Another Adepticon has come and passed and here are all the things you may have missed for Marvel Crisis Protocol!
AMG keynote presentation
This was the big company presentation for the event – an opportunity to show off upcoming plans and models for the game. Atomic Mass Games decided to present a very conservative roadmap for the next 12 months, showing releases that have already been presented elsewhere and not hyping up any new product we didn’t know about.
They started with an explainer about the new Marvel Crisis Alliances board game. This is a system that uses models that can be transferred to Marvel Crisis Protocol. It is a cooperative board game that presents a scenario and lets the players work together to achieve objectives and earn XP so they can level up. Scenarios are strung together in a campaign and AMG is envisioning that a campaign can be completed in as little as one sitting.
Alliances can be an entryway for players into the hobby and into the larger and more complex Crisis Protocol game. It can also be a way for Crisis Protocol players to introduce the game in a more friendly and cooperative manner to their partners, family, and friends. It has been getting positive reviews so I think it should be a hit with the community.
The first Alliances campaign going on sale will focus on the Spider people against Green Goblin. After that we get mutants versus Sentinels. After that will the Avengers versus Kang. These models are push-fit and simpler to build for the beginner hobbyist but look pretty good and will be a fun variety to see on the table. As someone who owns all these models already I don’t mind buying into this game to play with friends and also getting alternate models as well.
MCP news (or lack thereof)
AMG has been working hard on Alliances and has several products for that new game planned to release through the next year. Obviously they’ve been working hard to bring a whole new game system and design to the table and get it all printed to a high standard. In contrast, there was not any new announcement for Crisis Protocol product that wasn’t already on our radar.
In fact, they were even cagey about talking about product that they’ve already announced last November at Ministravaganza. A Young Avengers themed box with Patriot, Kate Bishop, and America Chavez did not feature on the roadmap that was presented. We also had a mysterious terrain box that showed up on the AMG webstore one day and disappeared the next and we still don’t have an explanation or announcement.
AMG did get out in front of the player bases’ disappointment with the lack of new product announcements. They stated that they wanted to keep the roadmap sparse and be able to surprise the player base with character boxes that were not announced months in advance. This could be their way of keeping expectations low in an industry environment full of uncertainty with printing and shipping from overseas. A counterpoint to this is the Legion presentation which showed off lots of new product coming with a full roadmap.
Either way I don’t think MCP is being de-prioritized. It looks to be a main focus of the company and will be highly supported. AMG has been struggling to get some consumer facing information/documents out these last few months so it could be something as simple as they didn’t have the bandwidth for a huge MCP presentation. I am excited for the MCP product on our radar, and hope we get some more over the next 12 months.
Leader, Red Hulk, and Sensational She-Hulk
We’ve seen these models painted for a couple months and there was little other information provided to us about them. The presentation did confirm that this box would introduce two new affiliations to the game. The first is the Thunderbolts lead by Red Hulk. I think we can expect Punisher and Elektra to be part of this team, they did say that MCP exists in its own alternate universe so they are taking their own liberties with team members. That sentence should keep the player base guessing until they release the affiliation document…
We also were told that Leader will be part of a new affiliation, the Intelligencia. This should be made up of evil and brilliant villains. MODOK, Klaw, and Leader were definitely a part of it in the 616 comics universe. (There are a lot of Fantastic Four antagonists who also make up the membership but we don’t talk about the Fantastic Four in this game.) We will have to wait until Q3 2026 for this box to arrive.
Onslaught
Onslaught is a peak 90’s X-Men villain that AMG always wanted to include in the game (because of the aesthetics I guess). He will have his own affiliation: Onslaught’s Grip. To me this sounds like a Thralls of Dracula situation but in some interviews they’ve hinted that this will have a set affiliated model list.
Onslaught looks to be a very high Threat model so the playability of his affiliation will probably be dependent on his effectiveness on the board and the power of his leadership. Time will tell, we should expect Onslaught in Q4 of this year.
Dani Moonstar, Havok, Jubilee, and Multiple Man
We have four more mutants joining the game and two of them will also have a leadership! This seems to be the year of new affiliations and previously we were told that Havok and Multiple Man will both be leaders of a new affiliation, X-Factor. Multiple Man looks to come with his grunts character, true to his superpower of being able to multiply himself so I’m interested to see how they make that function.
We also got a reveal for Jubilee. She’s a 2 Threat with a Range 4 gainer attack, the ability to re-roll defense dice for herself or an ally within Range 2, the ability to call on James Howlett (Wolverine) within Range 2 to take attacks for her, and when she rolls a Crit she gains a Power and drops any objective tokens she’s holding.
She’s weak defensively with 2/3/3 defense and 4/4 health pool. This is somewhat mitigated by her ability to re-roll her defense dice, but she can only do that once per Turn. It could also be mitigated by having a James Howlett character to stand within Range 2 of her but those two models want to be in different places on the board so I doubt you’ll run into that interaction very often.
She can fire off Range 4 attacks with the possibility to Stun, get your 1 Power and possibly get another power from rolling a Crit. However, even if she’s loaded up with Power she doesn’t have a great place to put it. Her defensive re-roll is pretty limited at Range 2 and her Spender is okay but nothing don’t expect to hit your Rapid Fire trigger.
Her big downside is her weakness to dropping Extract tokens. This means you don’t really want to roll dice on her while she’s holding an Extract. So it disincentivizes you from making attacks, interacting with a pay-to-flips, or rolling defense/dodge dice with her while holding an Extract. If it’s your activation you might have the opportunity to pick up the Extract again but probably I won’t be making attacks because I’m scared of rolling a Crit. Her defense dice make her not great at pay-to-flips. I would go for it if it would win me the game but there’s a real downside of not being able to flip the point and also losing your Extract.
