Ultimate Encounter: The Infinity Gauntlet

Few stories in Marvel history have reached the cosmic scale of The Infinity Gauntlet. With all six Infinity Gems in his possession, Thanos has become a being of nearly limitless power, capable of reshaping reality with a thought. On the precipice of his victory, Earth’s greatest heroes have gathered for one desperate attempt to stop the Mad Titan…

The Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter brings that battle to Marvel: Crisis Protocol, challenging players to work together against an enemy who is almost impossible to defeat.

Unlike a standard game of Marvel: Crisis Protocol, this Ultimate Encounter pits two players against a third controlling Thanos, Chosen of Death. Each member of the Crisis Team brings an 18 Threat squad, while the Cosmic Threat player commands the Mad Titan and the Black Order Minions who eventually join him.

The activation sequence also works a little differently. The Crisis Team activates three characters in succession before the Cosmic Threat player activates Thanos and, once Minions enter play, up to one Minion. Not every hero is guaranteed an activation each round, so deciding which characters need to act becomes just as important as deciding what they should do.

And there is quite a bit for those heroes to accomplish before they can even hurt Thanos.

Cosmic Entities prevents a Cosmic Threat character from suffering damage unless it has a Suppression token. To get those tokens onto the Mad Titan, the Crisis Team must collect Antimatter Cores from Supply Caches and deliver them to three Amplification Modules scattered across the battlefield.

Once the Modules are charged, a hero can Interact with the Nullifier Beam, removing an Antimatter Core from each functioning Module to apply Suppression to an enemy. If all three Modules fire together, the target gains an additional Suppression token. Every three Suppression tokens also removes one die from that character’s defense rolls, giving the heroes an opportunity to make their attacks count.

Of course, Thanos is not going to stand around while the Crisis Team prepares its weapon.

The Cosmic Threat player and their Minions can Trash Amplification Modules, forcing the heroes to spend valuable actions repairing the machinery they need to win. If the Crisis Team manages to KO Thanos, they claim victory. But if all three Modules are Trashed at the end of a Cleanup Phase, or the Crisis Team is reduced to four or fewer characters, the Cosmic Threat wins instead.

As you can imagine, the heroes cannot simply throw everything they have at the Mad Titan. They have to keep their equipment functioning long enough to create an opening!

And, well, surviving Thanos, Chosen of Death is a challenge all its own.

On his Healthy side, Thanos begins with 12 Stamina and defenses of 5 Physical, 5 Energy, and 6 Mystic. His Strike can Throw its defender Short Away, while Cosmic Blast lets him spend additional Power for more attack dice and potentially Push the defender away with Slow.

Charge gets him into the fight, while Might of Titan lets him Throw nearby Size 3 or smaller terrain features Long. Once the Mad Titan gets where he wants to be, there are plenty of ways for him to start sending heroes and terrain across the battlefield.

He is also particularly unpleasant when the Crisis Team tries to get its actual job done.

Limited Patience lets Thanos immediately make a Strike against an enemy that Interacts with an objective within Range 2 of him. Insolent Cur gives him another opportunity to disrupt an opponent, Pushing an attacker away after its attack resolves against him.

Actually damaging Thanos once he has been Suppressed is hardly a guarantee of success either. Being of Immeasurable Power allows him to modify and reroll Failure results, reroll any number of attack dice once per attack, and reduce damage from enemy effects by 1.

Incredible Physical Conditioning grants him 4 additional Power during the Power Phase and gives him another chance to undo some of the heroes’ work during Cleanup, when he can roll to remove special conditions and Suppression tokens.

The Crisis Team might work hard to weaken him, only to watch some of that progress disappear because even Dazing the Mad Titan doesn’t provide much relief.

At the start of the Cosmic Threat player’s turn, a Dazed Thanos removes his damage, special conditions, and Dazed token, rolls to remove Suppression, and flips to his Injured side.

And that is when the Black Order starts arriving. One member enters the battlefield as a Minion when Thanos flips, with additional Minions joining during later Cleanup Phases while he remains Injured. So not only is the Mad Titan still standing, but now his friends have started showing up too.

And that Injured side is where things get even more desperate. Thanos returns with 20  Stamina and gains Cosmic Obliteration, a potentially Strength 8, Beam 5 attack capable of tearing through several heroes at once. He suffers 1 damage after each attack it generates, but with that much Stamina available, he can afford to make the Crisis Team suffer along with him.

Now the heroes have to contend with an even tougher Mad Titan while members of the Black Order begin joining the fight. Hopefully, someone has been keeping those Amplification Modules in working order…

And let’s not forget about the Ultimate Infinity Gems!

At the start of each Cosmic Threat turn, the controlling player chooses one Infinity Gem to become active until the next Cosmic Threat turn. Each Gem can only be chosen once per round, giving Thanos a different cosmic advantage as the battle unfolds:

• Power Gem: it’s about as straightforward as it sounds, granting Thanos 10 Power.
• Space Gem: lets him Place himself anywhere on the battlefield, which is particularly potent when the Crisis Team thinks it has finally gotten some distance from him.
• Time Gem: changes how characters move, reducing enemy movement to Short while increasing allied movement to Long. A well timed use of Time can make delivering those Antimatter Cores much more difficult.
• Mind Gem: another particularly troublesome option. It allows the Cosmic Threat player to decide which Crisis Team characters activate. Since the heroes are already working with a limited number of activations, having those choices taken away can completely disrupt whatever plan they had for the round.
• Soul Gem: offers a very different surprise by temporarily bringing a KO’d hero back into play as a Minion. How fun!
• Reality Gem: lets Thanos turn Failure results into Criticals when attacking, defending, dodging, or Interacting. That gives the Mad Titan another way to make an important roll go his way, which is probably the last thing the heroes want given the circumstances.

With six different Gems to choose from, the Cosmic Threat player has plenty of opportunities to respond to what the Crisis Team is trying to accomplish. The heroes might be prepared for Thanos to attack them, but suddenly losing control of their activations or watching him appear on the other side of the battlefield is another matter entirely.

For groups looking to make things even harder, The Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter also includes several difficulty settings.

The encounter is designed with narrative play in mind, where Inviolable Resolve grants the heroes additional Power to help them stand against the Mad Titan. Higher difficulty settings reduce the number of Team Tactic Cards available to the Crisis Team, while the highest difficulty introduces My Divinity Is Absolute!

Under this rule, Crisis Team characters flip to their Injured sides immediately whenever they would gain a Dazed token. There isn’t much room for mistakes when the Mad Titan is fighting at full strength!

Everything needed to bring this cosmic showdown to the table is included in the set, including the Ultimate Encounter rules, a Thanos, Chosen of Death Stat Card, all six Ultimate Infinity Gem cards, and the custom components used to operate the Amplification Modules, Supply Caches, Nullifier Beam, Antimatter Cores, and Suppression.

The Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter brings one of Marvel’s most legendary battles to Marvel: Crisis Protocol with a very different kind of challenge. Between the incredible power of Thanos, the arrival of his Black Order, and the desperate struggle to keep the Nullifier Beam operational, the Crisis Team has quite the mountain to climb.

Will your heroes find a way to defeat the Mad Titan, or will Thanos prove that resistance really is futile? Grab a copy for yourself and let us know!

Till next time,
Atomic Mass Games