Painted Sabretooth, Apex Predator

This is Sabretooth, Apex Predator for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He comes in the same box as the updated version of Wolverine and has a separate in-game existence from the original release of Sabretooth. This one goes down to a shorter move and loses his ability to counter attack, but gains a very welcome throw (possibly the only character-only throw in the game?) and a pounce ability to close the gap to where he can do horrible things to people. I’ve really enjoyed this Sabretooth; he can get where he needs, displace people or daze them as required. My big problem with him is keeping him topped up with power as he just has so many cool things to spend it on. Defensively he is no slouch either, with reasonable stats, a beefy pool of wounds and Rapid Healing which of course gives the option to use X-Ceptional Healing.

Just like Wolverine, Sabretooth comes in his civilian clothes here which I quite like as I think that all of this is meant to be set before the X-Men and other costumed heroes became a thing. The box also comes with a cool bunker that I’ve given to a friend to paint but I assume is supposed to represent part of the Alkali Lake complex. Sabretooth’s mini here would fit quite nicely into an RPG if you filed down his claws a bit; he’d just look like a rather muscular gentleman out for a walk in the snow. He was fun to paint; the mini is quite large (fittingly of course, as Sabretooth is meant to be huge) considering that it’s only on a 35mm base. He was a lot of fun to paint, perhaps partly because I find Sabretooth quite an interesting character in modern comics. In the new(ish) runs in which all the mutants have retreated to live on Krakoa, and in which even the full blown baddies like Apocalypse get a seat at the council, everyone decided that Sabretooth was still too unhinged and dangerous to be allowed to run about the place and was therefore immediately thrown in whatever passes for prison there. What a naughty boy!

Next on the painting table: Nick Fury Jr.

Painted Viper

This is Viper, a Hydra assassin in Marvel Crisis Protocol. Her superpowers are mainly around mobility; she is a long mover, has a personal teleport effect and one of her attacks places her within range one of her victim. In principle this should make Viper really good for snatching lightly defended objective and scoring them, but she doesn’t really hit that hard and, even more frustratingly, is extremely easy to daze. So my limited experience with her is that she does a load of cool tricks to get somewhere, then achieves nothing on arrival and immediately gets bodied by whoever is waiting for her. It doesn’t help that she’s kind of themed around poison, which is one of the weaker status conditions. Probably her natural home is with Baron Strucker in Hydra but even there I’m not sure that she would make the cut in a competitive roster.

The card art for Viper is all about various shades of green and I wanted to lean into that while still keeping her with a distinctive costume. Having green hair is certainly unusual and it makes me wonder if she dyes it to match her costume or if it’s green because of whatever her evil origin story is. Like Psylocke, I took the rare decision to give her lipstick like in the artwork. There is a reason that green lipstick isn’t fashionable in the real world – it looks awful, at least on terrifying super-ninjas. I’ve left it on as it was a bit of a pain to apply and I didn’t want to undo my neat work, but I think if I had my time again I wouldn’t have bothered. Viper is another character I’m not particularly familiar with, though I do vaguely recall that she was in one of the rubbish stand-alone Wolverine films that were getting churned out in the wake of X-Men’s success.

Next on the painting table: Sabretooth, Apex Predator.

Marvel Crisis Protocol team tournament report: Crisis in Caledonia 20May2023

Another month, another Marvel Crisis Protocol event! This was the long awaited teams event at Common Ground Games where we set up in teams of three. Our team, Underpowered Scoundrels Form Mediocre Syndicate (apologies to whoever came up with this first as I’m sure I saw it somewhere and then stole it) comprised of me, my long-time friend and gaming sparring partner Gareth and my son Scott. There were some restrictions in roster selection to avoid duplicates of characters and cards but with the number of options available and only needing 3 rosters this wasn’t a huge issue.

My roster is basically the same Criminal Syndicate roster I’ve been playing for a few months, but without Patch Up as Gareth wanted that. I put in Indomitable instead as my main game plan on Secures is to sit on the objectives like a bunch of potatoes and not get moved off them. Gareth played a slight variation on Web Warriors and Scott was using Weapon X with an option to flex into X-Force if he felt like it. Tales of Crisis did a fun podcast reviewing the rosters which you can find here. Our team did briefly chat about which match-up we’d like to get and avoid, but in the end the pairing process doesn’t really allow you to do anything more than just avoid one specific opponent with one of your rosters so it’s barely more than random.

Characters: (10)
—Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) Threat: 4
—Shadowland Daredevil (Matt Murdock) Threat: 4
Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich) Threat: 4
Ulik (Ulik) Threat: 5
Black Cat (Felica Hardy) Threat: 3
Hood (Parker Robbins) Threat: 3
Bullseye (Benjamin Poindexter) Threat: 2
Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) Threat: 2
Toad (Mortimer Toynbee) Threat: 2
Juggernaut (Cain Marko) Threat: 5

Tactics: (10)
All According To Plan
Shadow Organization
Brace for Impact
Indomitable
Do You Know Who I Am?
Hood’s Gang
This Is A Robbery
Mission Objective
Eyes on the Prize
Versatile Strategy

Secure Crisis: (3)
Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends on Earth (Threat: 16)
Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate! (Threat: 20)
Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (Threat: 17)

Extract Crisis: (3)
Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (Threat: 19)
Struggle for the Cube Continues (Threat: 17)
Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan (Threat: 17)

Game 1: Ross playing X-Men

Our first round is against Brotherhood Without Manners and I get paired into Ross’s X-Men. I normally hate the X-Men vs Criminal Syndicate match-up as both sides really want to play on their own Secures and it feels like there is a big advantage in just winning the roll for priority. However in Ross’s case he’s not playing pay-to-flip options so that suits me just fine. Ross wins priority and chooses his Extractions, I choose the higher threat value as I wanted to include both Bullseye and Toad and it’s more awkward to do so at 18 threat. Normally I would be expecting some X-men trickery to take a 3 – 1 lead on the Hammers but I think that Ross is not likely to take that approach. Therefore my plan is basically to end the first round with 2 Hammers and sitting on at least three Secures, and then ride out the game from there.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As ‘Worthy’ Terrorise Cities
Secure: Superpowered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate
Threat: 19
My team: Kingpin, Bullseye, Black Cat, Rhino, Ulik, Toad
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Indomitable, Mission Objective, This Is A Robbery
Ross’s team: Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Psylocke, Rogue
Ross’s cards: Children Of The Atom, First Class, Pardon Me Sugah, Patch Up, Psionic Constructs

Round 1: Ross plays First Class. Storm takes the left Hammer and Ulik takes the one on the right. Jean collects the rear Hammer and strolls over to the back left Secure, where honestly I’ll be quite happy if she stays all game. Toad pushes Storm further away from my left Secure and Cyclops takes a desultory shot at Ulik from the comfort of the rear right Secure. Rhino takes the final Hammer and ends up on the central point along with Rogue and Kingpin. Bullseye and Psylocke take short walks onto their nearest Secure points while Black Cat takes a rather over optimistic run across the board to sit next to Jean Grey. She might live through Jean’s attacks and then can run away with her Hammer. The score is 6 – 3 to me.

