Marvel Crisis Protocol

At last after almost a year I was finally able to play a full game of this, after having my friend boost it for so long but being unable to play due to you-know-what.

I took the heroes vs the cabal from the core starter set. Man, that's a lot of tokens although the actual game play is pretty straightforward.

We have to collect 5 Cosmic Cube fragments and control 4 Extremis Consoles to score points each turn.

So I had Cap, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Black Widow and Spidey vs the bad guys led by the Red Skull guest starring Ultron and Doc Octopus.

At first, I was able to hold my own, but I made some pretty bad tactical errors. Spidey had a chance to get a fragment but eschewed that to try and punch out the Red Skull. That probably cost me the game right there on turn 1.

Turn 2 I did pretty well and pulled ahead by 1 point, managing to daze 2 bad guys... meaning all HP down and they couldn't act for the rest of that turn.

Turn 3 was when it all fell apart as Iron Man and Black Widow were dazed dropping their fragments and giving the bad guys a whopping 8 (out of 9) points, putting my opponent at 15VP with one more to go for victory.

I thought I could claw my way back on turn 4 when I dazed Zemo and picked up his 2 fragments... AND Iron Man dazed Crossbones aka the slow Haymaker guy plus Doc Ock... but then Spidey was dazed and having only Captain Marvel left to activate, I couldn't prevent the bad guys from picking up the last VP from a control point, so I conceded the game.

End: Heroes 13, Cabal 16.

It's an enjoyable game where it's less about narrative story (it's a game where it's perfectly OK for Cap and the Red Skull to be on the same team together!) and more about objective control to score points like Warmahordes or WH40K. 

It's usually not feasible to knock out all models on one side for victory (unless the defensive dice rolls are SO totally bad) so you really need to maximise points on every turn.

As I said earlier, having Spidey try to knock the Red Skull away from a control point instead of picking up a fragment cost me points that I could feasibly have used to have a shot at actually winning the game.

Oh well. Lesson learned. 

This is also a game about resource management, with the resource being power that triggers special abilities and attacks compared to some standard "free" abilities and attacks.

This game also needs a different mind set compared most other games where you want to maximise your attacks to deal the most damage. In this case, sometimes throwing scenery at your enemies... or throwing your enemies at scenery... can be the path to victory. And it's also lots of fun!

It's a lot to take in and manage for a first game.

The downside: it's an FFG/Asmodee (even though it says Atomic Mass) game so there's proprietary dice, measurement tools, and a heaping ton of so many tokens! (But still not as bad as Fallout Wasteland Warfare.)

Still, it was enjoyable and my opponent/teacher allowed me some "take backs" because I didn't realise I was allowed to do some things that gave me some slight advantages.

Will definitely play again.

BONUS: the game at the next table... an Ultimate Encounter featuring the Infinity Gauntlet and our favourite megalomaniac mass murderer!