Separating the Crisis

Currently we have 22 Crisis cards, split evenly between Secure and Extract. I’ll be referring to the Crisis as ‘Missions’ at some points during this article. Each of these Crisis cards is either a

Secure
–  Missions with mostly static objectives that characters have to stand around and secure by contesting them. Some of the tokens in these missions can sometimes move, but they still follow the pattern of needing to be secured.

Extract
–  Missions where you have to pick up and carry objectives, and possibly move them within range of a certain point on the battlefield. Some extract missions only have one token that needs to be picked up whereas others have multiple lower scoring tokens.

Each of these missions then uses one of six deployment maps, and can have anything between one and five objective tokens, as well as their own threat values. When playing a game, one Extract and one Secure mission are combined to create the overall scenario. This can all be quite confusing and seem like quite a lot at first, but I think you can break down all of the Missions into smaller categories. These categories are –

Single objective – Missions were they revolve around carrying a single high scoring objective.

Aggro Missions – Missions that encourage a brawl in the middle of the battlefield.

Wide spread – Missions that spread your team out across the board, scoring multiple objectives.

Specific Tech – Missions where you have to have a specific plan in mind in order to score them

Now that we have our different categories, we can break all of the missions down into them, and we end up with something like this:

Single Objective
– Mutant Extremists target U.S Senators (14 threat, extract)
– Research station attacked! (16 threat, extract)
– Skrulls infiltrate world leadership (17 threat, extract)
– Alien ship crashes in downtown! (20 threat, extract)

Aggro Missions
– Gamma Wave sweeps across Midwest (15 threat, secure)
– The Montesi formula found (17 threat, extract)
– Fear grips world as “Worthy” terrorize citizens (18 threat, extract)
– Daemons downtown! Has our comeuppance come due? (19 threat, secure)

Wide spread
– SWORD establishes base on moons blue area (14 threat, secure)
– Cosmic invasion! Black Order descends on earth (16 threat, secure)
– Mayor Fisk voes to find missing witnesses (16 threat, secure)
– Deadly meteors mutate civilians (17 threat, secure)
– Infinity formula goes missing! (17 threat, secure)
– Riots spark over extremis 3.0 (17 threat, secure)
– Spider infected invade Manhattan (17 threat, secure)
– Struggle for the Cube continues (17 threat, extract)
– Mutant madman turns city center into lethal amusement park (18 threat, secure)
– Portals overrun city with Spider-People (18 threat, secure)
– Terrigen clouds sweep over city (20 threat, secure)

Specific tech
– Mystic Wakandan herbs: Fact or fiction? (15 threat, extract)
– Deadly legacy virus cured? (19 threat, extract)
– Panic grips city as evacuation efforts continue! (19 threat ,extract)

The largest category here is the Widespread missions. These missions mean you have to be able to move across the board, and generally secure or extract multiple objectives. This can sometimes mean that teams are split up into smaller groups, or there even ends up being lots of smaller one on one fights across the board.

There are only four missions that I would say are specifically aggro missions. These are missions that force you to move into narrower corridors or setups, and the result is usually that there is a lot more fighting focused around the centre of the board. Demons downtown dishes out incinerate tokens, whilst the “Worthy” mission adds dice to characters attack rolls who are holding hammers. Both of these things encourage the teams to play more aggressively and brawl it out.

There are also only four missions that I would say are single objectives. All four of these missions are extracts, and revolve around a single objective that is worth multiple victory points. These missions tend to be favoured by players who either have fast moving objective holders that can get to safety, or characters like Black Cat and Enchantress who can easily steal the vital objectives. However, the researcher mission is arguably also an Aggro mission, as you can’t simply run off with this one – You need to Secure it to Extract it, meaning both players will be fighting to contest it.

The final, and smallest, category of objectives is Specific tech. These missions tend to require specific pieces in the roster to be able to maximise them, and if you don’t have the tools for these missions, they can be quite hard to score. These are also missions where if your opponent has specifically planned for them, you might struggle to achieve them. An Asgardian team is going to have a much easier time getting the power to evacuate citizens for example, and Defenders can make good use of their portals for turn one Wakandan herb scoring.

Based on your roster and the way you want to play, you can combine the different Crisis cards to create your Crisis deck. Generally, I think most rosters want to try and focus on two of the sub categories of missions in order to do well.

Black Order, for example, seems to do best in both the Aggro missions and the Single Objective missions. Web Warriors on the other hand, quite like the Widespread crisis cards, where they can manipulate the battlefield and push and pull enemy characters out of position. Once you’ve decided on your roster and the way you want to play, taking a while to look at the different missions in your threat value spread can really help build a roster you’re comfortable and familiar with.

As more and more Crisis cards come out, it will be easier to take missions for your spread from one sub category. At the minute it is quite hard to build a roster without taking one of the Widespread crises, but it is definitely doable and is all down to personal preference and how you’d like to play.

In future posts I’ll be breaking down some of the missions, and going through why I take the ones that I take in my current roster. As always, please leave a thumbs up if you enjoyed reading, or a thumbs down if you didn’t! Please feel free to comment any thoughts you have on the sub categories, and any missions you might change to a different one! Please follow the blog if you want to see future posts