Hey everyone,
Over the past couple of months, Wizkids has been releasing little bits of information about its upcoming WWE Campaign Box and its team packs, Bitter Rivals and Tag Teams. Today, we’ve just landed a major source of new information: the Solicits page was updated with images of all 3 upcoming products! From this, we now have a lot more information about the roster, and there are some interesting choices here.
We’ll look at the team packs, since their roster is far more clear, and then we’ll move to the campaign box.
Before we begin, I want to give credit where credit is due. In addition to the Solicits images, I will refer to two sources for spoilers:
- The Dice Coalition’s article on spoilers from Origins
- icv2’s article which includes product descriptions
So without further ado, let’s look at the…
Bitter Rivals Team Pack
Let’s start with this beauty of a pack, which has an absolutely amazing roster.
Most of the roster for this one has been known for a while. ICV2’s article already said that the rivalries featured included “Trish vs Lita, Stone Cold vs The Rock, and Kane vs Undertaker”. Let’s see if we can match the dice with the description.
The spoilers for Origins already showed that the die with the bull represents The Rock, the blue skull definitely looks like Stone Cold Steve Austin’s die, the black die to the right matches Kane’s mask almost exactly (compared to the mask worn by Kane at the top left of the team pack), and the black and purple die clearly represents The Undertaker. The pink die at the left looks like Trish Stratus’ die from the Origins spoilers. This leaves us with three dice, one of which must be Lita, and two mystery characters.
Looking at the die at the bottom right, I can’t help but see similarities to Lita’s logo. I would guess this die is Lita’s.
Assuming I’m right, this leaves us with two mystery characters. First, the pink die in the third column. The glasses may seem generic, but they look very much like Bret Hart’s. The die’s color is also a pretty good hint. My best guess would be Bret “The Hitman” Hart.
And who happens to be one of Bret Hart’s most famous rivals? Shawn Michaels, aka “The Heartbreak Kid”…and the other unidentified die’s logo just happens to be a breaking heart. Looks too big to be a coincidence. Definitely looks like Shawn Michaels is in too.
So let’s summarize: based on the die faces, I predict that the roster for this team pack is:
- Bret “The Hitman” Hart
- Kane
- Lita
- Shawn Michaels
- Stone Cold Steve Austin
- The Rock
- The Undertaker
- Trish Stratus
That roster is taken straight out of my high school years. I love it.
Next up, let’s take a look at the other team pack.
Tag Teams Team Pack
Now, icv2’s article hints at two teams: “The Shield”, and “The New Day”. Dice logos and colours are quite telling for this pack.
Notice how dice are of one of three colours: light blue, black, and brown. A smart theory to start from is that dice with the same color are from the same “team”, so to speak.
Now, the black dice are pretty obvious: Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sting were all shown at Origins, and all three have the NWO affiliation. So that seems to be one of the teams shown.
Now, let’s look at the light blue dice. We know that The New Day is featured in this. One of them is called Big E, and the logo on one of the dice is literally…a big E. Not the most original logo, but I’ll take it. To the right of that, there’s a creepy-looking head, which looks very much like Kofi Kingston’s logo. And the trombone…anyone who’s seen enough of Xavier Woods knows his antics with that thing. So…yeah, I think we’re past speculation at this stage; it looks pretty clearly like The New Day are all here.
This leaves us with the brown dice (third and fourth column, second from the top), which pretty much have to be The Shield. Those are pretty clear-cut: the one to the left has Roman Reigns’ logo, and to the right, you can clearly see Seth Rollins’ logo. So both of these characters seem to be in.