Round 2: Apart from possibly relieving Jean or Storm of a Hammer with either Rhino or Black Cat as required, my plan this turn is just to keep scoring the central and near Secures. Rogue punches Kingpin and he hits her back and throws her into Jean Grey. My hopes of Black Cat doing something cheeky into Jean Grey are dashed when the latter completely obliterates her! Sadly for Ross those are basically the last good dice he’ll get all game, as is demonstrated when Bullseye dazes Psylocke in one go. Cyclops again bounces off Ulik who leaps over and pushes the poor chap across the board to where Rhino can use him as a jumping off point en route to Jean. Storm tickles Toad who pushes her away again. Finally Rhino dazes Cyclops, attacks Jean Grey and then punts her away with This Is A Robbery so he can collect her Hammer. The score is 14 – 4 now.

Round 3: I think it’s basically impossible for Ross to overhaul me from here, but I suppose I ought to make it certain. I play All According To Plan and Rhino leaps over to Storm (dazing her to add insult) and legs it for the corner with her Hammer added to his collection. With his 3 points out of Ross’s reach it’s definitely over now. Rogue hurts Black Cat but Jean somehow fails to finish her off, while on the other side of the board Ulik KOs Cyclops. Not surprisingly, Ross has had enough of his dice and we agree to call it there with a 22 – 5 result.

Thanks to Ross for playing but unfortunately the dice made it not even a game. His team was definitely picked with fun In mind rather than being really competitive so between that and the gap in our experience it would perhaps have been a bit of an uphill struggle for him anyway; I flatter myself that I could have beaten Ross here even without the stupid dice. Gareth also got the win against Kai while Scott, who we’d ‘thrown under the bus’ was overcome by Stu. So as a team we take the win by 2 – 1.

Game 2: Sam playing Guardians of the Galaxy

Next up is my pick for expected winners, Warlords of the Nine Realms and I get paired into Sam’s Guardians. This is where the match-up process works for us as I don’t particularly want to play into Martin’s X-Men so we take advantage of the system to make sure to avoid that; I actually think that the reverse is probably true too, so Martin may have been pleased to dodge me. Sam wins priority and chooses his Extractions, I choose the lower threat value this time as Black Cat fits more neatly at 16 than 17. For once I don’t take All According To Plan as I’m expecting to be taller than Sam’s team; instead I pick Shadow Organisation to reduce the impact of some of the Guardians’ long range attacks for a round. Losing priority is a bit annoying in this match up as I’m sure that Sam will do the Eyes On The Prize safe extract with Beta Ray Bill, while if I have priority I would get to do that with Ulik and then sit on my points while making Sam do all the running. As it is I’ll have to cross the board and try to relieve him of at least one Book.

Extraction: The Montesi Formula Found
Secure: Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends On Earth
Threat: 16
My team: Kingpin, Black Cat, Rhino, Ulik
My cards: Brace For Impact, Indomitable, Mission Objective, Shadow Organisation, This Is A Robbery
Sam’s team: Star Lord, Agent Venom, Beta Ray Bill, Groot, Rocket Raccoon
Sam’s cards: Crew Of The Milano, Eyes On The Prize, Foreign Assignment, Lovable Misfits, Mission Objective

Round 1: I think that I’ll need to hang Rhino out in the middle here at the end of the turn as he’ll be needed to take one of Sam’s Books. Agent Venom, Groot and Rocket get Winging It tokens. Predictably Bill gets us underway by playing Eyes On The Prize, collecting the central Book and retreating to safety. Ulik moves over to the right. Star Lord and Black Cat pick up the remaining Books and sit on the rear points. Groot and Rocket go on the left with Kingpin while Rhino ends up mid-board, kind of hanging out in the middle of nowhere. Venom puts Incinerate on him and I use Aggressive to get to the Portal on the far side of the board. The score is 3 – 3.

Round 2: I think that Sam might have left me a small opening here on the left as Rocket is vulnerable to Kingpin if I can throw Groot away. If I can make that work I might possibly just retreat with Rhino and take a small but safe lead on the Secures. Beta Ray Bill, Groot and Rocket get Winging It tokens. Kingpin throws Groot down the board but then fails to hurt Rocket at all; dazing him (which I think is quite likely) really changes this game. I make a bit of a mistake and push him clear of the building so he has a shot at Rhino; I should actually have sent him into the building so he has no choice but to shoot Kingpin. Groot moves back to the point. Rhino can’t play This Is A Robbery as Mission Objective turns it off, so he Stampedes and eventually dazes Star Lord with a throw and is able to collect his book. Credit to Sam here too – I initially misplaced Rhino after one of his attacks and Sam kindly let me reposition him to a less silly place. Sam plays Lovable Misfits which ends up not doing much apart from putting Stun on Kingpin (which admittedly is quite annoying) and then plays Crew Of The Milano to remove Stun from his team. Rocket shoots Rhino and moves back to the Secure with Groot. I move Black Cat over to the left to score that point; I’m not sure if that was the right move or not; I figure that at least it got her to be relevant. Bill dazes Rhino then Ulik leaps over and achieves nothing whatsoever – I was hoping to generate power to move to pick up that fallen Book. Venom tickles Ulik right back then collects the Book. The score is 6 – 5 to me.

Round 3: Rhino is powered right up so I should expect to him to KO Star Lord here and then throw Bill away with This Is A Robbery once there is no-one left to Mission Objective it to. On the left, I can probably take my time with Kingpin as the same move is online again and it’s not likely that Rocket or Groot can take him out in one go; in addition they both want to go after him to recover from any displacement. Agent Venom, Beta Ray Bill and Star Lord get Winging It tokens. Rhino throws a size 3 at Star Lord, dropping a couple of wound off him, then Stampedes and attacks twice. Annoyingly my dice totally fail me here and I manage just two successes off both attacks which isn’t enough to finish off the legendary outlaw. He does at least use This Is A Robbery on Bill. That’s annoying, but even worse Star Lord rolls like a hero and dazes Ulik in one go. Kingpin throws Groot into Bill and dazes Rocket before Venom and Bill combine to KO Rhino. Black Cat moves into the fray and Groot gives up on Rocket and collects Rhino’s book. The score goes to 8 – 7 to me, but that turn has broken my effort and it’ll take an absolute miracle for me to come back from here.

