Marvel Crisis Protocol: Out with the Old, In With the New (Mutants)
What does Marvel Crisis Protocol’s newest band of mutant heroes have to offer? Time to dig into the New Mutants on the tabletop!
Last month, the Friday the 13th brought a little good luck for any mutant-loving fans of Marvel Crisis Protocol. Tucked into pack CP153, aka “Sunspot and Warlock box” was a team tactics card allowing Magik to lead a New-Mutants-affiliated team onto the tabletop. With only 7 current members and a single leader does this new team hold any weight in-game? I’ve painted them all up, and gotten a few games in. Now let’s have a look…
Cry For Help
Wow, that is a pretty spicy leadership ability. And it better be because it will count towards one of the five Team Tactics cards you can bring with you. It grants extra out-of-activation movement, and even better — it’s a place! This let’s you pop right through terrain of any size and avoid some of the annoying trap abilities you might run into. It can also help you set up the perfect Beam or Area attack. More importantly, getting to forgo a movement action means more attacks – and more damage output. But that’s kid stuff. The really important part is that it can keep your models on objectives and scoring. Did an angry Hulk throw one of your mutants outside of range 1 of an objective you were securing? Use Cry for Help to jump right back. And it’s not even a once-per-turn use.
The downside is you’re kind of at your opponent’s mercy. Yes, they’re going to have to attack your models at some point… But once they catch on to what your New Mutants can do they’re going to go out of the way to use pushes and throws to make your Cry-For-Help-places less effective if not impossible. So it’ll be up to you to advance up the field as carefully you can, always being vigilant to keep a range 3 distance between all your models. All the while making sure everyone has at least one power left to pay for a place to put them back where they need to be after getting pushed away. To put it more simply, this is a finesse faction that will require a lot of experience to make the most of. But even a beginner will be able to keep their opponent guessing – always wondering who they can safely attack without having another mutant pop up right beside them.
Since they like to operate within a certain range of each other, you should probably pick Secures that have objectives placed fairly close. For the games I’ve played I’ve used S.W.O.R.D. Establishes Base on Moon’s Blue Area, Super Powered Scoundrels Form Sinister Syndicate, and Deadly Meteors Mutate Civilians. You should also prioritize picking your own Secures over your own Extractions. Although this can hurt if your opponent shows up hoping to play an attrition game and you end up with something like Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership and don’t manage to get the roll you need to ever score a VP through extraction objectives
X-Force
Shocker: the title of this article is just a clever name. Don’t throw out the old mutants. Particularly because the New Mutants lineup has a lot of crossover with the team that, in the comics, would come to replace them. Since you don’t have to pick your affiliations until after the mission has been formed, you can choose to use the X-Force or New Mutants affiliations before any models hit the table. This can help a lot with competitive play as the New Mutants’ very limited roster can make it really hard for them to eke out a win in some situations.
Now lets look at the lineup. I’ve ranked them in order of how important I think they are to include when building your roster.
Magik
Might as well start with the leader. Sadly Magik might be the weakest link in the chain. She’s extremely squishy but operates best in the thick of it. I try to keep her securing an objective far away from the action, but close enough to try to lob the occasional Bolt of Oshtur at something so she’s not a complete waste of space. I also like to take the Journey Through Limbo Team Tactics card with her so she can send a model far away once per game when she really needs to. It’s her strongest trick so if you have to put her on the field might as well take it.
Cable
If we’re going to plan for the possibility of running an X-Force team, you’ll need Cable along. Fortunately, when taken in New Mutants, he can really take advantage of Cry For Help since he’s such a slow old man. When you take him with new mutants you may find him using Askani’Son and Omega Level Threat a lot more than you’re used to. He’s also the tankiest hero on the roster so there’s a good chance you’ll want him around for when you need someone who can take a beating.
X-23
Our gal Laura is my top choice for your roster after the two leaders. She can put out a lot of hurt for a TL3 model and works for X-Force and New Mutants. Healing Factor 2 is also nice to have in an affiliation that can really want for staying power. Additionally she can get a lot of use out of Cry for Help since she prefers to operate more up close.
Warlock
Like X-23, Warlock operates best in the thick of it. Ideally, you want to use Cry For Help to get him within range 2 of two enemy models. Then he can put Poison on both of them with his T-O Talons and hopefully by now has gotten at least the 2 power he needs for Transmode Virus Infection. Bonus points if he’s also close enough to a piece of terrain to “eat” with Techno-Organic Absorption and heal himself afterwards. I also like that his spender attack can incorporate a throw on a wild. You can never have too many throws.
When taken in X-Force he can operate a little differently, using his Buster Cannon at range, while hopefully benefiting from Unstable Outline until the enemy comes to him.
Sunspot
Sunspot is next. You’ll have to advance somebody up the field to start setting up your Cry For Help moves. Sunspot is the best choice since he needs to move if he wants to get the Flare Tokens that help him function at his peak (speaking of those flare tokens, my advice is to resist the urge to spend them to add more dice to his attacks unless you really need them. It’s best to keep them so he can use Sunburn and High Energy Conversion). As the game goes on Cry For Help may come in handy to get him close enough to use all of his actions for attacks since his range is actually pretty short.
