The Avengers are battling it out with some of your favourite supervillains in New York City... The action is happening in the street, on rooftops, buildings and cars. Of course your favourite characters are all in appearance: Captain America, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Black Widow, Red Skull, Doctor Octopus, Crossbones, Baron Zemo, and Ultron.
From a strong vantage point on top of a Daily Bugle news stand, Spider-Man uses his webs to drag Baron Zemo into the open where Captain Marvel can blast him without leaving the objective she is guarding. Using trashcans, streetlights, and even buildings to gain line of sight, or perhaps to throw.
This my friends... is Marvel: Crisis Protocol, brought to you by Atomic Mass. The tabletop miniature game where you fight for control of key points while attempting to recover people and objects from the battlefield.
The MCP Core Set comes with everything needed for two people to take part. However, you will likely want to purchase additional heroes and villains provided in character packs (Garry opted for running a mix of Mutant-X, Ghost Rider and Scarlett Witch. Tom opted for a an upgraded Avengers team including Hulk Buster, War Machine and Venom)
Inside the Core Set, theres a learn to play booklet, cards, tokens, dice, range and movement tools, and ten unassembled plastic miniatures. We were quite happy to find the set also includes terrain pieces (also unassembled): a small building, two cars, two dumpsters, two lamp posts and two traffic lights. In terms of started sets, this is amazing value for money.
It comes with ten miniatures in total, well known Marvel heroes and villains and the basic terrain. The terrain helps bring the tabletop to life for first time players and for MCP, being able to use the terrain to inflict damage is part of the game. Since it’s a starter set, there’s not really enough terrain to cover a proper battlefield, you'll likely want to invest in more. We opted to add the Sanctum Sanctorum and the Oscorp Truck Kit.
With our models assembled and primed (painting still to do) we opted to trial the game mechanics and run a slow paced game to get to grips with basic movement and the rules.
You start the game with 10 miniatures in your arsenal. Upon selecting a "Crisis' (objective) to complete , you then. narrow down your squad to 5 members who's value adds up to the required "threat level". We found it hard trying to cut players and reach the 16-19 points required across your team, but its clearly a mechanic that keeps the game balanced.
You then choose your leader, and an additional 5 tactic cards to use throughout the game. Though we selected our cards we didn't really have any intention of using them first time round as we wanted to focus on movement and gameplay basics.
`The game is scored in rounds, and you receive Victory Point (VP) for completing objectives, holding items or knocking out opponents. Its either first to 16 points or the highest scorer at the end of 6 rounds.
You roll dice to determine the outcome of attacks, measuring attack against defence to finalise damage. This again adds another randomised element to the game which can be tilted with character power ups and combos.
We thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay, each figure has very unique attacks and movement styles and various combinations of players can compliment each others attacks with devastating effect! Over time you can tell that understanding combos and player effects will really give you the edge when playing.
Using terrain really makes a difference in the gameplay. Bringing life to an otherwise 2D landscape, and using a printed play mat was a nice luxury too! Each characters attacks are recognisable from the movies / comics and overall it makes the game extremely familiar and a pleasure to play.
We played the 6 round and both ended up on the same score, ultimately happy to call it a draw! We thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay and how balanced the game itself was with such a large array of characters!
Safe to say we are hooked and will be playing on a regular basis.
