Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament report: May-be Time For MCP 12May2024

A bumper crop of 6 Edinburgh folks piled onto a packed train to play another Marvel Crisis Protocol event at Common Ground Games in Stirling. We seem to have been playing quite a few alternate formats lately and this time (I think probably the last for a while) we were going to all be playing the same pair of randomly drawn Crisis Cards rather than having sets as part of the rosters.

I think that this format theoretically encourages teams that are in the middle of the scenario vs attrition spectrum, so I wasn’t expecting a slew of highly specialised teams like Web Warriors or Black Order. I’ve mentally committed to keeping going with Inhumans for ranked games just to see what my Longshanks score looks like at the end so I stuck with them again. The roster has been playing really nicely for me and, while plan A is definitely to fight everyone, I think that the splashes allow me to compete in a wider scenario game.

Characters (10)
* Black Bolt (5)
Beast (3)
Crystal (3)
Medusa (4)
Ms. Marvel (3)
Quicksilver (3)
* Captain America (Sam Wilson) (3)
* Crimson Dynamo (4)
Rhino (4)
Toad (2)

Team Tactics (10)
Brace for Impact (R)
Can I Borrow That?
Eyes on the Prize
Fall Back
Inhuman Royal Family
Mission Objective
Sacrifice (R)
Smash
Terrigenesis
This is a Robbery

Game 1: Gordon playing Hydra

Round one I’m up against Gordon, which is always a nice smiley way to begin any event. He wins priority so I pick the slightly higher threat level so I can fit in both Medusa and Rhino. Most of Gordon’s likely teams are heavy on size 2 characters so I put Beast in to leverage his throw, though I do slightly worry about the number of energy attacks that he might face. The basic plan is to bounce around with Beast, Medusa and Rhino to flip SWORD points as needed while Black Bolt stands somewhere and vaporises people.

Extraction: Paranoia Pummels Populace!
Secure: S.W.O.R.D. Establishes Base On Moon’s Blue Area
Threat: 16
My team: Black Bolt, Beast, Medusa, Rhino
My cards: Brace For Impact, Fall Back, Mission Objective, Sacrifice, This Is A Robbery
Gordon’s team: Baron Strucker, Arnim Zola, Baron Zemo, Task Master, Winter Soldier Operative
Gordon’s cards: Brace For Impact, I Am A Baron After All, Inevitable Betrayal, Scientific Method, Soldat Activated

Round 1: Pay-to-flip Secures are a bit annoying for Inhumans as the need for extra power to deal with them reduces the amount spare for round 1 jank. So I don’t really expect to do a great deal of clever stuff here but it’ll be key to get at least 2 of the SWORD bases to stop Black Bolt getting pushed away into irrelevance. Winter Soldier plays Soldat Activated. Zemo goes to the left, flipping the back left point and standing next to the Extract on that side. Rhino takes a power from Black Bolt, flips the near left point and attacks Zemo for no damage but uses the place to get the Extract over on that side. Taskmaster comes forward but doesn’t do anything at all with the scenario; I guess he’s just making sure that none of the rest of Gordon’s team will be hurt for picking up an Extract over on that side. Black Bolt saunters forward and zaps Zemo for minimal effect and Winter Soldier flips the back right Secure and picks up the far right Extract. Beast flips the last SWORD base to make sure we’re all equal there and Strucker comes into the middle and picks up an Extract. Medusa tickles him and throws him toward Black Bolt to set up for next turn (not to mention being far enough away from Winter Soldier that Soldat Activated won’t do anything), and finally Zola trundles slowly up to the middle. The score is 5 – 3 to Gordon.

Round 2: Time to start the fighting; I want to start dazing Gordon’s team and relieving them of their Extracts. Black Bolt dazes Baron Strucker and takes his Extract. This also handily wins me the spot prize for this game, which is to daze a leader with your leader; it turns out to be Clea so I give her away to another gamer as I already own her. Now if I’m a bit careful about my target priority here I can probably keep priority for next round too. Zemo comes over and flips my near right Secure then Charges into Black Bolt for a bit of nice damage. Rhino attacks Zemo, flips that point back, attacks him again and places near the further away Secure and flips that too and finally throws some terrain at him which draws out Brace For Impact. Winter Soldier puts Stun on Beast and gets dazed in return; Beast is also able to take the last SWORD base and pick up Winter Soldier’s token although this leaves him on one wound. Zola improbably fails to finish Beast and then Medusa dazes both him and Zemo and collects the final Extract. Finally Taskmaster goes into Beast and somehow Gordon’s awful run of dice continues and my blue furred scientist stays standing, albeit with just about every condition in the game on him. The score goes to 12 – 5 to me as I score every possible point and push Zola away into irrelevance.

Round 3: Gordon’s going to have to have a pretty epic round to stop me finishing this from here. I’m not at all worried about retaining priority for next round since there almost certainly won’t be one; instead I’m just going to KO as many of Gordon’s team as possible to reduce his options for scoring. Black Bolt repeats his trick from last round by KOing Baron Strucker – infighting amongst the nobility going very much in favour the king over the baron! Winter Soldier finally dazes Beast and then unloads his spender into Black Bolt. Medusa KOs Zemo and pushes Taskmaster away from the fray. Zola leaves Rhino on a single wound which pretty much sums up Gordon’s game; I could continue to fight with him but instead just walk Rhino away to (relative) safety. Taskmaster can’t finish a spite kill on Medusa and we wrap this up at 20 – 6.

That was fun game with Gordon and we had a lot of laughs as we played through. The narrative became around infighting in the nobility as Gordon’s barons took on the Inhuman royalty and it was quite entertaining to see that story play out. I flatter myself that I had a plan to win this game here but Gordon’s dice were just awful and that meant that I didn’t really have to work too hard to get over the line.

Game 2: Ryan playing X-Men

I’m really pleased to be able to play into Ryan’s X-Men again as the last time I diced him off the table so hard that there wasn’t even a game in it. I’m also kind of pleased to be playing X-Men on this particular combination of Crisis Cards as it negates a certain amount of their nonsense. I win priority this time and Ryan chooses that we play at 18 threat. I want to go quite wide here so I forgo my preferred 4-threat characters entirely in favour of Black Bolt, who I intend to use a goalie for the Researcher and a bunch of mobile 3-threats to worry about the Infinity Formula. Beast gets the nod again as his throw is going to be amazing in this match-up, even though there are entirely too many energy attackers for him to feel comfortable. Ryan clearly has the same thoughts and brings his own Beast.

Extraction: Research Station Attacked!
Secure: Infinity Formula Goes Missing!
Threat: 17
My team: Black Bolt, Beast, Crystal, Ms Marvel, Captain America (Sam Wilson)
My cards: Brace For Impact, Fall Back, Inhuman Royal Family, Sacrifice, Smash
Ryan’s team: Storm (leader), Beast, Cyclops, Magik, Rogue
Ryan’s cards: Indomitable, Journey Through Limbo, Pardon Me Sugah, Patch Up, To Me My X-Men

Round 1: The basic plan is to sit a couple of people quietly on the two nearest Infinity Formulas, send Beast and Black Bolt to stop Ryan running off with the Researcher and then get a cheeky charge from Captain America to push someone off the back left point and score it instead. Crystal, Storm and Ms Marvel make exactly the moves you would expect onto their respective Secures; Ms Marvel is careful to stay outside of range 4 from Storm (because that way I can Embiggen into range to hit her but she has to move to hit me). Rogue goes to stand on the Researcher and Black Bolt comes forward and fails to hurt her at all. Magik takes the final Secure and also deals no damage to Crystal, then Beast takes a power from Black Bolt and double moves onto the researcher and throws Rogue off it. Cyclops shoots Beast, and Captain America takes a power from him and charges into Magik, failing to push her but at least contesting the point. Finally Ryan’s Beast comes forward, can’t quite get in range to hop off Rogue (because Cyclops is standing in the way) and goes for a risky attack onto my Beast hoping for the Wild to get Ambush. I take it on Black Bolt with A King Serves His People just to keep him off the Researcher but Ryan doesn’t roll the Ambush anyway. The score is 4 – 1 to me and I move the Researcher over toward Black Bolt.

Round 2: It’s on Ryan now to do something clever to take me off the Researcher because if the status quo remains then I’ll just score this out in 4 turns. My plan to stop him doing that is to daze all his characters ; I’m not too worried about losing priority as none of his individual activations are likely to be catastrophic for me and anyway going last means that I can try to displace his team off points. Black Bolt starts us off by dazing Beast in a single action. There isn’t anyone else in range so he just shrugs his shoulders and shuffles over to back stop himself on a bin in case Cyclops wants to push him away. Now that his own Beast is dazed, Cyclops decides to let rip with a beam into my Beast and Black Bolt, the king takes both shots and ultimately no damage. This exchange turns out to be a sign of how it’s going to go for the rest of the game. Ms Marvel Embiggens and dazes Storm, then Rogue charges into Crystal, achieves very little and uses Mutant Absorption to remove all her power. In return Crystal Incinerates her and pushes Magik off the back point. Magik gently tickles Sam and Limbo Steps back onto the point, Beast hurts Rogue and throws her back into the centre and Captain America pushes Magik back off the point and throws a ricochet into Rogue – with 4 critical hits (of 4) in the initial roll to demonstrate how my dice have been on fire this game. We go to 9 – 1.