So, in short, the roster for this team pack appears to be:
- Big E
- Kevin Nash
- Kofi Kingston
- Roman Reigns
- Seth Rollins
- Scott Hall
- Sting
- Xavier Woods
The obvious question now: where is Dean Ambrose? As the third member of The Shield, I’d expect him to show up…but as others have already pointed out, he is no longer on the WWE’s roster, wrestles in rival promotions (as Jon Moxley) and has publicly criticized the WWE after he left. I hope he’s in the campaign box, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
And speaking of the campaign box…
WWE Campaign Box
From the icv2 article, the following are said to be included:
- “Macho Man” Randy Savage
- Bret “Hit Man” Hart
- Becky Lynch
- Asuka (per Origins spoilers, she’s the white die with purple font)
- AJ Styles (the grey die with light blue font clearly has his logo)
- Shinsuke Nakamura (that red and black die with the logo that looks like a throwing star? Yeah, that’s his logo for sure)
Now, as I stated previously, I’m pretty certain that Bret Hart is in the Bitter Rivals team pack; it’s possible (though it would be rather exceptional) that the distribution of the roster changed since the original announcement.
This leaves us with a ton of dice to speculate on for fun. I’ve already pointed out a few obvious ones. But there’s another we can see pretty clearly: John Cena.
Look at the green die with the purple logo, with the “Ok” hand symbol. That is a known taunt used by Cena, and I don’t know of any other wrestler for whom this would fit. Not 100% certain, but I’m pretty confident about that one.
As for the rest of the dice shown here…you know? I could continue to speculate, but I’d love to hear what the rest of you think. Sound off in the comments, and let’s figure out the rest of this roster together.
As a side note, even if we figure out all of the dice shown here, we won’t know the entire roster. After all, if you check the Origins spoilers, Mick Foley, aka Mankind, was shown, with a die that is not visible on the Campaign Box’s art.
Now, you’ll notice I didn’t do the same number-crunching I did in the past for campaign boxes. That’s because we’re currently lacking in information about the box itself. There are currently only 3 cards from the campaign box where we have a clear picture: Mankind (see above), Asuka, and Becky Lynch. Everything else is from the team packs. Outside of seeing that the box apparently has only 58 cards, there is not much to be gleaned here.
So, who do you think is making the roster? And most importantly, which of these three products are you looking forward to? Sound off in the comments below!
Personally, I want that Bitter Rivals Team Pack…’cause Stone Cold Said So!
Owen Hart! He wore the glasses too.
But you’re more likely to get Elvis in the set than Owen, due to a rather tragic backstory.
It’s interesting, because Dean Ambrose would have certainly been included. Not now, but would have been. So…how would that Team Pack have worked? I’m sure it would have been 3x New Day, 3x Shield, and Hall and Nash as the NWO. Sting isn’t even *proper* NWO. He was 25th to join! I would say Sting was probably for the Campaign Box and got bumped to fill the Ambrose-shaped gap.
The Rowdy R is interesting to see. With Ronda having been away for a while, and supposedly away for years until she’s had a baby. Perhaps they repurposed the die and it’s now regular old Rowdy Roddy?
I’m hoping that cowboy hat is anyone but JBL… what a bully and a boor that man is. Could be any number of cowboy sorts, but it’s probably going to be JBL. Welcome to the proxy party, you’ll make a fine Two-Gun Kid.
One could argue that, perhaps, the Campaign box may be more modern, to focus on the current fan…but Macho on the (potential) cover and that die which is 99% going to be Bobby the Brain…well, there’s got to be some old school going on. And where there’s a Bobby, you know there’s an Andre.
A red and yellow Hogan die is conspicuous by its absence. But, well, it’s almost a lock. Despite all the recent history, WWE can’t seem to leave him out. Especially if this is to appeal to the common WWE fan. The common fan doesn’t seem to have any qualms with his particular thoughts on minorities.
It’s going to be interesting seeing who they choose to use, from such a heft back catalogue of weird and wonderful characters.
Incidentally, I noticed ’76 die’ on the side of the box. That’s how many have been in both Justice and X-Men Forever. So while you say there will only be 58 cards, that dice total is still reasonable.
Both Justice and XMF with their 76 die contain 24 characters. Or, well, in the case of Justice 22 characters and 2 actions. 24 being the important number.
If we’re to expect the same here, that would give each of the 24 characters just two cards, if we were to have 10 BACs.
So, going on the 24 character guess[pattern-recognition], we’re already half way to the full roster.
Becky, Asuka, AJ, Nakamura, Hart, Cena, Angle, Bobby the Brain Heenan, Sasha Banks, HHH, Rowdy, Cowboy hat [JBL?], Mankind makes 13. Let’s go ahead and maybe guess that Bret is no longer in the Campaign and has moved to greener Team Pack pastures. 12.
