Peace Was Never an Option

    Wowee. Where to begin with Emma Frost? I feel a little bad even covering her in some ways to be honest. The point of this series is to highlight characters that I feel get overlooked, and I don't think anyone is going to be overlooking Emma any point in the near future. I think she's quite possibly the best four threat in the game, up there with an unerrated Shang Chi, and if you're not seeing her all over the place in your local meta already... give it time. When people understand just how much this character can do, the question becomes why aren't you bringing the model with solid offense, great displacement and reliable defenses in your squad? There are reasons, but if you need a generalist all-rounder who happens to bring great tricks along for the ride, Emma is your girl. And what a glow up! Emma has spent years being underwhelming and mostly a tool for enabling the Hellfire Club. Now, she stands strong on her own and she alone might be a solid argument for giv...

  Who doesn't love Spider-Man? Ever since day one, Peter Parker has had a place in Marvel Crisis Protocol, and as of the writing of this article he currently has four places across Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Man, and Spider-Man Noir. That's a lot of Spider-Men! Some might say... too many Spider-Men? As the game has gone on, he's become only a small part of an entire affiliation of Spider People in the Web Warriors, which have sometimes been seen as extremely strong and rarely out of the meta entirely. Once upon a time, there was a perception in the community that the Web Warriors were 'solved' as a faction.  I don't think that was ever actually as true as people thought, but now that we have had two new boxes with five new Web Warriors and a raft of new tactics cards bringing them up to 20 characters and 23 character restricted or Web Warriors affiliated tactics cards, the number of ways you can play the affiliation has exploded in possib...

Regan Wyngarde isn't exactly a character that I had a lot of interest in prior to seeing her release in Marvel Crisis Protocol. I hadn't heard of her, and even her sculpt wasn't... my favourite, though I do appreciate the arrogance in the pose, the leaping leopard is a bit of a tough sell. But! After putting her on the table, Lady Mastermind became a fixture in my roster with a play pattern that reminded me of one of my absolute favourites in the original Loki, which was not something I expected at all from reading her card. Let's dive in to why that is! The most complicated thing here is undoubtedly Your Reality is Whatever I Want it to Be. There's a ton of text here, but I'll sum it up: If you have power equal to a character's mental defense and Regan is within range 5 of them, she can spend that much power and make an attack with a type, range and power equal to their builder or spender, targeting another enemy character near them. It doesn't get any ...

  After 6 months of prep along with my team the Thunderbolts, we gathered in Shepherd's Bush along with 115 other competitors to take part in Across the Bifrost's Team Champions! This was my very first time being part of a team in any miniature wargaming context, and jumping right in with a seven round tournament that I believe was the largest MCP event ever to have been organised was an incredible way to start! We had some of the best players in the world, who had travelled from all over the place, to play Crisis Protocol at the very highest levels. Also, we were there! As before I'm not going to try and give an exhaustive play by play of all seven rounds of the tournament. Partly because I think it could be overwhelming, but mostly because I am writing this the morning after the event and already some of the details of those games are fuzzy. Instead, I'm going to break this report down into three sections. First my thoughts on how the tournament structure and team gam...

  Well, it's been a heck of a week to kick off 2026. Not going to lie, it has knocked me back a bit from all those new routines I thought I'd kick the year off with. But! Let's proceed assuming that the world isn't going to end in the next few weeks. What are my goals hobby-wise for 2026? First up, it is my aim to get to at least 12 in person gaming events this year. One per month seems like an achievable goal, and I'm off to a strong start there! I am heading to the Across the Bifrost Team Tournament this weekend and will be enjoying two days of gaming alongside my teammates in the Thunderbolts! I'm excited to see if I can make my janky roster sing, and it'll be great to get some Marvel back on the table with some cool people who share my gaming mindset. I have also booked in a meetup with gaming friends in February where I'm hoping to play some Trench Crusade and test out the squad I painted over December. In March there's a Malifaux tournament I a...

As we enter 2026, I've taken the excuse to pause and consider how I spend my time, what my goals are, and whether I'm still happy with all of that. For the most part, I am! I have a good community around me, I'm working on a number of creative projects I'm really enjoying, and I have a vision for what my future looks like. The past few years have been pretty rough, but it's good to feel like I'm back on track. On that note, you can expect to start seeing some very different content on PWNAO over the course of the year, as I use this space to start rambling about the things I enjoy in life beyond just miniature wargaming. Wargaming still remains a big part of my life, though, and I'd like to put forward a case for something I don't see openly talked about in many miniature wargaming blogs or podcasts: namely, the case for being a loser. The competitive scene has really exploded in recent years, across all sorts of systems. This has been good! I've bee...