Painted Magneto

This is Magneto, iconic X-Men villain / anti-hero and leader of the Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants for Marvel Crisis Protocol. In game Magneto is one of the leaders of the Brotherhood affiliation and has surely the most fitting of all of leadership abilities – he and his team gain power when terrain is destroyed. Since Magneto is, I think, the only character in the game whose terrain throw isn’t limited to once per turn he can really generate a lot of power for the team very quickly. Magneto’s main weakness is his slow movement but timely use of the Asteroid M tactics card can get him quite easily to where he needs to be and from there it’s all pain for the other team. My main experience of Magneto has been Allan repeatedly crushing me with his Brotherhood and managing the Master of Magnetism is a big part of the game plan when I come up against them.

As befits such a classic character, Magneto has had a huge variety of costumes throughout the ages so as usual I went with the red and purple combination from the card art which is itself based on the 90s X-Men cartoon. I’m not completely satisfied here as the level of highlights don’t really pop enough considering the large areas for both suit and cape, but despite that I did really enjoy painting him. It was, in a small way, like bringing part of my childhood back to reality. To ensure that Magneto doesn’t run out of terrain to throw at his hapless victims, he is allowed to generate a Magnetic Construct each turn, represented by these two minis in the background. They’re meant to be just lumps of scrap metal so I didn’t spend much time working on them.

Next on the painting table: Rocket Raccoon.

Painted Magik

This is Magik, another of the X-Men for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Although she is, strictly speaking, a professional wizard (she’s the Sorcerer Supreme of somewhere or other), Magik is a cost-effective beatstick who gets good use out of her mystic damage typing on her main attacks. I like her also for her mobility as she can pay to teleport into or out of trouble with Limbo Step, though I still have to work on when exactly to do this as leaving her in danger is a recipe for disaster since she has no cool defensive tricks unless her attacker is also using mystic damage.

Since Magik hails from much more recent stories than the lurid 90s X-Men cartoon (at least, I’d never heard of her back then) she gets to avoid a bright spandex costume. Instead, I stuck with the rather dull costume from the card art. Since Magik’s clothes are a sensible if boring black I spent a bit more time working on the blue for her tactical swirly thing and I have to say that I’m quite pleased with how it came out. Clearly wherever Magik is the Sorcerer Supreme of has a lot of gyms as she has quite the set of abs sculpted on her – I’m pretty sure than mine have never been so defined!

Next on the painting table: Magneto.

Painted Quicksilver

Here is Quicksilver for Marvel Crisis Protocol. As befits a character who flits between goodies and baddies he is affiliated both with Brotherhood and Avengers (and also Inhumans for some Inhuman-soap-opera reason that presumably appears in a comic that I haven’t read yet). He is very highly focussed on Extraction plays with his speed, a Superpower to move even further and a cool tactics card to relieve the other team of one of their objectives as he hurtles past them. I find him surprisingly hard to kill if he has power on him as he has a ‘run away when being targetted’ Superpower and some nice defensive re-rolls.

Quicksilver got his classic costume of light blue with white markings which I really think works well for him. In fact, I’m quite surprised not to have seen a load of 3d print alternative minis of Quicksilver dressed in fairly normal clothes as per his movie appearances. I’m not crazy about the sculpting decision to have him accelerating off a little tactical explosion but the pose is spot on for his character and painting Quicksilver was both fast (rather appropriately) and satisfying.

Next on the painting table: Magik.

Painted Groot

Here is Groot for Marvel Crisis Protocol. One of many things I love about the game is that almost all the characters play like I feel they should based on their established powers in the comics. Hence, Groot is a slow moving tank who very occasionally generates enough power to let fly with his awesome spender attack, while mainly stopping people from attacking Rocket Raccoon.

Painting Groot was extremely quick and easy, as you might expect from a character that is almost entirely one colour. I did spend a bit of time going over him with various highlights and washes but ultimately he’s come out just exactly the way I expected and intended.

Next on the painting table: Quicksilver.