Round 4: There’s not much that I can do here that will actually impact the game so I just make some spite attacks. Agent Venom, Beta Ray Bill and Groot get Winging It tokens. Ulik continues my dice from last turn by failing to do even a single point of damage to Bill, though he does at least finally polish off Star Lord by throwing something at him. Groot one-shots Black Cat. Agent Venom and Rocket just run for the various Secures to guarantee that I’ll never get them next turn; the score is now 13 – 9 to Sam.  I think that the below photo is from after we did the Cosmic Portal pushes.

Round 5: For the second turn in the game Ulik fails to even put a single point of damage into Bill. Bill leaves Black Cat on a single point of health and she relieves him of his Book and runs away. Kingpin moves to my near objective and throws Rocket just to deny that single point and we finish up at 17 – 12 in Sam’s favour.

I love playing MCP with Sam, he’s such a lovely fun opponent and he’s really good. I have to apologise to him here as I think that I was very moany about my dice, especially in round 3, and I’m sorry that he had to listen to my frustration. I will admit that this defeat hurts though; I really felt that I had a decent chance to take this game either through dealing with Rocket in round 2 or by KOing Star Lord in round 3 but my dice just said ‘no’. Star Lord was especially annoying as not only did he survive but he also put down Ulik with some really brutal dice rolls that made it impossible to recover from. In retrospect I wonder if I could have just played on the three nearer objectives and let Sam have his home one with the two Books and just seen out the game 4 – 3 each round. At least that way he’s the one who has to do all the running. I don’t want to take anything away from Sam though – he played a very tight game (especially denying me This Is A Robbery in round 2) and was a total gentleman throughout. In the other games Gareth had a nice win against the always-excellent Martin while Scott and Thomas played out surely the most brutal game ever seen – the only piece left was Thomas’s Malekith with a single remaining wound. Well done to the Warlords of the Nine Realms for beating us 2 -1 and also eventually winning the whole event.

Game 3: Stevie playing X-Force

For our final game we’re up against one of the Glasgow-based teams in Team Gambit. We’re both out of the running to win and our team composition is quite similar in that we both have a Criminal Syndicate, Web Warriors and X-people rosters (though the rosters themselves aren’t very alike) so we agree to forgo the proper pairing process and just set up games that aren’t tedious mirror matches. I end up last with Stevie’s X-Force. I win priority this time and pick my Secures as I don’t really hate any of Stevie’s Extraction cards and Stevie chooses the higher threat level so, as he put it, ‘we can have more toys.’ With no normal Extractions in play I feel that Rhino is less useful so I replace him with Daredevil as the Ninjas can be quite annoying on the Research Station. I haven’t put Black Widow in this list for ages so I gave her a run out just for a sense of completeness more than anything else, though being able to cheaply sit and score an edge point should be quite useful. With 3 of my cards being specific to Extractions I was running a bit short on options so for the first time in a long time I had to include Versatile Strategy.

Extraction: Research Station Attacked!
Secure: Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0
Threat: 17
My team: Kingpin, Bullseye, Shadowland Daredevil, Ulik, Black Widow
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Indomitable, Shadow Organisation, Versatile Strategy
Stevie’s team: Cable, Domino, Psylocke, Magik, Toad
Stevie’s cards: Cat And Mouse, Disarm, Indomitable, Journey Through Limbo, One-Two Punch

Round 1: Thanks to the Ninjas I have an extra body to work with on the Researcher so my plan is to get out wide and score those points while leveraging Kingpin’s leadership so I don’t have to commit so hard to the centre. Psylocke starts us out with Cat and Mouse on the left; the photo above was taken after this was played. Bullseye goes on the back point, where he plans to sit and be annoying for the whole game. Domino goes in the middle and the Ninjas join her while Daredevil takes the right Secure. Toad drops the Ninjas then Black Widow goes to hide on the left point and Magik joins Domino in the centre, where Ulik and Kingpin will eventually score this for me. My dice let me know that their run from the previous game isn’t over as Psylocke one-shots Black Widow and Cable pumps a five damage into Ulik with a single shot. The score is 4 – 2 to me.

Round 2: I’m never really sure what to do with the Researcher now that the scoring for getting her to the far side is less generous so I just move it a bit back towards my team to make Stevie do the running. I need to clear out the centre here as unbelievably I’m way down on attrition and I haven’t even made a single attack yet. Ulik gives Domino an Activated token with Shatter Mountains, Shatter Bones (note that I think that I incorrectly played it that she got the Stagger token as well when it should be instead – sorry Stevie!) and dazes Magik. Psylocke KOs Black Widow with a single attack. Cable Body Slides into the action and throws terrain at Ulik which I have to use Brace For Impact on, then dazes him anyway and pays to Disarm Kingpin. Toad delivers a nasty hit to Kingpin who pushes Cable away and throws Domino into Toad. The score goes to 8 – 4 in my favour.

Round 3: I need to get try to displace some of Stevie’s team away from the Researcher so I can keep scoring it but it’s proving hard with the speed at which my team is being beaten up. I play All According To Plan to get back priority. Ulik leaps to the far point and dazes Toad but still can’t finish off Domino, leaving her on one. I will note at this point that I felt in good company as the next table over was Adam from Midlife Crisis Protocol whose catchphrase might as well be ‘so I’ll leave them on one.’ Magik does Journey Through Limbo to send Kingpin away from the action, she then Limbo steps forward and one-shots Bullseye. Daredevil leaves Cable on one and gets dazed in two attacks in return before Cable goes down to Bleed. Kingpin throws Domino and it’s blocked with Indomitable and the Psylocke drops him from full health. The score is now 8 – 7 to me.

Round 4: I’ll be lucky to end this game without getting tabled at this rate! I play Versatile Strategy as Kingpin’s leadership no longer provides my benefits. Kingpin uses Hail To The King to keep Psylocke out of my face and then KOs Magik, while over on the other side of the board Ulik survives a round of shooting from Domino before finally dazing her and giving Toad an Activated token (though with only 3 health on his injured side I was really looking to KO him and get him out of my hair). Psylocke comes back into the action and heals off the objective which means that, of course, Bullseye leaves her on one wound. Good play by Stevie there to see that opportunity. Daredevil bounces off Cable but at least the Ninjas do some work by scampering over to tie us up on the Researcher and buy me a bit of time. We go to 9 – 8 to me.

