The February Marvel Crisis Protocol event at Common Ground Games in Stirling was particularly well-attended with an impressive 32 players showing up from across Scotland; not bad at all for a random Sunday in February. Gareth joined me to drive along the M9 as train times on Sundays make that option a bit less practical.

This month I wanted to try out Sentinels. They did recently get a nice quality of life update, but on the other hand they’re still probably the worst and most limited faction in the entire game. What they do have is Cassandra Nova, probably my favourite character in MCP. So the idea was basically to play the Sentinel Prime, the Sentinel MK4 and Cassandra Nova in every game, then add in a single other character to help the big robots be where they needed to be. I do also have Taskmaster in case I need to do some shenanigans to make the threat level work out at 16, but I should be able to avoid that and I want to play the faction to play Sentinels and Cassandra Nova, not to add in random Rogue Agents instead. My general game plan is to lock down one side with the Sentinels themselves, then use Cassandra Nova as an annoying skirmisher to mess with everyone else and make them waste actions chasing her. Many thanks to my good friend Stephen for lending me the Sentinel minis (though they’re not very miniature!).

Characters (10)
* Sentinel Prime MK4 (5)
Cassandra Nova (5)
Sentinel MK4 (4)
Clea (3)
* Red Skull, Master of the World (4)
* Loki, Prince of Lies (5)
King Black Bolt (6)
Taskmaster (3)
Gambit (3)
Hood (3)

Team Tactics (10)
Patch Up (R)
Sacrifice (R)
Directive One
Efficient Machines
Online and Operational
Under Your Skin
Cosmic Obliteration
Giant‘s Blood
Mental Domination
Warpath

Secure Crisis
Lockdown! Security Systems Stymie Breakout (S, 18)
Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse (C, 19)
Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate (F, 20)
Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack! (R, 20)
Mayor Fisk Vows To Find Missing Witnesses (H, 16)

Extract Crisis
Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)
Unexpected Guests Crash Royal Wedding (N, 17)
Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities (D, 18)
The Montesi Formula Found (E, 18)
Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)

Game 1: Sean playing Avengers on Wedding Party and Inhuman Weapons

Sean is new to MCP tournaments, though it seems that he plays somewhat often with the Dundee folks. I win Priority and choose my Secures, Sean decides that he wants all the toys so we play at 20 threat. This is a good set up for me; I can overload one side and let Cassandra Nova have fun on the other. I’m quite happy to be 4 wide so my splash character this game will be King Black Bolt; the Secure suits him well and he wants to go last in general to push people off points and Telepathic Command the Sentinels back into position.

Extraction: Inhumans Deploy Advanced Weaponry
Secure: Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack!
Threat: 20
My team: Sentinel Prime MK4, Cassandra Nova, Sentinel MK4, King Black Bolt
My cards: Efficient Machines, Mental Domination, Online and Operational, Patch Up, Sacrifice
Sean’s team: Captain America (Steve Rogers), Black Panther, Black Widow, Hulk, Shang-Chi
Sean’s cards: Avengers Assemble, Battle Plan, Chi Mastery, Patch Up, Warpath

Round 1: I need to make sure to start with two of the Inhuman Weapons, but I’m OK going down on the Secure this round as it means that I can move the tokens to where I want them. I win the second roll and start with the MK4 taking the Extract on the right. Somewhat to my surprise, Hulk takes the other one over there and Gamma Leaps backwards to safety. I pass and Black Panther takes an Exrtract on the left, so Cassandra takes the other one over there and Shang-Chi joins her on the Secure. Over on the right, the Prime and Black Bolt park themselves ont eh Secure and Captain America and Black Widow remain rather cautious. The score, as expected, is 4 – 4.

Round 2: Time to start fighting; I want to hamper Sean’s options and retain priority for at least one more round. Black Panther is somewhat vulnerable to Cassandra Nova so she drops him with a ridiculous couple of attack rolls, then uses Biokinesis to annoy Shang-Chi. Black Widow comes into Black Bolt with her spender but pleasingly fails to land the Stagger; the MK4 lays into her as she’s now a clear target for being taken out of the game. Hulk gives Black Bolt a good kicking but between his own reroll and help from the Prime I get away somewhat lightly, then in return he dazes Black Widow and pushes Hulk away [edit: oops, Hulk is too big for King Black Bolt to push with his builder. Sorry Sean if you’re reading this, and thanks to Omar for spotting it]. Captain America uses all his power to Slam Black Bolt away but is then short on power to play Assemble to get back where he needs to be. The Prime decides that Captain America with just one power is fine so just shuffles on the Wedding Party. Finally Shang-Chi goes to collect the Extract dropped by Black Panther which helpfully lets Cassandra Nova move back to the Secure with Psychic Distraction. Sean plays Avengers Assemble to get Shang-Chi contesting the left Secure and bring Hulk back into the action. The score goes to 8 – 6 to me.

Round 3: That went pretty swimmingly; I want to KO either Black Panther or Black Widow (with the former the priority target) and continue to stay ahead on the Secures. I don’t expect to take down Hulk and so he’ll continue to have his Extract, and the board layout now means it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to collect Shang-Chi’s off him. Cassandra Nova takes down Black Panther with two attacks and also using Mental Domination to move Shang-Chi into him, so that’s a rather nice start. Hulk slaps Black Bolt down to a single wound, and he pushes Hulk back off the Secure, Hit and Run-ing back to it himself and uses Telepathic Command to put the Prime back where I need him too. Black Widow decides she has had enough of dealing with big robots and heads over to attack Cassandra Nova. My Prime hurts Hulk a bit, mainly to give him a few annoying conditions, before Captain America plays Patch Up to undo most of that good work. In a desperation move he then moves to go after Cassandra Nova and dazes to Psychic Distraction; nonetheless I think that was the right move as Sean needed to take a risk to turn this around. The MK4 pulls Black Widow who KOs to Psychic Distraction (and Cassandra has been rolling very hot this game!) and moves to stand on the left Secure. Shang-Chi goes for a kick into Cassandra Nova, doesn’t get her and then also helpfully dazes to Psychic Distraction when he lands. The score now is 14 – 7 in my favour.

Round 4: This’ll need a miracle for Sean to come back into it, so I just need to not self-destruct. Whoever I attack needs to go down this round and I figure that Shang-Chi is my best option. The MK4 lays into him with double Spenders (assisted by the Prime’s rerolls) and then Shang-Chi gets polished off by a Restraint Cables into a rather fortuitous Psychic Distraction. Hulk finally wakes up and one-shots the MK4. My Prime loads Captain America with many conditions and he just moves to collect a fallen Extract. Cassandra finishes us off by moving Hulk away from the Secure with Mind Possession and we call this good at 19 – 9.

Thanks to Sean for a fun game. I had some extremely good dice throughout this, especially from Cassandra Nova, and I’ll admit that I felt a little bad for having such a game into a newer player. Obviously I flatter myself that I could have won this one regardless! We talked a bit after the game at things that Sean could have done differently, mainly not being so passive with Hulk at the start of the game and keeping Captain America somewhere he can usefully Bodyguard hits.

Game 2: Ross playing Servants of Apocalypse on M’Kraan Crystals and Montesi

It’s very cool to be able to play Ross again and this’ll be an interesting match-up – in general I think that I’ve got a pretty good record against him but Servants of Apocalypse is one of the top affiliations right now and Sentinels among the worst so I’ll have to play well to stay in this at all. Ross wins the roll-off and chooses his Secures; I end up picking M’Kraan as it’s the least bad option but I don’t really want to be rotating around too much here. I suspect that my best plan is delete one of his characters as early as possible and just try to work around Apocalypse himself as well as I can manage. Also of note is the brilliant Lego terrain courtesy of Allan. What a joy to play on!

Extraction: The Montesi Formula Found
Secure: M’Kraan Crystal Gets Heroes Home!
Threat: 19
My team: Sentinel Prime MK4, Cassandra Nova, Sentinel MK4, Loki Prince of Lies
My cards: Efficient Machines, Mental Domination, Online and Operational, Patch Up, Sacrifice
Ross’s team: Apocalypse, Gambit (Death, Iceman (Famine), Magik (War), Sabretooth (Pestilence)
Ross’s cards: Immortal Servants, Instant Recovery, Journey Through Limbo, Recalibration Matrix, Sacrifice

Round 1: Ross wins second Priority so I’m pretty likely to go down by a point here; on the other hand I don’t think that he has a good safe grab in the middle so whoever he puts up to pick up the centre Extract is likely to have a rough day. Iceman is the lucky winner to take the middle. I send the MK4 over to the right and flip that M’Kraan point but my deployment was a bit off and so I’m not in range to start attacking Iceman. Magik flips Ross’s home right point, then the Prime saunters forward and one-shots Iceman! I’m not close enough to collect the fallen Extract though, so Sabretooth rockets across the board to pick it up. Loki flips my left M’Kraan and attacks Sabretooth, helpfully hitting the trigger to move him closer to Cassandra Nova; I choose not to do Psychic Distraction because it’ll put his counterattack online. Loki also uses Go Forth to move Cassandra forward. Apocalypse comes very deep and hurts Cassandra Nova and she fails to do a great deal to Sabretooth, though at least Instant Recovery gets drawn out. Finally Gambit takes the last secure. I definitely got lucky there with Prime putting down Iceman in one go, but on the other hand I failed to convert even one of the 8 rerolls that all that extra power afforded me so things did even out a bit. After all that we’re at 4 – 3 to Ross just as expected.

Round 2: I want to take that Extract off Sabretooth but I also have an opportunity to KO Iceman and I think that’ll serve me in better stead overall. In fact, I start with Prime and, thanks to Efficient Machines, he achieves both; I’ll probably lose Priority but my game plan is clearly attrition here so that was going to happen eventually. Apocalypse rolls an awful attack into Cassandra, pays for Recalibration Matrix to have another go and finds it’s not much better. He also helps me out by failing to flip my home right M’Kraan. Cassandra collects Sabretooth’s Extract, shakes her Shock and then bounces off Gambit. Magik is happy to sit and gain power so she just pings a couple of gainers off the MK4 before he cries ‘Halt Mutant!’ and Restraint Cables her off the back right secure and takes it for me. Gambit zaps the MK4, then Loki follows Apocalypse’s example by failing to hurt Gambit and failing the contested flip back there. The score goes to 8 – 6 to me.

Round 3: I’ve given away Priority but I’m feeling in a good position here both for scoring and attrition; if I can survive couple of activations from Ross here I can get into a strong position to do damage to him next turn and see the game out then. Dealing with Sabretooth is probably my main target as it’ll take him off the board, though Apocalypse is also tempting as he’s been pretty badly mauled already. Magik starts by using Journey Through Limbo to teleport a very surprised MK4 into the middle of the board, then she hurts it pretty badly and I Sacrifice the second attack into the Prime to try to keep the activation available; she then Limbo Steps back to the secure and retakes it. For some reason I decide that Apocalypse is a better target than Sabretooth so Prime dazes him before dragging in Sabretooth and upsettingly rolling zero successes on his spender into Victor. The MK4 plays Patch Up to keep the Prime looking shiny. Sabretooth doesn’t mess around and dazes the MK4, but Cassandra KOs him in turn with a timely use of Mental Domination. Gambit leaves Cassandra on one wound, then Loki flips the secure he missed last turn and picks up a fallen extract. The score extends to 14 – 7 to me.

