We are now six months into 2026 so let us look back at what has happened in Marvel: Crisis Protocol so far this year and what we can look forward to coming out soon.
January
Spectrum & Blue Marvel
This was a box originally scheduled for December 2025 but ended up on shelves in January 2026. Inside we have Spectrum, the leader of the new Mighty Avengers affiliation and Blue Marvel who ended up being a 5-Threat powerhouse who showed up in multiple competitive lists.
I’m happy to get new leaders and new affiliations. Mighty Avengers seems like an affiliation with lots of potential but partly held back by an affiliated models list that tends towards the lower 50% of models in the game. The good news is that the model update document (more on that later) may give this affiliation some buffs. I’m directly thinking of Ant-Man, She-Hulk, and Steve Rodgers.
Mighty Avengers is sitting at a ~52% win rate, which I expect to only go up for the rest of the year. Spectrum herself hasn’t been a very exciting model to play but she seems okay to bring as a leader of a good affiliation.
On the other hand, Blue Marvel is a 5-Threat who is affiliated with the Defenders and the Mighty Avengers. He has performed competitively, especially under Doctor Strange Defenders. But no matter where he’s played he has a great suite of powers on his card and his TTC is playable.
However, as I said earlier this box was delayed from 2025 until 2026 and Spectrum was printed with her Spender being 0 Power cost instead of 4. We also did not get the Mighty Avengers affiliated list and updated Standard format documents on the main AMG website, they showed up on the AMG forum instead on January 12th. Later on January 20th we got affiliations for Spectrum and Blue Marvel themselves.
Unfortunately this has been a running problem for AMG in 2026. Product that is printed wrong, and announcements that aren’t put up on the main AMG website. It makes playing and keeping up with the game challenging even for the most seasoned veterans.
Great Refuge banning & updates
On January 28th AMG finally updated their official documents for the Spectrum and Blue Marvel release and also decided to ban the TTC The Great Refuge in a surprising move. Usually AMG reserves their updates for around Adepticon in March and Ministravaganza in November.
The Great Refuge was an Inhumans specific TTC that enabled their more lethal characters (Black Bolt) to take down enemy models deep in the field. Possibly it could result in a Daze Round 1 and a KO Round 2. AMG has been pretty adverse to Round 1 shenanigans so this TTC found itself banned. (They are still allowing Terrigenesis which is another very powerful Inhuman TTC.)
February
Valkyrie on Elendil & Warriors Three
Next we have Asgardians on big (65 mm) bases. Valkyrie on Elendil and the Warriors Three are really gorgeous models. The character cards are interesting and powerful. These models are competitive in their own affiliation but are not quite good enough to be splashed anywhere else currently.
This summer we’ve seen some resurgence of Asgard winning events and both of these models have been included in lists. Post character rebalance these models will have even more competition in their slots. However, Valkyrie on Elendil could see some more play alongside a buffed 3-Threat OG Valkyrie so look out for that.
I can definitely recommend this box if you’re looking for great sculpts, competitive Asgard, or unique characters to put in your lists.
Adam Warlock, Moondragon, and Quasar
Guardians got new reinforcements with a leader in Adam Warlock and affiliated models Moondragon and Quasar. Adam Warlock is a base 7-Threat character but is often played at 8-Threat using his Bonded Soul Gem and the Reality Gem. AMG did a good job balancing this high Threat model and he has an interesting leadership with the ability to switch out die faces and store one for later.
Moondragon has the ability to take the Mind Gem so she can be played as either a 3 or 4-Threat character. It seems she’s preferred in competitive lists with the Gem attached and she has seen play in her affiliated teams, the Avengers, Defenders, and Guardians.
Quasar is somehow the least competitive of all the models in this box, even though she feels like she has a pushed character card. She has 4 powerful superpowers which are reasonably costed. She feels like a great brawler but hasn’t found a competitive home yet. Unfortunately, she is competing against some premiere 4-Threats in the form of Beta Ray Bill and Yondu in Guardians affiliation.
I would rate this box as a success for MCP both in casual and competitive scenes.
March
Kang, Iron Monger, Rescue, and Iron Lad
March brought the rare 4 character box with Kang, Iron Lad, Rescue, and Iron Monger. There’s a vague theme of armored models but they span a wide variety of affiliations.
