In Marvel Crisis Protocol, the Spider-Foes affiliated models exist on two extreme ends of the gameplay spectrum – either broad generalists who are decent at everything or hyper-specialized pieces who can’t veer too far outside a very specific role. The Kraven and Lizard box delivers two of the latter – both are the best at what they do in Spider-Foes.
While the pair helps round out the rosters they’re in, it also makes sense to package them together from a narrative and thematic perspective: Kraven, the super-powered big-game hunter, and Lizard, the brilliant scientist-turned-reptilian monster.
Kraven the Hunter: Spider-Foes 3-Point Glass Canon
Kraven’s Basic Playstyle & Affiliated Synergies
At first glance, Kraven’s stat line and basic attack suite look fairly underwhelming. His rankings of 3 Defense each for Physical, Energy, and Mystic are among the lowest at this threat level. Moreover, a Range 2, Strength 5 attack and a Range 3, Strength 4 attack don’t seem to compensate for Kraven’s fragility. Fortunately, all of these numbers are pretty deceiving, and Kraven – while squishy – can take a hit or two and has the highest average damage output in the entire Spider-Foes affiliation at his threat level.
Kraven’s whole gimmick is that he gets a big boost when he can start within Range 2 of an enemy model and attack them twice (or more, but we’ll get to that later). While Kraven’s Kukri strike is a fairly standard 5 dice (with a nice automatic Bleed and a Medium move on a Wild trigger), his Spear Thrust gets boosted from 4 dice to 7 if he’s already attacked the same target with a Kukri Strike this round. Moreover, Kraven’s Elixer of Calypso gives him one reroll on all attack and defense rolls, so he’s mathematically pretty close to rolling a 6-dice attack and an 8-dice attack if he starts his turn in the proper position, which is wildly high for a 3 threat.
Kraven also has two other superpowers that up his damage and allow him to deal with fast characters who may want to run away from him. Expert Tracker gives Kraven and every ally an extra die when targeting one enemy model until the end of the round (and he can put this marker on as many characters as he can pay for), which boosts his output even further. Moreover, Corner the Beast lets Kraven pick an enemy model to receive 1 point of damage every time they Advance or Climb until the end of that character’s next turn, whether that’s yet to come in the current round or not until the next one.
While Kraven works well as a self-sufficient damage-dealer, he does have some specific synergies with other Spider-Foes and affiliated Team Tactics Cards that make him even better. First, Kraven loves Custom Upgrades, which gives the user two extra attack and defense dice into a specific target for the rest of the game. Moreover, Surprise, Webhead, which allows any number of Spider-Foes characters to make a zero-cost attack into one enemy model, not only lets Kraven do a second boosted Spear Thrust attack, but the extra attack die that Kraven can hand out with Expert Tracker means every ally is hitting harder. With these two cards and counting a reroll as a die, Kraven can dish out an absurd 28 attack dice in one activation without jumping through any particularly challenging hoops.
Kraven’s Corner the Beast synergizes well with Mysterio, who can Advance enemy models when he does damage with his builder. This functionally means that Mysterio’s attacks do a free extra damage every time he lands a hit. This damage also applies to Advances from the Spider-Infected Extract Crisis and allows Kraven to Daze an enemy model during the Power Phase, meaning they stay Dazed for the whole round.
Lizard: The Tankiest 3-Threat Model In MCP
Lizard’s Basic Playstyle & Affiliated Synergies
Unlike Kraven, whose power may not be apparent at first glance, Lizard is an excellent example of being able to judge a book by its cover. He’s the Yang to Kraven’s Ying, an absolute brick house with unparalleled defensive tools but little offensive output. Lizard has a defensive spread of 4 Physical, 3 Energy, and 3 Mystic with 6 Healthy HP and 5 Injured, which is slightly above the curve but not particularly noteworthy. However, that’s all boosted by Lizard’s Thick Hide, which reduces all incoming damage by 1 (to a minimum of 1), and Healing Factor 1, which slowly heals up any damage that does get through.
Lizard’s attack suite is unexciting, but he generally won’t attack much in a game. Instead, his job is to hold an Extract, sit on a Secure, and require far more investment than any other three-threat model to take off the board. Lizard’s throw, Biomechanical Breakthrough, is where you’ll want to spend most of his power. If he’s taking hits and gaining power, which he does exceptionally well under Doc Ock’s leadership, a good turn for him is double moving with his Medium base and Medium Move and throwing someone off a point.
Lizard doesn’t have any particular synergies with other Spider-Foes because what he does is very self-sufficient. However, he uses some of the affiliated Team Tactics Cards particularly well. Given how tanky he is, Lizard will often grab a midline Extract or even dive an opponent’s home extract round 1. Given he’s unlikely to die to one or two hits from all but the strongest high-threat models, Lizard can bank power and play Strategic Retreat, which lets a Spider-Foes model pay 4 Power to pass an Extract to an ally and Advance Short away from the attacker then they’re targeted by an attack. He also becomes even more incredibly tanky with Custom Upgrades, going up to 6-5-5 defenses with damage reduction against a single enemy model. This allows him to sit on a flank and almost guarantee survival for a few rounds.
Team Tactics Cards
The Lizard and Kraven box comes with three Team Tactics Cards: an unaffiliated card locked to Kraven, an unaffiliated card locked to Lizard, and a Spider-Foes affiliated card that anyone can use. Unfortunately, their quality ranges from middling to quite poor.
To get it out of the way first, Fearful Symmetry is an absolute win in terms of theme and representing a story from Marvel Comics, but it should never be played outside of the most casual of games. The trigger is niche – very few games will have a Peter Parker across the table – and the payoff is a downgrade to Kraven. At first glance, it may seem like Kraven can turn into Amazing Spider-Man or Spectacular Spider-Man if he KOs an enemy Peter Parker, but the wording, which specifies the name and Alter-Ego combo Spider-Man (Peter Parker), means Kraven can only turn into the 4-Threat version from the original Core Box.
Monkey Brain is Lizard Home is more reasonable and saw more play before the Spider-Foes got several more (and better) affiliated TTCs in 2024. The card has a straightforward effect – Lizard can pay a few Power to gain access to an Area 2 attack that pushes all targeted characters away short.
Closing out the box is Neogenetic Recombinator – a card that previously saw niche play but has largely been pushed out in favor of newer affiliated TTCs like Surprise Webhead and Custom Upgrades. Healing effects are rarer today in MCP than before, but this card doesn’t quite do any healing. Instead, it simply moves damage around. The obvious use case is to put damage onto models who can heal (most commonly Venom or Lizard) or protect Extract carriers, but it can also be used to manipulate priority by weakening unactivated models. Moreover, it can be used to Daze an allied model with only one or two remaining Hit Points at the end of a round to avoid a quick Daze and missed activation in the next round. However, until Foes get more models with powerful healing, Neogenetic Recombinator remains middling at best.
Closing
The Lizard and Kraven box is easy to recommend to anyone looking to hop into the Spider-Foes affiliation (Kraven is also in the Criminal Syndicate affiliation but sees far less play there). Lizard is a best-in-class tank, and Kraven, while partially outshined by similar attrition 3-Threats like Zemo, got a massive indirect glow-up with the TTCs in the 2024 Spider-Foes four-pack of new models. Of course, these models are also included in the Spider-Foes affiliation box along with Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus (3 Threat), making them even easier to acquire for potential new players to the Affiliation.
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