New Character - Man-Thing (Swamp Walker) 5*

[S0kun]

The 2026 New Character Poll winner is ready for his MPQ debut. Man-Thing is arriving as our next 5-Star character, bringing a strange and supernatural presence to the roster that only the legendary swamp creature can provide.

Health & Match Damage

Feeder

Abilities

Ability: Moment of Thought

Color: Green
AP Cost: 8

Man-Thing lashes out at all that surrounds him. Deal 1595 damage to a random enemy, destroy 1 random tile(s), dealing 975 additional damage per tile.

Destroyed tiles do not generate AP, do not receive AP from cascades.

(Passive) Man-Thing instills fear into the hearts of all who see him. When attacked, Man-Thing sets his enemies ablaze, dealing 1107 damage and 221 permanent damage. For every Man-Things Repeater tile that has been made, increase damage by an additional 111.

Ability: Swamp-Things

Color: Blue
AP Cost: 6

Man-Thing, protector of the Swamp, sees that all things in nature are kept as is. If there are fewer than 2 Man-Thing Repeater tiles on the board, create 1 3-turn Repeater tile(s). On tile completion, gain 1 Green AP.

If there are more than 2 friendly Man-Thing Repeater tiles, lower one tile’s timer by 1.

(PASSIVE) While a Man-Thing Repeater tile is on the board, Man-Thing cannot be stunned.

Ability: Invasive Species

Color: Red
AP Cost: 7

Channeling the power of the Swamps, Man-Thing does what needs to be. Deal 1063 damage to the target enemy.

For every green tile matched, increase damage by 244.

*All character abilities are subject to change.

[Tiger_Wong]

Interesting kit. Can’t wait to try him out.

Also, thanks for letting us know the feeders before the release. I really hope that stays so I (we?) can start preparing our feed plan.

[KGB]

Another damage reflector and this one with a stun immunity too.

I presume the Green passive only damages the character who attacks him but given it says ‘enemies’ I am not 100% certain.

Blue is a bit convoluted so I presume he will be a 5/3/5 because it doesn’t do any damage but instead helps the Green power.

More importantly, can we get some cover shots and pics of what he will look like in the game since we voted on the animation (what was the result?).

KGB

[Kelly719pax2]

Thank you for giving him nice health at 450 and 550. Sometimes the health is so small that you can’t really gain the ap needed for the abilities. I look forward to trying him out. Great job!

[bluewolf]

Canonically he should be very durable as he’s basically animated plant muck with no vital organs or anything. So the health makes sense.

The kit looks pretty decent but I kind of wish there was less resistance to letting characters get AP from cascades caused by ability firings. He could do some interesting things on different teams.

Will the punishment dmg survive like this to published state? If so that could be a real deterrent to Hawkeye etc.

[Seph1roth5]

Well, I think he’s a bit of a mess per usual, but with some slight tweaks would be halfway decent? Again, super common character design issues all over the place though.

Green - 8 AP is too expensive for the damage it does, especially since you can’t even choose the target. Can’t really tell how good the damage is because I’m pretty sure the chart shows max, and then the character with 13 powers but not promoted (which bumps the numbers up just being promoted and 450).

I get trying to balance drawbacks with the powers, but I feel like ALL of man-things are off (and that’s been a problem with many many many characters in the last few years).

For example, the random target is a very big drawback, the high AP is a drawback, the destroying random tiles CAN be, especially since you keep putting in (another big drawback) no AP from cascades (does it actually do damage or did you just leave that part out?)

The perks from all these drawbacks? Not seeing any…Permanent damage is not worth it, other than maybe omega red and…1 or 2 characters maybe? It shows up a lot and looks like it brings the power level down a bunch to make up for it, but really, just take it out unless it’s going to be a big impact.

Suggestions - Lower AP cost by 1-2, let it gain AP since it’s only destroying 4 tiles at best. Remove the permanent damage part and just have the actual damage be good on all parts.

Blue - A big convoluted mess to just give him stun immunity. I get not wanting to just throw out a nova level immunity, but why make it so complicated? Why attach a bad power?

6 blue cost is ok for a good power, but the repeaters, which (should) synergize with his other powers are weak. 2-turn repeaters are supremely weaker than 1 turn ones, and easily removed. There are other characters that do repeaters so much better, like lowering them ALL by 1, with repeaters. Having to pay 6 to maybe lower 1 repeater by 1 is crap.

Suggestions - Better repeaters. Pop 1 out a turn and still have the max, and then have the active fortify them or something. Without tons and tons of help, you’re going to be hard pressed to get much green AP out of it to fund the 8 ap power. And/or maybe make his unstunnable power better a bit. Make him unstunnable if there’s a repeater or countdown tile on the board.

