Plans for 2024: Marvel Crisis Protocol, SAGA, Blood Red Skies etc.

 Having revived the blog earlier this month to give an AAR for my MCP game with Stan I decided I should probably make an effort to post regularly -- not just for the tiny number of people who read this but because I find that writing these does help me focus (a little bit -- I am still thinking about doing everything and actually doing close to nothing).

Marvel Crisis Protocol was the big surprise for me last year and into this year. Both Stan and Mike were very excited by this and I said I was happy to play but I would be unlikely to buy anything. It turns out it was a really fun game to play (and I notice that I often want to think more about historical games but when it comes to decide what I want to play that games like MCP, Fallout and Star Wars legion are more likely to be on the top of my list). I ended up buying one box just to see what the figures are like (far too many pieces to be honest, but for the most part they go together well) and then after another few games decided to increase that faction (the Winter Guardians who were, purely by luck, one of the smallest factions in the game). Once they were painted (only 4 figures) the faction list increased so I ended up buying the Starter Box. I have all the terrain from the box glued together and half the figures assembled (one of the two sprues -- both Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, the two winter Guardians were on the same sprue). I don't see myself buying any more figures in the coming year but I am considering some of the terrain packs. I do plan to paint everything that I have.

 

At Fall In I picked up some plastic Victrix Numidians to make a SAGA:  Age of Hannibal  Numidian army (I had hoped to end up with an Indian army for Age of Alexander but couldn't find anything) I started painting it late last year before I got caught up in the MCP frenzy. I still have half the cavalry and all the infantry to paint up but I think I should be able to get that done pretty quickly once I get to it since I had the colours figured out painting the cavalry and elephants. I also have a Hun army that I should paint but it isn't really on the horizon.

Also at Fall In, I played in a giant carrier battle game -- which I think deserves its own blog post so I won't go into too much detail here -- and that has inspired me to plan out 2 different games. The first is a carrier clash based on a campaign system in the Blood Red Skies supplement, Wing Commander and the second a game for Cangames based on American Torpedo planes attacking a Japanese carrier during the battle of Midway. I have bought most of the planes I need for these games but I need to start painting and play enough to be comfortable before Cangames. I also need to get a few ships (more for the campaign game but that is further in the future) but I am planning to get some 1/1200 prepainted ones. I also have a some Beaufighters and  Boulton Paul Defiants that are primed from when I was playing Battle of Britain games and hopefully they can get done as well.

Games which are further down my list are Fallout -- there is a new more tactical version of the game coming out which could be interesting (it uses the same figures so it should be east to try it) but they seem to be planning to continue supporting the current more narrative rules as well (which I prefer). I have quite a few figures to paint for this and I would like to do some terrain for this a well. I had an idea that I should paint an ADLG army that I could use at the Fall In tournament and bring to the OMG since I would like to get in the habit of going there again but I really don't know if I want to paint a bunch of 15mm figures so I don't know if that will happen.

The re-release of the Walking Dead is interesting, I don't think I need (or want) to buy anything I don't already have but it will be good to see the new rules. Before they let the game retire, there was a more tactical ruleset but that didn't seem to be that popular (I didn't really like it). I hope to play a few games once this comes out.

I would like to play some more Black Seas and/or Armada as well as Team Yankee (maybe someday I will actually paint my West Germans) and it would be nice to find some rules for 15mm WWII that I would want to play -- I have grown tired of Flames of War through the latest revisions and I think I would find most of the games I played long ago to be too complicated

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Winter Guardians vs Guardians of the Galaxy

 Mike was traveling back from Newfoundland so it was just Stan and I for this game of Marvel Crisis Protocol.

We went through the steps of setting up the roster and the battlefield but we decided to just go with the points in Stan's Guardians of the Galaxy models (14) rather than taking the points on the crisis cards. Fourteen points is also the value of my first 4 Winter Guard so that was convenient! The two crisis cards were "Spider-Infected Invade Manhattan" (this involved grabbing the infected -- which we called spider-babies for some reason -- who could force you to move a short distance in the power phase)  and "Demons Downtown" which set up 3 flaming portals which gave the incinerate condition to anyone close enough to contest them.

My force consisted of Crimson Dynamo, Red Guardian, Ursa Major and Dark Star. Stan had Star Lord, Grot, Rocket Racoon, Gamora and Nebula (not positive about the last 2 to be honest).

My initial plan was to control the 2 nearest portals and grab a few central spider-babies and then use Dark Star to teleport the character with the baby back to my side (I rarely had the power to use that ability as it turned out).

On the first turn we both moved up cautiously grabbing the objectives close to us and I am pretty sure we were tied for points after the first turn.

Next turn I got a bit more aggressive pushing Ursa Major up onto the objective on the newspaper stand and moving Red Guardian into the central street to grab a spider baby. Somewhat foolishly, I left Crimson Dynamo back on the rear portal which meant that my most powerful character spent a few turns just twiddling his thumbs (which was made even worse by me not noticing that he has an ability to spend and action to generate 2 power). 

The Winter Guardian faction power of being able to get rid of a condition at the beginning of  a character's activation turned out to be very useful for this scenario --  I managed to hit Stan's guys several times when they were incenerated but I think I was only affected once or twice.

The newspaper stand continued to be the focus with various characters climbing on top to join the fight. Star Lord had the misfortune to be thrown over the newspaper stand which allowed everyone on my side to hammer on him at will. Red Guardian was KOed in the street but but Dark Star managed to teleport him after he recovered and he managed to get his spider baby back under control.

Red Guardian took over the guard duty at the back portal and Crimson Dynamo went on the offensive managing this quite impressive electroblast which KOed 3 of the Guardians of the Galaxy

A lot fewer heroes are still standing towards the end of the game! We actually played and extra turn because we should have ended on turn 5 because I had reached 16 points. I think the final total was 19 to 16 so it was close.

I think it was a good thing that we went with the 14 points for this game -- I was missing abilities with the 4 characters I had (and they were the ones I was most familiar with) but the game went smoothly so I think we could ramp up next time we do a 2 player game. The Tactics cards are interesting -- I only used 2 of my 5 -- but it is another thing to think about.

I am really liking this game even though I am largely indifferent to the Marvel Universe (I actually read some Winter Guardian comics over Christmas to try and get inspired and it really just reminded me why I am not a comics fan). My plan is to just stick with the Winter Guardians as a faction (they have the 4 I played with in this game plus Black Widow, Winter Soldier and Omega Red) but if we keep playing that may change. I do plan to pick up some of the terrain kits as they are very nice.