Hulk Hogan and Andre are almost guaranteed. Macho Man is literally on the box [and the heroclix]. There’s also a tiny Ric Flair heroclix. Charlotte Flair too, and you can’t leave her out of a WWE product these days In fact, lets throw in the other heroclix characters because they make sense, from both a licensing point of view AND who is actually important enough to feature. So that’s the colourful Finn Balor and Eddie Guerrero, sans the rest of the Radicalz thank you.
Ultimate Warrior, anyone? Talk about iconic. Problematic, but iconic. And such an easy logo to pop on your dice. That makes 20.
So, the last four? Who knows. It’d be so easy to fill those last 4 gaps. How would I do it? Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn and Ricochet.
But Big Show has work in the pipeline for WWE, including a Netflix sitcom. Also a clix. Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman are currently at the top of the pile on television.
And we haven’t even got near to the quality in NXT [why didn’t they get a team pack? That’d have been an interesting concept]
Most of all: Give. Us. Chyna.
Definitely some good points and some fascinating suggestions here; I’m sure you’re right on at least some (maybe even most!) of them. Something to keep in mind though: Heroclix and Dice Masters rosters rarely correspond, even when they use the same source material.
For example, the Heroclix World’s Finest set featured Etrigan, Jason Blood, and a fair contingent of Doom Patrol characters, among others. Yet, those same characters did not show up in the Dice Masters set of the same name. So while I would like many of those Heroclix WWE to appear in DM, I expect some surprises in there for sure.
And most of all, thanks for the comments. 🙂 Definitely look forward to seeing the final roster as well.
“For example, the Heroclix World’s Finest set featured Etrigan, Jason Blood, and a fair contingent of Doom Patrol characters, among others. Yet, those same characters did not show up in the Dice Masters set of the same name. So while I would like many of those Heroclix WWE to appear in DM, I expect some surprises in there for sure.”
To be fair, though, the World’s Finest Heroclix set featured 70 figures, and the Dice Masters featured 44 characters[including actions]. In comparison, the WWE Heroclix is 21 characters, and the Dice Masters is about 24 by a rough estimate. There’s likely to be more overlap because of the numbers, nevermind the fact that those particular chosen characters will be chosen specifically as they are recognisable/have name value. You’ve got literally thousands to pick from for a DC set, but for WWE, that figure is dramatically smaller. Hence the suggested overlap.
Finn Balor shifts a ton of merchandise and has a massive following. [and a goddamn look]. Charlotte Flair is literally footsteps from a Hall of Fame career after barely six years. I strongly predict that those two are going to be in Dice Masters for the same reason they are in Heroclix, not *because* they are also in Heroclix. They are the Big Names.
There are no left-field pick in the WWE Heroclix. It’s not like someone threw in a Chipmunk Hunk or a TWO Cleas and not a single bloody Nighthawk. Everyone in the clix is everyone who is in the action figure line, on the book covers, in the video games. We’re not talking the Etrigans and the Doom Patrols, we’re talking the Batmen and the Wonder Women.
And honestly, of the 21 in the Heroclix line, it’s only Finn, Charlotte, Ric Flair, Big Show, Andre and Eddie Guerrero that aren’t immediately clear to be in this set. And Bobby means Andre is almost a cert. It’s not a huge leap to assume most of those will cross over too.
All that said, I am immediately reminded there was no Hulk Hogan in that Heroclix line. Well that’s certainly something. I wonder if the deal was made before Hogan was allowed back from his firing. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe everyone in the Clix line is contracted, be it performer or legends contract. Hogan didn’t come back until quite a while after the deal for these two products.
It feels like there is a good ratio of old to new. I was worried it might lean too hard into nostalgia, or ignore the history to focus on the current product. A healthy balance is good. And will be entertaining enough for fans of either era to enjoy.
But they better give me Chyna!
[Full disclosure: my partner makes costumes and entrance wear for several WWE contracted wrestlers, so I have a vested interest in this set. And any future sets. And especially the photos they might choose to use]