Painted Toad

Here is Toad for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He’s a cheap objective grabber with some cool mobility tricks which let him get to safety after being attacked. In theory this means that he should get hit once then hop away to avoid a follow-up attack, but in practice whenever I try something cheeky with him he just gets one-shot instead. Even so, his ability to interact with objectives at range two allows a certain amount of jank and I’m going to try him out in Convocation where the extra place off their leadership might give him more of a chance to survive. Like most of the two threat characters in the game, Toad only excels in one area of the game – so while he’s got good objective play he’s pretty useless for attrition.

Unlike most of the X-Men and Brotherhood characters, I actually prefer the slightly less silly look from the X-Men movie compared to the garish costumes of the 90s cartoon. I think in Toad’s case it’s not so much the colours as the flappy jester stuff hanging off him. I guess the poor chap is meant to be comic relief so maybe it’s appropriate to look like a clown. Anyway, that little moan aside I did quite enjoy the classic colour scheme of yellow and purple, and Toad is definitely a character who benefits from a very specific tactical-base-thing to be hanging off.

Next on the painting table: Groot.

Painted Wolverine

Here is Wolverine, surely one of the best known Marvel characters even in the wider population; this is his mini for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Like many of the heroes in MCP he plays very much like you would expect. So in Wolverine’s case this means that he’s very highly focussed on fighting the other team. It seems to be a fairly widely held opinion that he’s not really worth his cost in the game but after having Gareth use him to repeatedly murder my teams over a number of games I’m not sure that I’m ready to agree there. Wolverine also excels in the Struggle For The Cube Continues crisis as he loves getting extra power in exchange for a little damage; he can always use the former and has no difficulty healing the latter with Healing Factor [2].

When painting Wolverine there was only one choice – the classic 90s cartoon look. I did divert on one part – after numerous attempts I just could get him to look right with the blue underpants so I gave him yellow spandex all over instead. Wolverine is one of relatively few MCP minis with alternate builds; in this case he could also have had a head without the hood on, but this way seemed more fitting somehow.

I play a little game with Mrs Argentbadger when I finish painting an MCP mini to see if she can recognise them. As a general rule, she can get the ones in the MCU without much prompting and almost never gets the ones who are only in comics – though in fairness, I don’t always recognise characters either since there are just so many of them! With Wolverine, she didn’t even hesitate.

Next on the painting table: Toad.

Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament report: MCP Scotland May Event 07May2022

Gareth and I made our way across to Stirling’s Common Ground Games for another Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament run by Allan, this time with the imaginative name of ‘MCP Scotland May Event’. We were meant to be joined by another friend but she pulled out; luckily this meant that there were an even number of attendees so it wasn’t all bad.

I’ve been back and forth a bit on affiliations lately but decided it would be fun to go back to the Black Order. I began with them as a solo affiliation but found a bit of a weakness at 14 and 15 threat so swapped in Web Warriors for most of my splash characters so I could have a wider control option. The basic plan is to hope for 16 threat which gives me Thanos, Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight, and then add characters as they fit at higher threat values. For the Web Warriors I’m really intended to use Spider-Man (Miles Morales) as my leader but I do have Amazing Spider-Man in case I want to use them at a higher threat value… though I have to admit that I find Amazing Spider-Man very variable in his offensive output.

[Characters]
– Amazing Spider-Man: 5
– Black Panther: 4
– Bullseye: 2
– Corvus Glaive: 4
— Infinity Gem: Reality: 1
– Doctor Voodoo: 4
– Ghost-Spider: 3
– Proxima Midnight: 3
– Spider-Man (Miles Morales): 3
– Thanos, the Mad Titan: 6
— Infinity Gem: Mind: 1
— Infinity Gem: Space: 1
– Venom: 4

[Team Tactics]
– Advanced R&D
– All Webbed Up
– Brace for Impact
– Climbing Gear
– Execute
– Indomitable
– Lethal Protector
– Medpack
– Mothership
– Sacrifice

[Extract Crises]
– Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? [C]: 19
– Fear Grips World as “Worthy” Terrorize Cities [D]: 18
– Research Station Attacked! [E]: 16

[Secure Crises]
– Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due? [E]: 19
– Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse [C]: 19
– Mutant Madman Turns City Center Into Lethal Amusement Park [B]: 18