Round 3: The dice have been just embarrassingly good for me so it would be rude to change plan now. I want to prioritise KOing characters who are already dazed just to start reducing Ryan’s options for a comeback. Rogue charges into Beast and dazes him, then Black Bolt KOs Ryan’s Beast (again with a single shot!) and hurts Rogue. Storm gets her own back on Ms Marvel, one-shotting her to even the score between the two. Crystal finishes off Rogue and then Cyclops hurts her and Captain America, pushing them both off Secures. Captain America charges back onto the far left Infinity Formula and pushes Magik around; I choose not to Ricochet into Cyclops as a bad rolls could drop him to Quick Draw. Magik Limbo Steps back onto the point, puts some ineffective attacks into Captain America and then plays Journey Through Limbo to send him back toward Crystal. The score is now 11 – 2 to me.

Round 4: I think that I can probably get enough points to finish up this round considering that Ryan is down by two characters already, but honestly the way the dice have fallen it would take a miracle for him to come back into this turn. The plan is to daze or KO anyone else who I can manage, especially anyone who hasn’t activated so I can deny Ryan any further opportunity to claw this back. Ms Marvel starts us off by throwing something at Storm, then playing Smash to break a car and KOing Storm. Cyclops puts some decent damage into Beast but can’t quite finish him, and he also doesn’t end up on the Infinity Formula. Captain America Charges back toward Magik and dazes her, and everyone else jogs to score. We finish the game at 17 – 2.

That was perhaps the most ridiculously one-sided game of dice I’ve played… at least since last time I did this to Ryan! If you’re reading this Ryan, I’m so sorry. Full credit to him for taking it all in his stride; I suspect that I would have been a bit less serene. There probably isn’t much to be said about the game itself – I think I had a decent plan but with dice like that I would have beaten even the very best players.

Game 3: Alasdair playing Wakanda

After all this time I finally get to play against fellow blogger Alasdair, who writes excellent articles on Across The Bifrost. He wins priority and I choose the slightly higher threat as I think that I can get some work down by just going wider than the Wakandans and focusing on flipping points. On the other hand, I’m a bit worried that I end up with Black Bolt stuck on one side of the board with his atrocious mobility and the important stuff happening far away from him.

Extraction: Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership
Secure: Mutant Madman Turns City Into Lethal Amusement Park
Threat: 20
My team: Black Bolt, Beast, Crystal, Ms Marvel, Rhino, Toad
My cards: Brace For Impact, Eyes On The Prize, Mission Objective, Terrigenesis, This Is A Robbery
Alasdair’s team: Black Panther (leader), M’Baku, Shuri, Amazing Spider-Man, Beta Ray Bill
Alasdair’s cards: Advanced R&D, Brace For Impact, Eyes On The Prize, Spirit Of Wakanda, Wakanda Forever

Round 1: I’m not really sure how best to approach this; the Spirit of Wakanda play turns on all of the cool powers for Alasdair’s team right out of the gate. I think I’m unlikely to make huge headway into attrition so the plan is to drop Shuri as soon as possible to limit Alasdair’s activation count, play the Secure game as much as possible and hope to hold onto Skrulls for as long as I can manage. Bill plays Eyes on the Prize, Advanced R&D to power up Shuri who then plays Spirit of Wakanda to get the engine running. Luckily he was positioned a touch too far left to collect the right Skrull in one go but he still gets it and flips the Trap. Toad takes the central Skrull and then heads over to my left, flipping the trap with a power taken from Ms Marvel. Spider-Man comes over to collect the far left Skrull and gently tickles Toad, then Crystal goes to the back left Trap and flips it. Black Panther picks up the final Skrull and heads over toward Crystal, then Alasdair uses his pass so Black Bolt rolls abysmally in an attack on Bill. Shuri moves onto the Trap, Beast takes a power from Black Bolt, then moves up and throws Bill toward me. M’Baku makes a pretty rubbish swing at Beast and finally Rhino fails to do any damage to Bill. This leaves him able to play Robbery but he wouldn’t have the power to pick up the fallen Skrull so I decide it isn’t worth it and instead he gets lucky and takes the final Trap. This gets me a second spot prize (score all four Secures at once) which turns out to be, rather fittingly, Black Panther. I have him too so I just pass him to another nearby gamer. The score is 5 – 3 to me.

Round 2: I need to keep Alasdair off some of these Traps and also somehow relieve his team of some Skrulls. Rhino is a lock for that but he’s also got to live through an activation from a heavy hitter first so that’s not a sure thing at all. M’Baku lets rip into Rhino, drawing out my Brace For Impact on the throw into Beast but he survives with a couple of wounds remaining. Beast is not so fortunate, and gets dazed by one of the free attacks. Rhino plays This Is A Robbery on Bill, throwing him into Shuri in the process, the dazes Shuri after also drawing out Alasdair’s Brace For Impact. I considered making my last attack into Bill instead and then using Stampede to get back to my lines but I was worried that Bill would just throw Rhino into my team over there so I prioritised Shuri. Bill predictably dazes Rhino and retakes his Skrull, then heads toward the left side of the board. Ms Marvel Embiggens and rolls nicely to daze Spider-Man – thinking back I think that her first attack left Spider-Man with one or two wounds left so I should have played Terrigenesis at this point which would have made my life a lot more comfortable. Up in the corner, Black Panther makes short work of Crystal and flips that Trap, taking us to 9 – 7 in my favour.

Round 3: I have a slight lead so I need to somehow eke that out for two more rounds. My left side is collapsing so I probably need to focus on getting the Skrulls over to the right where Black Bolt can do work to defend them. Alasdair starts with Wakanda Forever – Shuri pushes Black Bolt away so he can’t double tap, and M’Baku and Black Panther make fairly inconsequential attacks. M’Baku has no difficulty KOing Rhino which is not too surprising but definitely makes the rest of this much harder. Ms Marvel dazes Bill and puts some nice damage into Spider-Man and Black Panther KOs Crystal before Spider-Man gets his revenge on Ms Marvel. Beast annoyingly fails to hurt Shuri or get the Ambush trigger to get onto the point and throw her, but Black Bolt wakes up and KOs her. The score is an uncomfortably tight 12 -11, still with me slightly in the lead.

Round 4: This is going to be the last round so I need to make sure I score at least 4 points. I’m feeling good about 3 of them (Toad’s Skrull plus the points on the right) but I’ll need to get something done on the left. Alasdair spots this too, and Spider-Man KOs Ms Marvel. She actually rolled heroically to avoid damage entirely from a massive hit in his first activation so it was a bit annoying that the second attach was also huge and took her out in one go. Black Bolt dazes M’Baku and Bill picks up the final fallen Skrull. I move Beast out into the middle in case Alasdair gets tunnel vision and sends Black Panther out to fight him – I’m worried that he can position to block Toad off the top right Trap as the movement is going to be very close. Of course, Alasdair is too canny to fall for that and moves Black Panther to block landing spots for Toad. Luckily Toad has indeed got enough movement to make it to that Trap. He needs to roll two successes off three dice to flip it, which is roughly a 50% chance. If he makes it, I win, otherwise Alasdair wins. It’s quite fitting in some ways that such a tight game has come down to a coin flip – the dice land and it’s good for me so I take the win by 16 – 15.

Wow, thanks to Alasdair for an amazing, exciting, thought provoking and above all fun game. This is what I come to MCP for – back-and-forth swings in momentum, play and counter play, a continuous sequence of decision points that all impact the final result. I loved that the game was so close we effectively decided it on a 50-50 roll of the dice; if I’m being honest with myself I do love it slightly more that the fortune eventually favoured me! I made a few notable mistakes – the biggest miss was not playing Terrigenesis on Spider-Man in round 2 as 2VP would have made the last round a lot less stressful. I didn’t make good use of my tactics cards in general, and I should have spotted that I wouldn’t have the spare power available to use Eyes On The Prize; having Inhuman Royal Family for use later in the game would have been much more useful.

