Mastering Marvel Crisis Protocol: Comprehensive Character Rankings for Threat Level 2

Greetings, True Believers! Everybody loves a good ranking article, right? Right. Over the course of these articles, I’m going to be looking at each threat level in the game and ranking them in a traditional tier system.  The rankings will break down as follows:

S-Tier: Gods.  Windmill slam these into almost any roster or affiliation you can think of.  

A-Tier: Incredibly good and versatile.  Not auto-includes, but still have utility across a wide range of affiliations and rosters.

B-Tier: Good within their own affiliation.  These work best in their home affiliation because of a unique mechanic or their leadership.

C-Tier: These models are good for making affiliation during squad building, but that is about it.  

D-Tier: These models need more than even their home affiliation to be really useful.

Now that the criteria is out of the way, let’s dive head first into argument territory and begin ranking MCP Characters, starting at the lowest available threat level: 2!

S-Tier

Okoye: If my opponent is putting actions and attacks into my 2-threat model instead of my much more threat-committed models, then it’s hard not to bring them along.  Okoye is only affiliated in A-Force and Wakanda, but she is so valuable for any squad that has a particularly strong model they want to keep around for a while because of her Bodyguard ability.  Despite being a 2-threat with 3/3/3 defenses, she is able to tank a TON of hits with her ability to re-roll a defensive dice and adding blanks within R2.  Absolutely nobody will look at you strange for bringing her along in any affiliation.

Toad: Brotherhood of Mutants, Shmutherhood of Mutants.  Bring Toad along in your squad.  Toad’s ability to pick up extract objectives at R2 instead of the normal R1 would typically be enough to push him over the edge in terms of utility, but his kit has so much more to offer.  His Slippery ability means he will rarely get attacked twice in a single activation, and with a R2 place through his Hop ability, he can cover a ton of ground and get to safety with whatever asset or civilian tokens he is holding.  Finally, if that wasn’t enough, he can also take extracts off of allied characters when the Crisis allows it.  

Wong:  Power is a precious commodity in this game, and Wong helps redistribute it.  R3 is a great range band, and can actually cover a fair amount of ground if you position correctly.  Just being able to help power up a key ability on a character a turn early is a tremendous ability, but Wong can also heal allies or remove a special condition from them at R3.  There’s always a place for Wong in a roster or squad.

A-Tier

Bullseye: Automatically being able to chip off 1 damage per attack is a great little insurance policy for those incredibly inconvenient times when you leave an opponent alive on 1 health.  The only real problem (and that’s a very loose use of the word) I have with Bullseye is that he has trouble generating power and being an effective damage dealer at the same time.  

Nebula: Do you like having a model in your squad that you can send off to do one thing, and one thing only without having to think about it? That’s what Nebula can do for your squad.  She can’t carry extract objectives or contest secure objectives, but she can absolutely murder the ones that do.  She is a long mover that removes a single damage every time she activates and she can also re-roll a defensive dice every time she is attacked.  That is all just to ensure that she gets into R3 so she can commit murder. If she is attacking an opposing model that is either securing or holding an objective, she can re-roll any number of her attack dice.  Suddenly, that 4-dice Blaster Pistol attack doesn’t look so terrible.  And if you’re using her to attack models that aren’t holding or securing objectives, you’re really using her incorrectly.  Or you’re winning, which is awesome.  

Black Widow: She is not an offensive powerhouse like Nebula, but 2-threat Natasha can pick up objectives and run to safety with her L move.  Additionally, she is pretty durable since she can count blanks within R2, and enemies have to be within R3 to even target her because of her Stealth ability.  And the chances are pretty good that you have her in your collection since she was part of the original Core Set.  I’ve even seen her put an enemy down with her Counter Strike superpower, too.

B-Tier

Rocket Raccoon: Look, I love Rocket.  The problem is, with 3 stamina he doesn’t stick around very long, so you are going to want to maximize the amount of damage he can do at R5, and Winging It re-rolls help that significantly when he’s included in his home affiliation of Guardians of the Galaxy.  Additionally, if you really want to maxmize his survivability (and unlock the unaffiliated Deadly Duo team tactics card) you need to commit 3 more threat and bring Groot. Not every affiliation can afford to bring a 3-threat splash, though.  In Guardians, though? Auto-include. 

C-Tier

Bob, Agent of Hydra: The humor of this character is not lost on me.  However, Bob can really only do one thing twice a game at most.  Also, Bob can literally lose you the game if he’s all you have left.  I’ve done that to an opponent before, and even I felt bad for them.  

D-Tier

Honey Badger: Gabby is great.  In affiliation, and with X-23.  On her own, though, she just dies.  Additionally, she cannot score you any points with objectives.  Even the faux-incinerate is not enough to overcome the shortcomings of her card.

Did I get them wrong? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

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