Looking to add raw cosmic power to your roster? Then it’s time to bring in Blue Marvel and Spectrum.

Today we’re diving into this powerhouse duo to see what they offer in Marvel Crisis Protocol.

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

Blue Marvel

Blasting in as a 5 threat puts you into a really competitive category in MCP. So how does Adam Brashear stack up?

4/4/4, 7 health and counting Skulls on defending and dodging does make him pretty tough to take down. We’ve seen this before on Scarlet Witch, and it’s slightly better than Wanda. So there’s that.

Hyper Cosmic Awareness is an unexpectedly good superpower. Especially when on pay-to-flips, as you essentially get your Interact power straight back if you happen to roll a Skull. With M’Kraan being one of the most popular Secures in the game at the moment, this will certainly come up for you often.

Time’s Up is insanely valuable. Size 4 character displacement is gold dust…and he can pick them up from Range 3 and throw them Medium?! That’s incredible. Easily the best part of his card if you ask me.

Anti-Matter Blast is a great attack. Scarlet Witch used to dominate during her day when Mystic attacks were the most useful. But these days it’s Energy attacks, so Blue Marvel fits right in there. Counting Skulls as successes with Living Anti-Matter Reactor means the Stun trigger on this attack won’t matter much - as you will be hitting hard and likely powering your opponent up anyway.

Let Loose is a weird one. It’s clearly thematic; he’s bursting with all this power and it just flies off him. A Crit + Wild trigger for Energy Pulse is going to be super rare, but at least Area attacks no longer hurt your allies? I suspect there are far better ways to spend power with Blue Marvel that aren’t this. Which leads us nicely onto…

Anti-Matter Barrier. So if we’re discounting his spender as ‘niche’ and not that worth it…what else is Blue Marvel going to be spending all of his power on? This! Re-rolls on whiffed defence dice is nice - and this lets you keep your successes and try again with the rest, including Skulls. It’s nice and will definitely come in handy.

Overall, I think Blue Marvel will play like Scarlet Witch if she was released today. He will still struggle with moving into position as she does, but once he gets to do what he wants, he will rip through people. He’s in an awkward spot (much like Wanda) where he’s a turret…and turrets aren’t always needed in MCP. But when the enemy is positioned in the firing line, the Skulls definitely come in handy.

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

Mighty Avengers

A new Affiliation! Yay! Let’s start there.

Stronger Together Than Apart is a great leadership. “When an allied would gain 1 or more power” covers a lot of ground. When they get hit? Triggers the leadership. When they fire off a Builder or Gainer attack? Triggers the leadership. Do they gain power from rolling Skulls like Blue Marvel? Triggers the leadership. What about rolling Blanks like Mysterio? Triggers the leadership.

We’ve already seen the flexibility leaderships like She-Hulk’s A-Force and Professor Xavier’s Uncanny X-Men bring to the table. Most characters in Marvel Crisis Protocol are balanced around their own power economy - so power leaderships bring really cool, interesting and big-brain choices to those that play them.

At the time of writing, we are yet to see an Affiliation list. But Atomic Mass Games have hinted towards Captain Marvel, Cosmic Avenger being affiliated - who is a power-trick character through-and-through. So I think there will be a lot of cool tricks packed in with this Affiliation.

Spectrum

Alright alright…let’s get onto the actual character.

Energy Boost is a great superpower for a leader to have. Especially when paired with Blue Marvel. Adding more dice to characters that have superior dice quality is always great value.

Multi-Spectrum Energy Absorption is situationally great. Bishop and Captain Marvel can really turn the tide on a fight when they roll Wilds in their defences. If you can find ways to boost defence dice on characters like this, you should. But at least she pairs nicely with Blue Marvel who can give her defensive re-rolls, helping her search for those Wilds.

Gamma Strike is fine. Gainers are great as they can fund the rest of a character's kit…but Spectrum doesn’t have much to spend power on (we’ll get to that) so I’m not sure how useful it is.