Game 4: Ross playing X-Men

The final game of the day is into Ross, who tells me that he’s pretty new to the game but is clearly also pretty good at it based on today’s performance so far. I win priority and Ross helpfully picks my preferred threat level of 19; my only swap out from my ‘normal’ team at this threat level for Demons Downtown is to bring in Quicksilver to steal a cheeky Hammer somewhere. Again, I’m lucky to be playing a very scenario-based team on a Crisis combination that will let me spend my time brutalising them all.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As ‘Worthy’ Terrorise Cities
Secure: Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due?
Threat: 19
My team: Black Bolt, Crystal, Medusa, Quicksilver, Crimson Dynamo
My cards: Brace For Impact, Can I Borrow That, Eyes On The Prize, Fall Back, Sacrifice
Ross’s team: Cyclops, Domino, Rogue, X-23, Amazing Spider-Man
Ross’s cards: Brace For Impact, First Class, Patch Up, Xavier’s Dream, X-Ceptional Healing

Round 1: I’m not particularly intending to score any of the Portals here, instead I’m going to take three Hammers and then try to do as much damage as I can. Ross plays First Class. Crystal plays Eyes On The Prize, takes a power from Black Bolt then picks up the left Hammer and retreats back toward my lines. Rogue collects the rear Hammer and parks herself in the middle. I’m quite tempted to go get the right Hammer with Quicksilver but I don’t have the power to do it and get away safely so instead Black Bolt just flies onto the building and shoots Rogue. Cyclops picks up the Hammer on the right, then Quicksilver uses Speedster to close the gap and hits him, paying the two power to relieve him of the Hammer with Can I Borrow That. Domino goes to the rear point, Spider-Man comes in a bit too cautiously on the left side and X-23 comes toward the middle too but hides sensibly behind the bus shelter. Medusa moves Dynamo onto the rear point then advances and pokes Rogue. Finally Dynamo takes the last Hammer, walks forward (I didn’t have enough opportunities to get him power to let him have the three he would need to pick up the Hammer and use Propulsion Thrusters) and zaps Rogue. The score is even at 3 – 3.

Round 2: That went quite according to plan, so now it’s time for the second part of the plan which is to daze a lot of X-Men. Crimson Dynamo unleashes two beam attacks to daze both Rogue and Domino, ending up with a second Hammer. X-23 attacks Quicksilver who pays for Can’t Catch Me; she follows and hits him but can’t land any damage. Crystal lights up Spider-Man but clearly it just makes him mad – he attacks her twice and Black Bolt takes both of them and ends up getting dazed for his trouble! Quicksilver just bounces off X-23 but Medusa gets her. I end the round giving a power from Medusa to Crimson Dynamo so he’ll have 4 power next turn, i.e. enough to pay for Disruption Field twice. The score is now 7 – 4 to me.

Round 3: Dropping Rogue and X-23 is my first priority as that’ll get them out of my hair for the whole game. Rogue goes first and puts some nice damage into Dynamo, but he doesn’t go down. He beams Domino and Cyclops and teleports back into range for me to use Sacrifice. Spider-Man can’t finish Dynamo, leaving him on one (as is traditional) after I Sacrifice the second swing onto Black Bolt. Crystal dazes Spider-Man, pushes X-23 away and adds some tasty damage onto Rogue – good work Crystal! X-23 comes back into the fray but somehow fails to deliver the last wound to Dynamo. Quicksilver hurts X-23 a little, then Domino pays to Patch Up Cyclops and he walks forward and, yet again, in unable to put that last wound into Crimson Dynamo. Medusa KOs X-23, hurts Rogue and throws the bus shelter into Cyclops who sensibly plays Brace For Impact. Ross decides to keep Domino back to score her point (probably a mistake but that is just his inexperience showing) so Black Bolt walks up to line up a very nice Whisper. The beam KOs Rogue and Domino, leaving Cyclops on one wound and with Stagger. The score is 12 – 4.

Round 4: We’ve been playing pretty slowly so this is going to be the last round but I think that I can wrap this up anyway here. Spider-Man does finally end the embarrassment and daze Crimson Dynamo, collecting his Hammers. Black Bolt easily dazes Cyclops, Medusa throws Spider-Man off the scoring points and I shuffle my team around to score points. We finish at 17 – 6.

That was a very nice game to finish up on, but it was really favouring me right from the start. The Crisis combination was exactly what my roster is comfortable playing, it was just what Ross’s X-Men didn’t want to see, plus Ross was quite inexperienced and (I think) not sure of how to approach this match-up. I probably could have had a smoother use of the Inhumans leadership in round 1 as it felt like I spent a lot of time for rather simple decisions but I’ll put that down to ‘game 4 brain failures’. Of course, I definitely acknowledge my good defence dice on Crimson Dynamo in round 3 but by that point I was ahead considerably on both attrition and score and I think I probably could have held on for the win even if Dynamo ad gone down earlier. I look forward to meeting Ross across the table again when he’s got a few more games under his belt as he seems very good at the game for having played so few match-ups.

Once the scores are counted up I’m in second place, behind Stu on the first tiebreaker (which is Strength of Schedule, as all events should be) and I’m more than happy with that result; you can’t do more than win your own games so I did all I could here. I managed to play all of my characters at least once which makes me extra happy. Special mention to Frazer who was just two wounds away from dropping Stu’s Hulk in the final game which would have taken him to a win and first overall – not bad for a guy who started the day saying he would be happy to just get a single win! Likewise commiserations to Gareth who spent the entire day suffering the kind of dice that most of my opponents had been lumbered with. Thanks to Gordon, Ryan, Alasdair and Ross for four fun games of MCP, and as always huge thanks to Allan for running these events and generally making the whole scene possible. I’ll be back!

Painted Hulkbuster

Here is the Hulkbuster for Marvel Crisis Protocol, yet another iteration of Tony Stark. This is the premium version of Iron Man, in the biggest suit and doing the most damage. It’s surprisingly stand-offish for such a bruiser of a suit, mainly being focused around playing keep-away with its foes. The builder attack has a built in push, while the spender attack has a throw if damage is dealt which is somewhat likely with so many dice. Hulkbuster can only throw terrain and I think it would get a lot more play if this was a character throw too. Of course, it has a form of damage reducer too, though you have to pay before dice are rolled which probably makes it the most annoying one in the entire game to actually use effectively. Overall I think that Hulkbuster matches up quite nicely into Hulk but is a bit less appealing once you start having to worry about swarms of small attacks overheating your ability to reduce damage. One thing I think is quite cool about Hulkbuster is that once it’s Dazed it ejects a smaller version of itself and continues the fight. Theoretically the ejection suit can pay 10 power and re-summon the Hulkbuster suit but in practice I’ve almost never seen this happen. Hulkbuster also has a leadership for Avengers but I don’t think I’ve ever actually encountered this in the wild, partly because it’s only a fairly anaemic reduction in damage taken from throws (which is irrelevant in many match ups) but mainly because all the other Avengers leaderships are really good.

I’ve generally not enjoyed painting MCP Iron Man minis but I did have a nice time with this one. The Hulkbuster suit itself is much less about flat armour than the smaller suits which makes it much more manageable for a painter of my skill level to work on, and the ejection suit is at least a really cool sculpt even if it is still mainly flat panels. As usual I stuck with the card art for colour inspiration although I did lean more into gold than yellow compared to older comics of Iron Man (though I don’t know if the Hulkbuster suit and the red-and-yellow costume were concurrent) as I think it looks better as a metallic style. Hulkbuster could well be my favourite sculpt in all of MCP.

Next on the painting table: General Grievous.

Marvel Crisis Protocol video battle report: Inhumans vs Wakanda

Here is another video report courtesy of Midlife Crisis Protocol; this time I’m playing Inhumans. As always, the whole credit goes to Allan – all I need to do is come along and play.

Marvel Crisis Protocol team tournament report: Crisis In Caledonia 20Apr2024

We had a team event in Marvel Crisis Protocol last weekend, hosted by Allan and run out of Common Ground Games in Stirling. Akos, Frazer, Gareth and Joe joined me in Underpowered Scoundrels Form Mediocre Syndicate and we set out with the full expectation of coming in at the bottom of the pack.

The rules meant that only one of each character and Tactics Card could be used per team, and all of the Crisis Cards had to be used at least once before they could be duplicated. The Serious Business way to play this would be to work out the five strongest rosters, divide up the all of the best characters appropriately and then carefully work out who we would try to put into each match up with the other teams. We didn’t do any of that. Instead, we all just listed the teams that we wanted to play, and then went through and removed any duplicates. Our goal in the match-up process was to get entertaining match-ups where possible rather than trying to specifically arrange an overall team win. I stuck with Inhumans and removed a few of the tech pieces from my ‘main’ roster as they were needed elsewhere; otherwise our team was Brotherhood of Mutants (Akos), Asgard & Wakanda (Frazer), Avengers (Gareth) and finally Spider Foes & Criminal Syndicate (Joe).

Characters (10)
* Black Bolt (5)
Crystal (3)
Medusa (4)
Ms. Marvel (3)
Quicksilver (3)
* Crimson Dynamo (4)
Toad (2)
Beast (3)
* Spider-Man (Miles Morales) (3)
Spider-Woman (4)

Team Tactics (10)
Sacrifice (R)
Can I Borrow That?
Inhuman Royal Family
Terrigenesis
Smash
No Matter the Cost
Double Agent
Escort to Safety
Trip Up
Sucker

Secure Crisis
Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest (E, 15)
Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? (E, 19)
Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse (C, 19)

Extract Crisis
Research Station Attacked! (E, 15)
Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)
Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)

Game 1: David playing Midnight Suns

In our first game we’re up against Absolute Weapon who are clearly taking things a bit more seriously than us. I end up playing into David with his Midnight Suns roster; he wins priority and chooses his own Secures. I go for the slightly lower threat level for the simple reason that I can make a team out of it nicely. Crimson Dynamo is there to make the likely triggers from David’s team a bit less likely while Medusa can put out a lot of consistent damage while moving my own pieces around in case they inevitably get displaced. David’s team is a lot less worried about the Stun from the Secures than I am so my plan is not to contest too hard in round 1 and work over Blade and Juggernaut, then I can hope to deal with Hulk in due course.

