Marvel: Crisis Protocol – ‘War of Kings’ Will Shick Interview
Will Shick answers a few questions about the new War of Kings Character and Crisis Card Pack for Marvel: Crisis Protocol.
I reached out to Atomic Mass Games to find out more about the new Marvel: Crisis Protocol War of Kings Pack. And Will Shick replied. I don’t know if he needs much of an introduction. But if you’re not familiar with him, Will Shick is the Vice President of Creative Development and Strategy at Atomic Mass Games. He’s the guy you see on all of the live streams talking about new products, reveals, and future plans.
Note: This video is not the interview. This is just one of the videos with Will Shick and two others from the MCP team from Ministravaganaza 2024.
Anyhow, he got back to me with the answers to a few of the questions I had regarding the up coming War of Kings pack. This is a new type of product from them. Not only does it have a new Character (Gladiator) in the box but it also has some new Crisis Cards for the 2025 season. Furthermore, these Crisis Cards are based off the War of Kings story arc from the comics. I was curious how this product came to be. So let’s get into the interview!
Will Shick On The War of Kings
Adam Harrison, Bell of Lost Souls: The War of Kings is a story arc in Marvel Comics that focused on a specific conflict between the Shi’ar and Kree. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to use this particular story arc for the theme of this Crisis Card Pack?
Will Shick, VP of Creative Development: We chose the War of Kings storyline as the theme for this new Crisis Card Pack as we wanted to release a Crisis set that narratively tied into the new Inhuman characters that were coming to the game within the same release wave.
So, we discussed some of our favorite Inhuman story arcs from the history of Marvel Comics and landed on War of Kings for the setting of the new Crisis set. Not only did the story arc center on many of the Inhuman characters, both old and new, that appear in Crisis Protocol, but it also pulled in several of the other cosmic characters that were both new and old to the game. So, we felt that there was a strong enough foundation with all these characters that players who wanted to could play fairly thematic squads to retell the War of Kings story on their own tabletops.
Adam: Do you have any specific reading suggestions for what comic issues helped inspire this set of Crisis Cards?
Will: For those looking for just the highlights, I’d suggest focusing on War of Kings #1–6 (March–August 2009). Most of the missions built from the thematically paired Crisis Cards come from those key story beats. We also drew some inspiration from the Realm of Kings for the big conclusion of the narrative campaign set, mirroring how the War of Kings story event wrapped up and transitioned into the next story arc for the characters involved.
Of course, for those who want the whole story of War of Kings, there are several tie ins throughout other titles including War of Kings Ascension and Warriors, Guardians of the Galaxy #8–17, X-Men: Kingmaker #1–4, and Nova #23–28 being the most significant ones.
Adam: This pack has a new campaign system that allows you to play through five “narrative missions” via the Crisis Card pairs. Can you elaborate on how these pairings work together to tell a narrative?
Will: One of our big desires with these new Crisis Cards was to be able to dive deeper into the theme and narratives of Marvel’s greatest storylines while still providing balanced gameplay mechanics that ensured players could use any of the Crisis Cards in the pack separately alongside their existing collection of Crisis Cards, both those currently released and all those yet to come in future Crisis Card sets.
As such the design approach to this set was to first identify the five big story moments that we felt we could best recreate in the game of Crisis Protocol. This was where the research of pouring through the War of Kings storyline came into play.
Once we identified our five key crisis events in the story we then started discussing how to represent the key objectives of those battles into MCP missions using the Secure and Extract Crisis Card mechanics.
This then gave us the five missions that create the campaign and allow players to retell their own version of War of Kings with their MCP collections. I’m really very proud and pleased with how this simple, yet theme-focused approach, turned out. Playing through the five Crisis sets really does evoke the iconic story through just five games of MCP.
Beyond the campaign, though, I think the most exciting part of this whole project was how it really drove us to create some really unique and interesting new mechanics within the individual Crisis Cards. Because we wanted to evoke the narrative of the story as much as possible but also had to make sure that anything we did worked within the larger set of Crisis Cards in the game, we wound up with some really fun and interesting interactions that made these new Crisis Cards bring new strategic and tactical considerations for players to consider when constructing their missions for standard games.
Adam: What role will Gladiator have in the War of Kings? Why did you decide to include this particular character as part of this new product (the combo of a character and Crisis Card Pack)?
Will: Within the story of War of Kings, Gladiator plays a huge role as both antagonist and eventually ally to the Inhumans as his loyalties are tested and his outlook on the situation within the Shi’ar Empire changes. Because of this, we felt this pack was the perfect opportunity to bring Gladiator to the game, and we really felt his inclusion would take the theme and narrative of the campaign to the next level for those players who were excited to relive the action of War of Kings on their tabletop.
So there you have it folks. Thanks again to Will Shick for taking some time to answer a few questions I had about the new War of Kings pack coming soon. Personally, I’m really liking this new style of product — the combo of missions and a specific character related to those missions is a great concept. While I don’t think every character should get a mission pack, I think this is a great way to do the mission card roll out. Also now that I’ve gotten a look at the missions and how they work together I am even more impressed. I hope we see more of these narrative-style themes that can also be used for “generic” missions in the future as well.
The War of Kings Character and Crisis Card Pack is currently up for pre-order and is slated to arrive in store on March 14, 2025!