Photon Blast…is…amazing. We’ve seen an attack like this in the form of Energy Blast on Captain Marvel. The re-roll any makes it deceptively effective at dealing damage. But it’s a Beam 4 GAINER! You gain +1 power per target in the beam. That’s amazing!

Pulsar Wave unfortunately comes with a typo at the time of writing - as it’s currently listed as 0 power. I think it’s safe to assume that this will actually be a 4 cost attack, which would be a fair cost. A fun thing you can do with this is if you hit the Wild Throw trigger is that you can throw the target into a position that you can then Place off for the perfect Photon Blast beam into their team. We’ve seen this before with Logan, The Wolverine and it can be devastating and useful as a fantastic repositioning tool.

Overall I think Spectrum is a very competent leader who will excel in cramped up fights on Wedding Party and Mayor Fisk so that she can make the most of her amazing beam.

Team Tactics Cards

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

Going All Out

We’ve already covered the fact that Spectrum has no trouble generating power thanks to Photon Blast, so she can easily pay 3 for this.

Placing herself within Range 2 means she can line up the perfect beam and then go to town…with some of the best “try and dodge this” tech in the game. Lining up enough people in this beam is going to be devastating for your opponent.

This card seems great - so long as the map shape forces your opponent to group up on a Secure or two.

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

The Ultimates

It’s Helios Laser Bombardment!

I guess this is an Avengers thing then. Contributing a load of power into one big mega-gun.

Play this with Blue Marvel whenever you can, as he will count Skulls as successes thanks to Living Anti-Matter Reactor.

Energy is currently the most sought-after attack type in the game, as it’s a lot of people’s weakness. The leadership Spectrum brings will encourage you to bring characters that are good at generating power, so you should have no problem pumping power into this attack.

If you manage to get the Energy Overload trigger off to put Stun on a character that has no power - you can then ignore them and they will be heavily power starved for the rest of the game. Much better than the explosion caused by Helios Laser Bombardment! Great card, use it to take down Hulks.

HEY WAIT A MINUTE. Helios Laser Bombardment is Unaffiliated? Bring a Tony Stark and take TWO massive gun cards! YEAH!

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

Phase Manipulation

This is…cool? I know I said that Energy attacks are really sought after…but I’m not sure they’re this sought after? I can see this card being super useful into old school Web Warriors or Weapon X, who really hate Mystic attacks. But is it worth a whole Team Tactics Card slot? I’m not sure. At least it’s free!

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

Strange Adventures

Here’s a team-up I didn’t know much about! Turns out they were on a team known as Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Sounds metal, I love it.

Spending 1 power each is cool. Elsa Bloodstone is known for multiple Hit & Runs a turn - and this card passes on that flavour to Monica Rambeau. I know I keep going on about it but Plasma Blast is an amazing attack and it costs 0!! So you can use this card to get Spectrum into position for yet another sweet beam into the enemy team.

I also quite like the single-target damage possibility with this card. You could get Elsa to fire off her Monster Hunting Weapons and potentially dish out Incinerate, ready for Spectrum to follow up with a Pulsar Wave. It’s flexible and great!

Image courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

The Man of Marvels

This is another take on Captain America’s Team Tactics Card Battle Plan. It’s situationally very good, but it isn’t always clear when that situation is. It brings great flexibility and can help you out in a pinch.

We don’t know if there are any Large base models affiliated with Mighty Avengers yet, but they would really love the Particle Manipulation part of this card.

Anti-Matter Healing is a good amount of healing, especially if you can get it off for multiple models - and Range 3 is very generous.

Good card! Hard to say if it will definitely be helpful every game or not.

Final Thoughts

A great box with a fantastic new leadership, on a great leader, with some very impressive Team Tactics Cards.

Let’s cross our fingers for a fun and long affiliation list for The Mighty Avengers!

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