Game 1: Liam playing Brotherhood of Mutants

For our first game of the day I’m matched up with Liam, one of the best players in my country and who is playing soon in the finals of the current online league. He wins priority and chooses Secures, leaving us with Sinister Syndicate and Deadly Legacy Virus. I think that I’m probably better off going wider here considering the mission and pick 19 threat. I use Web Warriors and splash in Doctor Voodoo to hopefully mess with Liam’s objective game. When I see his team I realise that I’ve probably picked the wrong option though – I’m never going to get to use Venom as he’ll spend the entire game getting pushed away and Miles and Gwen’s control doesn’t work on size 3 or above characters.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate!
Threat: 19
My team: Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Amazing Spider-Man, Ghost Spider, Venom, Doctor Voodoo
My cards: All Webbed Up, Brace For Impact, Indomitable, Lethal Protector, Medpack
Liam’s team: Magneto, Juggernaut, Thanos (Space and Reality stones)
Liam’s cards: Asteroid M, Do You Know Who I Am?, Field Dressing, Magnetic Refraction, Patch Up

Round 1: I send ASM into the centre to get the syringe, then he heads back to one of the Secure markers. Liam passes a couple of times and eventually Juggernaut smashes some terrain on the left to hand out power and picks up a syringe. I’m going to have to commit something to the game so Gwen goes onto the right syringe and takes it. Thanos pulls her in and one-shots her before Portal-ing Venom backwards. Magneto and Doctor Voodoo contest the centre. The score is 3 – 2 to Liam.

Round 2: Thanos one-shots Gwen again to KO her and Portals Doctor Voodoo away. ASM goes into Magneto and achieves nothing at all, so Magneto dazes him in return with a little help from Thanos using Death’s Decree. Venom moves back into the action but can’t put any damage on Magneto. Over on the left, Juggernaut tries to play Do You Know Who I Am? to punt Miles but I stop it with Indomitable; he does get slapped for 4 damage though. Doctor Voodoo moves back to the centre and does no damage to Magneto while Miles uses Medpack and moves back to the Secure. The score goes to 8 – 4 in Liam’s favour.

Round 3: Magneto KOs Amazing Spider-Man and Voodoo dazes Magento in return. I need to get lucky and send Miles over Juggernaut but I don’t get any damage on him; Thanos eventually uses Cosmic Portal to move both Venom and Miles off the Secures while Venom strolls back onto the point he’s been bouncing off all game. I didn’t note what Juggernaut even did this turn, but it seems unlikely that Liam forgot to activate him. The score moves to 12 – 6.

Round 4: Magneto dazes Doctor Voodoo and Venom, both from full health; Venom tries a So Many Snacks counter attack but can’t do a single point of damage. Not surprisingly, Miles is not able to drop Juggernaut, and though he does have the power to Venom Blast the syringe off him I don’t have the power to pick it up. The finish with a flourish, Thanos saunters over and picks up the two syringes lying around to KO himself and score 8 VPs. We finish at 20 – 6.

Well, it’s been a while since I was outplayed that badly. With hindsight I probably would have been better off going with a Black Order core here as many of my control tools were wasted against Liam’s team. The dice also were not helping me; I didn’t roll a single success on any dice until round 3 and I was picking up my characters left and right as Liam’s team delivered damage with impunity. It’s not really easy to explain in the text but I do want to point out the fantastic positioning of both Magneto and Thanos in the mid-board; Liam has them snuggled up between bits of terrain so even if I had ever generated enough power to use my throws and pulls I couldn’t actually have meaningfully displaced them. Still, I really enjoyed the game – Liam was a gentleman throughout and executed his game plan very efficiently. Hopefully we’ll get to play again sometime and I can put up a bit more of a fight.

Game 2: Paul playing Guardians of the Galaxy

I was hoping that I might get a bit of an easier game here as I was in the 0 – 1 bracket but it was not to be as I faced Paul. However, this was great news as Paul is an excellent old friend who I know from back when we were both playing a lot of Malifaux; I was honestly a bit surprised to find him here with me having lost his first game too as he’s a very good player. Paul won priority and chose Extractions so we ended up with Cubes and Intrusions; I picked 17 threat because I wanted to specifically try Black Panther in this match-up; he has good defences and mobility and I think he’s quite resilient in general to the physical and energy typed attacks I was expecting. My plan is to contest across the middle in round 1 then abandon one of the Portal markers and consolidate between the other two until I can get an attrition advantage.