Red - Simple at least, but again hard to tell the numbers. Again, can’t really use the first chart much, but looking at max (550?) it seems pretty weak. 14k damage for 7 red is so not worth it. Ya it can do some extra damage but it’s entirely based on random chance.

Suggestions - Higher damage/lower AP cost. Change the bonus damage to be for every green tile matched OR destroyed.

[BriMan2222]

So, which attack pose won the vote?

[LavaManLee]

For the red, does the green tiles matched keep stacking? Meaning if I’ve matched three green, and fire red it will do the green extra damage times three and then if I’ve matched three more green and fire another red, it will do the green extra damage times six?

[KGB]

I read it as it keeps stacking so after 2 match 3s its x6.

Most importantly the wording suggest thats it counts matched green tiles by EITHER team.

KGB

[KGB]

I think you are missing the point of the Blue. For every repeater he ever creates it adds additional damage to his Green. Doesn’t matter whether or not they go off. That’s just a bonus and you can use it as the throw away power at 3 covers.

Also the Green really hits hard. At R5 you are doing 20k + 14600x4=75K. Yeah it’s random but its a lot of damage and if this cost 6 AP with supports you could fire it 2x on turn 0. It’s fine at 8 AP and that’s before even more damage from firing his Blue and creating repeaters.

KGB

[entrailbucket]

I guess that’s one way to counter the infinite guys…make a guy with a ton of health who passively hits you back every single time he takes damage!

That passive is super strong and potentially pretty busted. Remember this is going to fire on, for example, every match of a cascade. It’ll trigger off every single Juggernaut AoE hit. And it’ll definitely be boosted by strike tiles and Iron May, and probably boosted by Okoye etc. if it’s AoE (which the flavor text seems to imply) he’ll even passively shred the munchkin teams with a baby 4​ + a 550.

I don’t care about the rest of his kit and it doesn’t really matter anyway, that passive makes him playable no matter what.

I do think it’s sad that the counter to those broken characters had to be just as broken as they are to be somewhat effective. We’ll see where this takes us.

[SaltnPeppa]

This was in the poll so I’ll repost it.

Man-Thing, Issue #1, November 1979. Cover Artist: Jim Mooney

[WilliamK1983]

Looking forward to running him with Toni Ho. Should produce similar results as toni and agatha.

[SuperCarrot]

I feel like there is a joke about Man-Thing and cascades, but I am too tired to figure it out. Anywho, really think you guys should let him get AP on cascades. Excited for this giant sized addition!

[entrailbucket]

Is everybody missing the passive power that says he hits you for 25,000 damage every time you touch him?

[KGB]

Nope, I saw it too.

Wasn’t sure if it was additive or whether they meant part of that damage was permanent. Either way its a min 15k and potentially 25k.

Doing that much against any damage makes him an absolute killer. Maybe they meant just active power damage. Or more likely it will get toned down some.

KGB

[Grantosium]

I think it’ll be difficult to gauge until it’s in game. Can he be 1-shot downed? 2-shot downed? Is he just going to be another character that when you see him you have to kill him first, but you don’t see him often because receiving damage isn’t something you want to plan to do on the offensive?

I rarely see defensive teams, when I do, it’s usually IHulk and Purple Man. Does a guy who screams “kill me first” make that defensive team any more threatening? You were going to have to kill the 3rd guy first anyway.

[leeqan]

@S0kun

(Passive) Man-Thing instills fear into the hearts of all who see him. When attacked, Man-Thing sets his enemies ablaze, dealing 1107 damage and 221 permanent damage. For every Man-Things Repeater tile that has been made, increase damage by an additional 111.

please focus to the Green skill, I have a question is,
Could the developers clarify how Man-Thing’s Green passive scales throughout a match?

Specifically, does the passive count the total number of Repeaters created during the battle (including those that have already been destroyed), or does it only count Repeaters currently active on the board?

This interaction has a major impact on Man-Thing’s long-term power level and on potential synergies

[entrailbucket]

He’s got 200k HP! I think some boosted guys will be able to oneshot him, but it’ll be pretty rare and depend on the week/list.

The big thing is that it’s (well, presumably – who knows what it’ll look like in game) every time he takes any damage. Other abilities of this type have a threshold. For Man-Thing, stuff that does power damage and tile damage will trigger twice. A cascade will trigger at least twice. The damage is really going to add up quickly.

It ends up creating a race. If you’re attacking him with match damage, there’s almost no way you’ll do more damage to him than he does to you, and he also has a ton of HP!

KGB makes a good point, that it might be 15k and not 25k. But it might also be AoE! The description is pretty vague. So I guess we’ll see, but this sounds insanely powerful.

[DAZ0273]

I’m good with this, its about time a Fan voted character was actually very good (if it plays out as expected of course)