoted 2, Curses, and the Judge Dredd set for Munchkin Apocalypse. Early in the year, we put out a pack of Munchkin Valentines for those who want to love the ones you hurt.

In our smaller-box format for 3 to 4 players, we released Munchkin Spell Skool and Munchkin Lite to Walgreens; you can get both of those plus the otherwise out-of-print Munchkin Grimm Tidings in our Munchkin Gift Pack. We also wrapped up the Guest Artist Edition series – check the link for any titles you may have missed!

License to Loot

Our partnership with the folks at USAopoly continued to produce amazing results. This year, they produced Munchkin X-Men, Munchkin Deadpool – Just Deadpool, and Munchkin Rick and Morty. All of these are super-fun titles and you should definitely check them out!

Late in the year, we also announced partnerships with Asmodée Digital to produce digital Munchkin content and CMON to create Munchkin boardgames. You'll definitely be hearing a lot about those in the year to come.

What About the CCG?

Work on the Munchkin Collectible Card Game continues. The core release is at print, on track for a February 2018 launch, and the first expansion – The Desolation of Blarg – will follow in May. We're hard at work on the next two expansions, Fashion Furious and [Title Not Available At Your Clearance], and we're planning robust support for the game through conventions and your friendly local game stores throughout the year, and into 2019 and beyond. This is going to be big!

What's Next, Andrew?

I can't tell you everything that's coming in 2018, or even most of everything . . . we have a whole lot of Munchkin headed your way and we've only announced part of it!

You already know about Moop's return in Munchkin Magical Mess, and the creepy joy of Munchkin Clowns. I mentioned Munchkin Starfinder earlier, which will be a big part of our spring. We have several more mini-expansions and at least one more full Munchkin game planned for later in 2018. There will be a whole lot of releases that have come about through our Munchkin licensing efforts, including several you still don't know about, from Steve Jackson Games and from other companies. There will probably be some things I don't even know about yet because they're still so preliminary they aren't on our schedule. And there's one other thing, late in the year, that I probably shouldn't mention . . . but . . .

Just today, as I'm writing this, I put a little notecard on my bulletin board for the fall of 2018 that says Munchkin 9.

If you think you know what it will be (you're probably wrong), head over to the forums and post your best guess! See y'all in the new year.

-- Andrew Hackard