Round 4: This is pretty much all over now as Ross doesn’t really have the firepower to drop enough of my team along with the mobility to flip enough secures. I just need to play it safe and make sure that I don’t give Ross a route back in, so I’m going to try to daze whoever doesn’t move first out of Magik and Gambit, while ignoring Apocalypse and crossing my fingers that he doesn’t have enough personal output to win the game alone from here. Gambit makes no mistake to daze Cassandra, collects her extract and flips a secure. The MK4 dazes Magik to keep her out of my hair, then Apocalypse dazes Loki. The Prime then pulls Gambit off his secure and doubles walks over to flip it; we end at 17 – 10.

Many thanks to Ross for yet another fun game. When I one-shot Iceman at the start I was thinking that I might just dice the poor chap off the table but fortunately for the game things did even out a bit more after that. Cassandra and Loki were a pretty annoying combination (as they should be for 10 threat, I guess) that let me really mess up Sabretooth in particular. In retrospect I probably would have been better off prioritising Sabretooth over Apocalypse in round 3 but I suppose I just saw the daze and the removed activation and figures I could get it in that round rather than risking Apocalypse surviving and going first in round 4 to cause me a problem.

Game 3: Will playing Dark Dimension on Lockdown and Unexpected Guests

Right, play time is over. Will is an excellent player, more than capable of beating me even when I’m not running something stupid. Nonetheless, I hope to give him a good game. Will’s roster is mainly Web Warriors with a Dormammu splash for fightier games and when I win Priority I expect to get Dark Dimension. 17 threat gives me Clea who I’m not really convinced about even with the power leadership and her recent rules changes, but I’ll give her a spin here. I do pack Directive One in case Will does surprise me and put Web Warriors down.

Extraction: Unexpected Guests Crash Royal Wedding
Secure: Lockdown! Security Systems Stymie Breakout
Threat: 17
My team: Sentinel Prime MK4, Cassandra Nova, Sentinel MK4, Clea
My cards: Directive One, Mental Domination, Online and Operational, Patch Up, Sacrifice
Will’s team: Dormammu, Baron Zemo, Black Cat, Gorgon
Will’s cards: Brace For Impact, Dark Restoration, Fall Back, I Am A Baron After All, Recalibration Matrix

Round 1: We’re pretty likely to end up on 4 – 4 after this because of the locations of al the various scoring points and I’m already seeing an issue with this Secure crisis for Sentinels – I’ll struggle to rotate once the points start to turn off. I do have plenty of long ranged attacks though so I’ll be happy to stand still and look across no man’s land at Will’s team. I win the second Priority and pick up on the right with Cassandra, then we swap back and forth a bit with Gorgon, Dormammu and the MK4 ending with the extract tokens. Dormammu also zaps the MK4. The Prime then wolks forward and continues its ridiculous reign of terror by one-shotting Gorgon. This is actually a bit less good than it sounds as he is, of course, far too far away for me to pick up his extract and I would probably have rathered just do enough damage to Restraint Cable him toward me for next turn. Black Cat collects it instead, so of course we do go to 4 – 4.

Round 2: One of the reasons I find this secure frustrating is my confirmation bias that the most annoying points for me are always the ones that turn off; in this case it’s the one on the right where Clea is standing. I make a huge mistake in activation order, starting with the MK4 zapping Dormammu gently. Gorgon, of course, has so much power he doesn’t know what to do with it and unleashes a monster spender into Cassandra, which Staggers her and throws her into Clea, who also of course blocks nothing and they are both left on one wound. He puts a second spender into the Prime and gives it Stagger too. Prime doesn’t have anything much more useful to do than hurt Dormammu, who retaliates and then moves back behind a bin where I can’t Restraint Cable him. Clea throws Gogon and tickles him a little and Zemo charges over to daze my Prime before Black Cat adds the MK4 to the list of my team dealing with Stagger. The score is 8 – 7 to Will.

Round 3: That was pretty bad as I’ve taken a ridiculous amount of damage, delivered almost none (and anyway Dark Restoration will render most of that irrelevant) and gone down on points. My left secure (the one with the Sentinels on it) turns off this time. I need to deal with Gorgon, Dark Restoration or not, just to stay in the game, so Cassandra takes care of that at least. Black Cat gives the Prime Stagger again, not that it matters as Zemo shrugs off an attack from the MK4 and then KOs my leader immediately. Clea teleports Cassandra forward to be a more annoying position, tickles Black Cat and throws her into Psychic Distraction range, which does at least get her. Dormammu dazes Clea and we go to 11 – 10 to Will.

Round 4: I’m still here on the score but I’m already in the death spiral here – my win condition is definitely attrition but I’m getting wrecked. The Same secure turns off again, Dark Restoration brings Gorgon back to play and I figure I might as well play Directive One just so I’ve not wasted it. Cassandra gets Dormammu with Mental Domination to buy me a bit of time but can’t do anything to Gorgon who makes no mistake dropping Clea. The MK4 finally dazes Zemo and Black Cat happily picks up a fallen extract. The score has somehow closed to 14 – 14.

Round 5: I’ve only got two models left, both badly mauled, and Will’s team is pretty much untouched so I’ll need a miracle here. Cassandra dazes Gorgon and moves as far away as she can manage. Zemo can’t quite get the MK4 who KOs him in return and walks as far away as possible from Dormammu. Black Cat manages a Troublemaker to daze Cassandra (though in retrospect she should have healed with Healing Factor so I guess I forgot that) and Dormammu picks up the MK4. We finish up at 18 – 14.

It’s always a pleasure to play Will but I think that the score flatters me a lot here. If Will had needed to step up a couple of gears he definitely had that in the tank, and even if Cassandra had actually survived and I’d held on for a draw then I’d have had her Staggered to deal with Will’s whole team in a hypothetical round 6. Ultimately I have to recognise that I was fighting an uphill battle into a very skilled player and I’m not too sad about the loss.

Game 4: Stu playing Guardians of the Galaxy on Wedding Party and Skrulls

Last up is Stu. I’m very happy to get to play into Stu again as it feels like we’ve somehow not be drawn together for ages despite both attending events most months. He’s playing the new hotness in Adam Warlock so I’m expecting a bit of a tough game here. I do at least win Priority so we play Wedding Party and Skrulls; I’ll admit that I’ve been screwed over by the Skrull roll too often to be really comfy here but at least it locks Stu into a 20 threat match that I’m generally OK with. The plan is the same as game 1; Cassandra Nova messes with people on one side of the board while the rest of the team hopefully overload the other.

Extraction: Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership
Secure: Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack!
Threat: 20
My team: Sentinel Prime MK4, Cassandra Nova, Sentinel MK4, King Black Bolt
My cards: Directive One, Mental Domination, Online and Operational, Patch Up, Sacrifice
Stu’s team: Adam Warlock (Bonded Soul, Reality), Beta Ray Bill, Moondragon, Nebula, Star Lord
Will’s cards: Cosmic Awareness, Galaxy’s Greatest, Lovable Misfits, Sacrifice, Survival

Round 1: I ideally want to go last with Black Bolt so I can Hit and Run over to the left secure and push any Guardians away using his beam attack; all I need from Cassandra is to pick up a Skrull and not get herself into too much danger. I win second priority and Cassandra goes to the right to collect a Skrull, getting up close to the building to stop any pushes from taking her into more danger than necessary. Bill goes to the centre, doesn’t get pushed and then moves over to the right secure too. The MK4 takes the other middle Skrull and I realise that I’ve made a big mistake in that it can’t get there in one move. This problem compounds when it fails the Skrull roll and lumbers right into the middle of Stu’s team. Star Lord and Adam Warlock shoot it a bit and I get off somewhat lightly overall. The Prime collects on the left and Nebula comes into caps the MK4 some more before Black Bolt moves up and fails to damage her at all; he does at least Hit and Run onto the point. Moondragon also bounces off the MK4. The score is 5 – 1 to me.

Round 2: I have priority but I’m going to have to use it to get my MK4 out of danger so that’s not a lot of help to me. Hopefully I can use Cassandra to move Adam around and make him waste time coming back toward me. The MK4 flees toward the left, pausing only long enough to cry ‘Halt Mutant!’ and pull Bill off the right Secure. Nebula goes after the Prime and I Sacrifice the second attack into Black Bolt to turnoff her rerolls, then Black Bolt pushes Moondragon away from the action. Adam comes up to get Cassandra who uses Psychic Distraction to move out of the way. He simply walks in and then one-shots her from there. I was annoyed enough about this to check the odds; it’s about 15%. If she survives it’s a different game as I can walk him off into Narnia and keep myself alive on the right. Star Lord takes advantage of being able to shoot the huge robots from behind cover so continues to pour fire into the Prime and Moondragon charges back to the action to do some more. The Prime then gives Moondragon all he’s got which turns out to be nothing, leaving him without even enough power to Restraint Cable her off the secure. I didn’t note what Bill got up to, but evidently it wasn’t too impactful this time. The score goes to 8 – 5 to me.

Round 3: I’m still up on score but that was a disaster of a round in that I achieved almost nothing and took a crazy amount of damage in return. I need to thin out the Guardians a bit so I can hopefully hang on to the left and score this out in a couple more turns. King Black Bolt finally dazes Moondragon and pushes Star Lord away. This was the wrong move; I should have used Cassandra Nova first to get some use out of her because she’s unlikely to survive a double tap from Adam. Stu plays Lovable Misfits for not a great deal of impact and then Adam makes short work of Cassandra. The Prime also tries punching down three threat but is unable to daze Nebula and she lands some big damage on the MK4. My final activation is the MK4 hitting Bill who puts out Sacrifice for the second attack but the joke is on him as I roll zero damage anyway. Bill then one-shots the Prime despite Shock and slaps a bit more damage onto the MK4, and finally Star Lord collects a Skrull. We tighten up at 10 – 9 to me.

Round 4: I’m running out of stuff to fight with here so this’ll need to be a monster turn for me. Luckily for me, Bill, Moondragon and Nebula are all nicely lined up for a double beam from Black Bolt and taking them down might give me enough breathing room to get back into it. One double beam from Black Bolt later and all three of them are neatly left on one wound. Moondragon drops some insane damage into the Prime, Hexing him for good measure, before my leader does at least daze Bill and Nebula. Star Lord moves off to look after the right Secure and free up Adam to join the party, then the MK4 drops Moondragon. Adam stroll over and easily KOs the Prime and the score goes to 14 – 12 to Stu.

Round 5: I don’t really see a way out of this beyoind just dicing Stu into oblivion but we might as well give a go so the MK4 KOs Bill. Nebula goes into Black Bolt to try to remove my activation and leaves him on one, then in turn Black Bolt leaves Adam on a single wound. I think dazing him wouldn’t actually have mattered for the scoring but it would have felt nice for me. Adam easily finishes Black Bolt and walks to score on the left; he probably could have KOed the MK4 instead if he’d preferred it. The game closes out at 18 – 12 to Stu.

