You are planning to attend LVO or maybe just your local game store is having an event, but you want to do well. How can you find that competitive edge? One way is to read the meta and make adjustments to your list in order to counter what you know your opponents are likely to be playing.
The first step to being successful at making meta based adjustments is to successfully read the meta. To do this I have created an internet friendly numbered list of the “Big Bads’ in the current Marvel Crisis Protocol meta. The second step is to find the best, most efficient models to counter that particular strategy. This is not an exhaustive list of strong models and their counters, but is a snapshot in time of this meta that can hopefully help you build the skills you need to read the meta on your own.
Web Warriors
Just a month ago Web Warriors were widely considered to be the best affiliation in the game. They have a strong scenario game and very strong 3 threat models allowing them to present a ton of scoring threats all at once. In the last month, we have had a fairly massive card rotation; seeing Mission Objective and No Matter the Cost leave the standard timeline has hurt the Webs’ ability to steal extracts quickly and protect the ones they already have. This has caused their popularity to drop but you should be under no illusion that they are not still one of the top five teams in the game.
With that same card rotation we have seen the most popular solution to webs leave the game as well, Marked for Death. Without the ability to put a webs counter in a Team Tactics Card slot we are going to have to reach for a character. We can take two different approaches to this problem. First, we could play a ton of extract stealing models and value scenario prices ourselves, and beat the webs at their own game. But that isn’t really a one or two model solution you can just slot into the list you are taking to this event. So option two is you play Agent Venom.
Agent Venom is ideal for killing Webs due to his web swing allowing him to easily get in range of Web Warriors and his Symbiotic Instincts preventing them from using their stacking rerolls. Agent Venom’s two main weaknesses are somewhat mitigated in this matchup as well. Webs have very few energy attacks as a faction, so Agent Venom’s 2 energy defense is less of a liability. Agent Venom’s other big weakness is his output is directly related to his access to power. As a result his first few strikes tend to dictate his game impact. But in this matchup a large number of the models will be def 3. If you have any kind of dice fixing in your list, Agent Venom getting to use it early can pay big dividends late against Webs.
Thor 2
Thor, Hero of Midgard is very new to the meta but is causing big waves. He does a lot of single target damage, a decent amount of AOE damage, and if he fails to kill you, his super swingy counterattack might put you in a place where you can’t really afford to attack him back. This problem is further exacerbated by low threat games and Brothers in Arms.
Brothers in Arms can fabricate a fantastic Thor turn out of nowhere. It grants Thor 10 dice builders and with those builders he is likely to generate enough power to turn the rest of his kit on, leading to your models being very very reliably dead.
This combo is made even stronger by the ability to play Bill, Loki and Thor at 15 threat. I won’t go too much into here since we just had Kylebe write up a great breakdown of the list. The core concept is by playing only three models the Asgard player is able to remove the comeback mechanics of MCP and punish anyone not prepared.
Solving this problem is a tough one since it is so new. AMG has helped out a lot with the restriction of Brothers in Arms and Researcher, but I think that this list in some combination will still be wildly popular. As possible tech picks I’ve seen collision-immune models like Kingpin, M’Baku, and Vison see some success. But the one I have to recommend is Hulk. Hulk is maybe the best 6 threat in the game and his kit here is perfect for our problem. First, Hulk’s throw is very good at dealing with Loki. Loki struggles to put out 5 threat of work if he has to spend his first action walking. Second, Hulk’s Hit Point pool is large enough that he should live through a Thor activation even on the Brothers in Arms turn. But to make it guaranteed I would recommend a bodyguard effect like sacrifice to split Thor’s attacks on the Brothers in Arms turn. And finally, Hulk has access to Stagger. Removing a builder from Thor will heavily impact his overall output.
So we have Hulk, but what do we do with him? As I alluded to above we are looking to throw Loki and put stagger on Thor. But ultimately we want to get Thor off the table ASAP. If we can do that without losing our list in the process, the other two models in this scary Asgard 15 should be fairly easy to clean up.
Thanos
The Mad Titan himself has been terrorizing the game since his release. He has seen multiple attempts by AMG to tamp down his strength (changing the gems, restricting the gems, and nerfing cosmic portal) yet he remains one of the most powerful pieces in the meta at the moment. There are three shells you see him in regularly that all frequent the top tables of big events: Cabal with Red Skull, Master of the World; Guardians of the Galaxy; and Wakanda.
These lists are built by combining high dice quality (dice modification or counting extra faces) with Thanos’ ability to give extra dice to attacks via Death’s Decree. This grants incredible hitting power routinely dazing 3 and 4 threat models within a single activation.
Before getting too into the weeds on how to plan for Thanos it is important to understand his turn 1 reach-out-and-kidnap-you range. Here is a video that the Alfredo’s Taco Truck did a year ago about this very subject. It is a bit old but the info is still very relevant to modern Thanos builds.
The best way to go after these lists from an attrition list standpoint is twofold. First, do your best to take away activations. With an 8 threat model the Thanos player is very likely to have more activations than you. As a result, you won’t have priority, so taking activations away from your opponent by dazing models before they activate has no downside. Second, you want to kill the models with the high dice quality first. The fewer models Thanos has to use Death’s Decree on, the harder it is for him to make good on his high price tag. The downside to this plan is that Death’s Decree is stronger on injured models, but you just have to weather the storm and take models off the table.
The best way to combat these lists from a scenario stand point is to try your best to play your normal game plan while providing thanos as little access to power as possible. This can be difficult as thanos has a very wide reach but try to make him spend actions walking. If you can’t do that make sure he can’t get a hold of more than 1 model per turn.
If you are looking for a tech piece into Thanos I would suggest any character with access to root. Thanos really hates root since even though his Being of Immeasurable Power lets him use the stones for free, he will still have to pay the root tax on everyone, and that can add up to a lot of power over the course of a turn. If you have root infarction use that; if not, Pyro is probably the best call as Fire Wall is easily accessible and he brings a solid Team Tactics Card that can play into the crisis-focused plan.
Exclusions from the List
I’m sure you have a few lists in mind that haven’t been covered here but here are a few that I intentionally left off the list.
Hellfire Club is strong but not particularly popular. Also their lists have so many permutations that it is tough to offer an easy solution to all of them. Most of the advice in the Web Warriors section applies to most of the builds for this team.
Defenders are on a huge upswing in both popularity and tournament showings. They are usually played as a brawling team trying to maximize their rerolls and when played in this way I think they are decent, but not worth altering your list for. But once they start playing Pentagrahms of Farallah they are a real terror. The plus side is that the portals style of Defenders is still quite unpopular.
Usually played in shield with the invader’s leadership, Double Bubble Namor is on the rise in the meta. The reroll stacking with the unlocked skulls feels incredible, but having piloted it for a few months now and played against it a good bit, I think it is overvalued by the community and slightly overplayed. If this is tearing up your meta, Agent Venom is also good here.
That wraps this one up just in time for Dracula and the monster to come out and shake up the meta again. Let me know what you are teching for in the comments down below. I’m Vincent Curkov and don’t forget that fun is a finite resource.
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