Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Guardians Of The Galaxy Updates

Welcome to another installment of our series looking at the character rebalancing in Marvel: Crisis Protocol. Today we are diving into the updates coming to everyone’s favorite cosmic crew: the Guardians of the Galaxy!

Designed right alongside the Core Set and many of the other characters we will be talking about in future articles in this series, the Guardians were certainly the characters we took the most risks on in terms of stretching the bounds of what was possible in Crisis Protocol. We took an off the wall approach to their leadership and built in some very thematic synergies in ways that no other characters or affiliations really had seen yet with things like Rocket and Groot and how they each amplified the other through their superpowers and Team Tactic cards. As with everything, though, as our understanding of the game grew from both our continued reps with developing and designing new characters as well as watching play patterns emerge once players had Crisis Protocol in their hands, we saw that some of our risks paid off and some fell just a little short of where we wanted everything to sit within the bell curve of balance within the game.

We might as well kick things off by talking about the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, the legendary outlaw Star-Lord. Star-Lord was our very first 3-threat leader and one of the first characters to really lean into doling out Special Conditions as a primary part of his kit. His design was therefore very much based around being a ranged focused attacker who could use his element guns to blast away at enemies, while characters like Gamora or Drax moved in to bring the hurt up close. While his ability to utilize his Full Auto attack very consistently when outfitted with the power gem and a strength 5 range 5 energy attack for his builder certainly saw him dominate at this role within the original batch of characters, as more characters were introduced, he found himself left a bit behind in terms of tactical flexibility.

And, of course, there was his Leadership. While mathematically an incredibly powerful effect, the cost of having to spend a Team Tactic card ultimately proved to be too restrictive based on the importance of Team Tactic cards to player strategies, which meant that the Leadership simply did not have the impact to the affiliation that all Leadership abilities are meant to have.

It’s a new day for the Guardians as Winging It now no longer costs anything, other than a bit of forethought before the Activation Phase begins. Not only can the Guardians now count on benefiting from their Leadership every round, but it also still provides that classic Guardians flexibility as the other 88% of the plan comes together in the middle of the action.

The other change to Star-Lord was one to add a bit more tactical flexibility and flash to Star-Lord’s kit. Hit and Run perfectly fits in with Star-Lord’s game plan of wanting to stay largely mid-field of the action without forcing him to sacrifice being able to attack twice each turn in order to keep himself out of the thick of the fight where his fellow Guardians are better suited.

Speaking of characters that want to be right in the middle of the action, the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy, Gamora, is also benefiting from some slight adjustments to make sure she is worthy of her fearsome reputation. Gamora was another unique character, being the first, and for quite some time, only non-threat 5 character to boast a basic attack at Strength 6. Combined with her exceptional speed, her Assassin’s Leap, and her signature Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy ability, Gamora was a terror among threat 4’s during our original testing. The tradeoff for her incredible offensive power came from her relative fragility. She was a character that demanded careful planning and play, and often relied on Winging It rerolls to help her get to her target. However, as the field of characters expanded, it became clear that, despite being one of the strongest offensive melee characters in the game threat for threat, she was just a little too fragile to hit the level of consistency and counter play we originally envisioned for her.

As with the majority of these character rebalances, it only takes a couple of small nudges to net big results. The first thing we identified when looking at Gamora was that her Stamina value of 5/5 made Dazing or KO’ing her with a single decent attack too reliable. By simply increasing her stamina on both sides by 1, the likelihood that she would require more focused effort to neutralize increased significantly. The additional stamina also meant she could generate additional power that she could use before being Dazed or KO’d for either offense or for her defensive superpower Martial Prowess. And speaking of Martial Prowess, the addition of Stealth not only provided her more survivability and fit her skills as a highly trained cosmic assassin, it also meant that she could more reliably count on Martial Prowess to do what it was intended to do and add tactical options for keeping her in the fight longer by increasing both her defenses and serving as a deterrent to lower strength attackers trying to chip away at her. Overall, we’ve been loving how these two minor adjustments have really brought Gamora back into the discussion as a potent 4-threat to be feared.

Last, but certainly not least, we need to talk about the deadly duo of Rocket and Groot. While both of them are individual characters and can certainly go out on missions without the other, we really wanted players to be rewarded and encouraged to run this pair together. Groot was the very first character to introduce widespread healing mechanics to the game, both through his superpower and his We Are Groot Team Tactic Card. His durability was designed precisely to work in tandem with Rocket, who traded in all the durability for some of the craziest attacks ever dreamed of by a 2-threat character. While each could function fine without the other, the idea was always that by putting them together each one would complement the other. Groot’s ability to soak damage ensured that Rocket could blast away without care. In the end the combination worked, but the original restrictions to their paired abilities meant that, when fielded together, players were forced into a very restrictive play pattern, and one that had a counterplay aspect that was never really intended.

Groot received minor adjustments but, paired with the changes made to Rocket that we will look at next, each had a significant impact on the pair. First, we increased the range of his Strike from 2 to 3. Not only does this better represent his powers as we see them in the comics, it also lets him contribute more to the battle while still hanging a bit back with his companion Rocket. Additionally, with this change, we had to also address the fact that Groot could now much more easily access his healing from Living Plant. So, it was adjusted to be once per turn.

Rocket’s changes all came from his Superpowers. The first one worth covering is the fact that Personal Bodyguard has gone from a very restrictive Range 1 to a much more dynamic Range 2. Combined with Groot’s increased Strike range, this allows the pair to have much more impact on the battlefield. The second change to Rocket is a whole new superpower called Nimble. One of the unintended play patterns that emerged for dealing with Rocket and Groot was to simply throw Groot into Rocket. This never really sat well with us and certainly wasn’t intended as the counterplay to the pair. Nimble not only now stops that unintended interaction between the pair, it also gives Rocket a bit more survivability and forces players to choose to either deal with Rocket directly or ignore him for bigger threats at their own peril. We’ve all seen Rocket use his small stature and dexterity to great effect in the Marvel Universe, and this new power really carves out his space within the realm of other threat 2’s and as a pseudo threat 5 when paired with Groot.

That concludes our look at the upcoming character rebalances for everyone’s lovable misfits, the Guardians of the Galaxy. Be sure to watch out for our next article in the series as we continue exploring what this new phase will bring to everyone’s favorite characters.