Extraction: Struggle For The Cube Continues
Secure: Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse
Threat: 17
My team: Thanos (Mind and Space stones), Corvus Glaive (Reality Stone), Black Panther
My cards: Brace For Impact, Climbing Gear, Indomitable, Medpack, Mothership
Paul’s team: Star Lord, Rocket, Nebula, Toad, Thanos (Mind and Space stones)
Paul’s cards: Field Dressing, Indomitable, Medpack, No Matter The Cost, Sacrifice

Round 1: Paul gives Winging It tokens to Star Lord, Rocket and Thanos. Toad and Rocket take the Cubes on Paul’s side of the board and, after a couple of passes, Corvus and Black Panther take mine and sit on the left and right Portals respectively. Nebula attacks Black Panther for no damage while Star Lord double moves onto the right Portal. My Thanos pulls him in but fails to do any damage, then his Thanos strolls up to the centre and moves Black Panther and my Thanos away, taking the Cube there in the process. The score is 4 – 3 in Paul’s favour.

Round 2: Paul gives Winging It tokens to Nebula, Star Lord and Thanos. Black Panther dazes Star Lord and then Nebula and Rocket take pot shots at him for minimal effect. Corvus goes through the Portal but the roll goes against me and Paul puts him in a really awkward place on the far right of the board so I have to use Climbing Gear to get him into the action. Sadly this needed the power I was hoping to use for a tasty Death Blow attack. He does at least manage to daze Rocket. Toad breathes a sigh of relief that the scary man has gone away and hops onto the left Portal. My Thanos punches his Thanos a couple of times, throwing him into Nebula to daze her and drawing out Indomitable in the process. Paul’s Thanos slaps mine a bit, moves both him and Corvus away and applies a Field Dressing to Star Lord. Star Lord then rolls brilliantly, doing the exact amount of damage to both Corvus and Black Panther that they will be dazed by the Cubes in the next power phase, which pretty much ensures that the game is over. The score is 9 – 6 to Paul.

Round 3: My Thanos slaps around a couple of Guardians but I would need to get pretty lucky to KO anyone, especially as Paul can play Sacrifice to ensure that two different victims get hit. Paul could probably daze my Thanos if needed but actually he just needs to pick up the Cubes and stand on the Portals to win anyway, so he does just that. Paul wins 17 – 6.

Oh dear, this is not going very well at all! Despite the margin of victory here, I think that this is actually closer than it looks. If Star Lord had done either one more or one less damage to either Corvus or Black Panther at the end of turn 2 I could have made a game of this as they could have actually got some attrition work done; probably KOing one or both of Nebula and Rocket (and perhaps even more if it had been Corvus). Paul played a solid game and in retrospect I think that I made an error in which way round I put Black Panther and Corvus. Corvus would have been more useful on my right with Thanos while Black Panther’s speed would have made him more effective in hunting down Toad on the left. Full credit to Paul, he used his team solidly and played him tactics cards at the right time to stop me doing what I needed.

Game 3: Craig playing Asgard

For game three I do indeed get an easier match-up (at least in terms of experience) as it turns out that this is actually going to be Craig’s third game ever. Craig wins priority and chooses Extractions so we end up with Cubes (again) and Mutant Madman; I go for 18 threat as this will mean that I can have a decent team that will use the last two characters from my roster who I haven’t used yet today. Mutant Madman is arguably better for Asgard than it is for me as they have so much power available, but on the other hand I like it because I can keep my characters moving around. I’m careful to explain how this Black Order team works as Craig almost certainly hasn’t played them before and the range from which Thanos can pull in his victims can be quite surprising.