Extraction: Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown!
Secure: Mayor Fisk Vows To Find Missing Witnesses
Threat: 16
My team: Black Bolt, Medusa, Ms Marvel, Crimson Dynamo
My cards: Escort To Safety, Inhuman Royal Family, No Matter The Cost, Sacrifice, Smash
David’s team: Blade, Immortal Hulk, Juggernaut
David’s cards: Do You Know Who I Am?, One Below All, Patch Up, Siege Of Darkness, Smash

Round 1: I don’t want to put up anyone too quickly because David’s team will make short work of them. On the other hand, I can’t afford to let things get too far out of hand or I’ll run out of fighting time. Juggernaut collects the central Core and then Bumps onto the righthand objective. I should have collected the left Core with Ms Marvel at this point but I was really worried that Hulk would just drop her in one so instead Dynamo takes a power from Black Bolt, jumps forward and starts applying Shock to Juggernaut. David uses his Pass and Medusa uses Royal Decree to bring Black Bolt into the fray. Hulk takes the left Core and sites on the Secure over there. On the one hand, I guess I’m happy for him to be out of my hair, but on the other hand I can’t just give up three VPs a turn if David goes on the defensive. Ms Marvel and Blade both spend their activations walking to the right and finally Black Bolt rolls like a champion to daze Juggernaut which is pretty handy. The score is 3 – 0 to David.

Round 2: The priority here is to KO Juggernaut because if I can bring him down then the rest of my life gets easier. Juggernaut slightly helps me out with some weak attacks into Black Bolt but then throws Crimson Dynamo into him and the king away with Do You Know Who I Am to daze my leader. Medusa does at least daze Blade in return. Immortal Hulk uses Smash, his own jump and One Below All to get across the board and slap Ms Marvel and Crimson Dynamo around a bit. Ms Marvel tickles Juggernaut and Crimson Dynamo applies Shock to both of David’s big guys. The score now goes to 3 – 2, though Ms Marvel also dazes in the end phase because of the scenario effects.

Round 3: Black hurts Ms Marvel then plays a brutal Siege of Darkness turn to really pile on the damage. Crimson Dynamo continues to put damage onto the Midnight Suns and then Juggernaut has an amazing turn where he dazes Medusa and KOs Ms Marvel while also receiving a Patch Up from Blade. Black Bolt is forced to walk over and uses Whisper to do some very nice damage into both Juggernaut and Blade. Hulk dazes Dynamo and throws Black Bolt off the point and the score goes to a rather alarming 9 – 2, though at least Blade gets Koed from the scenario.

Round 4: At least I now have priority. I need to score a lot of point this turn, but I can probably get a clear turn as Black Bolt should be able to deal with both of David’s remaining characters. He starts with a Master Punch to throw Hulk into Juggernaut. I consider doing that again but there are too many failure cases (daze Hulk in one and don’t throw him, get the throw but don’t daze Juggernaut etc) so he uses No Matter The Cost for a Whisper that does the job. I make a big mistake though and don’t place Black Bolt on the point at this stage. Crimson Dynamo moves to stand on the left point with an Extract and Medusa goes to the right but doesn’t have the movement to also collect a token so there is one sitting on the ground still. The score goes to 9 – 8 to David.

Round 5: If Black Bolt can survive a round with Hulk I’m confident of a win here. Otherwise, it’s going to be very tight. Either way, there probably aren’t too many remaining decision points since I don’t have any useful way to displace him if Black Bolt goes down. Hulk goes into Black Bolt and drops him with the exact damage needed which is rather upsetting. Dynamo and Medusa run around scooping up the Cores and standing places that Hulk isn’t, and the score goes to 12 – 12.

Round 6: If Hulk can drop Medusa with a single attack (since he’ll have to walk and Gamma Leap to make the attack) then I’ll lose, otherwise I’ll win. David rolls the dice and does 6 damage off his 7 dice attack, and I roll zero blocks even with a reroll. Oh well. The score is 15 – 15.

Round 7: This is over now; if we just sit there then Crimson Dynamo will run out of wounds from the scenario damage long before Hulk does. But we don’t need to worry about that, as Hulk KOs him with a single swing giving David a well-deserved win.

Wow, what a close fun game. I was debating between Ms Marvel and Crystal for my team and I should definitely have gone with Crystal; her long move and conditions could have ben relevant in many cases. Ms Marvel could still have been impactful if I hadn’t deployed her in the worst possible place – she should have been pretty much in the centre so I could send her after either of the outside Extracts. I could also have just placed Black Bolt more sensibly in round 4 and been able to score us out in round 6 by getting Medusa to collect the final Core earlier. Still, I got lucky to drop Juggernaut in round 1 and I should really have been playing all of this 3 points down. Good work by David who punished my mistakes and had an actual plan here. The rest of the team largely fares as well as I did and we go down 4 – 1.

Game 2: Kai playing Avengers

This time we’re matched up with Brotherhood Without Manners, all regulars at our events and mainly based in Dundee. I get Kai, who I think that I haven’t played in a long time, and win priority to choose my Secures. With Demons and Hammers this is going to be all about murdering the other team so I go down that route as hard as possible with the only ‘soft’ option being Quicksilver who will hopefully steal someone’s Hammer at some stage and run away with it.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As ‘Worthy Terrorise Cities
Secure: Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due?
Threat: 19
My team: Black Bolt, Medusa, Ms Marvel, Quicksilver, Crimson Dynamo
My cards: Can I Borrow That, Escort To Safety, Inhuman Royal Family, Sacrifice, Smash
Kai’s team: Captain America (Steve Rogers), Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Ghost Rider, Winter Soldier
Kai’s cards: Avengers Assemble, Brace For Impact, Deal With The Devil, Second Wind, Stark Armoury

Round 1: This is a pretty simple plan – take the right Hammer with Ms Marvel, let steal the left Hammer with Quicksilver’s card and then fight everyone in the middle. The combination of Bodyguard and Got Your Back is likely to be quite annoying but I think I can play around it. Predictably, Ms Marvel does take the Hammer on the right and Iron Man goes on the left. Quicksilver takes some power from Black Bolt and uses Speedster to get up to Iron Man but then fails to do any damage and hence just leaves him sitting there perplexed but still holding the Hammer. Captain America takes the middle and Medusa moves Crimson Dynamo with Royal Decree having borrowed Black Bolt’s other power. Winter Soldier comes on to the back point and takes that Hammer, then points out that I left Medusa too far forward by shooting off half of her health. Black Bolt bounces uselessly off Captain America, Captain Marvel joins him in the middle and Crimson Dynamo beams the three of them to give out Shock all round. Finally Ghost Rider surprises me by not attacking Ms Marvel for her Hammer but instead dazes Medusa. The score is 4 – 3 to Kai.

Round 2: Apart from a few niggles, that went pretty much the way I wanted it. I want to spend this turn leveraging attrition as the scores aren’t likely to change hugely so I just need to stop Kai from getting hold of too many Hammers. Medusa starts us out by throwing Ghost Rider into Captain Marvel, drawing out Brace For Impact. She then dazes Captain America (who had used Bodyguard to take the attack for Winter Soldier) and the Got Your Back KOs her in a single shot. Well that is quite annoying. Captain Marvel goes into Binary Form but then largely bounces off Crimson Dynamo as he uses Disruption Field to keep the incoming damage down to a respectable amount. In return Dynamo dazes Winter Soldier, Propulsion Thrusters over to collect the fallen Hammer and finishes dazing Captain Marvel. Ghost Rider puts a lot of damage into Crimson Dynamo but he stays standing. Quicksilver then has the most remarkable turn I’ve ever seen. He hits Iron Man and uses Can I Borrow That? to steal his Hammer. He then rolls both triggers on his builder six times in a row to bounce back and forth between Ghost Rider and Iron Man, eventually dazing the latter. Ms Marvel and Black Bolt daze Ghost Rider and the score goes to 8 – 4 in my favour.

Round 3: I’m expecting a pretty big fight-back turn here from Kai but overall the game have swung to favour me. My plan is to focus down and KO characters to get back to parity with number and then just see the game out. Unfortunately that stellar round of attacks has somehow given away priority despite me already having lost Medusa. Captain Marvel goes into Binary Form again and dazes Crimson Dynamo, the Kai pays for Avengers Assemble on her, Captain America and Iron Man to move them into better spots. Black Bolt tries to swing at Ghost Rider but Captain America takes it so I throw him out of the way, pick up a fallen Hammer and then try again with a bit more success. Ghost Rider uses Hell On Wheels to make sure that Quicksilver can’t just run out of range and leaves him on a single wound before dropping Ms Marvel in a single go. Quicksilver has another good run of dice to KO Iron Man before Winter Soldier dazes him and uses Hydra Tactics to hop around and collect some Hammers. Captain America ends by throwing Black Bolt off the back point. The score evens up at 9 – 9.