Well done to Stu for playing a cool game, I always love to face him across the tabletop. I didn’t note all the funky stuff that he was doing with Adam Warlock’s leadership as it’s just too wordy for this, but I reckon he never missed an opportunity to get an extra success per activation from it and sometimes was able to do clever things like fishing a superfluous Wild roll out for a future use. My biggest mistake was in deployment and I should have had Black Bolt ready to pick up the Skrull in the middle; that way evenif he’s been pushed he could have walked back to relative safety. I think that there is a probably a world in which I could still have hung on there but losing Cassandra to Adam for basically nothing and constantly coming up short on attacks meant I just ran out of steam too quickly.

After all is said and done I finish on a 2 – 2 record and 14th place out of 32, which I think I would have taken at the start of the day. The main thing I learned is that I don’t really enjoy Sentinels enough to pursue them further; they’re slow, dull to play and the Sentinels themselves are almost identical in play pattern so there is less variety than other affiliations. To make things worse, they’re not even powerful in the game! Next time I’ll try another faction and see how I get on; in the meantime thanks to Sean, Ross, Will and Stu for four very fun games of MCP, and of course thanks to Allan for his constant work to run these brilliant events.

After the excitement of the Across The Bifrost team event in London, we also had the first of our regular Marvel Crisis Protocol events for 2026 at Common Ground Games in Stirling. There was a good turnout expected but some inclement weather reduced the numbers a bit; even so we were over 20 players which is pretty good for a random Saturday in January.

I decided to play X-Men again after a long break. Partly this had been enforced because Gareth was using a load of my X-Men models, and with him moving onto a Midnight Sons roster I had a different opportunity. I also wanted to try something that wasn’t just about fighting people all the time and instead would play a more scenario-focussed game which would be a big contrast to my recent run with Thralls of Dracula. I’m currently using just Professor X as having only one leader reduces my opportunities to pick the wrong one in turn zero. Magik is amazing to start the chain with his leadership and is probably the only pure fighting character I’m bringing. Other characters are there for their displacement utility and because they have superpowers that are good for using and enabling the Professor X leadership.

Characters (10)
* Professor X (4)
Beast (3)
Emma Frost (4)
Gambit (3)
Magik (3)
Nightcrawler (4)
Rogue (4)
* Spider-Man (Miles Morales) (3)
Toad (2)
Shang-Chi (4)

Team Tactics (10)
Fall Back (R)
Sacrifice (R)
Children of the Atom
First Class
Headmistress
To Me My X-Men
Xavier‘s Dream
Journey Through Limbo
Recalibration Matrix
Chi Mastery

Secure Crisis
Cosmic Invasion! Black Order Descends on Earth (D, 16)
Guardians Save Shi‘ar Empress in Style (M, 17)
Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (D, 17)
Mutant Madman Turns City Into Lethal Amusement Park (B, 18)
Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate (F, 20)

Extract Crisis
Scientific Samples Found in Discovered Universe (D, 17)
Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan (F, 17)
Struggle For The Cube Continues (F, 17)
Terrigen Canisters Fuel Doomsday Device (F, 17)
Mutant Extremists Target U.S. Senators! (L, 19)

Game 1: Sean playing Brotherhood of Mutants on Extremis Consoles and Senators

I love to play with Sean, he’s got a cool attitude to the game – and in any case it’s always lovely to start out with a chill game into a pal. He wins Priority and chooses his Secures, and I choose the slightly higher threat value; the impact of which is ‘I guess I’ll add Toad’ for both of us. I want to go wide on this one so I go for Emma Frost and Beast to give me some displacement options (along with Professor X himself, of course) and Toad to pick up a Senator early and run around being annoying for as long possible.

Extraction: Mutant Extremists Target U.S. Senators!
Secure: Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0
Threat: 19
My team: Professor X, Beast, Emma Frost, Gambit, Magik, Toad
My cards: Fall Back, First Class, Journey Through Limbo, To Me My X-Men, Xavier’s Dream
Sean’s team: Mystique, Juggernaut, The Blob, Toad, Baron Zemo, Beast
Sean’s cards: Asteroid M, Do You Know Who I Am?, I Am A Baron After All, Patch Up, Sacrifice

Round 1: I’m going to try to dive some of the Senators on Sean’s side of the table here and rely on Xavier’s Dream to keep me in the game. Depending on how gallus Sean wants to be about things, that might be enough on its own to get me into the lead. I win Priority and play First Class, then Magik crosses the board to collect a Senator on the left and Limbo Steps back a bit. Sean’s Toad collects the centre and mine dives on the right – passing Zemo on his way to dive my Senator on that side of the board. Emma picks up the last one on my side of the board then Juggernaut comes over and puts a absolutely insane hit into Toad. I have to spend off almost everyone to keep him alive and he plays Slippery to get back toward my home Secure. Professor X moves to join him (healing him off the Secure for free thanks to First Class) and then does zero damage to Zemo. Both of the Beasts end up on the right, Gambit and Blob go on the left and Mystique pops her Leadership token on her home Secure before walking to Range 3 of Emma. We start the game out at 4 – 4.

Round 2: I’ve been given a golden opportunity to deal with Mystique here as Emma is very well equipped to take her out. Juggernaut is going to be a bit of an issue but he can only score maximum two points a turn so I’m just going to have to have to live with him and try to work over the rest of Sean’s team. Emma gives Mystique all she’s got, but it turns out to be not very much, and she also rather annoyingly rolls zero on Telepathic Lash. Mystique’s return fire, perhaps somewhat fairly, is also pretty mediocre. Professor X puts another two attacks into Zemo for no damage again and spends his power to heal Toad again. It doesn’t help as Juggernaut rolls onto the point and one-shots Toad again. Gambit, who is pretty well set to hurt Blob, only manages to gently tickle him and gets pushed away. Then Blob punches Magik twice and throws something into her and she blocks nothing across the whole run, dazing easily and giving up her Senator. Beast uses up all my good dice for the round, dropping Zemo to take his Senator and walk to Sean’s home point, ending by polishing off Mystique with a throw. Sean’s Beast reapplies the Mystique token on my right and then walks to collect my Toad’s dropped Senator. The score goes to 8 – 6 to Sean.

Round 3: Well, that was a bit of a disaster, but I’m hopeful that this turn I’ll roll a single block on any defence roll and that might keep me in the game a bit longer. I can start out by taking Mystique off the table with Emma, but of course that doesn’t happen and I roll no successes on Telepathic Lash again. Mystique leaves Emma on one wound in return, picks up a fallen Senator and uses Patch Up to heal Blob back to full. Gambit makes pretty heavy work of Blob but does manage to get him after Mystique plays Sacrifice into the big lad. Juggernaut body slides into Emma for the daze, then rolls his third monster attack roll of the game to one-shot KO Magik. Professor X’s dice come alive and he KOs Zemo to give me a little respite, then both of our Toads meet in the middle of the board trying to get to other Secures – but we both forgot about the Senators rule about only moving once (whoops!). His Beast throws Professor X off the Secure and I play To Me My X-Men to get Gambit back to the Secure on the left and bring my Beast into relevance. My Beast is at least able to finally KO Mystique but he’s making really hard work of it thanks to some insane defence dice on the shapeshifter. The score is 13 – 9 to Sean.

Round 4: That’s pretty much game as I don’t see myself keeping Sean to 2VPs this round. Still, there is a game to play out so I need to do my best to deny points to Sean. Blob collects a Senator and moves Beast, then Professor X does enough to drop Sean’s Beast. His Toad doesn’t get mine and moves to safety. I’m at the desperation level now and so Gambit goes into Juggernaut hoping to roll a load of Wilds and blow him up; needless to say that doesn’t happen. Sean passes and I should have rolled the dice with Emma Frost for the long shot of taking down Juggernaut – instead I move my Toad to score a Secure. Beast can’t do enough to deal with Blob and then Juggernaut plays Do You Know Who I Am? to hurl Emma Frost downtown. Dropping Juggernaut with two attacks would have been optimistic but one attack would need some crazy dice… which of course I do not get. We finish up at 16 – 14 to Sean.

Thanks to Sean for a very fun clean game; he very kindly reminded me of a few cool things that his team could do before I committed to falling into any of his traps. I think that the main thing I needed to do here was to target Blob with Emma Frost at the start of rounds 2 and 3; the way the dice rolled it wouldn’t have mattered much but she’s very good for dealing with him and would have saved me a lot of pain with Gambit getting pushed around. Sean’s choice of Juggernaut should have been predictable by me but I didn’t include any good way to deal with him. I should also note that I didn’t do a very good job of not moaning about my dice like a grumpy old man (which, admittedly, I am) in this game so apologies to Sean for having to listen to that.

Game 2: Chris playing Web Warriors on Super-Powered Scoundrels and Hammers

Chris is packing Web Warriors here and while he could theoretically play a different leadership I’m sure he’ll put down Web of The Spider-Verse because it’s fun, new and shiny. He wins Priority and chooses his Secures, and I decide again that I’ll get more value out of the higher threat. Shang-Chi is in the roster both for dealing with Web Warriors and for Super-Powered Scoundrels so the rest of the team is just making room around him really; I consider dropping Toad in favour up upgrading Beast and Magik to Rogue and Nightcrawler respectively but figure that I probably am better off being wider since so many points are available here.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities
Secure: Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate
Threat: 20
My team: Professor X, Beast, Emma Frost, Magik, Shang-Chi, Toad
My cards: Fall Back, First Class, Journey Through Limbo, To Me My X-Men, Xavier’s Dream
Chris’s team: Silk, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Woman, Ultimate Spider-Man
Chris’s cards: All Webbed Up, Masked Menace, Spider-Men, Spider Totem: The Bride, Web Of The Spider-Verse

Round 1: I’m pretty sure that this plays out to a 4 – 4 draw where we each get two Hammers and our own Secures then tie in the middle but in contrast to Juggernaut last game I have the tools to really hurt especially Spider-Woman and Spectacular Spider-Man (SSM from here). I win the second Priority and play First Class, opening up with Toad on the left. Spider-Woman takes the right Hammer and so I start the chain by Limbo Stepping Magik forward and smiting her with a great big sword. SSM parks himself on the home right Secure and Professor X successfully dazes Spider-Woman; Beast will pick up her Hammer later. Over on the other side of the board Toad surprises me by taking zero from Ultimate Spider-Man (USM); I wouldn’t have minded a gentle hit to let me Slippery back to safety. 2099 collects the far Hammer and sets up in the middle where Shang-Chi will charge in and push him away. Emma Frost takes the last Hammer but I’ve positioned her in quite a poor way so she doesn’t end up anywhere very useful. The score is 5 – 4 to me.

