Marvel Crisis Protocol: Where to Start – New Players’ Guide
Marvel Crisis Protocol brings the beloved characters of the Marvel Universe to the tabletop in a fun, strategic game. Here’s how to get started!
With stores opening back up and playgroups getting together again for the first time in over a year, all of our favorite games are bound to have a lot of new players! If Marvel Crisis Protocol is one of the games you have your eye on, this article can help you get started!
Crisis Protocol sits at an interesting intersection in the gaming world. The IP is well-known and much loved, with material stretching back decades. The game itself is well written by designers that have a strong background in competitive miniature gaming. These two facts work together to make the “new player” pool of MCP a mix of veteran wargamers and fans of Marvel who may never have played a game this detailed and complex.
For better or worse, most of the existing content is geared much more towards the veteran gamer community. Many of the websites and podcasts that put out regular MCP content started as Warmachine or Warhammer groups that picked up MCP and have gotten very involved. My goal is to produce more content geared towards players that are either brand new to miniature gaming, or who want to dig into the more casual/narrative side of the game.
Getting Started
This set of articles assumes that you have no experience in playing or collecting MCP. We will have more articles soon delving deeper into more specific topics, but for now, I want to provide a good roadmap for someone getting into the game for the first time. Think of this as the guide for a new video game that is pinned to the top of your subreddit or discussion forum that steps you through how to play through your first 50 hours of a game.
The first place to begin is the Core Set. The MCP core set is by far the best deal for a new player and is IMO the best core set of any game I have been involved in. That might sound like a bold claim, but the amount of stuff you get in the core set and the quality of those items is really refreshing compared to {unnamed other games}. One core set is even enough for two people to get started with if you plan on playing each other to begin.
In the core set, you get 10 models, dice, templates, tokens, cards, and several terrain pieces. The models are great and are very much in line with the rest of the models from the range. Some core sets have click-together models or stuff made out of cheaper plastic, etc to keep costs down. Not so with these models!
Still, there are some people who would prefer not to buy the core set, usually because they aren’t fans of the included teams. If you really don’t want a core set you can buy the templates, dice, and terrain separately. The harder part to replace is the crisis and tactics cards that come in the core set. The crisis cards (or scenarios) that come in the core set are very useful to have and give a good range of game types. Several core set tactics cards are used quite regularly even at a competitive level. You could definitely make do without them or could potentially get them second-hand.
All that said, I strongly recommend the core set as your first purchase to get into the game.
Avengers, Assemble!
Once you have your first models, you have to put them together! If you’re coming from other miniature games this won’t be any surprise for you, but if you’re coming from a board game background you may be surprised to find the game pieces are not built ahead of time! Be sure to leave enough time to build your models before you schedule your first game with a friend! Or offer them pizza to help you put your minis together.
These models are pretty detailed and come in more pieces than a lot of similar games. Even the simpler models in MCP usually have at least 6-7 pieces. I just assembled Warmachine this week and that one model had 26 pieces! Luckily the pieces are well made for the most part and fit together well. Just test fit before you start gluing, take your time and you should be fine. The core set characters took me about 2.5 hours to assemble, and I have been building models for almost 20 years.
Once you have the characters built, you can either finish off the core set assembly with the terrain or jump right into playing!
Your First Games
The core set instructions include a simplified scenario to play to get used to the rules of the game. I would definitely recommend starting there. The two squads are pre-set, and you play with a simple pair of crisis cards. Play the scenario, then if you have the time reset it and swap teams!
Take your time and be sure to look up answers to your questions as they arise. If you are coming from other tabletop games be sure to read the rules carefully as some concepts and terms are used a bit differently than they are used in some other common games. I will be doing another article very soon with some commonly missed rules and “gotcha’s” when coming from other rule sets.
After a couple of games with the basic scenario, add in some more moving pieces. If you are sharing a core set with your partner, it may be harder to swap models back and forth and still have functional teams, but if you are playing against someone with their own collection now is a good time to try building your own squad. Remember you can mix and match characters from different affiliations freely as long as you end up with 17 threat value.
Tactics cards add a lot to a game but can be one of the more challenging parts of your roster to choose. For the first few games, it is perfectly valid to play without any tactics cards and focus on getting the core mechanics of the game down. Alternatively, you can continue to use one of the recommended tactics card sets from the starter scenario.
At this stage, I would recommend choosing the crisis cards at random for each game, instead of choosing them as part of a roster as it is spelled out in the rules.
Expanding your collection
Core set games are fun, but most of us want to collect and play with a lot more of the characters than just the starting 10! Once you have a handle on the rules, expanding your roster to include some other models and affiliations is the next step.
I will be covering some tips for moving beyond the core set in part 2 of this series. We’ll dig into choosing an affiliation, picking some good “bang for your buck” character packs, and putting together a solid roster to play at your LGS.
How did you get started in Crisis Protocol? Share some of your experiences as a new player below!