Round 4: Now that I have priority back I can get to work polishing off Kai’s wounded team; Winter Soldier is the first target because I don’t want him doing Got Your Back with a pair of Hammers on him. Ms Marvel throws him into Ghost Rider, Embiggens, pays for Smash and then thumps him for the KO. She picks up those Hammer and KOs Ghost Rider; Kai could play Deal With The Devil here but decides that the two Captains are too important to sacrifice for this. Captain Marvel goes Binary again and dazes Black Bolt. Crimson Dynamo hops onto the middle and beams Kai’s team before Captain America pushes him off again. Quicksilver puts the last wound onto Captain Marvel and gratefully collects her Hammers. The score is now 14 – 10 to me.

Round 5: With just Captain America left, this is basically all over. He hurts Ms Marvel but can’t finish her off. I could probably KO Captain America in return but it seems needless so Ms Marvel throws him off the point and we score up. The final result is 21 – 10.

Many thanks to Kai for a very fun game. That probably featured the silliest dice I’ve seen in a long time with both Quicksilver and Winter Solder rolling absolutely stellar whenever they needed it. Kai probably could have focused more on having Captain America and Captain Marvel throw Crimson Dynamo into my team as they really hate that (especially without Brace For Impact in this format) and made more use of Ghost Rider down the middle where his immunity to Incinerate and his beam attack would have been really annoying to deal with. The games for the rest of the team have not favoured us though and we’re squeaked out 3 – 2.

Game 3: Simon playing Criminal Syndicate

So here we are, as foretold, at the bottom table. The match-up process puts me in with Simon who is returning to the scene after a while away having had another baby. I win priority which is helpful into Criminals as it should slow down the scoring by enough to fight everyone and we end up with a very satisfactory arrangement of Crises to play on. Since we’re at 19 again I just stick with basically the same team as last time with the exception of swapping out Quicksilver for Crystal.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due?
Threat: 19
My team: Black Bolt, Crystal, Medusa, Ms Marvel, Crimson Dynamo
My cards: Escort To Safety, Inhuman Royal Family, No Matter The Cost, Sacrifice, Smash
Simon’s team: Kingpin, Bullseye, MODOK, Rhino, Shadowlands Daredevil
Simon’s cards: All According To Plan, Disarm, Indomitable, Shadow Organisation, This Is A Robbery

Round 1: The plan here is largely the same as the last game with Kai – don’t give up too much of a points lead and focus on attrition until I have enough of a lead that I can start to catch up on points again Ms Marvel takes the Extract on the right and Rhino picks up the one on the left. Medusa uses Royal Decree to bring Crimson Dynamo forward and picks up the final token. MODOK zaps Crimson Dynamo rather more effectively that I would have liked and Bows Medusa backwards, which is probably not too bad for me as it means at least that she won’t get Incinerate. Crystal puts Incinerate on Rhino but does no actual damage, Daredevil bounces similarly off Ms Marvel and Black Bolt continues this trend by failing to do a great deal of anything to MODOK. Kingpin comes into the middle and Crimson Dynamo shoots him and MODOK a little. The score is 3 – 2 to Simon.

Round 2: I’m not Incinerated and most of Simon’s team is, so it’s time to get to work. I need to daze a couple of Simon’s team here so that I can start to KO them next turn and Kingpin is the number one target. Simon plays a very good use of Shadow Organisation on Kingpin and MODOK which messes with my immediate plans to start punching people with Black Bolt so instead Crimson Dynamo jumps in to zap Bullseye and Kingpin, getting the daze on the latter. Over on the right Daredevil and the Ninjas make short work of Ms Marvel and then on the other side Crystal rolls rather heroically to daze Rhino. Bullseye finishes off Crimson Dynamo and Black Bolt walks into range of MODOK and fails to roll even a single success on a Master Punch. Simon could have used Indomitable but I need to draw it out at some point. I also made a big error placing Black Bolt at the rear Secure which got him Incinerated without even scoring. MODOK hurts him back in return and Medusa puts a few attacks into MODOK for similarly little effect. The score is 5 – 4 to Simon now.

Round 3: That could have gone better (mainly with Black Bolt) but otherwise I’m kind of on the same plan. Daredevil is the lowest priority while Kingpin and Rhino and the ones I need to actually deal with. Medusa gets targeted with Disarm which is going to make her turn rather anaemic and Kingpin lays into Crimson Dynamo leaving him on a single point of damage with Stagger. Black Bolt uses Master Punch on Kingpin to force out Indomitable and then fails to damage MODOK for the second attack in a row. Rhino comes in and uses This Is A Robbery on Medusa (KOing Crimson Dynamo in the process of the throw) and then dazes her from full health. I guess that saves me worrying about Disarm. Ms Marvel dazes Daredevil in return and Bullseye puts a couple of shots into Black Bolt before Crystal dazes him too. MODOK completes the turn by dazing Black Bolt and Bowing Crystal out of the way. The score goes to 7 – 6, still in Simon’s favour.

Round 4: I can probably drop Kingpin this turn which will make my life a bit easier but I need to get MODOK under control after Black Bolt’s complete failure to do anything to the big head. Simon plays All According To Plan and Kingpin hurls my leader off out of the way before tickling Medusa. Medusa has an epic turn, throwing Bullseye at MODOK to make sure that he’s in range for her spender, then KOing Kingpin and Bullseye and finally dazing MODOK. That’s how you do it, Black Bolt! Daredevil comes over to do his area attack on Black Bolt and Ms Marvel and I gamble with Sacrifice onto Black Bolt hoping that I can keep them both up as my leader has 8 health here. It doesn’t pay off and he goes down. I compound my error by not immediately using Ms Marvel so Rhino survives what Crystal has to offer and KOs Ms Marvel. We’re now at 8 – 7 to Simon.

Round 5: I’m running out of pieces to do work with here so I just need to start evening up the odds. Medusa throws the Ninjas into Rhino hoping for an unlucky defence roll but he survives on one. She does at least KO MODOK. Rhino dazes Crystal, Stampedes across the board and drops a casual five damage into Medusa; I can probably hold on for a win if she survives but Daredevil manages the last damage on her from afar. 11 – 7 to Simon.

Round 6: Well, if Crystal can somehow KO both of Simon’s characters here I’ll take an ill-deserved win but it seems unlikely. She moves across and Incinerates both of them, (KOing Rhino in the process) but can’t quite get enough damage on Daredevil to seal the deal. The game finishes at 13 – 8 to Simon.

Well done Simon for beating me very soundly. I played a couple of turns very poorly, especially in round 4 where I activated characters in the wrong order repeatedly and also took a (I think reasonable) gamble with Sacrifice that didn’t pay off. Black Bolt’s apparent complete inability to put even a single damage on MODOK cost me very dearly, and I compounded it by getting him Incinerated for no gain at all. There is definitely plenty to improve from where I played here, but nonetheless I had a lot of fun getting to face Simon across the table again. The rest of my team fares better and we take the round 3 – 2 to avoid the wooden spoon.

Overall that was a lot of fun and I don’t think that I would change our overall ‘fly casual’ strategy if we had out time again. The event fuelled my nihilism as even if all three of my games had the opposite results then our team results wouldn’t have changed at all. Thanks to David, Kai and Simon for three more fun games of MCP, to the rest of my team (Akos, Frazer, Gareth and Joe) for joining me and putting up with my poor match-up decisions all day and of course to Allan for running the whole thing. I shall return!

Painted Kraken

This is Kraken, another Super Tactical Droid for Shatterpoint. Perhaps not surprisingly, Kraken plays much like the other droid with this role (Kalani) but is a bit cheaper and perhaps therefore a bit less effective on the tabletop. Kraken still moves other Battle Droids around the place and makes them a bit better, but it is more focused on personal output and (in particular) resilience when compared to Kalani. At least for me, it’s a bit of a moot distinction in that whenever I’m playing Kalani I also use Kraken as I just use the obvious synergy of ‘oops, all Battle Droids’.

The card art for Kraken suggests that it is basically identical to Kalani apart from the yellow markings but I already find it hard enough to tell apart the various flavours of clone trooper in Shatterpoint so I deliberately painted Kraken a darker green to make it clearer which one is which. I did take the opportunity to be a little more heavy handed with edge highlight on Kraken’s torso in particular which I think works well enough. Overall Kraken was a pretty quick paint, except for the yellow lining part of the decoration which took ages because I was being careful and also because getting yellow to look good appears to be partly sorcery. It was a fun little diversion for a game we don’t play a huge amount and takes us another step away from bare plastic on games nights.

Next on the painting table: Hulkbuster.

Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament report: Street Level Violence 14Apr2024

Last weekend I attended a Marvel Crisis Protocol event down in Protech Games (in Stockton) with a bit of a twist. The theme was ‘street level characters’ and so no-one with a threat higher than 4 could be taken in any rosters. This seemed like an interesting format – and anyway, I like to play games so it’s not exactly a hardship – so Joe and I piled into Allan’s car to head down to participate.