Round 2: That went rather well but that’s basically it for me having Priority here I think. The main move for this turn is to KO Spider-Woman if I get the chance and then to retreat Toad somewhere safe(ish). Chris plays Masked Menace, then Spider-Woman zaps Beast to take his Hammer and leave him on one, then retreats. I don’t particularly want to use Beast now but I might as well just to get an activation; in fact I could have just not bothered as he does zero damage to SSM. 2099 Web Whips Shang-Chi off the middle and drops a nice spender into him, and then Shang-Chi charges back into the centre and hurts him right back. Chris cleverly uses the Spiderverse bump to get out of range of the follow-up so I just have him shake Stun instead. USM lays into Toad who uses Slippery to get out of danger, and Toad shakes Slow and moves further away from the scary man. Silk chases after him. Emma can’t do any damage to USM with her attacks but she does at least manage to roll a success on Telepathic Lash this time to move him off the Secure. Magik Limbo Steps onto the Secure at the back, pays for Journey Through Limbo to move Spider-Woman off the point and Incinerate her, then does zero damage anyway. SSM pushes Magik off the point in turn and shuffles his feet a bit. Professor X also puts attacks into Spider-Woman but considering that she’s Incinerated and can’t reroll into Mystic attacks her defence dice are insane and she stays standing. The score is 10 – 7 to me though, so I’m feeling OK.

Round 3: I really need to take out Spider-Woman or she’s just going to run around scoring points off me for free. I’m happy to leave Emma over on the left keeping USM busy and concentrate the rest of my team dealing with the Web Warriors over on the right – especially since I have a points lead. Silk plays The Bride and Spider-Woman plays All Webbed Up, dazing Beast and leaving Magik on one wound. Magik finally KOs her and then a spender leaves SSM on one. Then the horror show begins. 2099 Web Whips Shang-Chi off the point again and absolutely hammers him; I spend Xavier’s Dream to stay alive. He leaves 2099 on one wound on his way to polish off SSM and of course does zero damage to him. So SSM drops Magik, throws Shang-Chi away and shakes his Bleed. Toad moves away from Silk and USM one-shots Emma to take her Hammer. In desperation I have Professor X move off the Secure to try to get SSM down and it does at least work out for me, and Silk catches and dazes Toad. The score goes now to 12 – 10 after an absolute disaster of a turn.

Round 4: I need Emma to survive USM’s activation so I can get him off the Secure, and I really need to take out either SSM or 2099 before they activate. At least I have Priority so I can do some of this. Magik does her part and takes out SSM to get me one of the Hammers back. Chris surprises me with 2099, moving and attacking Emma and one-shotting her through her Crystal Form defences and cover. Toad just flees, pursued by Silk who doesn’t quite pick him up. USM walks to the middle and one-shots Shang-Chi. I need to take a point off Chris somehow here or it’s all over already and I pause to think about my options. I use To Me My X-Men to move Beast closer to 2099, then he attacks him with a spender and a throw, taking out his 2 wounds precisely. Phew! We level up at 15 – 15.

Round 5: Chris has Priority again and so that will give me last activation. I really need to have enough models left to make use of it though! USM pulls Beast into Silk’s trap range and of course that gets him. Toad crosses the board to stand on a Secure and 2099 does his spender to throw Professor X off the right Secure; fortunately he doesn’t daze. SC can’t put the remaining three damage into Silk and pushes her off to the other side of the building; she moves back and attacks him which was probably an error as it meant that I could Wild Goose her off the point and closer to Magik. Professor X moves 2099 off the Secure and wheels himself back onto it, then finally Magik Limbo Steps over to Silk and dazes her with Darkchylde. I limp over the line at 21 – 18.

Wow, what a game. I thought that I’d been clever putting my characters who could threaten SSM and Spider-Woman on the right and it was all going somewhat smoothly until we hit round 3. Then suddenly I couldn’t get anything to stick and my team were going down like ninepins. Chris played pretty cannily to keep me off balance and in particular I liked the way he moved 2099 to skirmish around the middle. I suspect I was also a bit moany about dice in this one – sorry Chris, you didn’t deserve to have to listen to that.

Game 3: Ross playing Servants of Apocalypse on Extremis Consoles and Scientific Samples

It feels like a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of playing into Ross. Ross wins Priority and chooses his Extracts which is a solid move if you don’t mind any of the other teams Secures or even if there is just one you don’t like. With such a wide spread secure I think I’ll be doing a lot of move actions which isn’t great for my team so instead I’ll lean into displacement. Gambit and Magik are going to operate as spoilers to keep pressure on the Horsemen and I don’t expect to put any attacks into Apocalypse.

Extraction: Scientific Samples Found in Discovered Universe
Secure: Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0
Threat: 17
My team: Professor X, Beast, Emma Frost, Gambit, Magik
My cards: Children of the Atom, First Class, Journey Through Limbo, To Me My X-Men, Xavier’s Dream
Ross’s team: Apocalypse, Iceman (Pestilence), Magik (War), The Blob (Famine), Toad (Death)
Ross’s cards: Fall Back, Immortal Servants, Indomitable, Journey Through Limbo, Recalibration Matrix

Round 1: The main game plan here is to control Iceman out of the game and then bunker up on a couple of Secures with enough Extracts to make sure I’m scoring a bonus point. I win the second roll off and play First Class, sending Magik to the right and Limbo Stepping back with the Extract. Iceman goes to the left to my huge surprise (I’d have used Blob for that job) and then Emma decides to make up for her unexciting performances in the last game by hitting the Bend Will trigger into Iceman and then moving him closer to my lines with Telepathic Lash. On the right, Ross’s Magik does no damage to mine with a cheeky pot shot, then teleports onto the Secure. Professor X sets up camp on my home Secure and finishes dazing Iceman; Beast will collect that Extract later and head to the left. Toad consolidates the right Secure and Apocalypse goes there too and hurts my Magik. Finally Blob just picks up the last Extract and arranges his deck chair on the far Extract. The score is 5 – 3 to me (though looking back at this I think maybe we forgot to score the bonus points here).

Round 2: Now that I have a lead, it’s time to consolidate it. I was to try to drop Iceman but I think I’m unlikely to lose anyone to him in a single sitting so I figure I should try to preserve Magik’s Extract. I want to keep Ross busy on the right so Gambit will have to try to make a nuisance of himself over there. Magik bounces off her evil twin then walks and Limbo Steps back toward Professor X. Iceman puts Slow on Beast and Emma, then Staggers the former too. Gambit dazes Magik on the right and very gently tickles Toad. In retrospect that might have been a mistake as it would have let him Slippery off to somewhere annoying but Ross didn’t spot the line. Apocalypse has had enough of Gambit’s nonsense and dazes him easily before Emma moves Iceman back toward Professor X who will eventually KO poor Bobby. Toad, Beast and Blob just sit happily on their Secures; I think Ross needed to be a bit more aggressive here as the game was sliding out of his reach and passively scoring a few points wasn’t going to bring him back into it. The score is 11 – 7 to me now.

Round 3: I’m pretty sure I can end things this round but it’s probably going to end up with my team running away from Apocalypse while the Benny Hill music plays; if I can deny an activation I’ll take it but I don’t see any great opportunities to do that. Ross’s Magik makes short work of Gambit and Apocalypse comes over and dazes my Magik even through a bunch of Professor X rerolls and Xavier’s Dream. I just need to move Apocalypse away and so Professor X uses Mental Suggestion twice (the first one encounters a four block defence roll!) to move the big guy away. The rest of Ross’s team keep still and score their points and so I basically do the same as that lets me close out the game at 16 – 11.

Thanks to Ross for a fun game as always. I don’t think that Apocalypse really suits his style as a player as he’s generally had more success with brutal face punching attrition teams, but in this case he was right up against it because I know very well how to play his team and hence how to stymie them. I got lucky a bit on the Emma attack into Iceman on round 1 but I only really need to do 1 damage to turn on Telepathic Lash and then we’re off to the races. I would probably have led with Blob over there but you could argue that he’s worse into Emma specifically so possibly that was on Ross’s mind.

Game 4: Scott playing Web Warriors on Super-Powered Scoundrels and Scientific Samples

The final game is into Scott and I’m very wary of him playing this roster after he pumped me at one of our regular Tuesday night games in Edinburgh. Like Chris in game 2 I’m expecting Web Of The Spider-Verse as it’s the new hotness. I win Priority this time and choose my Extracts on the same basis as Ross’s choice in game 3 – I can live with his Secures just fine especially when I can veto the one I’m least keen on. The team against Chris on Super-Powered Scoundrels worked pretty well for me, notwithstanding how hard it was to actually deliver my plan and so I just take the same team again. Scott surprises me with his choice of team entirely so well done to him for completely wrong-footing me before we even put a single model on the table.

Extraction: Scientific Samples Found in Discovered Universe
Secure: Super-Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate
Threat: 20
My team: Professor X, Beast, Emma Frost, Magik, Shang-Chi, Toad
My cards: First Class, Journey Through Limbo, Sacrifice, To Me My X-Men, Xavier’s Dream
Scott’s team: Agent Venom, Gwenom, Scarlet Spider, Silk, Ultimate Spider-Man
Scott’s cards: All Webbed Up, Aunt May’s Wheat Cakes, Fall Back, Spider-Tracker, Web Of The Spider-Verse

Round 1: As usual for games with four Extract tokens I’m really only angling to end up with two of them. Probably this’ll end up at parity as we’ll each get two Extract and two Secures then tie the middle but I do have an extra character so we’ll have to see if that’s enough to get me a slight edge. There is a lot of displacement on both sides of the board here so it’ll be interesting trying to score the bonus points on Scientific Samples. I get Priority again (4 in row, not bad!) and play First Class of course. Magik gets the power train rolling on the left and USM goes on the right. I want to wait out a few of Scott’s activations before I commit to anything now so Professor X moves to the right home Secure and puts a speculative Mental Suggestion into USM and moves him away Long which is pretty funny. Emma collects my home Extract and joins the Professor on the right and Silk and Toad move to score various Secures. Agent Venom sits on Scott’s left Secure and Beast double moves and throws him off it. Scarlet Spider takes one look at the central Secure and Shang-Chi waiting to Charge onto it, and decides to sit somewhere a bit safer so Shang-Chi just strolls into the middle and wonders why he’s alone. The score is 6 – 4 to me.

Round 2: All I need to do now is keep parity for the rest of the game! Scott’s team form a bit of a puzzle if I want to remove any activations but I think he’s made a bit of a mistake pairing up Gwenom with USM – I’m already disincentivised to attack USM so Gwenom is a much more tempting target. However, my main game plan is just to move Scott’s team off Secures and score rather than giving him too much power. Silk starts us out with zero damage into Beast and Professor X retaliates in kind with zero damage into Gwenom. We’re giving peace a chance! Gwenom puts a little damage into Toad who gratefully uses Slippery to move to the centre and out of trouble. Beast slaps Scarlet Spider to gain a little power and throws Silk off her Secure, so Agent Venom shoots Shang-Chi and throws Beast away too. Toad moves to the relative safety of my back left Secure and USM rockets back into the action and lands a hilarious attack roll onto Professor X. Emma moves Gwenom off her Secure, then Scarlet Spider Web Whips Toad off his, slaps Magik and throws her away too. Professor X plays To Me My X-Men to get her back on the Secure and let Beast go into the middle to give Shang-Chi free reign to move off it; Magik dazes Scarlet Spider. Finally Shang-Chi Charges into Agent Venom, Flowing onto the Secure with the first attack and pushing him off with the second. We go to 13 – 7 in my favour.