Round 5: Psylocke drops Bullseye in one and hurts Kingpin. Ulik KOs Domino in return but Toad, still on one wound, manages to dodge the only piece of terrain around to throw at him, a size 1 lamppost. Cable finishes Kingpin and Daredevil does another single point of damage to him while the Ninjas also fail to deal the one remaining point of damage to Psylocke. Toad flails about a bit with Ulik; this activation also marks the first time that Stevie hasn’t converted a miss into a success with the X-Force reroll. Everything is a tie so we stay at 9 – 8!

Round 6: I’m in the hands of the dice now – basically if the Ninjas can deal one damage to Psylocke then I probably win, otherwise I almost certainly lose. Fortunately they do finally manage a point of damage (on the fourth attempt, with a reroll each time) and Daredevil wakes up and KOs Cable at least. Toad has an absolutely insane turn against Ulik, leaving him on a single wound left before the return swing does the remaining one damage to finish the mutant. The final score is 14 – 9.

Many thanks again to Stevie for being a wonderful opponent and, just like Sam before him, having to put up with my moaning about awful dice. Perhaps my expectation of what ‘normal’ looks like for MCP dice needs some adjustment? As mentioned above I also think I cheated him in round 2 by having Ulik give both Stagger and Activated to Domino – sorry Stevie! Luckily there was nothing riding on this game, not only because we were both midtable anyway but also because Adam and Ben had defeated Gareth and Scott respectively. In general I think that my strategy was broadly OK at the start; I thought that Black Widow facing off against Psylocke would last a bit longer as she counts blanks against energy (admittedly only with two dice) and had a tolerable 3 dice against mystic attacks. Even just not going down to a single shot in round 1 would have score me one more point and Stevie one less! Possibly I would have been better off with Daredevil in the middle and Ulik on the right in round 1 as the latter can reposition much more effectively; Daredevil ended up with not a lot to do on round 2. I also wonder if I was relying too much on displacement from Kingpin and Ulik as none of my other characters brought much other than damage.

When the final scores come in we’re in 5th place out of the 8 teams which I think is perhaps a little better than I expected considering how the games all shook out. Overall I have much to ponder, probably mainly about my own attitude and how much fun I’m making the game for my friends. All three games the dice were a far bigger factor than I felt that they ought to be and it was just as unsatisfactory to have a total non-game against Ross due to my amazing rolls as it was to be on the wrong end of it against Sam and Stevie. Many thanks to Gareth and Scott for being fun team-mates, Ross, Sam and Stevie for fun games (and/or putting up with me!) and of course to Allan for doing all the work to run the whole thing. I did enjoy myself a lot, and I’ll be back… but not for a few months as I’m busy for at least the next two events. Criminal Syndicate are going back in the box for now and I’m going to play around with some of the factions I haven’t used in a while.

Painted Psylocke

Here is Psylocke, another member of the X-Men for Marvel Crisis Protocol. I’m very much enjoying Psylocke on the tabletop; she has a very efficient set of rules to allow her to do one thing well – move around the board and stab things. Psylocke has ‘move and attack’ action, a long range attack with a trigger to make a move afterwards, re-rolls on attack and defence and finally that beautiful combination of Stealth and Martial Arts to ensure that she’s a pain to attack except in a very specific range band. She feels really dynamic in play with so many options to move to different places as the game goes on; even the ones where she gets downed early she has an impact. On the other hand, I’m also a bit sore because Allan’s Psylocke one-shot my Rogue twice in a row last time we played!

Psylocke is probably one of the worst sufferers (at least among the X-Men) of all the early artists being men and I’m a bit surprised that her sculpt here is the original (?) one where she’s not wearing a lot more than a swimming costume and a few ribbons. That said, that’s the exact costume that she was lumbered with in the Apocalypse film so what do I know?! Painting Psylocke was a very quick experience since she’s basically only three different colours; it probably took me about as long to do the Sentinel foot she’s standing on for the base. I decided to push myself a little bit and paint on the lipstick. Long time readers will have read my thoughts before about the weirdness of prettying oneself up with make-up / heels / etc before battle but there was something about the tie in between Psylocke’s hair and lip colour that tempted me to do it. I’m quite pleased with the outcome after all that!

Next on the painting table: Atalan Jackals.

Painted Beta Ray Bill

This is Beta Ray Bill for Marvel Crisis Protocol. I have to admit that I’m not at all familiar with this character, though he seems popular based on chats with various local gamers. It seems that someone wanted to know the answer to the question: ‘what if Thor was also a horse?’ On the tabletop he’s effectively a slightly lower budget version of Thor and brings many of the same tools but toned down a little. Having a size 4 character throw is very handy and his medium base does give him a little more mobility than Thor. Everyone else seems to think Bill is amazing (and to be clear, I find him just fine) so I suppose he’s going to be one of those characters like Baron Zemo who every player except me absolutely loves. I’ve tried Bill in both Asgard and Guardians of the Galaxy and he does perfectly fine in either team without really lighting the world on fire. In that regard, I guess he’s a perfect release – not useless, but also not hopelessly overpowered.

My first thinking when painting Beta Ray Bill was to try to make him look as much like Thor as possible, hence the bright red cloak billowing out behind him. I did very much enjoy working on the miniature but I think that part of the result is defined by what I didn’t do – specifically, anything substantial with the pairs of circles on his shirt which I assume are the equivalent of Superman’s ‘S’ logo. Partly this was because I couldn’t really find any consistent art for what they looked like, but mainly because of his pose no-one would ever see them anyway! Painting the lightning coming off his hammer was a lot of fun, though it’s definitely an effect that works better at longer distance and without the benefit of modern photography…

Finally, I ask a question: ‘Thor-se’ or ‘T-horse’?

Next on the painting table: Psylocke.

Painted Logan, The Wolverine

This is Logan, The Wolverine for Marvel Crisis Protocol. He’s another one of the characters with multiple versions in the game so isn’t to be confused with the original Wolverine release. This one is honestly much better on the tabletop than his predecessor, bringing rerolls to increase his reliability (a huge improvement on the other Wolverine) and some lovely mobility as he places within range one of whoever he attacks. Logan still brings Healing Factor 2 and therefore access to the X-Ceptional Healing card so while bringing him down isn’t impossible, it is certainly quite annoying. I’ve really enjoyed playing Logan as he feels very dynamic and fitting for the character – grumpily pouncing across the board and making *snikt* noises.