Extraction: Struggle For The Cube Continues
Secure: Mutant Madman Turns City Centre Into Lethal Amusement Park
Threat: 18
My team: Thanos (Mind and Space stones), Corvus Glaive (Reality Stone), Proxima Midnight, Bullseye
My cards: Brace For Impact, Execute, Indomitable, Medpack, Mothership
Craig’s team: Thor, Angela, Valkyrie, Black Widow, Baron Zemo
Craig’s cards: Disarm, Field Dressing, Inspiring Monologue, Odin’s Blessing, Rainbow Bridge

Round 1: Angela collects a couple of Cubes and sits in the middle of the board. Proxima double moves to the back left Secure and takes it but Bullseye fails to flip the near left one. Black Widow gets the one on the far right. Thor comes forward and Thanos pulls him in while using the Space stone to move Corvus forward onto the Secure. Corvus does Corvus things and dazes Thor, collects a cube and flips that Secure. Zemo and Valkyrie scoot into the centre. The score is 3 – 3.

Round 2: Corvus lays into Thor but can’t quite seal the deal through Odin’s Blessing, so Thor revs up and slaps Thanos silly. I go with Thanos who gratefully applies a Medpack before KOing the Asgardian prince. He also Cosmic Portals Valkyrie and Zemo back further from the action. Angela smacks another five damage into Thanos, who may be beginning to wonder if today is not his day! Bullseye throws a knife at her just to get the power and then collects the nearby Cube and flips the last Secure to atone for his failure last turn. Zemo bounces off Thanos and Proxima collects the Cube fragment from her corner and starts to gallop back in the direction of the action. Valkyrie tears into Thanos, leaving him on a single wound. We move to 10 – 6 in my favour.

Round 3: I get a bit greedy with Corvus hoping for the Flurry trigger but don’t get it; Zemo is left on one wound and Angela gets dazed. Zemo makes no mistake this time and dazes Thanos. Bullseye plinks a couple of wounds off Valkyrie and she then dazes Corvus and collects one of the Cubes scattered around the floor by all these dazed characters. Proxima finally makes it into the fight and dazes Zemo before picking up both cubes. Black Widow can’t get the supreme luck that she would have needed to drop Proxima this round. The score goes to 17 – 8 in my favour.

Craig was a lovely opponent and I have to credit his bravery and confidence to come along to a tournament without having played even a single game before. That said, the mis-match of experience was great enough here that I think that the actual result wasn’t really in doubt and my only hope is that Craig enjoyed the game (and indeed, the whole event) enough that he’ll come back next time with some more games under his belt. From my side, I decided that I could get away with having Corvus and Proxima on opposite sides of the board on the basis that I was likely to keep priority regardless of combining their activations and by the time I needed to worry about that I would probably have enough power on them to Mothership them around.

Game 4: Ryan playing Web Warriors

For our last game of the day I was matched up with Ryan. For the fourth time I lost priority, though Ryan had also lost priority for his first three games so one of us was destined to end the streak here. He chose Secures and I was quite happy to have a nice brawl across the middle; I went for 18 threat for the simple reason that I would be able to use the same team as last time and not worry about it. My basic plan was to have Proxima take the right Hammer and then leg it back to the centre so I could brawl between the left and central Origin Bombs.

Extraction: Fear Grips World as ‘Worthy’ Terrorise Cities
Secure: Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians
Threat: 18
My team: Thanos (Mind and Space stones), Corvus Glaive (Reality Stone), Proxima Midnight, Bullseye
My cards: Brace For Impact, Climbing Gear, Indomitable, Medpack, Mothership
Ryan’s team: Spider-Man (Miles Morales), Amazing Spider-Man, Ghost Spider, Black Cat, Captain Marvel
Ryan’s cards: All Webbed Up, Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes, Mission Objective, Patch Up, Spider Tracker

Round 1: Miles flips the left Origin Bomb and Proxima races up to snatch the right Hammer. Thanos pulls Miles in for Corvus, though this was probably a mistake and I should have had Bullseye take the left Hammer instead. Ryan takes advantage of my error and has Ghost Spider pick up that Hammer so Bullseye plinks a few wounds into her and fails to reflip the Origin Bomb. Annoyingly Corvus can’t put the remaining two wounds onto Miles, but fair’s fair so ASM completely fails to hurt Proxima on the far side. Captain Marvel takes the last hammer and heads for the centre. The score is 5 – 2 to Ryan.

