It has been several months since the War of Kings shook up Marvel Crisis Protocol with a whole new set of Crises to play on.
As well as the Crisis changes we have had some interesting balance changes in May which have brought new life into models such as Gambit and Carnage.
Lets find out how these changes have affected the competitive landscape. Which affiliations are doing well and which not so well.
This data is taken from the release date of the War of Kings which was officially March 14th 2025 up till the present day. It is also filtered to only include ranked events with 30+ people so some smaller 20 player events will have been excluded.
It’s worth a caveat that team events as well as singles events were included in the data. We also can’t forget that not everyone enters their information into longshanks perfectly so there will be cases where it looks like people have played their affiliation without a leader when in reality they just didn’t enter the leader into the results.
Top Affiliations by Win Rate
Convocation
The wizards have had some strong performances recently, boasting a 59% win rate over 178 games. Convocation are an interesting affiliation as they more than any other affiliation skew towards mystic attacks. This is particularly good into the Web Warriors, as it bypasses their spider-sense defensive rerolls.
In addition they don’t have a singular leader that they are stuck to and have the flexibility to assign their leadership card to any of their affiliated characters.
Unlike other leaderships attached to tactics cards the Bar with no doors leadership does not count towards the five you can take in a match. This leadership gives the wizards the ability to get a strong early lead on extracts leveraging the ‘Circle of the Cosmos‘ ability to bump range 1 when one of their characters is damaged.
This lets them dive an extract early with someone hard to kill like Lizard then each time the opponent attacks him, he will bump away making it likely he won’t be in range for follow up attacks.
The balance update helped several of their affiliated characters gaining extra health on Magik, Clea and Doctor Strange. Doctor Strange and Clea both received other big changes to their kit in the update.
On top of this, the most recent bogeyman – Thor, Hero of Midgard – received significant nerfs in February, not long before the War of Kings release. His strong energy attacks were a problem for the Wizards before this point as their ‘Iron-Bound Books of Shuma-Gorath‘ don’t protect them from energy. Thor’s removal from the meta has helped the Convocation to claim the top spot at the start of this season.
Web Warriors
The Web-heads are the premier scenario-focused team in the game and have maintained a strong 58% win rate across 513 games. Miles and Gwen have remained untouched since they were introduced and the rest of their key pieces like Spectacular Spider-man and Black Cat were also not hit by the recent balance pass.
One of their most common 2-threat splash characters, Toad did get nerfed in the balance pass losing some health on his healthy side making him easier to put down early but with most of the rest of their kit unchanged this doesn’t seem to have stopped the Web’s dominance.
From their two available leaders, Miles Morales is the clear favorite, with the majority of games being played under Miles. His defensive reroll and the ability to (sometimes) reroll skulls both serve the web’s game plan of picking up an early lead and maintaining it by weathering whatever the opponent throws at them.
The crisis rotation with the War of Kings removed some of the most central fight-y scenarios such as Research Station Attacked! and Gamma Wave Sweeps Across Midwest. This has left the Web Warriors in a great spot as most of the remaining scenarios are relatively high scoring, working to the Web Warrior’s strengths.
Servants of Apocalypse
The Servants of the Apocalypse are a relatively new faction to the game but have shown some impressive results so far. Since the War of Kings they have kept a 58% win rate over 704 games.
In many ways The Servants of Apocalypse is one of the most complicated affiliations in the game forcing you to assign characters additional super powers each game. These powers are specific to characters within your affiliation and unlike other affiliations, splashing characters from outside gives little benefit as they can’t gain these horseman powers.
Despite these limitations top players have solved the Apocalypse puzzle for the most part and this has led to some strong results on the tabletop.
The balance pass reduced the effectiveness of Toad as mentioned above but breathed new life into some of their other horsemen such as Gambit, Magik and Colossus which has overall left Apocalypse in a great position.
Apocalypse also has a strong game into the Web warriors as he has a lot of maneuverability to put out early strong mystic attacks. In addition he can use the Pestilence horseman power to put conditions such as poison and root on them which drains a lot of the early power of the Web Heads preventing them from a lot of their defensive tricks.
SHIELD
The Agents of SHIELD have achieved a 55% win rate over 227 games since the start of the War of King’s season. SHIELD are a team that can play the scenario game very well with Nick Fury able to pick up two extracts in one activation. They can play a core team very similar to the Web Warriors, with a dual Webs and SHIELD team being fairly common as they share some key pieces.
SHIELD are a team that can also pivot from the scenario game to attrition very well. Namor‘s Charismatic leader reroll bubble stacks with Baron Zemo‘s strategic genius rerolls and once you have a bunch of guns backed up by these rerolls they can start deleting models quickly.
When it comes to choice of leader the most popular are the Invaders led by Namor and the Last Line of Defence led by Nick Fury Jr. Invincible Iron Man remains as the least popular leader and also has the lowest win rate of the three.
One aspect that might be keeping SHIELD down is their relative lack of displacement. Many of their common characters such as Nick Fury Jr, Namor, The Howling Commandos and Baron Zemo have difficulty moving characters off objectives other than just killing them.
Being made up of mostly regular humans, they also don’t have many terrain throws in affiliation so can be at the mercy of the opponent throwing the biggest pieces on the table at them. Finally as mentioned previously, access to mystic attacks is strong at the moment to help against the Web Warriors but SHIELD have no magic users in affiliation.
Inhumans
Inhumans are considered by many to be one of the boogeymen of the War of Kings meta, boasting a 53% win rate over 753 games. They recently received an update of four new models with some great tactics cards to go with them. These additions have also revitalized an older tactics card, Terrigenesis — as it turns out, suddenly gaining 2 victory points out of nowhere is pretty powerful.
