Symbiotes are on the loose! A S.H.I.E.L.D. transport carrying canisters of Klynar symbiotes has crashed downtown and must be contained. Multiple Crisis teams have converged on the wreckage in an attempt to secure these symbiotes for their own ends. Little do they know, several containers have broken open and symbiotes have begun claiming various heroes and villains as their new hosts. Its chaos in the streets as aliens run rampant in a winner-take-all battle royale for superiority. Who will come out on top?
Separation Anxiety is a print and play Ultimate Encounter for Marvel: Crisis Protocol designed for four players to duke it out in a free for all battle royale. This scenario was originally released as a game night kit for retailer events and has since been added to Atomic Mass Games’ line up of digital narrative scenarios. You can find the digital copy on their website, or if you’re lucky you might be able to find a physical copy in the aftermarket or at an FLGS event.
Unlike other Ultimate Encounters, the Separation Anxiety encounter does not have a Cosmic Threat player. Instead, the scenario revolves around four players fighting each other and attempting to secure as many Klyntar containment canisters for their squad as possible.
For this scenario, each player creates a squad with a Threat Value of 11 and brings with them 3 Team Tactics cards. Also, Affiliations are available to the players using standard Affiliation rules, which means players have access to Leaderships and any affiliated Team Tactics cards too. It’s a fun challenge coming up with a short list of characters and trying to balance heavy hitters, Leaderships and utility at such a short threat level. On average, we ended up using either 2 or 3 characters per Squad.
Since this is a four-person event, we have modified rules for Priority and Activations while playing this scenario. Instead of the normal Priority rules, we have a new Priority Tracker card which will be used for tracking who’s turn it is. Players begin the game by randomly selecting designated faction tokens out of a bag and placing them in order on the Priority Tracker. As the game plays out in the same alternating activations style, continuing to each player on the tracker until all of the players characters have activated. As players finish their turns, if all of their characters have Activated or Daze tokens, they then move their Priority token down to the first available Next Round slot on the Priority Tracker. During the Clean Up Phase, any effects that need to be resolved by players are completed based on the order of the Next Round section and then all of the tokens are moved up to the Priority section of the card.
The main feature of this scenario is the Symbiote Deck. This deck is comprised of 16 cards, 14 symbiotes and 2 sonic rifles. Each symbiote has their own special abilities, which can lead to some crazy combos with characters.
Characters may interact with any of the Canister tokens on the table to draw a card from the Symbiote Deck and give it to the interacting character. If it is a Symbiote card, they must also pick up a Symbiote Token. This interact does not cost power, thanks to the Willing Hosts special rule. In fact, all Interacts are free during this scenario.
A character may not hold more than one Symbiote Card and/or Symbiote Token at a time, but it may have a Sonic Rifle as well as a Symbiote Card. If a character would gain a new Symbiote Card during the game, that character must discard one of the two Symbiote Cards at random. This represents the two symbiotes fighting over which of the two will inhabit their host. The discarded card goes into a discard pile next to the Symbiote Deck and if there aren’t any cards left in the deck, the discard pile is shuffled to create a new deck.
Standard interaction rules apply to the Canister tokens, as they are Objective Tokens, and a character may only interact with a given token once per activation as usual. This keeps players from multi-drawing the deck during a turn.
The map is split into four deployment zones, with each player choosing a corner of the map to deploy from. Each player may deploy within range 5 of their designated corner, allowing them to get into the thick of it pretty quickly. It’s a quarter circle deployment zone, which looks intimidating to set up but is actually quite simple in practice. If you measure from the corner of the battle field with one edge of the range 5 tool, it will give you an idea of where you can place your characters.
The Klyntar Beacon token is placed at the center of the table and it surrounded by four Canister tokens, placed north, south, east and west of the Beacon, Range 5 away from their respective table edges. You’ll want to keep the Symbiote deck and any tokens near the battlefield for easy access to players.
Throughout the game, players will be vying for control of the Klyntar Beacon, Symbiote Tokens and Canisters. Players will score 1 VP for each character they control that is holding a Symbiote Token, they will also score 1 VP for each Canister they are securing. Additionally, if a character is holding the Klyntar Beacon and is also holding a Symbiote Token, they will score an additional 1 VP.
The first player to score 16 VP total, wins the game.
The Klyntar Beacon acts as an Extract Token, this isn’t mentioned in the rules, but according to the official AMG Rules forum it is to be treated as an Asset. Any character who has special rules that interact with Asset tokens can use them with the Klyntar Beacon.
