Having finally succeeded in his conquest of collecting all six Infinity Stones, Thanos, the Mad Titan, has now become a being of unimaginable cosmic power. Soon he will achieve his goal of wiping out half of all life in the universe. Meanwhile, in a last-ditch effort, the greatest minds of earth have developed a new technology to attempt to strip Thanos of his power and save all life in the universe! Will they succeed? Or will Thanos prove to be too powerful, and snap away all your friends and family?
The Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter is a special scenario that comes packed in with the Thanos character pack, for Marvel: Crisis Protocol. It utilizes the Throne that he comes packed with as a starting position for Thanos to deploy from, a slew of tokens and cards to use during gameplay (more on that later).
credit: Atomic Mass Games
For this scenario, Thanos' throne is set up in the Cosmic Threat player's deployment zone and Thanos deploys from the base slot in the throne. The Nullifier Beam is placed at the center of the battlefield, surrounded by Amplification Modules and Supply Caches. The Crisis Team shares a deployment zone on the opposite side of the battlefield and deploys within range 3 of their battlefield edge as normal. Additionally, on each side battlefield edge, the Crisis Team may deploy one character within Range 2 of the edge and between Range 4+5 of their normal battlefield edge. This will allow them to get deeper into the table at the beginning of them game, at the risk of being Thanos' first victims.
Thanos has acquired all of the Infinity Gems and is preparing to enact his plan of wiping out half of all life in the universe. It’s up to the Crisis Team to strip Thanos of his invulnerability shield and knock him out before the Mad Titan can enact his plan. It's the job of the Crisis Team to power up the Amplification Modules connected a Nullifier Beam, using Antimatter Cores. The Nullifier Beam can then be used to apply a Suppression Token to Thanos or one of his minions, allowing them to be damaged.
Each turn, Thanos will use the Infinity Stones to defend himself and attempt to trash the Amplification Modules powering the Nullifier Beam. If the Crisis Team is successful in flipping Thanos, Chosen of Death to his injured side, he will then begin summoning the Black Order to his side. Starting with the turn he is flipped he will summon either Ebony Maw, Black Dwarf, Proxima Midnight or Corvus Glaive to his side as an encounter minion. Then, during each subsequent clean-up phase, he will summon another, until all four are in play. If they are all in play, it'll be a very hard time for the Crisis Team.
If Thanos, Chosen of Death is KO'd the Crisis Team wins! But, if Thanos and his minions have trashed all 3 Amplification Modules or if there are four or less Crisis Team members still on the table, the Cosmic Threat player wins. Hopefully the Russo brothers wrote a sequel for the Crisis Team to get some payback in that case.
credit: brushwizard
For this scenario, the Crisis Team is composed of two squads each containing a maximum Threat Value of 18. One thing to keep in mind, you cannot have two characters that share an Alter Ego. So, if one member of the Crisis Team decides to take Tony Stark, the other player of the Crisis Team is not allowed to take a Tony Stark model. There are no multiverse shenanigans here.
Affiliations and Team Tactics cards are allowed in this scenario, and each team can be the same or an entirely different Affiliation. The difficulty level determines the number of Team Tactics cards each Crisis Team player gets to choose, Narrative allows each player to take 3, while Insane difficulty only allows for 1. Another thing to note is that if both squads share an Affiliation and a Team Tactics card is played that allows characters with that Affiliation to do something, all applicable characters may use it.
Due to the way rounds are set up in Ultimate Encounters, the Crisis Team will get a total of 9 Activations per round. The team will choose 3 of their characters to activate, followed by a Cosmic Threat turn, at which point they will activate 3 more characters and so on until the Cosmic Threat player has had three activations. At which point, the round moves to the Clean Up phase and a new round begins.
credit: brushwizard
If the Crisis Team has more than 9 characters, some of them might not see action each round, but it might give the team options for later. Any characters that did not get to activate during the round are allowed to make a Short movement in the Clean Up phase, that way they aren't left hanging in no man's land and can reposition for later activations.
If they have fewer than 9 characters, the Crisis Team might be shorting themselves on opportunities which could give the Cosmic Threat player extra points, depending on the scenario. Also if characters start being KO'd, going tall means there's less of a buffer before the game ends by loss of characters. I try to suggest that the Crisis Team always makes sure to take a minimum of 9 characters between the two players and try take advantage of every activation allowed to them.
