Munchkin Collectible Card Game second core set put on hold despite ‘strong launch and fan response'

The second core set for the collectible card game version of dungeon-crawling party hit Munchkin has been delayed.

In its 2019 ‘Report to Stakeholders’, publisher Steve Jackson Games revealed that it had paused production of the second core set for the Munchkin Collectible Card Game after designing all of the cards for the planned release.

The company’s CEO Phil Reed deemed the set a ‘failure’, explaining that the cost of making the new set “was too great to justify taking [it] to the finish line” – something exacerbated by the decision to reprint the Munchkin CCG’s core set, which Reed deemed a “serious blunder”.

“We – I – made a serious blunder in listening to initial feedback and reprinting the game,” he wrote. “Yet again, we transformed profits into inventory. Lesson learned? We hope so.”

The second core set’s delay comes despite what Reed called a “strong launch” and “strong fan response” for the Munchkin CCG last year (here's our review from the time), which was quickly followed by three expansions.

In the list of Steve Jackson Games’ 40 most financially successful products in 2018 – a list dominated by 30 Munchkin-related games – the Munchkin CCG’s core booster pack was the company’s third highest release, behind only the original Munchkin and its Deluxe edition. The CCG’s Introductory Set placed at number 22, with an additional four Munchkin CCG products (all three starter decks and the Desolation of Blarg booster pack) in the top 15.

With the cards for the planned Munchkin CCG core set written but requiring artwork and layout to be completed, Reed suggested that the set could eventually surface in a different form in the future.

“We would like to bring the new, already-designed cards to the market, but we have to find a way to do it that builds on the quality of the existing card sets and doesn't prevent us from finishing other projects,” he said.

The Munchkin CCG wasn’t the only card game to run into trouble last year; squad-based card game Guardians recently saw its second expansion cancelled and the game as a whole put indefinitely on pause, with studio Plaid Hat simply saying continuing with the card game is “just not feasible” currently.