This round of retirement hurts theme teams in so many ways the pain is difficult to describe.

Superman means the LSH members from that set (9 I think) will no longer available to play with the ones in SLOSH.

LSH Members Say “Good Bye”

Galactic Guardians means the Guardians of the Galaxy characters in that set will never be available to play with the new ones coming in the Guardians of the Galaxy set which comes out in August.  Justice League New 52 means we lose all of JL Dark and all the non main 7 nu52 JL members like Green Arrow and Firestorm.  Chaos War means a ton of 2ndary Avengers are out of modern play. Finally, the FF War of Light means the leaders of the Lantern corps are out of modern play and you HAVE to win the WOL events to get new ones to play in modern.

War Of Light Fast Forces from DC 75th Anniversary set.

To be honest, I think a lot of retirement happens naturally. When I go to tournaments I rarely see older figures in play. Last night I stopped by a game and saw the Iron Fist, Luke Cage duo from Secret Invasion being used in a game which allowed any carded figure. But that was the only non-Modern age piece among 8 teams. New mechanics tend to make the older pieces obsolete. They called this “any carded figure” event “Silver Age”.  I have a new name, for all the stuff above and what is still modern after July 1. The Oreo Age. And I am sad to see some of it retired.

Set Rotation Schedule – Full Article at HeroClix.com

That said, retirement has a few good aspects.

It makes me go back and use pieces that are about to retire and enjoy them one more time (JL52 everyone).  Or use that piece I always wanted to but forgot (SM Swamp Thing).

Justice League new 52

I makes you look at new pieces from sets still in Modern Age and consider them.  I really like the character Bishop, but did not get his piece from WatX until after Iron Man and SLOSH came out, so I’ve never played it.  The Deadpool set is full of pieces I have not used yet.  So is SLOSH and Iron Man.  Amazing Spiderman, Batman, Streets of Gotham, Teen Titans and Wolverine all have pockets of characters I’ve never used.

What will I use next week? I have no idea.  Except that it will not look like what I played last week.  And that is exciting.

? Next Week ?