Review: Marvel Crisis Protocol

So the other day my buddy Jeremy and I decided to be bad and break quarantine (not that one was ever established in this bloody state) to do some gaming. He had some games we wanted me to try, and among those was Marvel Crisis Protocol from Atomic Mass Games. So, we opted to throw down and give the beginner scenario a whirl.

One thing right off the bat I will say is that the model are quite nice, especially once painted up by someone with some actual talent. Jeremy's got every model currently available (he went in hard), but we just used the suggested models from the starter box.

If you want to check out more of Jeremy's work on Crisis Protocol and various other games, check out his Instagram page.

A selection of models from the starter set.

The game actually plays pretty quick, and uses some interesting mechanics. Each character has a stat card that details their attacks, defenses and super powers. The cards are double sided, with one side being their starting stats and the other side is flipped to after the model has received enough wounds to get dazed the first time. Everything's pretty well laid out, but the cards are pretty big which is a minor quibble.

Every turn characters generate power tokens they can use to do more powerful attacks or activate their super powers, and in an interesting twist models also gain power tokens anytime they get wounded which means as they get hurt they can end up doing more incredible things. It's all very appropriate to the genre, really.

Characters activate in an alternating activation system, so there's very little downtime which keeps players engaged.

An overview of the table, turn two.

One of the most engaging things about the game is that all the terrain is interactive, meaning models can pick up terrain pieces and chuck them around the table at each other. It's actually pretty neat, and as terrain is thrown around it gets destroyed which can open some strategic options for opening up fire lanes for more ranged characters like Hawkeye or Iron Man. It also helps with that comic-book feel, and it's just damn fun to have Doctor Octopus chuck a dumpster at Black Widow.

Iron Man lines up a shot against Baron Zemo.

                                       

All movement and range is done via templates that are included in the starter, or you guy buy them separate if you just want to grab some two-packs of characters. It feels like something made by Fantasy Flight, which seeing how both FFG and AMG are owned by the same company might mean there's some crossover. It does mean no need for a measuring tape, but it does also just add to the pile of stuff needed to play.

Speaking off piles of stuff, holy damn can this game get heavy on the tokens. Tokens to track wounds, track power, track status effects (of which there are many) and some that are character specific and so on. Cards can pretty quickly get crowded with tokens, which is a bit of a pain to be honest. Not deal breaking, mind, but obnoxious. It also means you, the player, need to find something to store all those tokens in, and if you don't buy the starter box then you don't get those tokens.

Seriously, all the tokens.

Combat is done by rolling the special dice that come with the game, but can also be purchased separate if you wish, with each attack or super power listing what type it is (physical, energy or mystical) and how many dice you roll along with the range of the attack. Attacks can hit, critical hits let you roll an extra dice (the one time, no continuously exploding dice) and the wild face lets you count it as a success and often will let you do an extra thing (Captain America's "Shield Throw" attack, for example, lets you make another attack against a target within range 2 of the first target if you get a wild). The dice are used for both attack and defense, so they also have a defense face but a model can still benefit from crits and wilds. It's all pretty smooth, and the wilds adding that extra little perk is a nice touch.

Something that took me by surprise is that the game lets you just make a team with whoever you want. There are benefits to running specific teams, usually in the form of a model having a super power that benefits from having other models from that team around, but otherwise your free to mix and match as you see fit. A standard game is, I believe, 17 points, and no player can ever have more than ten models in their list. Keeps things nice and small, which is nice, and gives people lots of freedom compared to something like the Batman Miniatures Game which has very specific team options.

Despite what it looks like, Iron Man and Spider Man are not on the same team here.

 The only other thing I can really think of as a fault for the game is the price. The starter set, which does come with a ton of stuff, retails at a hundred bucks. Sure you get terrain, templates, rulebook (although the full rulebook is available online as a living rulebook), dice and ten models but it's still a bit of a tough sell. The character packs range in price, with a two pack of normal human sized characters being $35, some of the single bigger guys like Hulk are $35 on their own, and some sets are more (Black Dwarf and Ebony Maw are $50, while Thanos is $65 -although he does come with a bitchin' throne-). So it can get a bit pricey to build up a team.

The other big cost factor is terrain. This is a game that benefits from a lot of it, and you'll want some big stuff that's too big to be tossed around which can get a bit steep. The starter comes with several pieces, but the tables I've been seeing online look like you'll want quite a bit more.

Cars, buildings, light posts. And this is the smaller stuff in the game.

Overall, I will say that I was pretty impressed with Crisis Protocol. The game plays quick and smooth, the models are lovely and it was a damn fun little romp. I like that it's all objective based as well, so it seems less likely to attract the "If I just table you I win lol" types. If you're into Marvel comics (the designs are much more based on the comics than the movies) and miniatures games this is certainly worth checking out. It ticks the right boxes rules wise, and I do love some of these characters. Yeah some of my favorites aren't in it yet (no X-Men stuff yet, nor Warmachine for some reason and some of my favorite Spidey villains have yet to put in an appearance), but if the game keeps chugging along like it is I can see the roster really expanding to cover just about everyone's taste of Marvel characters. Absolutely worth getting a demo if someone at your LGS is offering.

Two villains fight on top of a news stand, and I forgot the punch-line.