Kang brings a Cabal leadership on a 6 Threat with some really strange time-travel TTCs. He has some potential and hopefully will see some more play in the future with Cabal. Iron Lad was released without any affiliation but will be put into Young Avengers when that releases. While without affiliation he doesn’t seem to have many reasons to be put on the table, even though he can also use the Kang TTCs (using the Nathaniel Richards alter ego). Time will tell whether the Young Avengers affiliation is reason to put him on the table.
Rescue has been billed as the first ‘support’ character with some interesting design that can heal allied characters, move them around the board (and heal them), or boost defenses. She’s probably the 2nd most competitive character in this box and will also be a better enabler when the character update increases health pools across the board.
Iron Monger is the last and most competitive model in this box. His character card isn’t all that flashy or exciting but his innate characteristics make him a valuable model to have on the board. He’s a 3-Threat on a big (65 mm) base that is also size 4. He has damage reduction and a limited dice re-roll superpower. He’s a solid include for his affiliated teams, Cabal and Criminal Syndicate. He’s a challenge for your opponent to deal with and can hold his own on a flank. He’s another great sculpt that is fun to show off on the table.
Unfortunately, this release also had a major printing error on Iron Lad which needed errata. The assembly instruction PDF was delayed from the physical release as well.
Adepticon
You can read my Adepticon recap article here. Unfortunately, the AMG presentation was pretty light on new information for MCP. The biggest reveal was the Sentinel character cards releasing in Q2 2026 and the Jubilee character card coming Q3 2026. The Sentinels were very exciting, but there was confusion after the 3-Threat Prime Sentinel models had different health printed on their regular card and their promo card.
Additionally, Jubilee was underwhelming for the community. She’s a pretty weak 2-Threat character with abilities that don’t really synergize. A 2-Threat mutant in affiliation might still be played but it looks like she’s just another mutant that is under the curve.
After the presentation it felt like a definite let-down as far as the roadmap went. Basically no new product was announced to the community. AMG said they didn’t want to over-promise or tease product that was really far down the line. They also said that there was possibly product that could come out in the roadmap that wasn’t included in the presentation. After the first half of 2026, we still don’t have any more information or additional product announced.
The community was also excited about a wave of character re-balances that often are released during Adepticon. AMG stated that the character re-work was in progress and it would be larger than any before, mostly because they were working on a game-wide re-balance of health pools, specifically for 3-Threat models. But because the re-work was so large, it would be delayed until June. (Since then the update has been pushed to July per a Facebook post.)
April
There were no new releases in April. In the last week of April the Crisis cards for Operation Zero Tolerance were revealed online with an effective rotation date of June 12th.
May
Bastion, Nimrod, and Omega Sentinel
These models were fully spoiled at Adepticon and came out in May. Bastion brings a new Sentinels leadership to the game which benefits the robots who want to be attacking early and often during the game. While this seemed like a very oppressive leadership, it hasn’t caused too many problems in the meta since it released.
Nimrod has not seen the success that fellow 5-Threat Blue Marvel saw upon release. However, Omega Sentinel has huge benefits to playing on Pay-to-Flip Secures and generally brings a good character card to the table so she’s seen play both in Sentinels and in other affiliations.
These model sculpts are quite complex and unfortunately the assembly document was again delayed from physical release. As of the time I’m writing this article the affiliation document and base size document are not updated with these characters on the AMG website. Finally, the Nimrod card also has a misprint on it similar to Iron Lad that needs errata (but is also not updated in the errata document on the AMG website).
June
Crisis Card Pack Operation Zero Tolerance
The Crisis cards in the Operation Zero Tolerance pack were released online in late April and we also got a new Challenger document with Crisis rotation information. This allowed players to update for the new season and tournaments to adapt before the physical product was released. However, even since the physical release, the AMG website does not have a print and play for the Crises like they usually do. The War of Kings Crisis document from 2025 is still found on the AMG website.
With this release, we finally got clarity on the health pool of the Prime Sentinels (6/6) through the Rules Forum but AMG has not officially added them to the affiliation or base size document on their official website.
This set of Crisis cards is supposed to set the baseline for a year long competitive MCP scene but it’s felt like they haven’t supported the release. The community has done a lot of work to implement these Crises but finding this information from AMG can be a real challenge.