This format obviously effectively excludes any faction with a 5+ threat leader so I clearly wasn’t going to be going for leaderless Inhumans. In my opinion some factions are highly advantaged in this format, partly because their power pieces fit into it, and partly because their natural predators are not present. I was fully expecting to see big successes from Guardians, Wakanda and Web Warriors, and I also thought that X-Men were likely to be around in high numbers simply because they fit nicely into this format and they’re the new hotness after the release of Professor X et al. I did briefly consider playing Wakanda myself but decided that I wasn’t really excited to play them and just left them behind. Instead I took a Cabal roster led by the new Red Skull (Master of the World) by removing the high threat characters from a roster I’d been tinkering with as a chassis for Shadow King. That roster had rather been based around moving the other team and generally being a pain to work into, but as I removed pieces I realised that it had just become a roster of characters that I find entertaining. Mystique and Mysterio both being affiliated makes me very happy and in the end I just figured I would see how I got on without worrying too much about min-maxing a roster that I would only really use here.

Characters (10)
* Red Skull, Master of the World (4)
* Mystique (3)
Mysterio (3)
Crossbones, Merciless Merc (3)
Enchantress (4)
Skurge, The Executioner (3)
Bullseye (2)
Baron Zemo (3)
Rhino (4)
X-23 (3)

Team Tactics (10)
Dark Reign
Deception (R)
The Grand Illusion
Brace for Impact (R)
Meet My Executioner
Cosmic Obliteration
Mission Objective
I Am A Baron, After All
This is a Robbery
X-Ceptional Healing

Secure Crisis
Infinity Formula Goes Missing! (B, 17)
Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate (F, 20)
Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest (E, 15)

Extract Crisis
Struggle For The Cube Continues (F, 17)
Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan (F, 17)
The Montesi Formula Found (E, 18)

Game 1: Nigel playing Winter Guard

The first game puts me up with Nigel, also travelling to the North East for gaming though in his case from Stockport. We have met at least one other time but I haven’t had the pleasure of playing him until now. I’ve hardly ever played against Winter Guard in events but my record against them in casual play is pretty abysmal. I win the roll-off choose my Secures, though I probably wouldn’t have minded too much the other way round either. Since we’re basically going to be having a scrum in the middle of the board I go for both Mysterio and Crossbones; the two slowest characters in the game. Hopefully they won’t have to move too far!

Extraction: The Montesi Formula Found
Secure: Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest
Threat: 18
My team: Red Skull Master of the World, Baron Zemo, Bullseye, Crossbones Merciless Merc, Mysterio, Mystique
My cards: Brace For Impact, Cosmic Obliteration, Dark Reign, Deception, The Grand Illusion
Nigel’s team: Crimson Dynamo, Black Widow, Ursa Major, Winter Soldier Operative, Logan The Wolverine
Nigel’s cards: Brace For Impact, Mission Objective, Patch Up, Sovereign Strike, X-Ceptional Healing

Round 1: I don’t have any safe extracts, but then again neither does Nigel. In the end I figure I’ll just send up Crossbones on the basis that he’s quite tough and collect the central book. Otherwise I want to pull back to my side of the board and ideally kidnap someone using Deception at a key moment. Crossbones collects the middle book, and Winter Soldier shoots him to no effect while collecting his own. Bullseye picks up the last book and settles himself on my home secure. Ursa Major waddles forward and Mystique uses Deception to move him into no-man’s-land on my side of the board, shooting him rather ineffectually for good measure. Black Widow comes in to contest the centre, and Mysterio fails to hurt Ursa Major at all. Crimson Dynamo puts shock on Crossbones and goes into the middle. Zemo and Red Skull both try to hurt Ursa Major but start what will be a day-long story of me using the Red Skull leadership but still failing to do any damage, thus removing what little power I had available. The score is 3 – 3.

Round 2: We’re committed to the brawl here so I need to minimise the impact that Black Widow and Winter Soldier can have, and then start to work over Nigel’s team that are in my reach. Crimson Dynamo puts Shock on Zemo then jumps to zep him again along with Mysterio and Red Skull. He finishes up by paying for Patch Up on Ursa Major which leaves him quite dry on power. Crossbones pays for Dark Reign on Crimson Dynamo in case I lose him early, then clears Shock and beams Black Widow and Winter Soldier (not ideal but there weren’t any neat lines going the other way) before Mysterio pays for The Grand Illusion. Logan smacks the hell out of Mystique but his beam is heavily blunted by The Grand Illusion. Red Skull bounces off Crimson Dynamo even with Dark Reign and teleports Logan out of my way before Ursa Major has a fairly ineffective turn into Mysterio. He and Mystique join up to daze Crimson Dynamo and Winter Soldier leaves Crossbones on one; Black Widow polishes him off and collects his book. Zemo goes into Winter Soldier but can’t do much damage. The score goes to 6 – 6.

Turn 3: The priority here is to drop Crimson Dynamo as he’s in a great position to stymie basically everything I want to do. I also need to relieve Black Widow and Winter Soldier of their books. Winter Soldier starts us out by using the book to beam Zemo and Crossbones. Despite being unable to explode Criticals or reroll, Nigel rolls a perfect 12 successes from 12 dice and I roll zero blocks on either character, losing them both in one go. Mysterio mildly inconveniences Crimson Dynamo before going down to Bleed (He was going down either way and I wanted to get more use out of him first). Crimson Dynamo dazes Mystique and Red Skull, leaving me with just Bullseye. There’s not a lot he’s going to do so I just have him pop a couple of damage into Crimson Dynamo to soften him up for next turn before Ursa Major dazes him. Nigel scores the maximum to take it to 13 – 6.

Turn 4: Wow, that was a pasting like I haven’t had in a while. I’ll be lucky to pull this back but basically the plan is the same as last turn – deal with Crimson Dynamo and try to get some of these books back. Red Skull finishes off Crimson Dynamo, then Winter Soldier one-shots Zemo. Mystique drops Ursa Major and collects his book, then Black Widow comes uses her book to beam both Mystique and Mysterio. Nigel rolls another perfect roll (so that’s 24 success from 24 so far) but I do at least make some blocks this time and they do survive. Bullseye finally dazes Winter Soldier, Logan puts some damage around my team but I get lucky and only Mystique gets Koed and then Mysterio goes to work on Logan, moving him away from the scoring points. The score goes to 15 – 9 to Nigel.

Turn 5: I’ll basically need a miracle here in that I need to stop Nigel scoring at all, so my priority has to be to daze Black Widow. Wolverine goes into Bullseye and Mysterio dazes him with Tricks and Traps on the place. Mysterio then rolls a ridiculous set of dice to one-shot Winter Soldier. Ironically I needed him to survive on one so I could get a move from Tricks and Traps to be in range of Black Widow, who happily legs it for the corner where I can’t get to her. We finish at 16 – 15 to Nigel.

Wow, that was a hell of a game. Nigel’s turn 3 (and his dice on the Montesi Formula books in general) just completely broke my back and I was in some ways quite pleased to get it back to being so close. In retrospect I could have made better use of Crossbones in turn 2; he should have attacked Crimson Dynamo instead of some fairly inconsequential damage on the two characters at the back. Hopefully we can meet across the table again!

Game 2: John playing Cabal

In general I prefer not to have mirror-matches as I enjoy the diversity of factions in the game, so it was inevitable that I would end up playing the only other Cabal player at the event! Fortunately John was playing a rather different roster from me which was much more focused on just killing everything in sight so it seemed unlikely that we’d face the spectre of playing the exact same teams into each other. John won the roll off and picked his Secures, and I went for the slightly higher threat mainly because we were already out of the running for the event and I wanted to play more of my toys.

Extraction: Struggle For The Cube Continues
Secure: Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due?
Threat: 19
My team: Red Skull Master of the World, Bullseye, Crossbones Merciless Merc, Enchantress, Mysterio, Mystique
My cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Dark Reign, Deception, Mission Objective, The Grand Illusion
John’s team: Red Skull Master of the World, Baron Mordo, Baron Zemo, Hood, Elektra, Nebula
John’s cards: Dark Reign, Hood’s Gang, I Am A Baron After All, Mission Objective, Vendetta

Round 1: Again neither of us have a safe central grab so my plan is to leave the centre and see how well John can play around Deception. I don’t particularly want to get involved in a brawl right in the middle so hopefully I can drag the main fight over to my side of the board where I can leverage Bullseye, who is definitely planning to sit on the back point all game. Hood and Bullseye take the left Cubes, then Mordo moves on the rear point and uses Master Of The Occult so he can be a battery for Red Skull later. My Red Skull takes the near right Cube and moves back to the middle. Elektra comes to the middle (but for some reason doesn’t take) the centre Cube after her Ninjas pick up the one on the back right. This leaves her in range for Enchantress to Siren’s Call her forward and into my clutches. John then makes a really clever play where he brings Red Skull forward and teleports Elektra back to safety using the power that Mordo just generated – I didn’t see that coming at all. Mystique mostly bounces off Red Skull and Zemo picks up the final Cube fragment. Nebula comes for Mystique but, as is tradition, leaves her on a single wound. The score is 5 – 3 to John.

