Welcome to Goonhammer’s Power Up in MCP series – a collection of articles to help players level up from casual to competitive. Below is a list of other articles in the set that you may find useful.
Marvel Crisis Protocol’s wide-open roster rules allow players to take any character in any list. While this presents incredible strategic or thematic opportunities, it can also make constructing a competitive roster overwhelming. In most cases, it’s not simply about taking the 10 best things in the game – or even in an affiliation – and jamming them together. While this might work to eke out some wins, players looking to level up and enjoy more competitive success need a better understanding of how different characters fit together like puzzle pieces to achieve victory.
Every Roster Starts with a Goal
There are only three ways to win a game of Marvel Crisis Protocol: be the first to 16 points, have more points than your opponent at the end of round 6, or KO every model on the opposing team. Realistically, very few affiliations intentionally pick one of the latter two – complete table wipes happen, but they’re rare (moreso with the current speed of the game), and most teams don’t differentiate between trying to reach 16 and simply being up after round 6.
However, there’s nuance within the broad strokes of any win condition that players need to think about before putting together their roster. While it’s impossible to cover every permutation of available strategies, the first step when picking 10 characters is to decide which of the following general game plans you want to focus on (or which combination):
- I want to use displacement and/or mobility to dominate the Secures.
- I want to use Extract steals or other tools to gain and maintain an Extract lead.
- I want to apply status conditions or other effects that disrupt my opponent’s game plan and enable my own.
- I want to leverage combat to remove enemy models and activations.
- I want to play reasonably wide, fielding 5+ models at most Threat levels.
- I want to play tall, usually fielding 3 or 4 models at most Threat levels.
In truth, this isn’t an either-or situation. It’s more like a radar graph that emphasizes some elements of play over others. With extremely few exceptions, every roster is going to play the Secure, Extract, Attrition, and Disruption game plans to varying degrees.
Which Affiliated Models Do I Actually Want in My List?
From here, it’s time to look at your affiliated models first, as they’ll form the foundation of most competitive lists. Some players find it helpful to consider a “core,” or the models you think you’ll play in most games, as a start. This typically includes three or four models, featuring a leader and your top characters. From there, consider which other characters from your affiliation play well with that core and which can sub in for another model if the crisis setup or opposing roster is a bad matchup.
Moreover, it’s generally worth avoiding too much overlap. It’s ok for two models at the same threat value to be vaguely similar, but if they have too much in common and have the same good and bad matchups, it may be a wasted slot if you can’t often play both. Instead, consider models that can slot in for your core models to cover their weaknesses or enable alternate game plans.
How Many Affiliated Models Should I Play & What Should I Look For in a Splash?
The number of affiliated models in your roster will vary by affiliation, but in general, the majority of competitive MCP lists use somewhere between 6 and 8 characters who are actually in that affiliation. Where you’ll land within that margin-or if you’ll go outside of it-will depend on a few factors.
Does your affiliation have Team Tactics Cards that scale up in power with more affiliated characters? Maybe you won’t want many splashes. Are most of your affiliation’s best characters within specific threat values? You might want to splash some models to fill out other threats. Does your leadership have specific synergy or unlock synergies with outside models? Consider splashing them, but remember that synergy alone isn’t always enough to warrant a spot in a roster.
At the end of the day, remember that you need all of your squads to be comprised of over 50% affiliated models. If you rely too much on splashes for your main game plan, or if you have too few affiliated models in your roster, you may find it hard to put together squads for certain crisis combinations or crisis threat values.
It’s easy to look at the Longshanks page for competitive events, see characters like Shang-Chi, Baron Zemo, and Toad among the most taken, and throw them into a list. Moreover, that might actually work. However, as you level up to a more competitive player, understanding what you need out of an affiliated model is crucial. Consider the general roles your affiliated models play, like offensive threat, defensive tank, mobile assassin, squishy support, etc. Would you prefer your splashes to double down on what your list is already good at or fill the gaps? Usually, it’s the latter unless the splash is so good at what they do that the overlap is worth it.
Should I Dual Affiliate? Questions to Consider
Does My Main Affiliation Have a Glaring Weakness?
All rosters will have things their best at, and there’s a difference between a less-than-ideal situation and a notable weakness. If your affiliation’s leader, leadership, and TTCs all struggle with one matchup or Crisis style, you may want to consider another affiliation that plays that game better.
Does the Dual Actually Give Me Anything?
A common mistake for newer or more casual players is to add a second affiliation to their rosters just because they can. They might look at their Kingpin Criminal Syndicate list, for example, see that they’re already playing an affiliated Black Cat and a splash Spectacular Spider-Man, and notice that they’re just one Miles Morales away from a Web Warriors dual. But why?
Kingpin lists can sometimes struggle on slow-scoring Crisis combinations that promote big brawls in the middle of the board and instead prefer slightly wider set-ups that score out quickly. In general, Web Warriors have the same likes and dislikes, so dual-affiliating doesn’t make the Kingpin list any better.
Building a Sample Roster
With the above advice in mind, let’s build a roster for one of the most popular affiliations: The Avengers.
Affiliated Core
- Hulk – One of the best models in the game, who synergizes well with Avengers TTCs and leadership.
- Captain America (Steve Rogers) – A leader good enough to play every game.
- Shang-Chi – An incredible model made even better by Captain America’s leadership.
Other Affiliated Models
- Sam Wilson and Luke Cage – Both 3 threat models who can be added to the above core to hit 17, the most common threat value in the game.
- Black Panther – A workhorse 4 threat model who can replace a 3 threat model at 18 points or help build a wider, faster squad without Hulk.
- Cable – A 5-point model to slot in at 19 that supports Hulk, Shang, Black Panther, and Steve exceptionally well.
Splashes
- Gorgon – an exceptional user of the Avengers’ “Reserve Members” TTC and synergizes well with Steve’s leadership
- Mighty Thor – An alternate five-threat model who is a bit tankier than Cable and prefers to be on the frontline instead of sitting a bit back
- Miles Morales – Another 3-threat who uses Reserve Members well. Miles also opens up an extract list for the list, which the included affiliated members lack. Helps fill in a wider list when Hulk doesn’t seem ideal
And that’s a start! From there, selecting TTCs and Crisis cards rounds out the list, but those are all predicated on having a good selection of models with which to play them — and steps we’ll cover in a future piece.
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