Powerscaling: Captain America, First Avenger

 

Powerscaling: Captain America, First Avenger

Steve Rogers has three incarnations (to date) in Marvel Crisis Protocol, with Sam Wilson meaning that there are three different ways you can have Captain America lead your squad of Avengers! That’s a lot of Steve and a lot of Captain America, and I have to be honest, the thought of painting up yet another Captain America in the year 2025 was… exhausting. But of all the models in the second core set for the game, Violent Steve – or especially his leadership – was the one that stood out to me the most.

I’ve now played a lot of games with Steve3, and whilst I’ve lost about as many as I’ve won, Captain America, First Avenger (Third Steve) remains, I think, the most interesting of all the different ways you can field the man who can, famously, do this all day. Whilst the man himself remains fairly generic, his leadership has proven to be a tool that just feels more useful the more I learn to use it So I’d like to talk about him! Which inevitably means talking about his first incarnation as well.

Captain America (First Steve) is also not himself a particularly interesting piece on the board. He can bodyguard for your other heroes, he can throw his shield to stay relevant at range 4, he has size 3 displacement on his spender, but the main thing people take him for is his leadership ability which reduces the cost of the first superpower used by each allied character by 1 to a minimum of 1.

This incredibly flexible leadership makes the vast majority of the characters in the game perform better with him, to the point that it seems likely some characters are paying too much for their powers in their home affiliations to stop them being rampant monsters when paired up with Steve.

This playstyle does lend itself to a few archetypes, however. Teams focusing heavily on 2-cost throws or charges or powers that can be used reactively every round have performed very well, and Avengers in general have a roster which supports all of these excellently. The value of the leadership falls off as the game runs longer and power no longer becomes such a commodity, however, and there are certain ‘power tax’ strategies which counter this quite hard, forcing Steve to use his leadership just to bring the characters back to where they would normally be, and blunting the early game advantage that one extra power discount can make.

Steve3 is also a character that leans heavily on his leadership, but the kit he brings is more aggressive. He can charge, which with a range 3 attack keeps him mobile and contributing consistently throughout the game. He doesn’t have as pronounced a weakness to mystic attacks as Steve1, and whilst he doesn’t have a guaranteed throw his spender also has a flurry trigger – meaning that whether he’s using his shield bounce or his spender (and his shield bounce is a builder rather than a gainer, making it easier to build power for all of this) he can throw out up to 4 attacks per turn, with charge making it likely that he’s going to do so when he needs to.

He does lose 1 health on his front compared to Original Steve, but he keeps I Can Do This All Day on his back and his ability to boost mystic as well as physical and energy defence means that the tankiness is more or less comparable, though it is worth noting that if your opponent is putting the pressure on him it is much more difficult to keep the power up for his juicy spender, charge and his leadership.

And the leadership is where he really shines. Once per turn, spend a power when you have a hit and you can change another die into any result you like. Suddenly, triggers become much more consistent. He can use it himself to secure his flurries, he can help make Luke Cage put out his staggers and Hulk get his pushes. There are a lot of characters who absolutely love a world where they can hope to get their triggers almost every round.

Even without triggers, though, I’ve found that the extra damage is very useful on its own merits. If you are using a builder, you effectively refund the power that you spend to get the damage pushed through. Sometimes you’ll overkill an opponent, but you can equally often use the leadership to exactly daze or exactly KO a target, and that feels really good.

It won’t come up on absolutely every single attack – sometimes you look at your opponent’s defence roll and it isn’t worth the spend, sometimes you roll well enough that you don’t need the leadership at all – but with a 4-wide team (I very much enjoy Hulk, Steve, and then a 4 and a 3 of choice at 17) I’ve averaged an additional 3 damage pushed through per round, and with most games lasting 4 rounds, that’s an additional 12 damage and a similar number of relevant triggers secured over the course of most games. Although spread out across multiple characters, that is slightly above the average health pool of a character in the game!

Original Thor feels a lot better when you can reliably aim to get 3 size 4 character throws in a round and push through the damage needed for a stagger on For Asgard. Doctor Voodoo is already great, but all of his triggers are incredible for Steve3 – spiritual strength becomes much more achievable, sap power actually nets you 1 power and power burn can do an additional 2 (one for the wild, one for the burn).

I also think it’s important to note that whilst you do slightly tax your own power economy (you aren’t gaining quite as much power as you would normally for the damage builders inflict) you do still have the great character roster that Avengers enjoy under Steve1 – you’re just trading the early game charge and throw (or other super power) access for greater mid and late game damage to finish off opponents.

This does make Steve3 a less flexible leader; Steve1 you can play a very control-oriented game with if that is what you want to do, with splash characters like Ghost Spider alongside your cheap throws to pull people around and save your own characters without really engaging in the fight any more than you have to.

But I’ve always enjoyed a brawl, and whilst characters like Shadowlands Daredevil and Star-Lord can offer very strong attrition teams, they are doing it through rerolls which – if you’re trying to hit particular triggers – just aren’t as reliable as Steve’s ability to give his team exactly what they need, when they need it.

So that’s Violent Steve, and of course I have to rate him A, for AMERICA!