Round 3: I reckon I can hold onto the 3 points I need to get over the finish line this turn, so my main objective is to displace activated Web Warriors where I can and protect characters holding Extracts. If I can remove any of Scott’s activations then that’s great but I don’t know that I’m likely to achieve that. Agent Venom starts us out by removing all his many conditions, popping Incinerate on Shang-Chi and then dazing him. Professor X fails to damage Gwenom with Mental Suggestion so just moves back to score and hide. Scarlet Spider attacks Magik again and I Sacrifice the second attack into Toad who uses Slippery to go to the central Secure where he can move to score any of the points if he lives long enough. Magik KOs Scarlet Spider in case we do end up going to round 4, the Gwenom finishes dazing Professor X and throughs Emma off her Secure. Emma should just move Gwenom but instead the dice favour me and she dazes instead. USM goes into Beast, Toad collects a fallen Extract and score the middle and Silk just moves to score again. I end with Beast throwing Agent Venom off the Secure and into Silk and then doing a spender into her, hoping for the Wild push but don’t get it. It doesn’t matter though as we finish up at 20 – 10.

That was a very satisfying game so thanks to Scott for being a very cool opponent. We didn’t really end up fighting each other so much as just taking turns pushing the other team off places where they could score. Being able to go wider than Scott was important in this matchup because he was unlikely to be able to take out my team fast enough to get the advantage of having Priority and it meant that I could generally go last to deny him one or more points.

In the end my 3 – 1 submarine is good enough to get me into 6th place of 23 players. I had a grand time and I’m already looking forward to the next event, though I think I’m likely play something a bit stupid next time. Thanks to Sean, Chris, Ross and Scott for four fun games of MCP and as always thanks to Allan for running these events.

It’s my first Marvel Crisis Protocol event of 2026, and this is a big one. I joined 9 other locals split over two teams and travelled to Dark Sphere in London to play in the Across the Bifrost team event run by the mighty Jamie and Norbert. I stayed with Thralls of Dracula for this event, and I was on team Invincible Irn Bru with captain Adam (Web Warriors), Franky (Avengers), Stephen (Brotherhood of Mutants) and Will (Dark Dimension and SHIELD). I was joined on the train by Mike, Stephen and Will where we played a few small card games and generally chatted amusingly; I love this kind of road trip to a gaming event.

Thralls of Dracula are a pretty poor choice for a team event, because the best bit of the leadership is being able to take all the best characters and play them affiliated. And of course, in a team event, four other players also want those best characters. But after some discussion we agreed that we weren’t going to be super sweaty about this anyway, by which I mean specifically that we weren’t putting down Apocalypse or Inhumans (currently two of the best three affiliations in the game) and I ended up only removing two characters from my singles roster. I replaced Juggernaut with Mephisto, mainly because I think he’s funny, and Shang-Chi with Psylocke as she fills largely the same role.

Characters (10)
* Dracula (5)
Abomination (5)
* Blade (4)
Drax the Destroyer (3)
* Red Skull, Master of Hydra (5)
Rogue (4)
N‘Kantu, the Living Mummy (3)
* Hulkbuster (6)
Mephisto, Lord of Temptation (5)
Psylocke (4)

Team Tactics (10)
Sacrifice (R)
Thralls of Dracula
Cosmic Obliteration
Grievous Wounds
Recalibration Matrix
Warpath
Stark Armory
Indomitable (R)
Survival
Up the Ante

Secure Crisis
Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse (C, 19)
Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack! (R, 20)
Deadline to Destruction (P, 16)
Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0 (D, 17)
Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians (I, 17)

Extract Crisis
Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities (D, 18)
Inhumans Deploy Advanced Weaponry (O, 18)
Deadly Legacy Virus Cured? (C, 19)
The Montesi Formula Found (E, 18)
Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown! (C, 17)

I don’t normally make goals for events, but somehow it felt fitting to do so for such a big tournament. I decided that I could call this a success if we could achieve at least one of the following three goals:
Win more than we lose as a team
Win more than I lose as an individual
Beat the other Scottish team in the overall final rankings
Needless to say, the third one is the most important. I also add a bonus objective here:
Play all my characters at least once, assuming that I’m not on track to be undefeated (in which case I’ll stick with what I think is the ‘best’ option for any game)

Game 1: Ben (We are in the Friend Game now) playing Defenders on Wedding Party and Hammers

I’m lucky to have Adam doing the pairing process and stay clear of it for the most part; once the process is done I find myself into Ben’s Defenders. He wins the first Priority roll and chooses his Secures which is what I probably would have done too; we end up on the fightiest combination possible which suits me very well. I have Hulkbuster in my roster for this exact scenario so he goes in; I think that Blade’s ability to shake conditions is going to very worthwhile here so he gets the nod at 4 threat. My team should be taller than Ben’s so I just want to drop a character at the top of each round and go late with Hulkbuster to clear off the weak Wedding party and keep the score reasonable.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities
Secure: Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack!
Threat: 20
My team: Dracula, Abomination, Blade, Hulkbuster
My cards: Indomitable, Recalibration Matrix, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Ben’s team: Doctor Strange, Hawkeye, Man-Thing, Namor, Shang-Chi
Ben’s cards: Chi Mastery, Fall Back, Mystic Ward, Street Smarts, Survival

Round 1: I suspect that we’ll end up tied here with two Hammers each (and really, that is all that I’m looking to get out of this) so I’m mainly looking to establish some board position here and soften someone up. Ben wins the second Priority and sends Namor to collect the right Hammer and retreat to safety where he can threaten me next round. Blade takes the left Hammer and stays out of Hawkeye range if he wants to pick up his home Hammer. Man-Thing comes forward to sit on the left Secure and Dracula gets in about him, eventually using Hypnotic Gaze to move him a bit closer to Abomination. Hawkeye does indeed collect Ben’s home Hammer and drops an annoying Shock onto Dracula, then Abomination gets the final Hammer and punches Man-Thing, predictably leaving him alive on one wound. He then drops Mystic Ward on the left Wedding Party before Doctor Strange comes over to push Dracula off it anyway. Hulkbuster and Shang-Chi just chill on the right. The score is 2 – 2.

Round 2: I was going to start the daze train here by taking out Man-Thing but Ben plays Survival. He shouldn’t actually have been able to do that because Man-Thing was still on his healthy side but apparently it was too early in the morning for both of us. Instead I pass and Man-Thing hurts Blade a little before being dazed by Dracula. Shang-Chi drops a Stagger onto Hulkbuster, who will spend the rest of the game Staggered by various means, before being pushed away. Hawkeye shoots Dracula who Warpaths over and dazes him with a counterattack spender; this leaves a Hammer on the floor so Abomination collects it, applies Bleed to Doctor Strange and retreats back to the left Wedding Party. Namor puts some more damage onto Hulkbuster, then Blade and Doctor Strange move to score on the left and right respectively. The score is 7 – 5 in my favour.

Round 3: I want to get Man-Thing out of my hair before he activates so he’s the main goal here. Otherwise I should just bunker up on my side of the board and score out the game as it’s on Ben to come to me. Dracula completely fails to do anything useful to Man-Thing having apparently used up all his good dice on Hawkeye last round. Man-Thing attacks Abomination and I Sacrifice the second attack onto Dracula but annoyingly it’s a total whiff of an attack so I don’t actually get the power to counterattack! I’m keen to delay a bit more on the left so Hulkbuster shakes another Stagger and Meteor Punches Doctor Strange away before Shang-Chi reapplies Stagger and Flows again onto the right Secure. Blade completely fails to KO to Man-Thing too (leaving him on one wound yet again), and Hawkeye Hook Arrows onto the middle terrain and shoots me a bit. Then I completely lose my mind in the game. I see a route to pick up both Hawkeye and Man-Thing. Abomination walks and Gamma Bombs Hawkeye, getting the wild to throw him into Man-Thing. However, they both survive (especially upsetting as Man-Thing had to roll 3 blocks off three dice to do so) and the positioning means that now I can’t get Abomination back close to the Secure. Worse, Ben spots this opportunity that I’ve handed him and Namor charges over, hurting Abomination and the using the Spender to drop both Hammers which gives the initiative right back to him now. Doctor Strange hurts Hulkbuster a little more and moves onto the right Secure. The score now is tied at 10 – 10.

Round 4: Now I need to somehow relieve Namor of his Hammers. But I think that I can extend this for another round so it’s probably worth doing some attrition work first. Abomination finally KOs Man-Thing and also hurts Hawkeye and Namor. Namor crosses the board and drops Hulkbuster who ejects into the mini-suit; this doesn’t help me much though as he’ll go down to Doctor Strange and Shang-Chi over the next couple of activations. Blade does finally do something useful by KOing Hawkeye to get him out of my hair while Dracula moves twice to the right Secure but is agonisingly just out of range. The score is 15 – 13 to Ben now.

Round 5: This is going to be the last round so I need to really limit Ben’s options but unfortunately I’ll need the dice to help out a bit as I’ve given Ben a huge help with my misplay in round 3. Namor crosses the board yet again and dazes Abomination. Dracula starts us out well by dazing Doctor Strange but fails to do one damage to Shang-Chi (who only had a single wound left) and is thrown off the Secure for his troubles. Shang-Chi walks and charges Blade, who is also on one wound and I think I’ve gotten lucky as he takes zero damage and plays Indomitable to stop getting pushed away from the Secure. If I can do one damage to Shang-Chi with a builder and then drop a wounded, Bleeding Namor with the Spender then I can squeeze over the line here. Sadly he rolls zero damage on the attack and gets thrown away and dazed by Shang-Chi’s counter. The game ends at 20 – 13 to Ben.

Thanks to Ben for a very fun, tight game. I’m quite annoyed with myself for basically handing the game over with my misplay of Abomination in round 3 though as I just had to stay the course and it would have been on Ben to break the deadlock. There was definitely a path to victory even in the final round but Dracula and Blade both failing to put a single damage into Shang-Chi sealed it for Ben. Well done Ben for spotting the opening I’d left you and capitalising on it. Our team go down 2 – 3 this round so at least we should now be able to avoid the very sweatiest teams!