This version of Logan is dressed in civilian clothes which makes a bit of a change from all the spandex suits I’ve been painting lately. I will admit that I prefer my comic characters to be at least a bit silly but I did really enjoy painting a someone who, if not for the claws coming out of his hands, could just be a normal person going about their business. The base is different from the majority of the MCP minis as it is meant to be a part of a diorama set in which Wolverine and Sabretooth (another new version, more about him later) grimace at each other atop a bunker entrance at Alkali Lake. I was a bit worried about the snow but in the end I came upon a very simple approach – a base coat of my palest blue, then top it with a few very thin coats of white. I’m really pleased with the way that this has come out.

Next on the painting table: Beta Ray Bill.

Painted Rhino

This is Rhino, one of Spider-Man’s classic baddies from the cartoons, as portrayed for Marvel Crisis Protocol. Not surprisingly, he’s in the Spider-Foes affiliation plus my favoured Criminal Syndicate which I think is probably his better home. I love playing Rhino! He’s somewhat hard to kill and gains extra power when attacked which makes him an unappealing target (unless you’re Allan, who one-shot him twice in a row last time we played) unless you bring in a really big hitter. But more amusingly he has a push and must place next to anyone he attacks which means that, if his targets were positioned suitably, he could cross the board in one activation. Rhino has been a key part of my Criminal Syndicate rosters lately, not just because he’s really fun on the tabletop but also because his Tactics card (This Is A Robbery) is a very effective way to take Extract tokens off people which has long been a weakness of my game with this affiliation.

I was worried that painting Rhino might be quite dull – after all, he’s basically all grey and my basing for MCP is also all grey. But actually it turned out to be quite fun to mess around with the different shades. Probably Rhino’s scaly hide could have done with bit more work highlighting but ultimately I’m pleased with he outcome. The little bits of rubbish on his base that come with the MCP bases also help to give a bit of colour.

Next on the painting table: Primus.

Marvel Crisis Protocol video battle report: Brotherhood of Mutants vs S.H.I.E.L.D

This is another game of Marvel Crisis Protocol via my friend Allan’s excellent YouTube channel, Midlife Crisis Protocol. This game features his S.H.I.E.L.D up against my Brotherhood with Mystique leading. The game was filmed ages ago but only posted now according to whatever schedule Allan has for his channel – it does include a classic match-up between Hulk and Hulkbuster. Enjoy!

Painted S.H.I.E.L.D Agents

Here are the S.H.I.E.L.D Agents for Marvel Crisis Protocol. They’re Grunts rather than proper characters, just like the Hand Ninjas, though these are linked to Nick Fury Jr (more about him later). The Agents are amazing at the Extract game as they can choose where to drop a carried Extract token when they inevitably get smashed by a supervillain which can give you a really fun way to get a leg up on Extract scenarios like Hammers where you can collect one each with the Agents and Fury, then let the Agents die and just place the fallen Hammer back in your own lines. Their attacks are pretty small fry which of course means that it’s really funny (or annoying, depending on who is using them) when they spike the dice and gun down some hero.

Quite unusually I painted these three separately from the base which made it much more practical to get my brush in about them – I wish I’d thought to do that with the Hand Ninjas! I wanted to keep a slightly darker colour which still using the classic blue jumpsuit look, so I went with a dark blue base coat and then hit the lot with the magic of Nuln Oil. As Grunts, I didn’t want to spend ages on the Agents but I’m quite satisfied with the final look.

Next on the painting table: Rhino.

Marvel Crisis Protocol tournament report: MCP Monthly Mayhem 16Apr2023

This has been a busy weekend of gaming! After Saturday’s excursion to Common Ground Games in Stirling, Allan kindly gave me lift down to Protech Games in Stockton so we could get another 4 rounds of Marvel Crisis Protocol in their monthly tournament. The attendees this time seemed to include a lot more travellers and fewer locals and it was clear from the people registered that there was going to be a bit of a shark tank at the top tables. In general I suppose that the people who care enough about a game to travel across the country playing it are probably better than average, but in this case there were people I’d actually heard of coming along to show us lesser mortals how it’s done.

Characters: (10)
—Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) Threat: 4
—Shadowland Daredevil (Matt Murdock) Threat: 4
Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich) Threat: 4
Ulik (Ulik) Threat: 5
Black Cat (Felica Hardy) Threat: 3
Hood (Parker Robbins) Threat: 3
Bullseye (Benjamin Poindexter) Threat: 2
Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) Threat: 2
Toad (Mortimer Toynbee) Threat: 2
Juggernaut (Cain Marko) Threat: 5

Tactics: (10)
All According To Plan
Shadow Organization
Brace for Impact
Patch Up
Do You Know Who I Am?
Hood’s Gang
This Is A Robbery
Mission Objective
Eyes on the Prize
Versatile Strategy

Secure Crisis: (3)
Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends on Earth (Threat: 16)
Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate! (Threat: 20)
Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (Threat: 17)

Extract Crisis: (3)
Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (Threat: 19)
Struggle for the Cube Continues (Threat: 17)
Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan (Threat: 17)

I made no changes at all to my roster from the Saturday. Admittedly some of this was because I’d been out on the Saturday night and so didn’t want to mess about and risk bringing the wrong miniatures, but I’d been quite happy with the way the roster played anyway. I’d quite like to get Pyro in the roster somehow but I’m not sure who’d remove to fit him – maybe Black Widow as she’s tended not to make the teams but I think that she does have a place.

Game 1: James playing X-Force

As it happens I do get a round one match-up with one of the local players; I think that James and I played the last time I visited Stockton too. He wins priority and wisely chooses his own Secures; both cards are the same threat value so we’re playing at 19 threat either way. I have Black Cat in my roster for specifically this Extraction so she went in, and in fact that obliges me to play Hood as the final piece if I’m sticking my main game plan of Kingpin, Ulik and Rhino as my core.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse
Threat: 19
My team: Kingpin, Black Cat, Hood, Rhino, Ulik
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Mission Objective, Patch Up, This Is A Robbery
James’s team: Cable, Domino, Honey Badger, Psylocke, X-23, Winter Soldier
James’s cards: Brace For Impact, Cat and Mouse, Mission Objective, Psionic Constructs, X-Ceptional Healing

Round 1: James plays Cat and Mouse on X-23 which pretty much ensures that she’s going to attack whoever I push forward on the right. On the other hand, that might also tempt James not to ‘waste’ the attack by collecting the token on the right with her so I may be able to exploit that. Domino takes the central token and Black Cat goes on the left to make Winter Soldier’s life a bit more annoying trying to work around her stealth. James does send in Psylocke on the left which gives me the chance to take the right token with Hood; now I just have to hope that X-23 can’t one-shot him. Honey Badger come in to drop Hood’s already pitiful defences and X-23 slaps him but doesn’t get the daze; I think that this is the likely outcome but dice can sometimes make a mockery of all of our plans. Meanwhile Winter Soldier and Kingpin go in the left, Ulik in the middle and Rhino on the right. Cable starts shooting Ulik but doesn’t bother to contest the centre. The score is 5 – 1 to me.