The majority of competitive Inhumans’ rosters rely on leveraging how strong they can be with extracts.
A typical round 1 for Inhumans with priority on an F-shaped map (like the five-side of a dice) often involves safely grabbing the central extract with a character like Toad, while using the leadership ability to pass a power to Quicksilver.
Then you, as the opponent would take one of your home extracts left or right. On their second turn they pass Quicksilver another power so that he is now on 3 power before activating. This gives him enough power to move and use his Speedster superpower to move long again stealing your remaining home extract before using their final move action to move Quicksilver long away to safety.
Usually if an opponent tries to dive your home extracts you can try to do the same and dive theirs back hoping that your character can survive and maintaining score. The reality is that Black Bolt has one of the strongest builders in the game – 6 dice energy with a reroll and pierce on a wild. The great refuge means that if you do try to dive him he will teleport in and shoot you twice almost certainly dazing your character. All this amounts to situations where the Inhuman player can be 4-1 up on extracts at the end of the first round which is very difficult for a lot of teams to come back from if they keep that advantage.
It’s no surprise that Black Bolt’s leadership is by far the most popular choice competitively with the majority of games being played under him. The ability to move power around your characters means that they can make plays in the early game that other teams might not be able to make until much later on under normal circumstances.
The 53% win rate shows that although strong, the Inhumans are far from unbeatable and if their early turns don’t go their way they can struggle. As Black Bolt’s leadership moves power around but does not create it, they don’t particularly like pay to flip scenarios which can drain them of much needed early power.
The Best of the Rest
Although those are the top five, the rest of the field aren’t too far behind, and there are competitive builds for the majority of affiliations in the game.
A-Force
A-Force also sit with a 53% win rate though only across 126 games. One of their main strengths at the moment are the fact that She-Hulk and The Mighty Thor are both great models into Apocalypse as they can throw his size 4 frame into his relatively fragile horsemen. On top of that they have a large roster of strong models and some great tactics cards like Special Delivery to go with them.
Criminal Syndicate
The Criminals are the third affiliation on this list with a 53% win rate over 760 games. Both Shadowlands Daredevil and Kingpin have done well out of the War of Kings crisis update.
Kingpin’s ability for his healthy characters to count as 2 lets him score early leads on scenarios such as Super-Powered Scoundrels For Sinister Syndicate which has 5 points on the table.
Shadowlands Daredevil has always been strong but been let down historically by not being as good at a central fight as some other fighting teams. Now that those scenarios are gone, Shadowlands can shine once more. New tools for the criminals such as Mephisto and Loki Prince of lies have also helped push them into the spotlight. And the ability for an attrition team to suddenly steal priority with All According to Plan is very strong.
Dark Dimension
The Dark Dimension managed a 51% win rate over 196 games at the start of this War of Kings season. The ability to take any character in the game and use them with a powerful leadership will always give Dormammu and his thralls a strong standing. Dormammu himself as 8 threat worth of leader is often the one aspect bringing the affiliation down. One of their latest popular tricks is to use Weapon-X as under Dormammu he can charge round 1, put out a huge amount of damage and then later in the game be brought back with Dark Restoration.
Wakanda
The Wakandans come in with a 51% win rate over 405 games. Theyhave an extremely strong fighting core with M’Baku and King T’Challa together forming a hard hitting team that can leverage cards like Wakanda Forever to push things in their favor. Although Spirit of Wakanda isn’t as good as it once was when Advanced R&D was legal, it’s another very strong card in their arsenal that can help against Apocalypse as they can remove all special conditions from their characters at once.
Asgard
Oh how the mighty have fallen. The Asgardians have a perfectly balanced 50% win rate over 457 games. Just before the War of Kings began they were one of the strongest teams in the game. Thor, Hero of Midgard along with strong affiliated pieces such as Beta Ray Bill and The Mighty Thor were extremely difficult to deal with especially on a central scenario. The nerfs to Thor, Hero of Midgard on top of the removal of the central fights have made it difficult for the Asgardians to compete in the War of Kings meta.
Avengers
The Avengers are the most popular affiliation in the game with a 50% win rate across 1073 games. As they come bundled in both starter sets there is an argument that the Avengers get let down by newer players bringing them and doing less well. That being said there are some strong Avengers builds at the moment.
Steve Rogers‘ leadership can leverage them with some strong round 1 plays with many characters such as Shang Chi and Sam Wilson able to charge off the bat. The First Avenger version of Steve also has some strong builds with the newly revamped Gambit being a particularly good reserve member for the Avengers.
Spider-Foes
The Spider Foes also kept a balanced 50% win rate across 438 games. The newly revamped Carnage can make a Green Goblin focused list extremely scary to deal with. Carnage gets a lot of mileage when coupled with some of the Spider-Foes cards such as Surprise Webhead. The Foes have always been good at doing chip damage to their opponents with abilities such as Mysterio‘s Tricks and Traps. This can particularly good into the Web Warriors who rely on defensive rerolls to overcome their small health pools.
Everyone Else
The other affiliations all have a sub 50% win rate in the War of Kings meta at the moment. This doesn’t mean that a skilled player can’t do well with them, just that as a whole there are currently better options. For the most part MCP is in a very balanced spot with most affiliations with win rates between 40 and 59%.
There are a few outliers at the bottom of the pack. The Sentinels are struggling with a 37% win rate. The Black Order down at 35% and Hellfire club at a measly 24% (though only across 52 games).
There has never been a better time to bring your favorite superheroes to an event and start battling it out. Unless of course your favorite superheroes are giant mutant hating robots but thankfully we have confirmation of the Sentinels getting some love in 2026.
To deep dive into more of these stats yourself go to Longshanks here.
For more Marvel Crisis Protocol content, take a look at our other articles here.Â
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