Round 2: If I just leave this all to play out then I’ll eventually lose so I need to either leverage the attrition side of my game or start pushing people around. I have tools for both but in a Cabal vs Cabal match the only true choice is to fight. Red Skulls dazes Mystique easily and then teleports Crossbones far out of the fight. Mysterio moves Elektra away and then rolls quite nicely to finish off John’s Red Skull. Zemo charges in and almost takes out Enchantress in one go before retreating back to safety. I pretty much have to use her then and she makes me proud, dazing Nebula and Siren’s Calling Mordo further away. Hood comes in but can’t finish off Enchantress as his attacks are stuck on her best defence type. My Red Skull teleports into the action and dazes Hood, collecting his Cube in the process. The Ninjas hand their Cube to Zemo (they would have died to the Cube damage at the end of the turn anyway) and Elektra dazes my Red Skull and picks up both of his tokens. Bullseye drops her in turn but can’t get her Cubes back; this tempts Mordo to come in for them but he gets dazed by a timely Tricks and Traps from Mysterio. Crossbones saunters back into the fight and picks up a bunch of these Cubes that are just lying around on the ground. John stays in the lead at 7 – 6.

Round 3: Not having priority here is going to be a problem because a lot of my characters are looking extremely fragile. If I can keep Mysterio up until my turn I can put out The Grand Illusion which will catch almost the entire game and between that and Dark Reign I might be able to get enough of an attrition lead that I can just ride this out to the end. Mordo pays for Dark Reign on Red Skull, then boosts Hood’s attack roll – the resulting Empowered Dark Lightning KOs Red Skull and dazes Enchantress and Bullseye. The latter does manage to Mission Objective one Extract over to Mystique, who then pays for Dark Reign on Elektra while Mysterio puts up The Grand Illusion. Crossbones lets rip with some epic attacks, KOing Hood and Elektra and leaving Mordo clinging on; he also moves onto the central objective with Hit and Run and collects a Cube so not a bad activation at all. Mystique follows up by KOing the other Red Skull. In the meantime Nebula fails to do much of anything to Crossbones or Mystique. Mysterio KOs Mordo and puts a little damage into Nebula. Zemo plays his card, zooms up and dazes Crossbones before KOing Mystique which is rather impressive. The score goes to 10 – 6 in John’s favour.

Round 4: I might be way down on points but I’m way up on attrition and I have priority at last. Enchantress collects all three cubes lying at her feet, Siren’s Calls Nebula next to Zemo for a neat beam and then zaps them both, KOing the former and leaving Zemo on one wound. He hurts Enchantress and KOs Bullseye out of spite, then Crossbones KOs him to end the game. The score remains at 10 – 6 but I get the win.

Thanks John for a really fun game. It was entertaining to play a game where we were both aiming for murder but went really wide, and I learned a few interesting tricks from watching John use Red Skull. Ultimately the dice favoured me, but I was able to leverage my beams to get more damage out than John’s team. Plus I got very fortunate on the turn I played The Grand Illusion as it felt like John rolled a lot of Critical results. The game felt like ‘good clean MCP’ without much in the way of jank and instead everyone just fighting each other.

Game 3: Tony playing Wakanda

For this game I finally got to play against legendary Element TO Tony Moore packing Wakanda. I was not surprised to see a lot of Wakanda rosters around – they’re really strong even in an open format never mind in this ‘street level’ version of the game. I win priority and choose my Secures and Tony chooses the higher threat. The game on this set up is basically going to be about who can get the central objective and leg it over to their chosen side quickest, as that will split the other team and force them to chase. I pick Rhino because his mobility and his card will help with the plan in general, and he also loves the extra power from Infinity Formula. I also put down X-23 mainly just to get her a run out; she could have been Skurge just as easily.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Infinity Formula Goes Missing!
Threat: 19
My team: Red Skull Master of the World, Baron Zemo, Bullseye, Mystique, Rhino, X-23
My cards: Brace For Impact, Dark Reign, Deception, This Is A Robbery, X-Ceptional Healing
Tony’s team: M’Baku (leader), Black Panther, Killmonger, Shuri, Gamora
Tony’s cards: Advanced R&D, Jabari Chieftain, Spirit Of Wakanda, Usurp The Throne, Wakanda Forever

Round 1: Tony’s deployment makes it clear that he’s planning to largely refuse my left side, so I should do the same in return. Ideally I want to take at least two of the Extracts and then retreat over to my left side. I start out with Bullseye, as he can sometimes get away from early pressure with Parting Shot and also because he ended up deployed over there early. Gamora plays Advanced R&D so Shuri can play Spirit Of Wakanda and turbocharge Tony’s whole team. Zemo takes the central Cure and Killmonger helpfully bounces off Bullseye (though I also wouldn’t have minded getting a mild beating so he could get out of further danger). X-23 picks up the final cure over on the left. M’Baku comes for Zemo and hurts him so Mystique comes up and uses Deception to displace him somewhere I could attack him. Shuri pushes Zemo then Red Skull gives M’Baku a mild Shock in return and teleports Zemo further away – seeing John do that in our previous game made me think of that move. Black Panther crosses almost the entire board and plays Wakanda Forever, annoyingly getting the damage through to daze Zemo. M’Baku also drops Bullseye from this free attack. Rhino bounces ineffectively off Black Panther and the score is an enormous 2 – 1 in favour of Tony.

Round 2: There are two tokens on the ground so I guess I’ll be picking up whichever one Tony doesn’t grab and then running to my left. Black Panther collects the one on the left and legs it back toward his team. Bullseye picks up the one he’d been holding before and then moves considerably more slowly towards the left. M’Baku throws some terrain into Bullseye which I rather reluctantly Brace, then hits him and Bullseye uses Parting Shot to get further away. X-23 ‘passes’ my turn by just walking up to the top left Secure. Gamora drops Bullseye and then Mystique pays for Dark Reign on her and puts a fairly disappointing volley into her. Killmonger leaves Mystique on a single wound, then Red Skull teleports himself over, finishes off dazing Gamora (and collects her token) then teleports Killmonger away again and moves back toward my left. The score is 5 – 4 to Tony.

Round 3: The plan here basically remains the same – get two of the Extracts over to my left side and hope that the Wakandans have to over extend trying to get them back. This plan immediately goes awry when Gamora drops both Red Skull and Mystique with a single attack (in fairness, Mystique only had one wound remaining but I was a bit annoyed to see Red Skull drop yet again to a 6 dice attack from full health), collects the fallen token and runs away. I pass and Tony makes (in my opinion) an error in attacking Rhino with Shuri, powering him up nicely and giving me two Aggressive moves across the board. He KOs Gamora using This Is A Robbery to pick off her last wound, which still felt worth it, and then runs and Stampedes away. Killmonger goes after him but will only get a single attack, albeit powered up by Jabari Chieftain and Usurp The Throne – luckily the dice don’t go insane for once and he only picks off 4 damage leaving my big chap alive. M’Baku finishes him off throwing Rhino into X-23 for good measure and she helpfully rolls zero blocks and obliges me to play X-Ceptional Healing. Zemo dazes Killmonger and Black Panther crosses the entire board yet again and dazes X-23 after she fails to roll any blocks one more time. The score is 7 – 6 with Tony in the lead.

Round 4: I’m very rapidly running out of pieces here as Tony is just deleting my team whenever he makes an attack roll. On the other hand, both M’Baku and Black Panther are quite badly mauled and I can probably bring them both down this turn to swing the attrition more in my favour. Rhino starts out by dazing both of the Wakandan leaders between his attacks and throws, the collects the fall Extract. Killmonger continues his rather uninspiring run by failing to finish off X-23 and she puts some nice damage back into him. Tony uses his pass so Zemo finishes off Killmonger to my very great relief. Shuri crosses the board to bring in some reroll support and Red Skull hurts her and teleports her away. The score goes to 11 – 7 to me.

Round 5: There is going to be a mighty hit back here and I’m likely to lose at least Rhino, but overall my plan is to run away with all the tokens and try to see the game out. M’Baku goes absolutely wild, KOing all three of Red Skull, Rhino and X-23 in a single activation; this isn’t helped by my failure to roll even a single successful block on any of the defence or dodge rolls. Zemo fails to hurt Black Panther and retreats to the back left point; in retrospect I wonder if he would have been better just crossing the board to the right side instead. Black Panther collects the tokens lying on the floor and goes after Zemo but can’t KO him. Shuri and Mystique move to sit on the right side points. The score is now 15 – 11 to me.

Round 6: I need to keep Zemo alive and basically that is it. He runs as fast as his little legs will carry him away from Black Panther. Everyone else shuffles their feet and finally the king comes to get the baron. Zemo has three wounds remaining so I need to block at least one of the Pounce damage, and my dodge rolls this game have been uninspiring to say the least. Luckily the dice favour Zemo this time and he survives on one, sealing the game at 16 – 14.