Round 2: It seems like a waste to use Corvus to deal with Miles when Bullseye can do it without relying on rolling dice, so Miles gets dazed and Bullseye successfully flips the left Origin Bomb from under Gwen’s feet. She’s having none of his nonsense though, and dazes him easily. Proxima slaps Black Cat for a good few wounds and I see a chance to make ASM’s life really annoying so Proxima applies All The Conditions to ASM via her spender attack. He does punch her back but without power he’s very hard to get good value out of; he also plays Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes to remove damage from most of the Web Warriors. Thanos pulls Ghost Spider in and dazes her before flipping the central Origin Bomb. I don’t pick up the dropped Hammer with him partly because I think it’ll be more useful on Corvus and partly because I want to see if I can bait Ryan to move Captain Marvel in there to stand next to my two big hitters. Instead she dazes Proxima so Corvus picks up the Hammer, dazes her in return and collects the third Hammer. Black Cat picks up Proxima’s hammer and comes over to slap Corvus for minimal effect. The score is now 8 – 6 in my favour.

Round 3: Corvus with three Hammers turns out to be a bit of a murder machine and he KOs both Miles and Ghost Spider. Captain Marvel hurts him in return and applies Stagger to Thanos with her spender before Thanos dazes Black Cat and gets the last hammer. ASM more or less bounces off Proxima. The score moves to 17 – 6 in my favour.

That felt like the sort of game where everything just went my way. I was pretty lucky on the dice and Ryan wasn’t. Amazing Spider-Man in particular is extremely reliant on good dice to get the power he needs to do all his cool stuff, so between generally not rolling well and having Proxima stick Poison and Stun on him in turn 2 meant that he didn’t really get rolling. This isn’t a match-up where you can afford to have your biggest hitter bouncing off their targets. In many ways this felt a bit like the reverse of my first game against Liam, where this time I was the one who just had to stick to a solid game plan while my opponent floundered against me. Ryan was a lovely chap and I hope that we get to play again soon.

Overall this was perhaps a result I’m happy with but not the manner that I came by it. I’d normally be perfectly pleased with a 2 – 2 result but it felt like I came up short playing into the stronger players against whom I compare myself and got one of my wins in a match-up against someone who was never going to be able to compete because of the huge mismatch in terms of experience level. Still, it’s just some games of dollies so even if I lose four in a row I’m pleased to be able to get four games in with lovely opponents. Many thanks to Liam, Paul, Craig and Ryan for four very fun games of Crisis Protocol, and of course thanks to Allan for putting the event on. I’ll be back!

Painted Colossus

Here is Colossus, one of the X-Men in Marvel Crisis Protocol. Fittingly he’s a tough chap to put down, being able to add dice in defence on his healthy side, counting blanks when flipped to his injured side and having a damage reducer in either case. Colossus also has a bodyguard ability to ensure that he’ll get to use these tools. For me, the most fun part of Colossus is the Fastball Special tactics card which allows him to throw Wolverine at a hapless victim.

I’m really proud of the way that Colossus’s skin came out; I used a blue undercoat for it rather than the black I’d normally start with for metallics and took care to get good coverage of the silver. The rest of his colour scheme is, of course, based on the card art… which itself is just how he looked in the classic 90s cartoon.

Next on the painting table: Wolverine.

Painted Sabretooth

This is Sabretooth for Marvel Crisis Protocol. I’ve always thought of him as one of Magneto’s minions and an adversary to the X-Men but he’s also affiliated in X-Force in the game so presumably there is a comic run where that happens. True to form, Sabretooth is a fast attacker who can make extra attacks in his own activation or as a sort of riposte against incoming attacks. After a few games we’ve found that he’s a bit too fragile to go right into a central brawl without back-up – Sabretooth’s defences are decidedly average and he has no other cool defensive tech. Instead, he’s been most effective picking off injured stragglers or weaker prey out on the flanks, and I find this very appropriate for someone who is very much an unprincipled bully in every comic I’ve seen him in.

Painting Sabretooth was quite tough as he’s almost entirely clad in shades of brown; even the yellow part of his suit is rather a brownish yellow. I did try to keep the various colours quite distinct to give him that vibrant comic book appearance and, while he’s not quite as crisp as I’d hoped he’s definitely good enough for me. For some reason it seems that I forgot to add any of the usual base debris when I was assembling Sabretooth so he comes on a surprisingly clean base… apart from his Tactical Rock of course.

Next on the painting table: Colossus.