Round 2: I’m looking here at ways to get all the Legacy Virus tokens onto Black Cat but my main priority is not to get everyone dazed this turn so I can ride out the damage from James’s team for another round. I’m unlikely to out-fight X-Force here so I’m really just trading my characters’ hit points for time in which to (hopefully) score enough points to finish the game. Hood starts us out by gunning down Honey Badger who takes the hits I would much rather have gone onto X-23; X-23 herself takes only trivial damage from him. In return she dazes Hood who pays to Mission Objective the token onto Rhino. In the middle Ulik throws some terrain at Domino which draws out Brace For Impact and also saves me from having Cable throw it at me later. He also pushes Domino off the point but can’t daze her to steal that token. Psylocke does some nice damage into Kingpin who does depressingly little to Winter Soldier in return but does throw him off the point and into Psylocke. Winter Soldier leaves Black Cat on a single hit point; her reply gives Psylocke Stagger but she also has to clear her Bleed before she dazes. Cable continues to shoot Ulik. Rhino bounces off Domino and then plays This Is A Robbery to throw her away; sadly he (again) doesn’t have the power to collect the fallen token. Slightly to my surprise Domino moves over to the right Portal rather than just collecting the fallen token. The score moves to 9 – 2 to me.

Round 3: I can definitely get all the Legacy Virus tokens onto Black Cat here, I just need Rhino not to go down in one go to anyone. Otherwise I think I can afford to abandon one of the Portals which hopefully will strand one of James’s characters to score it. Black Cat moves to collect the fallen token in the middle, gets a Patch Up from Ulik and then gets as far away from all the scary X-Force folks as possible. Winter Soldier easily dazes Kingpin. Hood has a great activation, dazing Domino with the splash damage off his Empowered Dark Lightning into Honey Badger then KOing the latter with the follow-up shots which she again takes on behalf of X-23. X-23 KOs Hood and goes after Black Cat with the combination of free moves off Claw Rush and Frenzy but can’t quite bring her down. Rhino passes the final token to Black Cat with Kingpin’s leadership. Psylocke uses some of her cool movement shenanigans to get over to the Portal on the right, not bad for having Stagger and being all the way over on the left at the start of her activation; sadly the attack she made in the process was quite anaemic. Ulik leaps over to the left Portal and pushes Winter Soldier away. Cable decides to go after Rhino but can’t drop him; I think it wasn’t impossible for him to go after Black Cat but I guess James either missed it or decided that he’s seen enough. Black Cat gets KOed by the Legacy Virus Cures and we finish up at 17 – 3.

Thanks to James for another fun game of Crisis Protocol. He’s definitely getting better as he gets more experience, and this game was probably a lot closer than the scoreline suggests. If I didn’t get over the finish line I’d start to hurt badly for attrition and it’s possible that James could have overhauled me if we went the full number of rounds. I made a bit of a mistake with Kingpin in round two; throwing Winter Soldier into Psylocke didn’t really do anything useful and I’ve have been better off just throwing him as far away as possible.

Game 2: James playing S.H.I.E.L.D

I finally get a pairing I’ve been looking forward to for ages. James and I played many great games of Malifaux together back in the day and it warmed my heart to find that he’d also taken up MCP. I knew that he’d be a really strong player here, just as he had been at Malifaux. So this was going to be a very interesting test but also I expected a highly enjoyable game with an old friend. He wins the priority roll and picks his own Secures, I choose the slightly lower threat value as I think that Bullseye and Toad are probably my best bets here. That said, I think that there is probably also an argument to play at 19 threat and swap in Daredevil for Toad, but of course that would give James another two threat of cool stuff available.

Extraction: Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan
Secure: Demons Downtown! Has Our Comeuppance Come Due?
Threat: 17
My team: Kingpin, Bullseye, Rhino, Ulik, Toad
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Mission Objective, Patch Up, This Is A Robbery [James pointed out that this should really have been called ‘This Is A Rhin-obbery’ and I wholeheartedly agree)
James’s team: Nick Fury Jr, Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Crimson Dynamo (proxied here with a really cool Ironheart print), Pyro
James’s cards: Battlefield Medicine, Eye In The Sky, Helios Laser Bombardment, Pyrotechnics, Sacrifice

Round 1: Iron Man starts us out by collecting the far right Spider-Infected. I decide to go for a cheeky play and send Toad right across to collect the far left Spider-Infected on the basis that if James attacks him he only needs two power (and to survive, of course) to Slippery back to relative safety. The Agents go in the middle and Fury fails to hurt Toad. Bullseye sits on my back point and fails to hurt the Agents. Winter Soldier shoots at Toad who gains enough power to Slippery back toward my lines. Ulik takes my rear left Spider-Infected and Rhino takes my right. Meanwhile Pyro decides to swap sides (presumably to deal with Rhino?) while Kingpin and Crimson Dynamo sit in the middle. The is 5 – 3 to me which is not bad, but I’ve left a really grim beam for Crimson Dynamo.

Round 2: I should just retreat now and look after my lead so I can force James to come to me, but of course I won’t be smart enough for that. Instead I decide to take the game to him. Crimson Dynamo beams through Bullseye, Kingpin and Ulik; Bullseye uses Parting Shot to break the line up so the second beam doesn’t include Ulik. Shock is applied all round though, and Kingpin is left on one wound. Kingpin gives Crimson Dynamo the Stagger condition, kills the Agents by throwing Crimson Dynamo into them and retreats to my back point. Fury opens fire on Toad but he survives on a single wound. Rhino bounces off first Iron Man and then Crimson Dynamo; the latter case was a Sacrifice from Pyro (who I really want to deal with) but I didn’t do any damage anyway. James takes advantage of my poor play by having Pyro Incinerate Rhino and relieve him of the Spider-Infected. Winter Soldier comes forward and finishes Kingpin, then Ulik jumps forward twice, dropping Winter Soldier first and then Pyro. Iron Man pushes him off the rear point and sits himself in the middle and Toad decides to join him after clearing Bleed. The latter was risky but I felt that a two point swing was probably worth it, and anyway Toad’s defence dice had kept him alive far longer than he had any right. The score is 9 – 6 to me, not a bad score but I’ve left myself in an awkward position.