She mitigates the risk of rolling a Crit while defending because she can re-roll her own defensive Crits. If you’re not going to Daze from incoming damage, it would be worth it to re-roll your own Crits so you don’t drop the Extract you’re holding. 2 Threats are inherently valuable because they just seem to perform above their costs in the game and being affiliated helps a list use the splash models they really want to take. We’ve seen a similar model released recently in Spider-Ham. Spider-Ham just has way more survivability and board control.
So does X-Men want Jubilee in their lists? One big factor is that the X-Men leaders already fill the role of sitting on a back point, supporting the team in a much bigger way than Jubilee. Do they want a Jubilee to stand on the point with them? It doesn’t seem like the best use of 2 Threat in a game…
TTCs will be eventually revealed for this box so withhold your final grades until then. In the meantime get your most vibrant yellow paints ready for Jubilee, who should release Q3 of this year.
Bastion, Nimrod, and Omega Sentinel
This is the upcoming box and AMG did show us all of the character cards coming. The headline of the box was the new Sentinel leadership on Bastion’s card, Operation Zero Tolerance. This is a Power taxing leadership similar to a Stun or Judgement special condition effect. Stun and Judgement are some of the best special conditions because they stop your opponent from amassing Power to make a big clapback. MCP has big swings from Round to Round because if you’re loading up your opponent with damage, you’re also loading them up with Power. To sever that connection and be able to load them up with damage while denying them Power is a very powerful effect that will break the symmetry of the game.
Bastion’s leadership works in this way on every attack with no other hoops to jump through. Bastion is also a pretty survivable model so the leadership can’t be taken off the board very easily. Bastion is supported by Nimrod, who has strong attacks and can give out the Root special condition to stifle the enemy. As well as the new 3 Threat Prime Sentinel models who manipulate the Root special condition to give allies re-rolls and have multiple ways of giving re-rolls as well. Finally, Cassandra Nova is already part of this affiliation and she has strong attacks with the Sap Power trigger, and she can give out Root on a superpower. Overall Sentinels now have a strong new identity of locking down opponents and not letting them play their models to the fullest potential.
This Power controlling strategy by Sentinels seems like it will be extra strong if they can get ahead early in the game. They will continue to gain Power and VPs while being able to stop the opponent from doing anything impactful.
Omega Sentinel also comes in this box and this looks like a great 4 Threat addition to the Sentinels. She gets re-rolls when Interacting on pay-to-flips and Power refunded. She looks to be very aggressive and can boost one of her defenses to make it hard to attack into her effectively.
I like Nimrod as a model and I want to see how he performs on the table. He will be competing with two other 5 Threat models in his affiliation (funny to think that Sentinels is now crowded with great choices).
We already briefly discussed the Prime Sentinels. They will be coming in the Crisis Card Pack and you can take two of them on the table. TBD if you will want to be taking one or two but my inclination is to take two right now.
Operation: Zero Tolerance Crisis Card Pack
We were also treated to two new Crises that will be included in the Crisis pack. These are Assault Ships Make Sweeping Search (Secure) and Surprise Assault! Mutant Homes Destroyed (Extract). Both of these Crises create a rhombus shape in the middle of the table which will probably lend itself to brawling. The Secure also rewards attacking with an attack re-roll against characters within Range 2 of a Secure point. The Extract looks to be a rhombus that is even closer to the midline of the board. It features Source tokens where you pick up an Extract token from them once per Round. They are so close in that characters will probably also be brawling on this shape and staying near the middle.
Overall these revealed Crises lean toward attrition teams again. They encourage fighting and are on the slower side of VP scoring. The only other information we got was an even spread of Crisis cards over the playable Threat levels. This might create more varied games in Threat level. Both this Crisis pack and the Sentinel character pack are scheduled to release Q2 this year. (Sentinels character box is listed on the AMG web store with a pre-order date of May 22. It also says there are 6 Tactics cards so Sentinels might have more tricks up their sleeves.)
Character Changes!
AMG confirmed that they are working on character changes and will be released… in June. This was a slight disappointment since I’ve been eagerly awaiting character buffs that AMG promised to 3 Threat characters. The good news is that the June character update will be huge compared to past updates. Mostly it will consist of health pool changes but they also said there will be some larger re-designs for 10-15 characters.
They will also be addressing overpowered characters in this update. Apocalypse and Shang-Chi were specifically named as models who need tweaking. I think AMG has done a really great job balancing this game and making character changes in the past so I hope this will continue their great track record. Hopefully as we get more towards June we can get some more information on what exactly to expect.
Check out my previous articles for character changes I’d like to see.
MCP in 2026
So there we have basically all of the Adepticon information for MCP. We should expect some big changes for MCP this year simply because we are getting a new leadership and Crisis Card rotation in Q2. A large character update in June. New affiliations and leaders in Q3. And even more affiliations and leaders in Q4. I think it will be a dynamic and exciting time to be playing MCP. I personally want to get my hands on the new Sentinel models ASAP.
Let me know your reactions to the AMG presentation at Adepticon. As always, you can find me playing MCP at my local shop the Fabricator’s Forge in the Pittsburgh, PA area. Please join our regional MCP discord the Appalachian Cup! And if you’re shopping for discount models, check out the Frontline Gaming online store. Stay tuned to the Frontline Gaming blog where I will be discussing the meta at the Worlds tournament played at Adepticon as well as roster building for the new Sentinels. Good luck and happy gaming!
