Marvel Crisis Protocol: Impressions

Continuing my series of articles for game impressions I figured I will cover games Ive already played a lot of games of too. Itll be a little different then the Age of Sigmar impressions, since Im already past the pre game and 1st game impressions. But I think it would still be useful to a new or prospective player to hear about the game from an already experienced stand point, even if you are not joining me on the journey. I will write these in no particular order except the first. Marvel Crisis Protocol is probably my current favorite game, so I will start with that.

I will try to keep things to the mechanics of the game, and not talk about specific characters or cards that I like/dislike. They’re designed to give an overview of what mechanics I think are good for a game or bad for a game, and why they appeal or don’t appeal to me. Specific units or imbalances or whatever shouldn’t be in these articles, unless they are part of the core rules of the game.

I like to keep track of every game I play in Longshanks, this is something a buddy of mine did in the Warmachine days, and I liked it so now I do it. Its neat to see how many games I end up playing in a year, and which factions I tend to gravitate towards. Longshanks has some neat analytics they can show you if you pay the subscription (which I recommend because they do a lot of great work, Im not paid to say that either). I played a few games during COVID, but it was the end of 2022 where I really started to get into the game. 2023 I started tracking all my games, and I reached 100 games towards the end of the summer. But anyway without further ado here are some of the things I like and some of the things I don’t like about the game:

Like:

Time- Im going to start with this one just because of the limited amount of gaming time I have. When you have a game where both players understand the rules and know their lists well, you can play a whole game in an hour to an hour fifteen. MCP probably has the quickest average game of all the games Ive played. The availability of online games has allowed me to play a game at home after my family has gone to bed, and still get to sleep early enough that Im not groggy for work the next morning. It’s also led me to test games where I end up buying models I would have otherwise not bought, but that’s aside the fact.

Scenario- Im a big fan of how scenario selection works in MCP. For those unfamiliar, when you build your 10 man roster, you pick 3 “Secures”, which are basically objectives you have to stand near, and 3 “Extracts”, which are objectives you have to pick up. Players roll off to determine priority, and the player with it gets to pick if they want to pick from their pool of secures or extracts. They randomly pick from their pool of whichever they chose, and randomly pick from their opponent’s pool of what they didn’t choose, so there is 1 secure and 1 extract both active during the game. Each scenario has an associated threat and the player without priority picks from the two available what threat level the game is played at, and players then pick their squad from their available 10 man roster. I love this for two reasons. The first being that each game can be vastly different from another game, and as Ive said before I love variety in games. The second reason I love this is that it gives the player a lot of agency in scenario when they build their list. Going to a tournament and just having an assigned scenario every round I find to be both boring and potentially detrimental to my list build. In the MCP format, you get to choose what scenarios you bring, so you know that each game, at least half of the scenario is going to be something you picked. I don’t have to worry about a scenario where I have brought a very killy but not mobile list, and the scenarios picked by the TO for the first 3 rounds all involve being very mobile. It’s a very generic example, but it gets my point across that in other games sometimes your list build doesn’t do well in a certain scenario, and that scenario selection is out of the player’s hands entirely. With the way scenario selection is decided here, it makes it a PLAYER CHOICE. In my philosophy every game decision should be a player choice, from list building, scenario selection, game tactics, everything. Everything about the game should be decided by the player, with the TO there to organize the tournament and make rules judgements. I know this one got kind of long, but I just really like the way they do the scenarios, and its one of the few games where scoring is a player choice, and has dynamic decisions. It leads to a lot of tactical decisions pre game, do I pick my secures which are good for both me and my opponent’s list, or do I pick my extracts which are only good for me, but it allows for his secures that are only good for him? More player agency is always a good thing in games.

Characters- Im not going to touch on this one a lot because its self explanatory. Typically I prefer a game have custom characters and unit customization and stuff, but I make an exception here. Its all Marvel characters. Some I like, some I don’t like, but most of them I have grown up reading about or watching cartoons of. I originally got into the game because my son was young and very interested in Marvel super heroes. I figured Id buy into the game and when hes older we could play together. I don’t think I realized just how long Id have to wait, but I ended up loving the game anyway. I also like that you can mix any characters together, it can lead to some neat storylines in my head about why X and Y character are working together.

Interactive Terrain- Im not sure if Ive encountered another game with interactive terrain like this. Obviously there are games where terrain affects you, slows down movement, causes damage, gives cover etc. But in MCP your characters can pick up and throw the terrain. This can damage other models and removes the terrain from the board. Yes theres cover and line of sight stuff too, but being able to pick up and throw a car at Captain America just leaves such a satisfied feeling. I think it lends to the game’s imagery very well, and I mean it makes sense. I cant think of a single time Ive seen the Hulk in a movie or cartoon and he DIDN’T throw a car at somebody.   

Roster Building- I absolutely love the list building in MCP. This or scenario are probably the thing I like most about it. Basically you pick 10 models, any 10, and that’s your roster. Once scenario and threat are determined you pick from that 10. Each model has a threat value, which is their points cost, and you pick models until you reach that points cost like any other game. But I love the fact that you get to see the scenario first. The biggest thing I like about this though is again, variety. I get to pick any 10 models, theres no faction restrictions, no points limit (until squad selection), I can just pick 10 characters I really like. Each actual game is going to use on average probably 4-6 models each side. This means that if I go to a 3 round tournament, I can do 2-3 rounds without repeating a character. Not to mention I could do an entire con and never repeat the same squad. This makes the variety of the game so easy to access. I can play a hundred games before I have the same squad as I did in another game (I know theres math to figure out how many games before I actually have to repeat, but Im too dumb to figure that out. If somebody wants to do that, Id love to see the answer).

Dislike:

Dice- Im typically not a fan when a game uses non D6s, and MCP uses D8s. Ive spent 15 years working on my D6 math and this throws the whole thing off. It also means I have to buy proprietary dice, which I often think is gimmicky and often made for business reasons and not game reasons. That being said, I don’t HATE the D8s in MCP and I understand why they went with that, but it is definitely something I looked down my nose at when I was first looking into the game. I also think the dice can be too swingy for a competitive game, but I think that may be some of the appeal in a weird way.

Movement/Measuring Tools- The game uses two types of measuring device. A movement tool, which is hinged stick that comes in 3 sizes to measure how far a character can move. And measuring tool, which is 4 sticks of varying size to measuring ranges. This also falls into that category of “I have to buy a proprietary thing that is just ever so slightly different from a tape measure”. But more so then that I dislike the pre measuring rule for the tools. A player is allowed to have 1 measuring stick and 1 movement tool out at a time. Maybe Im just used to Warmachine, but the lack of proxy bases seems silly to me. Im allowed to basically pre measure anything Id need to measure except the base size. And with the way movement works this could lead to some disparity. I get why this is here, its supposed to make it so you cant just measure things out and be like “Ok I know I could do X plan”, and instead you have to think “Hmm this is close, it looks like Id make it, but I could be 2mm out and then my whole plan fails”. In reality it just leads to players using other methods to measure the base. They hold fingers down, point at parts of the map etc. For the most part it gets you the same measurements you wanted to know about your plan, but it just slows things down.

And those are my impressions of MCP. There are some characters and scenarios that I think are spot on, and some that missed the mark, but these articles are supposed to focus on the mechanics of the game, and how its played. MCP is probably my favorite game at the moment, but that ranking does fluctuate as I play more games and what not. It is definitely the game I have played the most in the past year, and for now I feel comfortable saying it is my favorite. Until next time, keep rolling dice!