Marvel Contest of Champions – Summoners Fest 2025
I spent the weekend at Summoners Fest 2025, a tournament and exhibition for Marvel Contest of Champions. If you're not aware like I am, MCoC is a mobile fighting game that has been around since late 2014. That's an insane amount of time for any mobile game. At first I was confused by how such a game a) had a tournament scene and b) lasted so long. My time at Summoners Fest answered both of these questions with ease.
While the controls allow for high precision input and skill-based gameplay, the real battle happens up front. Such a huge list means that you will have to carefully consider the choice of your champions. If you bring the wrong champions into battle, you have more or less already lost that battle. In other words, it's like you're playing two different games at the same time. I understand fighting games, at least in theory. But the strategy RPG that was smuggled in with it continues to elude me.
High craftsmanship ceiling
I learned all this after watching several tournament fights. Said fights are another anomaly. It's an asynchronous PvP system where you fight against your opponent's draft picks. Everyone chooses from a variety of seven-star monsters, and it is these choices that can determine the outcome of a high-level match. It cannot be overstated how rich and intense the strategy commentary becomes during fights like these. But instead of feeling afraid, I was delighted. Seeing what heights of mastery can be achieved, you are encouraged to begin climbing the same mountain. In other words, I played a lot of MCoC over the weekend.
In the period between the semi-finals and the final, we received a bunch of announcements regarding the game itself. A new game mode, Colosseum, will be released in a month. You and your team work together to defeat a boss with a ridiculous amount of health bars. Stellar Forge Champions will arrive early next year along with Fortress Assault and the Collaborative system. They also showed off some of the new champions coming in the next few months. The Punisher, Doctor Doom and Blue Marvel are all set to release in the near future. MCoC receives two new champions per month, and at this point the number is well over 300 champions.
So many characters
I haven't tested the Colosseum mode myself, but I saw Kabam host Mike burn through 10 health bars of Adam Warlock with Gladiator. It was both impressive and informative. Will I be able to achieve the same success in the game with practice? Maybe not for mobile devices, but they did release a PC version earlier this year. While the control scheme on mobile devices can be reduced to swipes and taps, old people like me are more comfortable with buttons and joysticks.
We've also taken a closer look at teams, an ingenious method for making your entire squad useful. Your champions form teams based on their characteristics and class, with the strongest member serving as their captain. After this, any achievements obtained by the specified captain apply to the entire team, and vice versa. The stronger the entire Collective, the more bonuses everyone receives. Sometime next year it will fall. As someone who prefers collecting to fighting, updates like this keep me playing. I want every member of my cast to feel important.
On the second day of Summoners Fest there was a whole series of quizzes. Players registered and were randomly selected to be the next “Summoners”, eligible to win thousands of in-game currency and other prizes. In fact, even the tournament itself used these units instead of money. Although there was still this amazing championship belt to be won. The final match was absolutely intense. Liam led 3-1 in the best-of-three set, which honestly should have been the end of the match. But Andrew rallied just enough to turn the game into a nail-biting 3-3 tie, with the win coming down to the penultimate possible battle. In the end, Liam won the belt using his “consistent” style of play.
Straight to the wire
Of course, the energy in space was undeniable. There's something incredible about watching two absolute professionals fight each other, especially in person. Yet somehow, it seems like the competitive scene is just starting to heat up. Online competition has been very hot for at least a decade, but there haven't been many official tournaments, at least not ones you can fly to. Most of the tournament's stars were busy building their own online followings, parlaying their talent into respectable careers on YouTube and Twitch. But MCoC didn't break containment in real life, at least not as much as it should. Seeing these players battle it out in this unique arena has convinced me that this scene will only continue to grow over time.