Game 2: Pete (Cork Marvel Fites Gang) playing Midnight Sons on Lockdown and Hammers

For this game I’m paired into Pete; we’re obviously both playing teams that want to fight each other so I’m pretty glad to go here. I win Priority and choose my Extracts as our Crises are somewhat similar and now I can guarantee not playing on Mayor Fisk. Needless to say we draw that and my other least favourite option so we’re playing on Lockdown. Winning Priority was crucial for another reason though – the table space was very tight with annoying pillars throughout the room. Our table had a pillar right in the comfortable gaming spot on one side. So I gave that side to Pete; I didn’t even care that much about the board layout. I want Red Skull’s Troopers here to make the most of scoring and also N’Kantu to take advantage of the Troopers constantly KOing and feeding Souls. I didn’t expect to see Immortal Hulk on Pete’s side of the board but in retrospect he’s a great pick for this.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities
Secure: Lockdown! Security Systems Stymie Breakout
Threat: 18
My team: Dracula, Abomination, N’Kantu The Living Mummy, Red Skull Master of Hydra
My cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Indomitable, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Pete’s team: Blade, Doctor Voodoo, Immortal Hulk, Man-Thing
Pete’s cards: Bats The Ghost Hound, Brace For Impact, One Below All, Recalibration Matrix, Siege of Darkness

Round 1: Pete takes the second Priority roll. I’m fully expecting this to be a 4 – 4 round where we just collect our Hammers and then go at it in round 2. Hulk takes the home and left Hammers; the Troopers take a pot shot at him and park themselves on the right Secure while Red Skull picks up the left Hammer and tucks himself in as tight as possible behind the building. Man-Thing comes forward as far as possible and take a swing at Red Skull after just getting line of sight. I have N’Kantu take the last Hammer now in case Pete has anything clever he can do; he takes my left Secure. Doctor Voodoo crosses the board to take Pete’s left Secure and Blade goes on the right. After some measuring and eyeballing I decided that Dracula can probably manage to make it into Man-Thing with a Wolf move and go for it – he’s just in! The hit itself is not very exciting though. Finally Abomination double moves to try to contest with Doctor Voodoo but he’s just a bit short of making it. The score, as foretold, it 4 – 4.

Round 2: My home right Secure turns off. I can freely fight my way through Pete’s team here since I don’t have to worry about giving up Priority; on the other hand I have to whether the storm first. Man-Thing puts a bit more damage into Red Skull and then moves away to score the back right Secure. Dracula hurts Doctor Voodoo and moves him away with Hypnotic Gaze, then Blade moves over the middle bit of terrain and drops the Troopers with his Throwing Glaives,also hitting the Pursuit to get onto the (inactive) Secure. N’Kantu shuffles his feet, then uses his recently acquired Soul token for power and zaps Blade for no damage. Doctor Voodoo comes back and hurts Dracula a bit and Red Skull moves to score. Hulk crosses the board and plays Siege of Darkness to daze Dracula, then throws Abomination away and plays One Below All to get to the Secure. Abomination walks and plays his Spender to launch Man-Thing off the Secure, drawing Brace For Impact in the process. Once again Man-Thing is proving to be a very annoying chap to deal with; the score is 8 – 6 to me.

Round 3: This time it’s my home left Secure that goes inactive. Hulk is going to be a big problem and I’m going to have to do some big damage to him as I definitely need him to daze at some point just to take the Hammers off him. Hulk goes into Red Skull and I Sacrifice into Dracula and hit back with the full Spender combination. The second attack dazes Red Skull and now Hulk is carting three Hammers around with him with is rather upsetting. He then Bumps and Gamma Leaps to the opposite Secure. Abomination hits Doctor Voodoo but doesn’t land the Poison that would let me efficiently deal with him and Man-Thing; I settle for dazing the former but the latter somehow survives on one wound yet again. Man-Thing teleports himself to the Secure and shakes conditions. Both Blade and Dracula move to score points and N’Kantu, who is loaded with Souls now, takes down Hulk and forces Pete to pay for Bats to keep him alive on one and Bleeding. The score goes to 11 – 9 to Pete.

Round 4: The far left Secure turns off this round. I need to take out Hulk but he’s going to have his way with me first; albeit only a single attack as he is Bleeding. Hulk drop Mummy to the box, then shakes Bleed. The Hydra Troopers bring him down and Red Skull double moves to collect the four Hammers. Doctor Voodoo follows, Possesses him and picks up two of them, and then Abomination also joins the party and collects the last two. Blade rolls like a good to KO Dracula from full and we finish up at 14 – 12 to Pete.

Round 5: My home left Secure turns off. This is going to be the last turn and I need some big cooperation from the dice as I have to take out Hulk and Doctor Voodoo before they go. Red Skull pays for Cosmic Obliteration to Incinerate Hulk and the Troopers do me proud by KOing the big green chap. Red Skull then pays to count blanks twice and I cross my fingers… Doctor Voodoo goes down exactly. Blade saunters over and casually KOs Red Skull from full with a single attack anyway but has no power and so has to just skip off to the far away Secure again. Abomination gratefully collects the last two Hammers, Man-Thing shuffles his feet a bit and N’Kantu drops Blade out of spite. We finish the game at 17 – 15 in my favour.

Thanks to Pete for a very cool close game. I really needed the dice to cooperate in round 5 but some of that was a consequence of having spent much of the rest of the game failing to deal with Man-Thing and generally adding damage tokens to my characters. I made a bit of a deployment error with Abomination that cost me a point in the early game (or at least, gave Pete a free one) and that’s something I’ll need to be much more aware of for the future. Pete, if you’re reading this then I’m sorry that I gave you the side with the annoying pillar but also I’m grateful that it was you suffering that instead of me. Our team takes this round 3 – 2 so the pressure to avoid losing every round is off.

Game 3: Lewis (Skrull T-Shirts Incorporated) playing Cabal on Alien Ship and Intrusions

Our captains collude to put me in with Lewis this game as, again, we’re both clearly planning to fight each other. Fun fact, it turns out that Lewis is the top rated T’au player in Warhammer 40,000 so he’s clearly very good at games in general. Our Crisis cards are largely similar and when Lewis wins Priority he picks his Extracts. With only 6 points on the table each round this is clearly going to be about attrition and of course that’s already my plan (and Lewis’s) so we’re both very happy. I decide that this is the game to try out Mephisto as part of my objective to play all the characters in my roster; in theory he should be good for the extra mobility and the beams but in retrospect I think that maybe he doesn’t like being locked in such a tight brawl.

Extraction: Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown!
Secure: Intrusions Open Across City As Seals Collapse
Threat: 19
My team: Dracula, Mephisto, Red Skull Master of Hydra, Rogue
My cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Up The Ante, Warpath
Lewis’s team: Red Skull Master of the World, Baron Zemo, Killmonger, Ultron Metal Tyrant, Valkyrie
Lewis’s cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Dark Reign, I Am A Baron After All, Indomitable, Sacrifice

Round 1: I’m taller than Lewis so I want to make sure I don’t go too far behind on the score and then start to leverage attrition in my favour. Adam completely out deploys me though as we end up with Ultron facing off into Dracula; this is going to be a bit of an issue as he counters most of what Dracula wants to do. I do at least manage to keep my Red Skull away from his as that’s not a fight that favours me at all. I win the second roll off and send Rogue up to collect on the right, then Valkyrie does the same on the left. I decide to pass here as I think that I don’t want to expose Dracula too much in the centre so Killmonger (and later Zemo) just double walks to the right Secure. I’ve managed to body block my own Troopers off that point so they just sidle round the side; Red Skull hurts Valkyrie on the left though so it’s not all bad. Mephisto gets off to a terrible start, failing to damage Valkyrie with either of his attacks and then to add insult Ultron’s Drones pump three damage into my Red Skull. Ultron himself just picks up the last Secure and Dracula goes into him and completely fails to hurt him. The score is 4 – 2 to Lewis.

Round 2: I want to take out Valkyrie and relieve her of her Alien Core, and otherwise just pump as much damage into Lewis’s team as possible. My Red Skull does achieve his goal while the Troopers stroll onto the Secure and tickle Baron Zemo. Killmonger hurts Rogue and I make a big mistake and give up Priority by having her daze Zemo… though I’ll admit that this was quite satisfying in its own right. She also removes a good chunk of Killmonger’s power to keep him honest. Lewis’s Red Skull hops through the portal and leaves mine on one wound before leaving again. Dracula bounces two attacks off Lewis’s charmed Ultron before the robot goes through the Portal itself and dazes Rogue. Mephisto collects the Core that Ultron dropped and then lays into Killmonger, doing zero wounds over his first five attacks in the game. We even up the score at 6 – 6.

Round 3: I put Red Skull into the collision-proof version of his armour to stop Valkyrie just dazing him with a throw, and I need to start dropping Lewis’s team as I’m going to be short at least one activation this turn. Valkyrie does indeed daze Red Skull, then leaps through the Portal to bounce off Rogue. Mephisto makes up for his earlier failures a little by one-shotting Baron Zemo out of nowhere and then tickling Killmonger. The latter hurts Rogue and she then dazes him. Rogue then puts her Spender into Ultron to get him off the Secure but Lewis smartly Sacrifices it into Valkyrie. Ultron then KOs Rogue, taking out my Troopers in the process by throwing Rogue into them. Dracula decides that it’s his time to shine; he Portals into the scrum, KOs Valkyrie, dazes Ultron and Hypnotic Gazes Red Skull away. Red Skull attacks Dracula and gets dazed by the counterattack. I didn’t actually note the score here but I think from the board state that it was probably 9 – 6 to me.

Round 4: I’ve got Priority back now so I need to remove another of Lewis’s options; Killmonger is probably the most likely to take down so Dracula goes into him and makes it stick fortunately. Lewis plays Cosmic Obliteration to Hex Mephisto and Incinerate Dracula, then Ultron pays for Dark Reign on Mephisto. The Drones do some good work into Mephisto and I then put both of Ultron’s attacks into Dracula with Meet My Associate. Annoyingly, the last attack does the perfect amount of damage to Dracula to throw him into Mephisto and daze them both. Both of our Red Skulls just collect Alien Cores and try to score points. The score goes to 12 – 10 in my favour.

Round 5: We’re both down to almost nothing left, which I guess is probably what we expected when we set-up the game. I have priority and if I can remove one of Lewis’s options then he’ll have a ridiculous job to catch me up, especially with my Red Skull giving me a scoring edge. Dracula makes no mistake into Ultron this time, KOing him and then Hypnotic Gazing Red Skull as far away as possible. Lewis takes a look at the board state and decides that we don’t need to play this out; we enter the score at 16 – 10 to me.

Thanks to Lewis for a really fun game; it was brilliant as we were both on the attrition game plan and on perhaps the fightiest combination of Crises so we could both give it our all. I think that ultimately this came down a bit to my experience; Lewis just doesn’t play that much MCP (presumably because he’s focused on being incredible at Warhammer 40,000) and his plan was just to focus on attrition and hope to overwhelm the other team. Since I was also ready and willing to play that game, it eventually favoured me. I made a big mistake in round 2 giving up Priority and that could have cost me very dearly so that’s something to watch out for. As a team we take another narrow victory.

