May 14, 2010: Munchkin Like You've Never Seen It!

Steve Jackson Games is happy – and proud! – to announce that, beginning with the 19th printing of Munchkin, the fantasy sets will have John Kovalic's classic cartoons in full color. Color reprints of Unnatural Axe and Clerical Errors are coming in June, and the other fantasy expansions will be colored as their reprints come up over the rest of the year.

But that's not all. As long as we were adding a new coat of paint, we took the opportunity to clarify some rules and cards, based on questions that have cropped up over the years. We revised and reorganized the rulesheets for all the Munchkin core games and added two pages while we were at it, making the type larger and leaving more room to show off the art. We tweaked the wording on dozens of cards to make them easier to understand and more fun to play. And we're putting a custom six-sided die into every Munchkin core game. (Those of you who follow us on Twitter have seen a photo of some of these dice – they look good!)

Almost every reprint we do is tweaked a little bit. This is a big tweak, but it's not a new edition. Those of you who already own a couple (or a couple dozen) Munchkin sets can keep right on playing. If you want to use the updated rules in your current game, we've got you covered; check this space tomorrow. Of course, if you want new sets, we're happy to sell them to you!

We've set up a special discussion thread in the Munchkin forum for everyone to ask questions and give us feedback. You can also ask us via Twitter: just put @sjgames at the start of your note and include the hashtag #Munchkin. Additionally, Andrew Hackard will be hosting a uStream chat this evening at 6:30pm CDT to answer some of those questions, and talk about the upgrades in more detail. (If you can't make the chat, don't worry – we'll announce more over the next few weeks right here in the Daily Illuminator!)

The full-color Munchkin begins shipping to distributors on May 24, and should arrive on the shelves of your favorite hobby games retailer two to three weeks later.