The near future
Per a Facebook post, the character card update is expected in July. The reason given currently is that it represents a large overhaul of the line to bring old models back into the competitive scene by giving them a health increase. Health increases mean a model is on the table for a longer period of time and can effect change on the game. They should also gain more Power over the course of the game by taking more damage.
We are also supposed to see some larger character changes like we have in past character update documents. We know at least that they want to slightly nerf Shang-Chi and Apocalypse and buff characters like Magneto.
My hope with this release is that we see a release on the AMG website with few to none errors. That has been the standard in the past so hopefully we get back to that standard.
Boxes available for pre-order:
Currently on the AMG webstore there are quite a few pre-orders available. However, they are all terrain pieces or re-packs of older characters. First, I’m really happy that older characters are becoming available and new players can find older models easily. It will help the health of the game.
Second, the terrain pieces primarily consist of really large center-pieces which often don’t play well on a board for MCP. I think they look cool and they might appeal to hardcore hobbyists but I don’t see anyone in my local community that wants to buy them or play with them.
We also have two new Starter Sets on pre-order, one for Asgard and one for Guardians of the Galaxy. Both contain 10 models but neither contain the highly sought after Beta Ray Bill model. The two Starter sets we got last year were priced at 95$ which seemed like a fine introductory price to get new players everything they needed to play a game in one box. The Guardians box is now priced at 100$ which seems fine but the Asgard box is priced at 125$. I’m not sure what caused AMG to change the prices and also make them not consistent across boxes. These starter sets were also put as Q2 2027 in the Adepticon timeline so things definitely were not communicated very well.
These boxes for pre-order stretch all the way to August 21st but we have not seen any communication or pre-orders for new models that are supposed to come Q3 2026. We know from Adepticon that we should get a 4-model mutant box and a 3 model Hulk themed box.
In fact, the official articles from AMG on their website (“transmissions”) haven’t done a Panel to Play since the end of April. There were zero transmissions for the month of May and the three transmissions we got in June were all aimed at hobbying/painting.
The official affiliation documents on the AMG website were last updated in March so we’re now looking at a multiple month stretch where we aren’t getting updates from the company website. I’m not sure the reason for this or why they’re using the Rules Forum or social media as preferred routes of communication.
Conclusions
Overall we’ve seen a smaller number of new model be released but they have an outsized impact because they launch new affiliations or new leaderships. I think that has been helpful to the game since there has been no box that has been a total dud in terms of casual and competitive interest.
This theme continues with the other boxes on the roadmap for 2026. We should see new affiliations or leaderships for every single box with the exception of the Criminal Syndicate box in Q4 2026. (But it is unclear from the Adepticon presentation whether we’ll get the Young Avengers in Q4 2026 or Q2 2027.)
I’m not confident that we’ll see anything else new from AMG for the remainder of 2026. With a lack of communication and support for their releases recently I can’t see them going above and beyond the roadmap we were already given. While MCP is supposed to be a focus of the AMG studio moving forward, it doesn’t feel like there’s been a consistent or robust support for the game.
We do know that the MCP-adjacent board game (MCP Alliances) is supposed to be launching in August 2026 but we also haven’t seen any pre-orders available for that game yet. They have two additional Alliances product launches in early 2027. I’m not sure what resources went into Alliances versus the main MCP game but I hope that it won’t cause an extended period of hardship for supporting MCP.
I think MCP boxes that hit the shelves so far in 2026 have been good for new players and existing players. Re-packs, starter sets, and new models will help the game in the long run. I also think that the character cards, leaderships, and new affiliations released have been interesting and the sculpts have never been better. Unfortunately, the company does need to work on their official documents and transmissions on their AMG website to better support and provide information to their player base. The AMG website should be a one-stop shop for all of the information needed to play MCP and right now it is lacking. Printed product also had several problems this year with wrong Power costs or wrong superpower symbols. Hopefully AMG can get back to product that is well vetted and printed with no errors.
Let me know what you’ve liked and disliked so far in 2026 for MCP. 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. Come back here soon for my review of the July character card updates! I’m really looking forward to how this will change MCP and bring back some long forgotten models! Good luck and happy gaming!
