Which Mechs vs. Minions box should you actually buy?

Mechs vs. Minions is back, and this time there are two boxes to choose from. Incredible Dream Studios is reissuing the 2016 League of Legends co-op game for its tenth anniversary, and ICv2 has the US hobby retail plan: the Classic Edition at $199.99, the new Bandle City Edition at $74.99, and an Unpainted Miniatures Set at $39.99, arriving in US game stores in November 2026, with European retail starting in December.

The game was demoed at SPIEL Essen last week, where the official SPIEL catalogue listing notes it is back in print for the first time since 2020. I missed it the first time around, like a lot of people did. So my question is not whether it is good. It is which box a normal group should buy.

Same campaign, very different boxes

Start with the most important line on the Incredible Dream product page: both editions contain the full ten-mission cooperative campaign, with the same rules, missions and cards. What changes is the plastic. The Classic Edition keeps hand-painted mech miniatures, 100 sculpted minions, metal coins and a working sand timer. Bandle City swaps the mechs and the Bomb for double-sided acrylic standees and turns the minions, coins and timer into punchboard.

inHobby adds the parts that matter for the table. It is a 2 to 4 player co-op where you draft command cards and program your mech's moves, with each mission running about 60 to 90 minutes. Both editions also get twelve skin cards and ten printed solo puzzles that used to live online, and the rules wording has been clarified rather than redesigned.

The campaign is identical. You are choosing between a hundred tiny plastic minions and $125.

What each box costs per mission

Nobody selling the game is doing this math for you, so I did. Box volume is from the published dimensions, rounded.

The gap is $125. Add the $39.99 unpainted mech set to Bandle City and you are still about $85 under the Classic box, with four primed mechs to paint yourself. The Bandle City box also takes up about half the space, which for some of us is the whole argument.

Which box for which table

• You loved the 2016 game and sold your copy: Classic. It is the original experience, and Incredible Dream calls it a limited run. If you already know you want the minions on the board, do not wait for a restock that may never come.
• You have never played and want to see if programming clicks: Bandle City. Programming games are a love it or bounce off it thing, and $74.99 is a much cheaper way to find out which camp your group is in.
• You paint: Bandle City plus the Unpainted Miniatures Set. You get the four mechs as sculpts, and you skip paying for paint jobs you would want to redo anyway.
• You play mostly solo: either box, since both carry the ten printed solo puzzles. Pick on budget.
• Your game night is a League of Legends crowd: the skin cards are in both editions, so the Riot flavor does not push you toward the expensive box.

When it actually shows up

Dates depend on where you live and how you ordered. ICv2 lists ACD Distribution as the exclusive US distributor, with Hachette Boardgames UK, Kroeger in Canada and Let's Play Games in Australia and New Zealand handling English editions elsewhere. Devir has Spanish and Portuguese editions in 2027, which inHobby pins to the first quarter for Spain. The direct presale is a different track: Incredible Dream says all US orders ship on or before December 31, 2026, and EU orders by January 31, 2027, and it calls November shipping an estimate rather than a promise. Its own store is closed for now, and Riot's merch store is selling a limited number of Classic copies.

If you are planning a holiday campaign night, I would not bet on a December presale box. A November store copy is the safer play.

Where it fits this season

This has been a heavy autumn for big-box co-op. We have already looked at how long a Diablo: Unbound campaign takes and which Arkham Horror Remastered pledge makes sense. Mechs vs. Minions is the odd one out in a good way. It is not a crowdfunding gamble or a new design. It is a known campaign with a ten-year track record, coming back at two prices.

My take: the Classic box is a collector's piece and is priced like one. The Bandle City Edition is the actual reissue, the one that lets a new group find out why people kept asking for this game. If I were buying one copy for a table that has never played it, I would buy the small box, spend the change on snacks, and save the painted minions for the group that falls in love with it.

How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.