Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Apocalypse Ultimate Encounter
Apocalypse is coming to stores this week from Atomic Mass Games. It’s time to check out his Ultimate Encounter.
Back in August, I was excited to see just how massive of a release wave Apocalypse was bringing. Well, the impending Apocalypse wave has arrived and is in stores now! While I’ve covered his model, Angel/Archangel, and the three different terrain packs, I wanted to do a deeper dive on Apocalypse’s Ultimate Encounter.
Apocalypse’s Ultimate Encounter – Rejuvenation Chamber
To kick things off, you want two main things from this wave of releases. You’ll need Apocalypse (duh) and you’ll want to snag the Rejuvenation Chamber. Inside that box, you’ll find all the rules and extras for this Ultimate Encounter.
Once you’ve got the Rejuvenation Chamber all assembled, you’re ready to play. The set also includes a bunch of tokens to use if you don’t have the corresponding terrain features from the other terrain kits. However, if you DO have them, you can just swap the tokens out for their respective miniatures/terrain features.
All of the terrain feature tokens can be swapped with the terrain from the other Apocalypse kits for a more immersive battlefield.
The Ultimate Encounter’s basic premise is that Apocalypse is “evolving” in the Rejuvenation Chamber (the terrain feature) and his horsemen are there to protect him while it happens. The Crisis Team’s job is to stop his “evolution” as much as they can.
Apocalypse Rising
Apocalypse will “awaken” during the clean-up phase in round two after increasing the Evolution Chamber Count. There’s no preventing him from coming out of this state — it’s just a matter of how tough he’s going to be when he comes out!
Which version you use is based off the Evolution Count which is a chart you can see below. The various Celestial Tech terrain pieces around the board contribute to Apocalypse’s Evolution count. The Crisis Team can interact with the various pieces in an attempt to sabotage them by either interacting with them, throwing them, colliding with them, or causing some other effect to “destroy” them.
These effects (throws or destroys) don’t actually remove the pieces. Instead each time that happens you put a token on the terrain piece. During the clean-up step, for each sabotage token, you roll a die. If a crit or wild is rolled, the feature is destroyed and removed from the battlefield.
Additionally, there are also Celestial Chests players can look to gain some Celestial Tech — this might be rather important so don’t forget to snag those!
Once Apocalypse is out, that’s when the real fight begins…
The Teams
Now, as far as the Crisis Team, it’s a pretty typical Ultimate Encounter for them. The Crisis Team is constructed of two players, each with a squad with a maximum threat of 17. Meanwhile, the Cosmic Threat player’s squad is determined by the chart above. If you’re looking for a challenge, the chart really lends itself to scaling well for the players.
And in case you missed it, yes, this is a 2v1 situation. The Crisis Team will activate three characters on their activations while the Cosmic Threat player will activate an Encounter Character and one Minion character. It’s worth noting that while Apocalypse is “evolving” the Minion Character with the Horsemen of Death card counts as the Encounter Character for activation purposes.
Winning the Ultimate Encounter
The win conditions are simple. The Crisis Team wins if there are three or more Exhaustion tokens on the Dashboard at any time AFTER Apocalypse awakens. The Cosmic Threat player wins if at any point there are fewer than three Characters on the board for the Crisis Team.
There’s a bit more within the rules for some of the specifics of what the terrain does. There are also Plot Cards the Cosmic Threat can use depending on what terrain is still active. But those are the basics for this scenario. Personally, I really like this one and think it’s a great way to play with a friend or two. These Ultimate Encounters are some of my favorite ways to play Marvel: Crisis Protocol. If have a play group I HIGHLY recommend you all go in on the terrain and get at least the Rejuvenation Chamber kit just to run this scenario.
Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Rejuvenation Chamber Ultimate Encounter $124.99
The Rejuvenation Chamber terrain adds more Apocalypse themed terrain to players’ Marvel: Crisis Protocol collection! This product also comes with a new Ultimate Encounter that introduces special rules and comes with all the gaming components needed to start playing.
Will you stop the Apocalypse?