There's a lot of token interaction happening in this scenario, and it’s worth noting that each character can only interact with any one objective token once per activation, as per the core rules. So, a Crisis Team member to loot a Cache or load an Antimatter Core into an Amplification Module multiple times on the same activation. Things can get out of hand quickly, if you're not careful with interacts and activations.
credit: brushwizard
The Crisis Team has access to Inviolable Resolve, sometimes. With this card in play, the Crisis Team has been boosted and each character gains an extra power during the power phase. This should help open up some plays during the game, allowing you to interact with objectives and lay the beat down with your heavy hitters. It should be noted that, according to the difficulty chart, this card is only used during the Narrative version of the scenario.
The Nullifier Beam and You - In order to damage Thanos, Chosen of Death, the Crisis Team needs to focus on loading the Amplification Modules with Antimatter Cores in order to fire the Nullifier Beam. To gain an Antimatter Core, a Crisis Team character must interact with a Supply Cache, then move to an Amplification Module and load it. Luckily, interacting with a healthy Amplification Module to load it costs no power. Once the Antimatter is loaded, a Crisis Team character may interact with the Nullifier Beam to apply one Suppression token to an enemy character, this costs 1 power.
credit: brushwizard
But wait, there's more. For each Antimatter Core removed from the Amplification Modules, one Suppression token is applied to up to three characters (one for each Amplification Module). If three Antimatter Cores were removed during this interaction, each enemy character gains 2 Suppression Tokens instead. It is very important to try and load up Thanos and friends with Suppression tokens since every Power Phase he is going to shrug off Suppression tokens, and if he has none on him, he is invulnerable to damage of any kind.
credit: brushwizard
The Cosmic Threat player's team begins the game with Thanos, Chosen of Death. He can charge, he can throw, he's gets to punch people for interacting with objectives, he gets the best kind of reroll and a damage reduction and he can shrug off status effects and Suppression tokens during the Cleanup Phase. This version of Thanos is no joke and he's ready to make quick work of the Crisis Team. In our last game, he punched Thor off the table before the Prince of Asgard even had a chance to do anything of note.
As I mentioned previously, once the Crisis Team flips Thanos to his Injured side, he will then start summoning the Black Order to join him. At the end of each round, he will summon a new member into the game, and then the Cosmic Threat player will be able activate each of them once per round. Things will get very hairy for the Crisis Team as new Black Order members appear, because they will be able to freely attack Amplification Modules quickly and bring about the end of the game if things get too out of hand.
credit: brushwizard
The Cosmic Threat player has a bunch of toys to play with, including six special versions of the Infinity Gems - some of which feel absolutely brutal. Each turn, Thanos will use one of these gems to swing the game in his favor.
The Ultimate Mind Gem: In my opinion, the most brutal gem of them all, it lets Thanos picks three characters that the Crisis Team will activate the turn this gem is played. Forcing the Crisis Team to potentially use characters out of their intended order, or make subpar plays.
The Ultimate Power Gem: This gem lets Thanos gain 10 power instantly and have up to 15 stocked until the beginning of his next activation.
The Ultimate Reality Gem: This gem allows Thanos to treat all Skulls rolled for attack, defense, dodge or interacts, as Criticals.
The Ultimate Soul Gem: This gem resurrects a fallen Crisis Team member to Thanos side and use them as a minion for the turn.
The Ultimate Space Gem: Allows Thanos to teleport around the battlefield.
The Ultimate Time Gem: Forces the Crisis Team to only use the Short movement tool, while the Cosmic Threat team is allowed to use the Long movement tool.
Each round Thanos may pick three gems, one per activation, to use during his turn. These all gems refresh at the beginning of the next round, which means he can even choose them same ones repeatedly. Back-to-back Ultimate Mind Gem plays can be absolutely devastating to the Crisis Team's game plan.
credit: brushwizard
The Cosmic Threat player has access to two special cards, Cosmic Entities and My Divinity is Absolute!