Game 4: Ed (Zeroes For Hire) playing A-Force on Alien Ship and Deadly Meteors

Our final round of the day and Adam puts me into play Ed as I’ve played loads of A-Force myself in the last year. Ed takes the Priority roll and picks his own Secures; luckily one of his Secures is the same as mine so I’m happy to pick Deadly Meteors and just fight Ed in the middle. I’m not crazy about Red Skull on this Crisis as both he and the Troopers are awful at the pay-to-flip so I opt to take three 4 threats. Rogue can hopefully soak up a bit of damage, Blade is resistant to conditions (and I also expect that none of Ed’s team will be Bleed-proof) and Psylocke can hopefully get good value out of her Stealth and variable attack types. The board layout, as cool as it looks, is actually a bit annoying to play on because all the trees are about the same size but are clearly supposed to be different sizes in the game. After a couple of attempts to classify them, Ed and I agree to just ‘fly casual’ since it’s the last game of the day, we’re both tired and neither of us is about to go 7 – 0.

Extraction: Alien Ship Crashes In Downtown!
Secure: Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians
Threat: 17
My team: Dracula, Blade, Psylocke, Rogue
My cards: Indomitable, Recalibration Matrix, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Ed’s team: She-Hulk, Black Cat, The Mighty Thor, Wasp
Ed’s cards: A-Force Assemble, Indomitable, Patch Up, Recalibration Matrix, Special Delivery

Round 1: I have to decide whether I’m going to play around Special Delivery and decide that I’ll just take my lumps in exchange for hopefully keeping She-Hulk off to one side for a couple of turns while I deal with whoever goes into the middle; Rogue draws the short straw as she’s most likely to survive a punching. Ed wins the second Priority roll which is a bit annoying as I’d really have liked to take the Alien Core on the right. Black Cat collects it instead and so Rogue sighs and goes to the one on the left. Wasp immediately deposits She-Hulk via Special Delivery and She-Hulk begins a reign of terror rolling hot on attacks; she’ll daze Rogue in her own activation. Blade flips the trap on the right and Psylocke goes over there to stick Bleed on Black Cat to put a bit of a timer on her. Thor goes straight up the middle, helpfully misses the pay-to-flip (though it doesn’t matter, of course, since Dracula will go after her) and collects the Core. Finally Dracula turns into a Wolf and joins her in the centre, dropping a nice hit and Hypnotic Gazing her out of my way so I can flip the centre. The score is 4 – 2 in Ed’s favour.

Round 2: Ed still has Priority and my plan is to activate and lay into whoever out of She-Hulk and Thor doesn’t move first. She-Hulk hammers Rogue into the ground like she’s a tent-peg, KOing her already, so Dracula dazes Thor and takes her Alien Core. Black Cat moves across to Stagger Dracula but he has so much power after dealing with Thor that his counterattack is a spender that dazes her. Blade just collects the dropped Extract before Wasp transforms, bounces off Dracula (who doesn’t have enough power left to counter attack her too) and fails the contested flip. Psylocke goes to the centre and puts Bleed onto Wasp. We level up the scores at 6 – 6.

Round 3: I need to take out a character here – either Thor or someone who hasn’t activated – and then I can start to concentrate properly on She-Hulk. Thor puts some damage into Dracula and Psylocke then the team around that Secure pay for A-Force Assemble, before Dracula lays some tasty damage into Black Cat and heals up. Wasp dazes Psylocke and Blade KOs Black Cat and hits Thor. She-Hulk walks over and one-shots Dracula, flips the central Secure and plays Patch Up on Thor to undo my good work. The score is 9 – 8 to Ed, but I’m in an OK position here despite what it looks like. I just need She-Hulk to stop rolling so hot!

Round 4: I have Priority at last so it’s time to go to work; as well as the attrition I want to keep Ed from having the time to push onto the right side and flip that Secure as I like it scoring for me each round. Dracula Hypnotic Gazes She-Hulk out of Bodyguard range then KOs Thor. Wasp puts a monster attack into Psylocke and I pay for Recalibration Matrix to keep her standing; Wasp collects a Core and retreats to safety. Psylocke Stuns She-Hulk which should limit her a bit more and lays some nice damage on, then She-Hulk one-shots Blade and leaves Psylocke on one wound. The score is 13 – 9 to Ed.

Round 5: I’m running out of characters but Ed’s are going down faster; if I can take out She-Hulk then I’m sitting pretty. Dracula gives She-Hulk all he’s got and it is sufficient. Wasp does her best, KOing Psylocke by throwing a tree into her, flipping the middle and retreating. I was going to get the fallen Core with Blade but I need to deny Ed a point more than I need to gain my own so Blade walks and flips Secures twice, helpfully getting both. The score is 14 – 13 with Ed slightly in the lead.

Round 6: Wasp has one wound left and is Bleeding. Not surprisingly, she can’t one-shot Blade so she shakes Bleed and hopes for the best. It’s not enough, Blade dazes her and I flip some points to we end up at 18 – 14 to me.

Wow, what a game! Ed was a truly lovely chap to play and my favourite opponent of the whole event – and he was up against some stiff competition I can tell you. I think that my basic plan was pretty fine here, and if Ed’s She-Hulk rolled like mine usually did then I might have made this a bit less fraught. If there is a lesson here it’s probably to keep fighting over every point and make the other team pay the resources for anything they’re going to gain. At one point I was down on points and attrition but just kept plugging away. Thanks to Ed, hopefully we can meet again. However, as a team we take a loss in this one which does neatly end the day at 2 – 2 for the team and 10 – 10 for the individual matches.

As an interlude we all went round to a local burger place that had been booked out for us. The burgers were fine, the service was uninspiring. But the people were a highlight! I got to chill in the pub with loads of cool people, new and old friends. There was even a Marvel themed pub quiz hosted by the very excellent Dan Porter, so thanks to him to putting in that extra work.

Game 5: Thomas (Universally Challenged) playing Guardians of the Galaxy on Hammers and Extremis Consoles

For our first round of the morning I get paired into Thomas, a very polite young gentleman playing Guardians of the Galaxy. Once again, this is the ‘we just want to fight’ match so I was happy with it, though I’m a bit worried about the amount of long range energy attacks I was going to have to deal with. Choice of table was Thomas’s but he didn’t seem to have an immediate preference and so I suggested that we take the Murderworld board because it looks super cool. I win Priority and pick my own Secures; Thomas clearly has a plan as he immediately picks 17 threat. Red Skull is great on Extremis Consoles because the Troopers can also do a spot of healing off the Consoles, and I think I want Rogue for her charge and resistance to damage. The last choice is between Drax and N’Kantu and I select the latter because I think that this is going to be a game of scooting around and taking pot shots rather than walking and stabbing people. Also there are going to be a lot of Soul tokens floating about here.

Extraction: Fear Grips World As “Worthy“ Terrorize Cities
Secure: Riots Spark Over Extremis 3.0
Threat: 17
My team: Dracula, N’Kantu The Living Mummy, Red Skull Master of Hydra, Rogue
My cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Indomitable, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Thomas’s team: Star-Lord, Nebula, Nova, Ronan The Accuser, Echo
Thomas’s cards: Fall Back, Galaxy’s Greatest, Lovable Misfits, Recalibration Matrix, Sacrifice

Round 1: I win second Priority and Thomas immediately surpasses almost all other Guardians players in my estimation by actually remembering to do his Winging It Tokens; they go on Echo, Nova and Ronan. I’m going to keep N’Kantu on my home Secure and just let him rack up points, and from the way Thomas has deployed I’ll be doing the same with Rogue on the left. So my plan for round one will be just end up carrying two Hammers and then after that to daze someone before they activate. Rogue goes to the left and Thomas surprises me by not immediately hoovering up the right Hammer so I rather gingerly put Red Skull on the job. Nebula attacks him but I get away somewhat lightly. N’Kantu picks up my home Hammer and sets out a deck chair to wait for the fight to eventually reach that Secure; I could have delayed but I didn’t want to risk Thomas getting cheeky with his long movers. Ronan comes in and immediately dazes Red Skull with a hilarious Universal Weapon attack; the only saving grace is that he’s too far away to collect it, so Dracula has to move twice to pick up the fallen Hammer. Nove does nothing to Dracula and Echo shoots at the Troopers from midfield. Thomas plays Lovable Misfits on all the Guardians except Star-Lord and they all get the move which definitely consolidates that Secure! The score is 5 – 3 to me.

Round 2: At least I’ve got a lead here but that was an uncomfortable amount of damage to be taking so early. I am confident that Rogue and N’Kantu are a match for Star-Lord and Echo so I just need to keep the fight over on the right. Winging It tokens go to the same three heroes as before. Dracula dazes Nebula, the gives Ronan Bleed and Hypnotic Gazes him away. Nova goes into Red Skull and I Sacrifice it into Dracula and eat another giant spike of an attack. By contrast, the Spender counter attack is even more disappointing but it does at least launch Nova into the distance. A second attack goes into Red Skull for rather less damage. The Troopers draw Recalibration Matrix out of Echo which is quite fortunate, then Red Skull dazes Nova and gently tickles Ronan. The latter throws Red Skull into Dracula, leaving my leader on one wound. Echo charges across the board to contest with N’Kantu and everyone else just shuffles their feet. The score is 9 – 6 in my favour.

Round 3: The same three characters get the Winging It tokens. I really need to take out Nebula here as she’s going to be a huge problem if she gets to attack, and it needs to be Dracula as he’s about to daze. The first swing isn’t enough and an excellent Fall Back saves her bacon, then a follow-up Spender into Ronan doesn’t do much despite all the rerolls I have. Thomas plays Galaxy’s Greatest on Nebula and Nova, and Nova beams his way through my characters, dazing Dracula in the process. Red Skull plays Cosmic Obliteration (I’m about to lose him so I might as well use the card) and tries to deal with Nebula but she plays Sacrifice into Ronan. Even worse, the attack roll is huge and takes Ronan down, so his The Accuser attack KOs Red Skull. Ironically, this leaves Nebula without any good victims! Echo moves to the right to pick up the Hammer, Nebula moves toward N’Kantu to set up for next turn, and Star-Lord does a move into Hit And Run to zap N’Kantu from across the board. My other two characters shuffle and start working on the Times crossword. The score goes to 13 – 9 to me.

Round 4: If I can keep at least one of N’Kantu and Rogue score their Secure and also holding their Hammers then I can get this regardless of what happens to Dracula on the right. So I need to do what damage I can over there to keep the Guardians busy but first N’Kantu needs to earn his keep by dealing with Nebula. Thomas keeps the same Winging It token carriers. N’Kantu does a double Spender to take out Nebula and I breathe a bit of a sigh of relief. Nova hurts Dracula who hits him back with an absolutely monster Spender attack and has him sailing almost back into his deployment zone. It takes Dracula two swings but he does take out Echo, then Star-Lord finishes him off with a Hit and Run back to his home Secure. Ronan needs to one-shot N’Kantu after moving towards that Secure and doesn’t manage it, so I slope over the line at 16 – 11.

I really enjoyed playing Thomas, he really knew what he was doing and greatly impressed me with his maturity. The game itself was a bit odd as almost all the action took place in a 20cm square on the right of the table and I was quite happy to keep the Guardians’ fightiest heroes busy over there while N’Kantu and Rogue racked up 3 or 4 points each turn with minimal interference. Thomas played his cards really well to keep Nebula as a threat and make sure that I had a very hard time getting dazes anywhere. It’s a good round for the rest of the team too and we take the overall victory.