Wow, that could have been the tightest game I’ve ever played. Tony is a great opponent and I really enjoyed finally being able to play into him. I think if I were to have my time again I would have not even contested the token on the right and instead used Bullseye to pick up the central one; that might have kept him or Zemo in the game for longer at the start of the match and given me a chance to do some more damage to Tony’s team in the early rounds. Overall this was the perfect game in that every move felt relevant and either of us could have taken the win right up to literally the final dice rolls.

Game 4: Chris playing Web Warriors

I have to admit that I expected there to be a lot more Web Warriors around but I think that Chris was the only one in the end. Luckily for me we got my Secures (and my priority) and even more luckily we ended up with the one that Webs like least. I was quite tempted to just use both of the slow people again but decided that I’d spend a good chunk of the game repositioning myself so chose to play Baron Zemo over Crossbones.

Extraction: Paranoia Pummels Populace!
Secure: Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest
Threat: 15
My team: Red Skull Master of the World, Baron Zemo, Bullseye, Mysterio, Mystique
My cards: Brace For Impact, Cosmic Obliteration, Dark Reign, Deception, The Grand Illusion
Chris’s team: Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Black Cat, Ghost Spider, Spectacular Spider-Man, Lizard
Chris’s cards: All Webbed Up, Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes, Brace For Impact, Escort To Safety, The Cat And The Spider

Round 1: I want to try to get two of the Paranoia tokens here and hopefully use Mystique to Deception one of the Web Warriors into my core for an early attrition lead. Bullseye starts us out by taking the token on the right and then Black Cat uses The Cat And The Spider to grab one of the central ones and retreat. Zemo goes to the left and Lizard picks up the final token in the middle. Mystique uses Deception to pull him so Ghost Spider moves to give an option on Life Saver for Lizard. Red Skull teleports the big scientist to the back of my lines and safely away from his friends and eventually Mysterio leaves him on a single wound where the Gamma damage will finish him off. The score is 5 – 3 to Chris.

Round 2: My priority this turn is to deal with Lizard and avoid giving up too much else. Red Skull starts us out by failing to do any damage at all to Lizard, and also loses himself a power because he used his own leadership but didn’t gain anything from the attack. SSM dazes Bullseye and picks up his token and then Mysterio does just a single point of damage to Lizard. In return Lizard halves Mysterio’s health and throws him away and I follow-up with Mystique also failing to do any damage to Lizard, so that’s 6 attack actions for a net gain of zero damage because Healing Factor removed the one that Mysterio managed. Spider-Man uses Web Swing and offs Zemo in a single attack and Ghost Spider pushes and pulls Red Skull and Mystique around while also playing Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes to remove the incidental damage from the scenario on Chris’s affiliated models. The score is 11 – 5 now.

Round 3: Well, that was a pretty awful turn for me. I guess the initial plan is the same (deal with Lizard) but now I also need to somehow score a lot of points and stop the best scenario team in the game from seeing this out. Mysterio does finally polish off Lizard after the big guy stops rolling 3 blocks for every attack, then SSM one-shots Bullseye with his builder. Zemo gets revenge on Spider-Man by charging past to block Life Saver and dazing him. Black Cat effectively passes her turn again as she’s quite happy and safe where she is. Mystique fails to do any damage to Ghost Spider and then in return Ghost Spider rolls just as badly on Zemo. Red Skull does finally daze Ghost Spider but can’t hurt SSM. The score goes to 14 – 9.

Round 4: I don’t actually think it’s even possible for me to stop Chris winning this round so I decide to just go for as much damage as I can put out. SSM pays for All Webbed Up and Spider-Man KOs Baron Zemo easily. Mystique puts Dark Reign on Ghost Spider and Red Skull puts out Incinerate with Cosmic Obliteration then uses his spender in the hope of getting some extra attacks and dealing some damage to the Webs team but even with full re-rolls I can’t get the trigger so although at least Ghost Spider goes down that’s all I can do. SSM takes down Mystique from full health in one go and Mysterio can’t finish off Spider-Man even through the Incinerate, though it wasn’t really affecting anything anyway. We finish up at 19 – 12 to Chris.

Thanks to Chris for a fun game and I hope that we can try this again at some point where I put up a better show. I had the wrong approach right from the start going for the edge Paranoia tokens as the combination of Gamma Shelters meant that it was doing a load of needless damage to both Bullseye and Zemo. On the other hand, the dice basically made it so it didn’t actually matter much anyway. Chris played a solid game without notable errors and I’m only sorry that I didn’t really push him hard to do something cool. One aspect of my play that I was quite pleased about was playing around Life Saver and Escort To Safety. It’s not really easy to write about positioning for that stuff but Chris didn’t get to use either of them all game… on the other hand, I never did enough damage to anyone to actually matter.

When the scores are in I’m 11th of 28 which is quite good for a 2 – 2 result. Both of my losses were quite winnable, but in fairness both of my wins were quite losable too so overall that’s a pretty fair representation of how I played. Next up is a team tournament where I’m back to Inhumans, albeit with some roster changes to fit that format. Thanks to Nigel, John, Tony and Chris for four very fun games of MCP, and of course to Anth for doing all the hard work to run this whole show.

Painted Lockjaw

This is Lockjaw for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He’s the court pet for the Inhumans, and as you can expect, is only affiliated there. Lockjaw serves two main functions, or three if you count being ‘the goodest boi’ as a function. Firstly, he generates loads of power which you can move around with Advanced R&D or the Inhumans leadership. And secondly, he has an absolutely enormous teleport for friendly minis, which has been used in combination with some of the big monsters like Malekith and Dormammu to throw them up the board early and extend their threat range in round one. Unfortunately Lockjaw basically doesn’t contribute (at least for me) after round one as his attacks are lacklustre and he’s quite slow; I’d rather have another three threat in his place in most rosters.

I really enjoyed painting Lockjaw though, especially his face which is really expressive. I initially tried to follow his comic book marking where he has some white patches but it just didn’t look right to me at all. I’ve also seen people plain Lockjaw in the style of their own dogs. In the end, I just went for a fairly boring brown on his body and spent my time on his face… and I’m very pleased with how it came out.

Just look at that cute little face!

Next on the painting table: Kraken.

Painted B2 Battle Droids

Here are a set of B2 Battle Droids for Shatterpoint. They are, as represented in the various films and TV shows, somewhat tougher than the B1s and this is partly shown because there are only two of them on each base and partly because they have the Protection rule which reduces incoming damage. I find them quite a good unit when in a team that supports them well, by which I mean that it has Super Tactical Droids like Kalani to boss them around. The main problem I have is that they’re awful in melee in a game which encourages standing in various places to score points, and so my general experience with them is that they move forward onto an objective, maybe get a decent attack off, then my friend Tiggs sends a jedi into reduce them to scrap metal. However, I think that the problem is more that I’m just not particularly good at Shatterpoint rather than any issue with the B2s themselves.

I painted the B2s in a two layer process. First I gave a fairly heavy silver drybrush over the black base coat. Then I tried to pick out the edges and interesting bits with a more enthusiastic touch of silver. Ultimately there isn’t a great deal to say about them as the B2s are almost entirely one colour. But for what it’s worth I did enjoy the painting process and I was quite satisfied with the outcome, especially compared to how long it took to paint them up.

Next on the painting table: Lockjaw.

Painted Captain America, First Avenger

This is Captain America, First Avenger. He’s the third iteration of Steve Rogers for Marvel Crisis Protocol, and the fourth version of Captain America as there is also a Sam Wilson version out there. This one is from the Earth’s Mightiest Core Box and comes with a very simple yet powerful leadership to allow attacking characters to pay one power and change a dice to whatever face they like. Obviously this is just net neutral when using a builder power but allows some extra spice when using characters who need a specific dice face for a trigger; Pierce is a good example of this. I’ve seen two schools of thought on building rosters with this Captain America as a leader. Firstly, just take anyone you like and rely on the leadership to make everyone just a little bit better. Or alternatively, load up on characters with Pierce, wild throw triggers etc and just enable whatever nonsense you need. Probably both have merits, though the second option is obviously more reliant on the other team not prioritising fighting Captain America and KOing him early. Otherwise, I think he’s a fine and straightforward character and he does keep I Can Do This All Day on his injured side which makes him much harder to drop than his raw stats might suggest.

Although I am aware that there are quite a lot of variations on the classic Captain America suit, I was never going to paint this mini in anything other than the classic red white and blue. The sculpt isn’t particularly dynamic but I believe that it’s a reference to a specific comic cover. He was fun, his musculature is well sculpted and it makes it easy even for a mediocre painter to make them stand out nicely.

Next on the painting table: B2 Battle Droids.

Marvel Crisis Protocol video battle report: Cabal vs Guardians of the Galaxy

I was fortunate enough to be able to join the ever-excellent Allan, of Midlife Crisis Protocol ‘fame’, for some more games which he kindly recorded for his YouTube channel. This is the first one of this batch, my Cabal vs his Guardians of the Galaxy. As always, I take no credit at all for the work Allan does here with the editing or other jiggery-pokery required for video; I just got to play some MCP.