Cosmic Entities is the card that allows Cosmic Threat characters to be immune to damage, unless they have a Suppression token. If they would be damaged while they don't have a Suppression token, they are Pushed with the Short movement tool instead. Also, Thanos, Chosen of Death ignores being given an Activated token by any attacks or effects that would give characters an Activated token. Sorry Ulik, Thanos is shatterproof.
The other Cosmic Threat card is My Divinity is Absolute! This card skips the normal Cleanup Step of flipping Dazed characters - for the Crisis Team. Instead, when a Crisis Team member would be Dazed, they instead remove all status effects and damage and are immediately flipped to their Injured side, meaning they are fair game to be pummeled into the dirt. Luckily, this card is only used during Insane difficulty.
credit: Brushwizard
So, is the Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter fun? Is it worth it?
Obviously, the real value of this kit in Thanos himself, he is the main reason for buying this character pack anyway. The Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter is basically an added bonus on top. If you have the rest of the Black Order, you might as well play this scenario as well, it’s an uphill battle, but it can still be fun trying out different characters in a non-competitive arena.
This is a very challenging scenario. There's a lot of moving parts that the Crisis Team needs to balance. Carrying the Antimatter, loading them into the Amplification Modules and firing the Nullifier are all individual interacts. They also need to try to keep the Amplification Modules from being trashed and defending against a super powered Thanos and his crew. Since Thanos starts gameplay right next to one Amplification Module, its nearly guaranteed that it could be trashed in the first round. But, since the Crisis Team is allowed to start two characters higher up the table, it they might be able to defend it if they play well. I feel like you need characters have high maneuverability, as well as characters that can take on Thanos and keep him busy.
In the last game we played, I had access to Spectacular Spider-Man and the original Spider-Man (Miles Morales), under the first Captain America. This let me do their Web Swing super power for 1 power and we were able to keep the Amplification Modules pretty well stocked.
credit: brushwizard
You need to find a way to keep Suppression tokens on Thanos, since he'll shrug them off during each cleanup phase, and while he's vulnerable he needs to take as much damage as possible. Keeping that pressure can be taxing and if you lose momentum and allow too many Black Order models to come into play, its pretty much game over.
The other Crisis Team player brought along Nova, Cosmic Ghost Rider and Gamora, under Star-lord, and they did the heavy lifting of dealing out damage.
This scenario can be very difficult, especially at the higher difficulty levels. In the 4-5 times we've played it on various difficulties, the Crisis Team has only won once on the Narrative difficulty setting, which was our most recent play through.
I really feel like Inviolable Resolve superpower for the Crisis Team, which is only used during Narrative mode, should be included during the harder difficulties as well. Sure, characters are going to get some things done easier with an extra power per round, but also this scenario has an incredible amount of interactions needed. I believe it should be included in the game regardless of difficulty as a house rule, we never tried it to see if it makes any kind of difference. The Crisis Team is hindered a bit by limited Team Tactics cards and Thanos gains new ways of murdering heroes, as the difficulty goes up.
We never tried using that card on Hard or Insane difficulty, so I don't really know if it would be that big of a deal or not. The nice thing about casual play scenarios though, no judge is going to send you for gaming jail for infractions.
credit: brushwizard
Overall, I'd say the Infinity Gauntlet scenario is one of the more unforgiving Ultimate Encounters I've played so far, and it’s probably not a good starting place as an introductory game if you're looking to use it with new players. If you're looking to teach your friends Marvel: Crisis Protocol, there's better options in Ultimate Encounters, such as Separation Anxiety. But if you're looking for a co-op challenge with friends, this is a brutal challenge, but like other Ultimate Encounters, it’s a nice break from the standard Marvel: Crisis Protocol format and I'd say at least give it a try. Especially if you've already bought Thanos anyway, you might as well give it a spin.
Now that more powerful characters out there, compared to when Thanos was originally released, that might help with some of the challenge. Either way, Thanos makes full use of his title as the Chosen of Death in this scenario, which you should expect from someone wielding the full might of the Infinity Gauntlet.
Have you tried out the Infinity Gauntlet Ultimate Encounter? Have newer models helped you take down the Mad Titan? What's the craziest play you've had happen during the scenario? I'd like to hear your war stories, hit me up on
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