Marvel: Crisis Protocol – What To Expect In The Core Rules Changes

Marvel: Crisis Protocol – What To Expect In The Core Rules Changes

Welcome to another Atomic Mass Transmission! All the chatter about updated to Marvel: Crisis Protocol Core Set characters got you excited? Well let’s talk about some other core things that are changing!

We’ve been watching the game and the players for a long time now – listening to feedback, reading articles, listening to podcasts, and lurking in various places to see what people love about Crisis Protocol and what we can do better to help that experience be the best it can be. Couple that with the game growing and expanding and all the lessons learned along the way, and you get to a few things we want to update about the core rules of the game.

First up – Roster construction! The Roster system has been a smashing success for the game – we see players of all walks really enjoying how it comes together to create their own personal team of characters and tactics. But every system can be improved! With the release of more characters that share an Alter Ego we’ve seen that the original rule about who can be included in your Roster has become a bit too restrictive. This rule is being updated to allow characters with the same Alter Ego (But different Character Names!) to be included in the same Roster – however you still cannot include multiple characters in your squad that share an Alter Ego.

What does this change do in reality? Players can include both versions of Stephen Vincent Strange (Doctor Strange and Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme) in their Roster but would have to choose one to use in their squad when the time came and could not include both. Players are still not allowed to take two of the same Doctor Strange in their Roster (perhaps one with each of the available Infinity Gems?) due to him having the same Character Name and Alter Ego.

The next Roster update involves Team Tactic Cards: Players may now include 10 Team Tactic Cards in their Roster instead of the previously allowed 8. We settled on this change for a few reasons – the most important of which being the shift from unaffiliated to character-specific cards being the norm. We wanted to give players the option of taking more specific cards rather than feeling like they must remain more generalist with their selections. Regardless of that, who doesn’t love more Team Tactic Card choices?!

The next change I’d like to talk about is Crisis Selection. This ties in to Roster creation and generally the direction of the game – we’ve changed this to fully randomized selection from the 3 crisis you included in your Roster. Players still roll for priority the same they always have and choose either Secure or Extract just like normal. However, when they go to pick their Crisis, they simply reveal one Crisis instead of two – that is the Crisis that is used for the game.

If you’ve watched some of our recent streams, you’ve already heard of all the changes up to this point, but we didn’t talk about this one: We have decided to change the player that selects the threat value after Crisis selection to the player that does not have priority (instead of the player that won the roll for priority). This accomplishes a few things for the game. Primarily, it removes some of the benefit of having priority. Getting to select which Crisis type you get to use for the game AND the Threat Value led to a style of play that we were not a fan of and artificially inflated the importance of Crisis selection above that of even characters. We want players to remain focused on the characters they pick and the tactics they use and not focused on creating spreadsheets of opening moves. Randomized Crisis selection and the non-priority players selecting the Threat Value of the game both work together to help combat this play pattern.

The final change to the Core Rules involves the Infinity Gems. And we’re back at Roster Construction… I do love talking in circles! When a character is included in a Roster, the player must now select any Infinity Gems the character will have. Gems no longer consume “Roster slots” like they used to – they are just added to character. Each Roster may only include one of each Gem and Gems increase the threat value of the character when squad building just like they currently do. However, if you include the Gem in your Roster, you MUST include it with the character should you chose to add them to your squad.

We are also taking this opportunity to clean up a few of the more confusing sections of the Core Rules and updating some examples to better explain the existing rules of the game – these may involve minor functionality changes but will not affect the vast majority of players.

Whew! What a ride. Anyways, that’s it for this installment of previews of the up-and-coming changes to Crisis Protocol – stay tuned as we cover more of what’s happening in the near future.