I love everything about marvel champions, game play, deck building, discussion, home brewing, all of it. I also love pointless speculation that is ultimately inconsequential and matters exactly zero. Really love it.

Going off that last note, I have a theory about the pre-con decks for Mutant Genesis and that is that the aspects for each of the heroes was swapped late into production (Gasp!). Big, bold and meaningless assertion out of the way, here are some of my reasons for thinking this.

To begin, these heroes actually lend themselves very well to the aspects in the box, I think the best aspects for just throwing in random cards and seeing what sticks for each of these heroes is going to be Protection and Aggression (just working off of what little we've seen of their hero kits). Which is actually pretty nice, you get some feel good flexibility in how you play right in the box, which I'm sure some people will appreciate. So its not the wildest idea that late in development flipping the aspects these guys get would be a safe change to make.

Now, into the specific cards. The biggest, most obvious piece of evidence for me is Magik, who is Colossus's sister, was not put into his deck for some reason. Like this actually just makes too much sense too pass up unless you make a last minute change! They could've just made her with a affect that's still thematic but also works being protection flavored, but they didn't, because she likely was already in a Aggression deck with Colossus until a later change.

In this same vein Wolverine is associated with Colossus a lot more than Shadowcat is, and I think it made more sense to have them together. When the announcement came out many people spoke of hoping we get some kind of "Fast Ball Special" card for Wolverine and Cyclops in the future, so this isn't a unpopular connection.

Looking at protection cards, Powerful Punch is a attack and defense event that just screams to work with Shadowcat's kit, she is even in the card art and quote! Perseverance also has added synergy with her due to her more frequent form changing (granted, toughness helps Colossus too).

"But what about Polaris? Or Gatekeeper? Don't these obviously lend themselves to the heroes we're seeing now?" To that I say good point, and shut up. Joking aside, they could have been wrapped up later after the change was decided, or their might still be cards to be revealed that would work as well. I wouldn't be surprised if a protection card comes out that Shadowcat can also use Selective Intangibility on. Polaris also has a interesting enough power that you could think of lots of ways to apply it, and a ally/hero buffing power actually seems like a weird way to go interpreting it, so it could have been a later change.

The question after all of this is then why? If cards were fine in both heroes, why change in the first place. For that, we look at Wolverine. Specifically, his cost to play, which is outside of Colossus's ability to pay for with his handsize (excluding double resources). This and any other cards that might've had a higher cost curve in the Aggression aspect could have pushed them to change aspects for these heroes down the development line, or if protection just generally had a better curve for Colossus.

And there you have it, one man's ramblings on on what amounts to theoretical product placement going off of a single announcement. In other words, I'm excited for Mutant Genesis, okay?