Meanwhile the Canisters have been clarified to be Secure Objective tokens, but haven’t been given designations as Point of Interest or Target of Opportunity tokens. But based on the rulebook descriptions of each, I would rule them as Points of Interest Secure Objectives, but I’m not sure if that really matters or not. I can’t recall any characters that have special rules that interact with specific types of Secures.
Finally, we have Symbiote Tokens, these have been clarified as plain Objective tokens and do not interact with any special rules that target tokens. They can only be moved off of a character with rules within the Separation Anxiety Ultimate Encounter, such as the Sonic Rifle.
During the game, players can knock Symbiotes loose from their hosts by using Sonic Rifles. The Sonic Rifle gives the character holding it a new attack called Sonic Rifle. This attack is a Beam 5, Strength 5 attack that costs 0 power to use. It has two special rules, one of which also references the Creepy Crawly Goo rule.
The first special rule is called Force Separation, it has a Crit and Wild trigger and this is what forces the target to drop their Symbiote Token and lose their Symbiote Card. The Symbiote Token is dropped using standard dropped token rules, so it is dropped within Range 2 of the character that dropped it.
The second special rule seems confusing at first, but it’s pretty straight forward in practice. Any Symbiote Tokens on the battlefield that are in the path of the beam’s range measurement tool must be moved as per the Creepy Crawly Goo special rule. This causes the tokens on the table to move Range 2 from their current position. We are only referencing the movement portion of Creepy Crawly Goo, so for now nothing else happens with the Symbiote Token. It should also be noted that this can move tokens peeled off of characters too, since this movement happens after the attack is resolved.
There are only two of these in the game and if a character that is holding one is Dazed or KO’d the Sonic Rifle they were carrying is put in the discard pile. It cannot be picked up from the battlefield. Also, it could come up that a character ends up with two Sonic Rifles, if they draw a second one.
Other than that, it’s basically a battle royale and a good reason to just slam models into each other. I used a Cabal list featuring Red Skull, Baron Mordo and Nightcrawler, my wife brought Immortal Hulk and Venom, one of our friends brought She-Hulk and Ultron and our other friend played a Spider-Foes list of Green Goblin, Lizard and Electro. More on how that all played out in a minute.
But you may be asking, so, is it worthwhile? Oh yeah it is.
Separation Anxiety is the ultimate casual game mode for Marvel: Crisis Protocol. It’s low model count, which makes it easy to introduce the game to newer players. Being a 4-player encounter, it lets you and your friends all play together without having to figure out team rules. It features objective base play, which also does a good job of introducing new players to standard game mechanics, but you also get to just hang with friends, roll dice and toss miniatures into each other. It’s an excellent variation to your standard 1v1 game.
The off the wall combinations of symbiote abilities and characters can lead to some very interesting moments.
In our last game, Nightcrawler go ahold of a Sonic Rifle and then proceeded to make a Range 5 Beam attack – targeting 4 characters. This let him Puff of Smoke 4 times and while he ate 2 traps from Green Goblin, he as able to shred Norman with a follow-up Brimstone Blitz, which was cranked up to 12 dice, only to be dazed by Lizard on the next turn.
Red Skull pulled Raze from the Symbiote Deck, giving him 3 more power during the Power Phase, and the ability to store up to 15 power, at the cost of 1 less Mystic Defense. This let him do some crazy shenanigans without needing to use the Power of the Cube for extra power. Meanwhile, Lizard was able to hold onto Sleeper for a long time, allowing him a new gainer that also forced movement. This comboed so well with Green Goblin, allowing our friend to pop off of their traps whenever he would move an enemy near either Norman.
And then you had my wife, who brought Immortal Hulk to the table, and then Venomized him. She pulled Anti-Venom for him, giving him even more ways to heal himself. Scary.
Separation Anxiety is easily our most played Ultimate Encounter and a great way to get games in with our friends at Adepticon. It lives in the front pouch of my backpack; in case there’s interest at the game store too. It’s a great way to get casual play in with larger groups of friends and a nice palette cleanser, for when you need a break from playing standard games.
Have you tried out the Separation Anxiety Ultimate Encounter? How do you feel about it, what were some crazy shenanigans that happened during the event? Let us know and hit me up on Bluesky, Instagram, or if you’re a member of the Goonhammer Discord server share them on the dedicated Marvel: Crisis Protocol channel.
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