Emma Frost
Emma would be higher up the list but she doesn’t have the X-Force affiliation. She’s an important model as she offers another way to move your opponent’s pieces around with the special abilities on both her attacks. Additionally her Shield Mind ability can be extremely useful if your opponent tries to push one of your models out of range 3 of a model that wants to use Cry For Help. And we haven’t even gotten to all the other stuff she does in diamond form. Just an all-around super useful TL 4.
Shadowcat
Shadowcat is low on the list because she has that undesirable mix of low damage output and low health. In my experience, having the Stealth super power will barely help with that deficit if at all. Her Can’t Touch This super power is decent, but unreliable, and Cable has a very similar power already. She does have a few things going for her though. First she has a long move – something that’s always useful. Her Get ‘Em Lockheed attack can cause Incinerate on a wild, but it’s a 4 die attack giving you only 50/50 odds of getting it. She can also use the Hold Still Team Tactics card which allows her to make an attack that may cause an enemy model to drop an objective token. But again you only get the effect if you roll a wild. The odds are slightly better than with “Get ‘Em” since it’s a 6 die attack, but it still seems a little too uncertain to take up a valuable Team Tactics card slot.
Out-of-Affiliation Picks
For out-of-Affiliation picks I’ve been trying the above models since they prefer to operate up close, but lack any way to traverse the table outside of a normal move action. Hopefully Cry For Help will let them maximize their abilities. It’s worked pretty well for Red Skull and and Colossus. Scarlet Witch I’ve yet to try.
And there are so many more to try out than just the ones I’ve shown above. With their low Affiliation count, New Mutants can really use all the outside help they can get. As of this writing I have Rhino and Black Dwarf on my painting table to try out. Like the models above they can use some help moving up the table. I’m also hoping their big 65mm bases will give me more place opportunities. Best of all, one of the most useful New Mutants Team Tactics cards, Practice Round, doesn’t require a New Mutant be the one using it. So bring along someone who can make a really high dice attack to get the most out of that re-roll… Assuming you don’t get any crits.
Team Tactics
While we’re on the subject of Team Tactics cards I might as well discuss them all.
I just mentioned this one. It’s an auto-include for me since, as stated, any allied character can use it, not just a New Mutant. Hopefully you can use it on a high dice, high cost attack but don’t wait too long to play it or there’s a chance you’ll never get to. Any time you roll an attack with no crits its probably worth considering. Especially if you really want a wild or some other specific result to get an important special ability to activate.
This one seems good but with the New Mutants roster as limited as it is right now, I usually see myself taking as many non-affiliated characters as possible. That means this will probably only net me around four power, so for now I’m leaving it off my roster. But hey, look at all the New Mutants on that card that don’t have models yet… Maybe when we get the Warpath/Psyche and Cannonball/Boom Boom boxes I’ll want to bring along more actual New Mutants and this card will suddenly see a lot more play. (Note: no such boxes have been announced and there is no guarantee that characters depicted on Team Tactics cards will get models in the future.)
This one is great. A no-power-cost out-of-activation attack that incorporates an automatic push? Count me in.
Roster
Here’s the latest roster I’ve cooked up.
Characters (10):
Threat level: 38
Team Tactics (10):
Secure Crisis:
Extract Crisis:
As you can see I’ve tried to account for a lot of New Mutants and X-Force crossover. I’ve yet to try this roster variation and I still consider it a work in progress. I’m hoping the combination of damage output and tankiness that Black Dwarf and Rhino bring will make up for some of the shortcomings I’ve experienced in my previous games while their big bases make for more place opportunities. Omega Red is there because I want to see how effective he and Warlock can be when they combo Death Factor and Transmode Virus Infection. Bishop is there to give me another X-Force character, but I can also use Cry For Help to set him up for an absolutely brutal Area attack.
But much practice is still required to see if I can master this Affiliation. As I said a lot of finesse is needed to succeed with New Mutants, and with just a few games in so far I definitely don’t have the hang of them quite yet. Hopefully I can improve my record with experience but no amount of that can make up for this roster’s low selection and extremely fragile leader. As cool as they are I worry the New Mutants will continue to struggle until they can add some more models to their team, and hopefully find a tougher leader. As it is I’m surprised certain existing models weren’t included, most notably Professor X but also Magneto, Domino, and Honey Badger. It would have been so cool to see Magneto on a “good guy” team like he was in the comics sometimes… But the comics don’t always dictate the game. Maybe Cry For Help turned out to be such a powerful leadership ability in playtests that they had to keep the roster extra tight? Guess I’ll have to get some more games in to find out.
~Hope you enjoyed the article! Has anyone else tried out the New Mutants, or faced them? How did you think they played? Do they have the potential to win tournaments? If you like the painted pics you can follow me on Instagram to see all my painted models for Crisis Protocol, Age of Sigmar, and lots more games. I go by @t00mini. Thanks for looking!
