We met up recently and managed to squeeze in some MCP games. Neither of us have played in a while and were trying out new rosters. We tried to brief each other, including confirming that neither of us had any throws with our characters. Turns out we were both very wrong and, as you will read, used them to good effect in the game! The turn 0 conversation is only useful if you know what your own team actually does!
Don’t worry, I don’t have any throws in my list
Famous last words of Stu and Jamie, completely forgetting that in fact both of them have throws…
Team:
Both of the Crisis Cards we drew randomly were 15 threat missions so the threat level was already decided for us.
Stu brought Midnight Sons with Blade, Wolverine, Wong and Doctor Strange.
Jamie used Avengers with Steve Rogers Captain America, Iron Man, Vision and Captain Marvel.
Crisis Cards
Research Station Attacked & S.W.O.R.D Establishes Base on Moon’s Blue Area
Game Summary
The first round was largely focused on moving up to secure the objectives, with each claiming two S.W.O.R.D. bases. A last minute move from Iron Man ensured that the Avengers secured the Researcher but otherwise there were not many attacks other than Captain Marvel sending a warning blast of energy towards Doctor Strange.
Things heated up in round two as Doctor Strange staggered Iron Man and damaged Captain Marvel. Vision’s beams and throwing of Wolverine did not do much due to some exceptionally poor rolls by Jamie! Wolverine showed how it was done by angrily leaping over Steve Rogers and aiming for Iron Man. However Captain America threw himself in the way, keeping Iron Man alive but getting dazed in the process. Finally in his smashing turn Wolverine made Iron Man bleed before bumping into range of the objective.
Iron Man shook his stagger before unleashing homing rockets at Doctor Strange with the help of Friday AI. However he failed to do serious damage to Doctor Strange, who used mystic shields to block the damage. Blade hit Vision with his mystic katana, flipped the console to the Midnight Sons before bumping into the middle to trigger his vampiric immortality and heal off the bleeding Avengers. Captain Marvel beat up Wolverine before slamming a building on top of him to daze him. Wong meditated and healed Doctor Strange. Whilst Iron Man held the Researcher, the Midnight Sons took control of the S.W.O.R.D. base.
The Avengers had priority in turn 3 and Captain America started proceedings by throwing his shield at Wolverine but completely whiffed his attacks! Wolverine dazed Captain Marvel with his berserker barrage powered up by his wild rage. Then Stu activated the Siege of Darkness to let Doctor Strange and Blade Attack too, dazing Iron Man as well. Vision beamed and tried to throw Wolverine into Blade again but Stu used Brace for Impact to negate this.
Things were looking somewhat bleak for the Avengers at the start of Turn 4. Whilst Vision used Patch Up on Captain America and then triggered Avengers Assemble to reposition the team, Wolverine responded by killing Captain America with 10 damage in one attack!!! Iron man beamed Doctor Strange and Blade wounding them before pushing blade away from the action. Doctor Strange responded by killing Iron Man and retaking the S.W.O.R.D. base. For the last action of the round Captain Marvel swooped in and dazed Doctor Strange before throwing a car into Wong.
At that point it was clear where the game was going, with the Midnight Sons ahead both on the board and in terms of points. We therefore decided to call it there with a victory for the night boys!
Lessons Learnt
Jamie
MVP: Captain Marvel
I was very impressed with how the OG Captain Marvel plays. She was pretty mobile and vary capable of holding a flank by herself. Additionally her powers really benefitted from Captain America’s leadership ability reducing their cost and she was able to get some throws off to good effect.
Speaking of Captain America’s leadership – it is just a really good, if simple, leadership. Making superpowers cheaper makes all the difference (for example making bodyguard and Vision’s throw both cost only 1 power) and means you can be a lot more efficient in your plays. The Avengers Assemble card is really good, with the extra movement really handy for getting everyone in a better position – I used it to get Vision (with a stagger) and Iron Man in position to use some beams without having to spend an action moving. Overall I thought Iron Man was a bit underwhelming, but I also did not think that I played him super efficiently.
I was semi impressed with Vision (though the dice rolls let him down with his beam attacks). However I thought he was good at building power but did not have much of an outlet for spending it.
Stu
MVP: Wolverine
Especially on his damaged side. Who needs to contest objectives when you can throw 4 extra dice and shred enemies!
I really enjoyed playing with the Midnight Sons and was a nice change from my usual Asguardians of the Galaxy hybrid list. Still far from using them optimally but did learn a lot from the game.
Wolverine was my splash character and included based off the recent Midnight Sons comic run where he teamed up with Blade. He absolutely shredded enemies (with some lucky dice rolls helping out) and took a fair beating with his healing factor keeping him in the game. Wong didn’t attack once! But didn’t need to and his utility abilities of generating and passing power to others and healing up Doctor Strange were really useful. Loved using him and felt like 2 threat well spent. All my characters had only medium moves but ‘Bump in the Night’ ability gave them extra mobility and unpredictability and Wolverine had some surprising extra mobility with his Berserker Barrage ability.
I was really suprised by how tanky Steve Rogers was on his wounded side by adding blanks to successes, which also negated my pierce abilities on Wolverine and Blade. This coupled with his ability to bodyguard others and take their hits made him very powerful defensively and made it hard for my team to really ramp the pressure up and finish off characters.
Mutant Snake Eyes 