Round 3: This is the All According To Plan turn. If I can get a decent attrition play off this I can possibly ride it to victory. Otherwise I need Rhino to do some good work with This Is A Robbery and just cling on as best I can. Ulik can only muster a single point of damage on Winter Soldier, though he does at least jump to the rear point again. It doesn’t help as the Agents make short work of him (collecting the Spider-Infected in the process) but unbelievably Fury can’t get the final point of damage onto an Incinerated Toad. My defence dice were crazy! Toad pushes Fury away and then books it for the corner of the board. Iron Man pushes Rhino around then unleashes a 24-dice Helios Laser Bombardment which, not surprisingly, dazes the big chap. Pyro and Winter Soldier have little to do apart from collect the many fallen Spider-Infected. The score now goes to 12 – 11 in James’s favour.

Round 4: It’s almost certain that this will be the final turn so I need to relieve James of most of his Spider-Infected somehow. I do have This Is A Robbery in hand still, but I don’t have a great deal else going for me apart from Priority. Rhino starts us out since he’s flush with power. He KOs Pyro, collects his Spider-Infected and then plays This Is A Robbery to make Iron Man drop his and send him flying. I get the positioning wrong and he’s able to walk back and collect it in a single move (I was trying to keep it also in range for Ulik to collect) and then just park himself on the rear Portal. Ulik does daze him but I need to use a throw to put the last point of damage on which means that Ulik doesn’t have the power to collect the fallen Spider-Infected; Fury needs no second invitation to take it. That’s game, but we have a bit of time so Kingpin dazes Crimson Dynamo purely out of spite. James takes the win 16 – 14.

What a fun game! James is such a lovely chap, I could play against him all day every day and be happy with it, and probably learn something clever in every game. I made several big mistakes. Firstly, Bullseye should have collected the back right Spider-Infected instead of Rhino. Firstly and most importantly that would have freed up Rhino to use his tactics card and then actually pick up any fallen token. Secondarily because Bullseye was likely to be an less appealing target as he would be further back than Rhino who has to close with the other team if he is going to do any work. I could have placed Iron Man’s token (dropped from This Is A Robbery) somewhere that would have required him to walk twice to collect it, and just attacked the Agents instead with Ulik to take their token. The biggest error was probably the strategic choice not to just drop back and cede the centre point after round 1 and force James to do the proactive plays while I held onto my tokens. Toad’s defence dice did their best to keep me in the game but James capitalised on my errors and took the deserved victory.

Game 3: David playing Asgard

I thought I might get a bit of an easier ride after a defeat but instead against paired against David who I think I’ve never met before but seems to be very highly regarded. He wins priority and picks Secures which is quite annoying for my game plan as he has a hand full of pay-to-flips that Kingpin hates. Still, this is what I have Daredevil in the roster for. I did consider sticking with basically the same plan as in game 1 (i.e. Black Cat and friends) but with Kingpin’s leadership off the table that makes the Legacy Virus stuff a bit more awkward. Also, and perhaps more importantly, I’m expecting a full beatdown list coming into me with Thor and Hulk and I don’t fancy my chances of playing keep away for long enough to matter. Instead I bring in my own big boy on the basis that Juggernaut can at least throw Hulk away with his tactics card and keep him out of my hair for a turn. This also has the advantage of bringing in another character I haven’t played today which is definitely a relevant consideration now that I’ve dropped a game.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Mutant Madman Turns City Centre Into Lethal Amusement Park
Threat: 18
My team: Shadowland Daredevil, Rhino, Ulik, Juggernaut
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Do You Know Who I Am?, Patch Up, This Is A Robbery
David’s team: Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Hulk, Winter Soldier
David’s cards: Brace For Impact, Eyes On The Prize, Mission Objective, Odin’s Blessing, Patch Up

Round 1: To no-one’s surprise, Bill plays Eyes On The Prize to collect the central token and retreat back to the left. Daredevil takes the one on the left, trusting to Stealth to keep himself safe from Winter Soldier. Winter Soldier flips the back left Trap and, in a move that foreshadowed David’s dice for the entire game, failed to drop the Ninjas. I’m a bit torn on the right – on the one hand I don’t want to just give the token to Hulk, but on the other hand if I’m holding it then This Is A Robbery isn’t going to be much use. I decide to collect it with Juggernaut, and flip the near right point in the process. Hulk flips the far right Trap and throws something at Juggernaut. Thor comes in and finishes off the Ninjas and Ulik flips the last point to me. The score is 4 – 3 to me, not the expected result here to be honest as I didn’t think that I’d get two Legacy Virus Cures with David having priority.

Round 2: Now that I have the token advantage, just need to keep even on the Traps. Hulk is unlikely to one-round Juggernaut but it’s not out of the question, and I’m not sure how best to deal with him from here. Winter Soldier fails to do any damage to Daredevil and Juggernaut returns the pillow-fisted favour on Hulk. Hulk throws Juggernaut away and flips my near right Trap then Rhino goes into him and fails to flip it back. Now that Thor is revved up he goes into Daredevil with For Asgard but Daredevil’s defence dice are hot and I’m basically going to roll 4+ successes with him every time for the whole game which helps. Daredevil dazes him in return. Bill continues David’s awful dice, failing to finish off the Ninjas and we finish up with Ulik leaping to the back left Trap, pushing Winter Soldier off it and flipping it to be mine. The score moves to 8 – 6 to me.

Round 3: I need to tidy up Hulk on the left so that I can free up Rhino to head across the board and steal Bill’s token, so I need to survive his attacks then throw him away somewhere with Do You Know Who I Am?, which is easier said than done. On the left my main priority is to finish off Thor as that will take the Asgard leadership off the table and make the rest of the game a bit more manageable. Thor comes storming into Daredevil but again my defence dice are absolutely on fire; there are various throws here which do hurt and I end up playing Brace For Impact on the last one (Ninjas being thrown into Daredevil) just to be sure he’ll survive, though I’d rather have saved it for the inevitable throwing Rhino and Juggernaut into each other. To add insult to injury, the Ninjas rolls like gods on Thor, drawing out Odin’s Blessing on the second attack and Daredevil finishes off the Asgardian leader, teleporting back to the point with the place from Demon’s Devastation. Daredevil also flips back my rear left Trap which had been Thor’s final act on that side. Hulk dazes Rhino, probably wondering why Thor was making such a meal of the little enemies on the far side of the table. Ulik leaves Bill on one wound, drawing out Brace For Impact, and flips the back left point to be mine. Winter Soldier heals Bill with Patch Up and hurts Ulik with a couple of good attacks. Juggernaut pushes Hulk off the Traps but is only able to make the roll to flip one of them back to me. I guess I can’t exactly complain about the dice. Finally Bill throws Ulik into the Ninjas (killing them again) and successfully flips both of the left Traps. The score is 11 – 10 in my favour.