Game 6: Euan (The Only Scottish Team) playing Wakanda on Deadline and Deadly Legacy Virus

It was, perhaps, inevitable that we would end up playing the other Scottish team after travelling hundreds of miles to London. Still, at least this lets us set bragging rights for the year. I get matched into the truly lovely Euan, a longtime Spider Foes player. I take Priority and pick my Secures and he chooses the lower threat value. I had noted that Euan could possibly flex into Wakanda with his roster but some reason it didn’t occur to me that he might actually do it. However, it didn’t hugely affect my own plans as I have a nice 16 threat option for Deadline and just went with what I knew; it also had the bonus that I would play Drax and complete my goal to play all 10 characters.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Deadline to Destruction
Threat: 16
My team: Dracula, Drax The Destroyer, N’Kantu The Living Mummy, Red Skull Master of Hydra
My cards: Cosmic Obliteration, Indomitable, Sacrifice, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Euan’s team: M’Baku, King T’Challa, Okoye, Abomination
Euan’s cards: Indomitable, Sacrifice, Survival, Wakanda Forever, Wisdom Of The Ancestors

Round 1: My main goal for the first round is not to give King T’Challa enough free power for a Bound; I’ll do that by spending my power on Bleeds or pressing the Deadline Consoles. I get first activation and send N’Kantu up the left side to collect an Extract and Abomination goes on the right. I’m a bit nervous about sending anyone up the middle so Drax goes to the right and gives Abomination Bleed. Okoye is brave enough to take the middle Extract. Dracula goes on the left Secure as (unsurprisingly) Euan doesn’t just conveniently stand King T’Challa there for me to hit him. T’Challa walks up and, with no rerolls, simply one-shots N’Kantu anyway; he then has plenty of power to Bound onto the left Secure. The score is 4 – 2 to Euan.

Round 2: I certainly wasn’t happy to lose N’Kantu so easily but at least I have T’Challa where I want him. I need to drop him as soon as possible while staying in contention on the rest of the board. Needless to say, Dracula leaves the King on one wound, though he is weighed down by conditions this time. It doesn’t stop him from one-shotting N’Kantu again, then moving away from Dracula and dazing to the Bleed. Uh oh! At least I don’t have to worry too much about Priority now. Red Skull and his pals daze Okoye and collect her Extract, then Euan’s dice desert him as Abomination puts a spender into Red Skull but fails to get the throw or do any damage. Drax walks and Bleeds M’Baku before retreating to his Secure, and M’Baku follows him and lands a big hit. The score is 7 – 5 in my favour now.

Round 3: Euan either forgets about Survival or chooses not to play it (probably because he thought that he was safe behind that building), so here is my opportunity to KO King T’Challa and put the game firmly in my hands. Dracula Hypnotic Gazes King T’Challa into stabbing range but he can’t do enough damage to KO! My heart sinks. Abomination makes up for his earlier failings to daze Red Skull perfectly. Drax throws M’Baku off the Secure and then gets thrown off in return by the chieftain’s spender before Warpath-ing back himself; so a lot of effort on both sides for minimal effect. Okoye collects her Extract again and King T’Challa opts not to risk the counterattack and just shakes Bleed and heads to score [I think that there is a cool play here that Euan didn’t see where Okoye moves toward Dracula to Bodyguard the counterattack if King T’Challa wants to fight him]. We narrow the score to 9 – 8 to me.

Round 4: Euan remembers to play Survival this time and I’m running out of resources to make this work. I need to deal with Abomination before he KOs Red Skull and that might be enough to keep me in the game. The troopers shoot M’Baku twice in case they get a lucky spike and daze him early but Okoye Bodyguards both shots and they do no damage anyway. I do get the rolls I need from Red Skull and he gets the daze on Abomination and that’s what I really needed. Euan then makes a key mistake and activates M’Baku instead of T’Challa, dazing Drax and tickling Red Skull. I’m not going to get another opportunity here so Dracula turns into a Wolf and chases King T’Challa, finally KOing him and doing wonders for my blood pressure. Phew! Okoye just moves to score and we go to 12 – 10 to me.

Round 5: I’m feeling a bit more comfortable now about all of this and I think I can probably see the game out for scoring. If Abomination goes down then I’m almost sure to get over the line as Euan just won’t have enough stuff to deal with me. Red Skull is my guy for ‘just pump out damage’ so he plays Cosmic Obliteration (Hex on M’Baku, Incinerate on Abomination) and after throwing everything at Abomination he KOs perfectly. Euan plays the saddest Wakanda Forever and M’Baku doesn’t even manage to clear the Troopers; Okoye uses the activation to hurt Drax. Dracula strolls over to daze M’Baku and Drax can’t drop Okoye so settles for just throwing her off the Secure; I see this one out at 16 – 11.

That was a real rollercoaster of emotions as we both rode the ‘will King T’Challa just randomly make this a non-game?’ train. Euan is always a great guy to play and I need to be more like him and his sanguine approach to dice. In this case it was clear that he hadn’t played a great deal of Wakanda and I think that there were probably a few times where a better line from him would have put this out of my reach much earlier. I look forward to playing agan soon when he’s got some more practice with this side of his roster and gets to unleash a full operational King T’Challa on us all. Perhaps most importantly my team delivers the goods here with only Franky going under the bus of Lewis’s Inhumans.

Game 7: Nicky (Go Figure) playing Hydra on Wedding Party and Deadly Legacy Virus

The final round has us up against Belgian travellers and I’m very pleased to go into Nicky who is, if not famous, at least someone I’ve heard of! Nicky wins the Priority roll off and picks his Secures and I’m glad to be able to choose Wedding Party. I go with my main team here, taking Rogue as the 4 threat this time to leverage her higher resistance to damage when compared to Blade in particular. Thinking about this now, probably Psylocke would have been better to threaten Red Skull; hindsight is a great thing.

Extraction: Deadly Legacy Virus Cured?
Secure: Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack!
Threat: 20
My team: Dracula, Abomination, Hulkbuster, Rogue
My cards: Indomitable, Sacrifice, Recalibration Matrix, Thralls of Dracula, Warpath
Nicky’s team: Red Skull Master of Hydra, Baron Zemo, Bob Agent of Hydra, Beta Ray Bill, Hulk
Nicky’s cards: Cosmic Obliteration, I Am A Baron After All, Recalibration Matrix, Sacrifice, Survival

Round 1: The basic plan is to go hard on the left side and thin out Nicky’s team there while Hulkbuster buys me a bit of time on the right. Beta Ray Bill is going to be a thorn in that plan as he’s very well equipped to deal with Hulkbuster but I’ll see what I can do. I win the second Priority roll and send Rogue to collect the left Extract while Bill takes the right one and Abomination goes in the middle. With that out of the way we can get on with the game! Bob and the Troopers take the left Secure while Red Skull and Zemo go to the right. Hulkbuster pushes the latter away and Hit and Runs onto the Secure. Dracula turns into a Wolf and puts the least effective attack ever into the Troopers, doing no damage and not even giving them a condition. Hulk strolls up and hurls him off into the distance. The score is 5 – 2 to Nicky.

Round 2: At least I get to move the Secures around. I’m not going to be able to slow down Nicky much on the right but I can’t afford to abandon it either as Red Skull’s Troopers could just score if for free so Hulkbuster is stuck there for now. I’ll be happy if I can waste a bit of Hydra time on that side while doing focussing down Hulk on the left as that should give me space to expand over to the right. Zemo plays his card, Charges into Hulkbuster and puts a bit of damage out while also giving Bleed. Dracula walks back to the fray, puts Hex on Hulk and walks him away with Hypnotic Gaze. On the right, Red Skull hurts Hulkbuster who then dazes Zemo. Bob clears Bleed and walks back to the Secure and Rogue fails to do any damage to him. Bill throws Hulkbuster into Narnia and Abomination dazes Bob. Hulk comes in and throws Abomination; I play Indomitable but the attack does manage to roll the Wild and push him off anyway which gives Hulk a landing spot to get to the Secure. The score goes to 8 – 4 to Nicky.

Round 3: Hulk is now wearing every condition in the game so I think that he’s probably KO-able from here Once that’s done, I can start to push over to the right and rescue Hulkbuster. Dracula goes into Hulk needing to pick up 1 power to unleash his spender. The attack roll is 7 blanks. In desperation, I play Recalibration Matrix. This is a bit of a long shot but I need to roll the dice to get myself out of a hole here. The reroll also does zero damage. The second attack also does zero damage. Oh well. Zemo attacks Abomination and lands a monster hit; I Sacrifice the second swing into Dracula but it’s a Steel Rush and Nicky is smart enough to use the move to get out of counterattack range. Abomination goes into Hulk and gets a super attack roll which Nicky Recalibration Matrix-s into no damage. Take note Dracula, that is how you Recalibration Matrix. In return, Hulk dazes Abomination and takes his Extract. Hulkbuster launches Zemo away with his Spender and Hit and Runs onto the Secure where Red Skull, the Troopers and Bill will eventually daze him and fire out the Ejection Suit. Bob fires his big rocket and dazes Dracula with the splash damage and Rogue does zero damage to Hulk again. The score is 12 – 5 in Nicky’s favour.

Round 4: I suspect that this is out of sight now unless I get an enormous blow out, but I’ll fight for each point so I first need to finally sort out Hulk and try to lock in something for the left Secure at least. Nicky plays Survival on Zemo. Dracula lets rip two Spenders; the first is taken by Bob with Sacrifice and the second does finally daze Hulk. Red Skull stands on the right Secure and Bill ends the round by moving to the left and throwing Rogue away. The score is 15 – 7 to Nicky; I’ll admit my notes are a bit rubbish on this round for some reason so probably I missed Nicky doing something clever.

Round 5: Bill starts us out by throwing Iron Man away and double moving to the centre. I decide I might as well at least get something out of the game by stopping Bob from activating. Rogue goes into him and continues her complete failure this game – she didn’t roll even one success on any roll. Bob then rub salt into my wounds by KOing Iron Man. I move Dracula toward my team with Dracula as good practice for the non-existent next round. Abomination fails to do even a single point of damage to Red Skull or to throw him off the point. We finish up at 18 – 11 to Nicky.

Thanks to Nicky who was a very fun opponent. Perhaps I’m kidding myself that this was winnable for me as Nicky is clearly very good but I felt that I had the right tools to take this game if my dice hadn’t been totally rancid throughout. Oh well, it wasn’t like we were going to win the entire event on the back of this game or round. Things aren’t better on most of the other tables and the Belgians beat us handily.

When the scores are all totalled up we are in 11th place of 24 which seems a very fitting mid table result. As a team we were 4 – 3 on the rounds and 18 – 17 on individual games. I had a grand time with 7 very fun games of MCP, so thanks to Ben, Pete, Lewis, Ed, Thomas, Euan and Nicky for the games, thanks to Adam, Franky, Stephen and Will for being cool team mates and thanks to Jamie and Norbert for organising everything. That’s probably the end of the road for Thralls for me and I have several other rosters now that I’m excited to put on the table.