X-Men Trading Card Game - Background

Background

The X-Men Trading Card Game was a joint release of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (WotC), Marvel Entertainment (Marvel), and Twentieth Century Fox (Fox). All three companies involved with the game required that certain stipulations be met in the final product, which was more than slightly instrumental in the game's all-too-rapid demise. WotC, naturally, was responsible for the structural design of the game; Marvel was to provide artwork; and Fox determined the overall look of the characters depicted in the cards, to wit, the black leather outfits worn by the actors of Fox's 'X-Men' feature film. The game's only promotional cards even featured Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and James Marsden as their respective movie characters. The Hugh Jackman Wolverine card was distributed at cinemas to moviegoers purchasing tickets to 'X-Men' and the Halle Berry Storm card was given to customers at hobby and game shops. The remaining promotional actor cards were slated to be awarded as prizes at sanctioned X-Men TCG events, but neither tournaments nor competitive leagues were ever established. Consequently, these undistributed promo cards rank among the all-time most-difficult acquisitions in all of collectible gaming.

Apart from the American region emcompassing Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska -- where the creative efforts of that area's WotC-assigned Regional Representative consistently brought notable and surprising turnouts to X-Men TCG events -- the game was stillborn upon release in the summer of 2000. This unfortunate, albeit inevitable, eventuality came about for one reason, and one reason only: the alarming and hitherto unheard-of passage of time between the release of the game's starter decks and booster packs. Starter decks are the skeletal structure of any new release in the TCG industry, as they introduce players to the game and provide the rules by which the game is played. But it is the booster packs -- with its expanded card selection and random distribution -- that flesh a TCG out, providing collectibility and the means for refining and individualizing a player's deck. Due to delays from the Marvel art department, whose cavalier and lackadaisical approach to the project brought it to a screeching halt, the booster packs did not hit store shelves for months after the release of the starter decks. The frustration felt by furious fans was further fueled by the finished portfolio. To the astonishment of nearly everyone, the final art was universally panned and drove the last nail into the coffin of the X-Men TCG. The disappointingly subpar work was epitomized by a large number of the cards' artist credit simply listed as Marvel Staff. Despite a small blip of sales in the aforementioned U.S. region, the booster packs practically debuted on clearance racks in what few stores decided to order them.

An interesting epilogue to the sad saga was the design and creation (solely by Wotc) of the prototype for a full expansion set, Generations, very shortly after the release of the base set. The 100-card set -- never produced but printed on mock-up sheets dubbed the Generations GodBook by WotC staff -- would have featured new X-Men such as Iceman, Gambit, Cable, Nightcrawler, and White Queen, and villains including Pyro, Lady Deathstrike, Arcade, Spiral, and the Acolytes, as well as introduced split-color cards that counted as the color of the player's choice. With WotC working independently of outside parties, the set was ready -- complete with final text and card art -- ahead of schedule. And no card illustrations were credited to the mysterious artist formerly known as Marvel Staff.