Round 4: So the Hulk plan remains the same, at least if Rhino actually lives long enough for it to matter. Otherwise I need to bring down either Bill or Winter Soldier on the left and start to mop up those Traps; fortunately I do have priority after Rhino was dazed early last round. Daredevil dazes Bill but doesn’t have enough power to either flip the Trap back or pick up the token so I have to hope that Ulik lives through Winter Soldier’s activation to deal with that. He doesn’t, he is gunned down easily by Bucky. Juggernaut hurts Hulk and throws him with his tactics card. I end up throwing him toward the melee on the left, partly because that was probably the best angle for distance and partly because I wanted to be able to lock down the tokens on the right. However, I’m not sure if this was playing more into David’s hands by giving him a chance to do some good work over on the left side of the board with Hulk. Anyway, Juggernaut also manages to flip the remaining Trap on the right so at least some good came of it. Hulk double walks and Gamma Leaps over, dazes Daredevil with a throw (diceless, which is sensible after the way things have gone this game) and collects both the fallen tokens. Rhino shows off his good mobility by Stampeding over to the left and hurts Winter Soldier, flipping the back left point in the process. The score is a very tight 15 – 13 to me now.

Round 5: Hulk has hardly any wounds left after the pastings he’s received from Rhino and Juggernaut so if I can drop him with Ulik I’m pretty sure that I can see out the game. Even if not, I can probably get Juggernaut over there to have a say in things and he can be my last activation if needed. I play All According To Plan and Ulik lets rip on Hulk, dropping him in two attacks and picking up both Legacy Virus Cures. Winter Soldier drops Rhino with a rather rude double Red Fury and flips back that point. Bill and Daredevil wrestle ineffectually with each other and we finish up at 21 – 14.

David was a nice chap to play against but I’m not sure that there is a lot to learn from this game as the dice were so hopelessly one-sided. Thor in particular just couldn’t get to do anything cool; I think he made four attacks into Daredevil for a total of zero damage (plus a trivial amount of throw damage) while the return attacks one-turned him twice. Full credit to David for taking it in his stride and nearly winning anyway; I suspect that I would have been a lot more moany about it than he was. If you’re reading this David, I’m so sorry! I look forward to playing again at some point in the future and getting a richly deserved kicking.

Game 4: Joe playing X-Force

My final game is against Joe, who turns out to have just won a major TTS tournament this weekend and is clearly an extraordinary player. I finally get priority and, of course, choose my own Secures as Joe’s would all be awful for me; Joe picks the slightly higher threat value. There are probably lots of really clever teams I could have made here but I was quite tired after all this gaming so I just went with the team full of big chunky villains and figured I’d have a fun time throwing the cool cosmic terrain about the place. It became clear quickly that I wasn’t going to get much use out of All According To Plan or, as Joe put it: ‘if you need that card you’ve probably already won’.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As ‘Worthy’ Terrorise Cities
Secure: Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends On Earth
Threat: 18
My team: Kingpin, Rhino, Ulik, Juggernaut
My cards: All According To Plan, Brace For Impact, Do You Know Who I Am?, Patch Up, This Is A Robbery
Joe’s team: Domino, Honey Badger, Psylocke, X-23, Ghost Spider (proxied by a very nice Nightcrawler print), Storm
Joe’s cards: Brace For Impact, Fall Back, Mission Objective, Sacrifice, X-Ceptional Healing

Round 1: Joe has massively stacked the left side, so my plan is to take the Hammer over there and hope that Kingpin can survive enough attacks that I can run away with it next turn, then just fight over the near and right Cosmic Portals. So Kingpin starts us off by going to take the left Hammer. To my even greater surprise, X-23 abandons the right side and moves to the middle to take the rear Hammer. Honey Badger goes to annoy Kingpin and then Domino hits him with a Grenade Bounce to apply Incinerate. The rest of the X-Force lay into the big man but he’s left standing on one wound after judicious use of Intense Physical Conditioning. I send Ulik to the right mainly just to keep some of Joe’s team busy over there. The score is 6 – 2 to me.

Round 2: I think that I can just see this out by doing little more than moving Kingpin back to me home Portal and handing the Hammer to Juggernaut (i.e. the approach I should have taken in game 2) and playing keep away. Kingpin throws Honey Badger into Psylocke, though in retrospect I’m not sure why I didn’t just throw Psylocke away instead. He then moves back to Juggernaut and passes him the Hammer. Domino puts Incinerate on Juggernaut and Ulik dazes Storm because at this point I still thought that Joe was playing X-Men as mentioned below. Psylocke and Honey Badger do a bit of damage to Ulik. Juggernaut walks out to hit Domino and slides back to the Portal, then uses the gained power to Patch Up Kingpin. Ghost Spider pulls Ulik off his point and bounces off Juggernaut, the score is 11 – 5 to me.

Round 3: This is basically over unless I let Juggernaut go down, which is pretty unlikely considering the board state here. Ulik KOs Storm and Domino starts shooting Juggernaut. Juggernaut goes to hit Honey Badger and Ghost Spider uses Life Saver to pull her out of reach so he just strolls back. X-23 attacks him but it’s too little, too late and everyone else just sits on various objectives. We finish up at 16 – 8 to me.

Many thanks to Joe for a fun game, but it was probably least interactive, most passive game of MCP I’ve ever played. It was also quite clear that he’d run out of steam after his heroics the previous night and three tough prior rounds. At some point in round 2 I think that he also realised that I could probably just run Juggernaut to the back right corner and pretty much score the game out if needed and the light kind of went out in his eyes so the round 3 actions were a bit half-hearted. I hope that we get to play again in the future so he can show me some very cool tricks.

Note that I misheard Joe at the start as I thought that he was playing X-Men rather than leaderless X-Force. When we had finished I asked him about this choice, expecting to hear some really novel tech handed down, but the answer was basically ‘I’m really tired after my big game last night and I wanted something where I could just roll a bunch of dice and not have too many complex decisions to make’. I’ve got to respect that kind of attitude!

When the dust settles I come in a highly respectable 4th place so I can’t argue with that. Beautifully, my 7 – 1 record over the weekend contrasts perfectly with Allan’s 1 – 7 nightmare run; I think that we even had our only reverse in the same round! Many thanks to James, James, David and Joe for four fun games of Crisis Protocol, and to Anth for running the show as usual. I’ll be back, probably in a team event in Common Ground Games next time.