Pathfinder Protocol: Crisis Unleashed (9th Aug 25)

 

Lured by the promise of incredible swag and more Crisis Protocol, I packed up my Midnight Sons and took a trip over to sunny Peterborough! This was apparently the first tournament that Rob had organised – and if I hadn’t been told that I wouldn’t have guessed. We had good communication in the weeks running up to it, the tables were great, the promised swag was top notch. Great stuff!

Since the UKGT I have definitely been bitten by the tournament bug. I’ve joined a team (The Thunderbolts! We’re the good guys, probably) to take part in next year’s Team Tournament and I’ve committed to making my girl Elsa shine. In the words of Marge Simpson:

So this tournament report will be followed up with some more in-depth thoughts about where I might want to try and take the roster next. Spoiler alert: I think there’s definitely some room for improvement both in my Elsa-playing and in the tools I have brought to bear.

My roster was:

The Immortal Hulk
Elsa Bloodstone
Wong
Werewolf by Night
N’Kantu the Living Mummy
Man-Thing
Doctor Voodoo
Black Panther, Chosen of Bast
Loki, God of Mischief
Blade

Brace for Impact
Sacrifice
Siege of Darkness
Bats the Ghost Hound
Giant’s Blood
One Below All
Phases of the Moon
Instant Recovery
Recalibration Matrix
Survival

M’Kraan Crystal Gets Heroes Home!
Mutant Madman Turns City Center into Lethal Amusement Park
Guardians Save Shi’ar Empress in Style
Fear Grips World as “Worthy” Terrorize Cities
Skrulls Infiltrate World Leadership
The Montesi Formula Found

This is an iteration on what I had been playing at the UKGT, with the idea that:

1. Doctor Voodoo is very strong
2. Pay to Flip secures double down on the pain of the power tax from Loki and Root
3. Loki without a gem makes list building a lot easier (a suggestion from my Thunderbolts teammates which has definitely been borne out in practice).

One of the things I wasn't sure about was keeping Blade and iHulk in the roster - they are very strong! But I also had very little intention of playing them unless I ran into Apocalypse or maybe if I was playing Hammers where the leadership and iHulk can get a very early lead into some teams.

As it turned out, neither of those situations arose and I instead got four great games in with my girl which I think have underscored to me that if I’m planning to force Elsa I need those two slots back. I still think that the dual roster is very much alive; iHulk/Blade/Voodoo/Wong are a good 17 to start building from and there’s some potential in deciding that you’ll play that when you’re on your extracts or Fisk/Wedding Party and switch to Elsa for pay to flips, but if your primary gameplan is Elsa and you want to play her there’s so many ways to construct that squad the extra two spots can help a lot.

Anyway, on with the games!

Round 1: A Goose vs Joemanji
Crisis: Inhumans Deploy – Guardians Save Empress

Threat: 18
Priority: Goose

My Squad: Elsa, Loki, Voodoo, Bast Panther, Man-thing
Joemanji’s Squad: Mystique, Rhino, Juggernaut, Quicksilver, Baron Zemo

In any other community I think this would have felt like a pretty intimidating game. Joe is one of the very top players in the country, but he’s also such a lovely guy! We’ve chatted a few times but I don’t think we’ve ever actually played before? So mostly I was excited – and delighted to see Brotherhood on the table.

There was the chance of a pivot to Magneto and Exodus so I figured Bast Panther and Man-Thing were good choices; they turn off dice modification or limit crits and that’s valuable. The Loki bubble and root make Magneto extremely miserable so I was kind of hopeful… but Mystique makes Loki extremely miserable in turn, and she personally doesn’t care much about the tax shenanigans.

Round 1 set the tempo for the game – Loki moved up and took one extract, Man-Thing took another. I had potentially made a mistake in matching Voodoo up against Juggernaut and could have worked harder to get him into Rhino instead, but I was thinking that I didn’t really want to have to try and actually kill Juggernaut – sapping his power and possessing him would have been fine by me instead. As it turned out Voodoo did neither of those things, inflicting no damage and sapping no power.

At the end of the round Mystique walked up and dazed Loki with her rapid fire attacks. This would turn into something of a pattern for poor Loki – in my test games putting him up on the midline and grabbing an extract was usually fine because he has a lot of ways to run away if he survives the initial attack. That wasn’t how it played out over the day this time, though! Turns out that he can be a bit of a squishy nerd at 5 health 3/3/3 – and in fairness, I did know that Mystique is one of the more dangerous counters to him. She is the superior shapeshifter!

Loki opened round 2 dazing Mystique right back – counts blanks mystic spender does a lot of work – but from here I was facing a team with two extract steals in Can I Borrow That? And This is a Robbery, and which had better mobility than me on the secures with three long movers, Juggernaut and Rhino.

I was able to draw it out to round 4 with Elsa burning Siege and Bats to daze Rhino and deny the last point Joe needed to win on round 3 but from there I was mostly trying to rely on violence, and whilst the squad has a few ways to hit relatively hard it wasn’t enough to turn things back around. Great fun and hard fought!

Final Score: 19-11 to Joemanji

Round 2: A Goose vs Monty
Crisis: Skrulls Infiltrate – Guardians Save Empress
Threat: 20
Priority: A Goose

My Squad: Elsa, Loki, Voodoo, Werewolf, Man-Thing
Monty’s Squad: Soul Strange, Ghost Rider, Valkyrie, Shang-Chi, Wong

This was my first time facing into the new Defenders and Monty’s first time facing into Elsa, who I think he wants to look into next! Funnily enough his first round game was on Skrulls and mine was on Guardians so we got to repeat half of our previous game.

I set Werewolf up against Ghost Rider as my main fear was the 6 die energy attacks. Werewolf went up and claimed the skrull on that side first and didn’t move, Shang-Chi took Monty’s home one and was pushed forward, Man-Thing took the other side extract and that left Loki to claim my home extract – and he was also pushed forward. That set the early tempo for the game as it meant that (as we all made our home secure flips) I was able to end round 1 with 3 extracts and my home secures, and also have Elsa shoot Shang, incinerating and rooting him. Then Voodoo was able to burn him down at the top of turn 2 and take his extract as well.

Playing around Strange was interesting; it limited where I actually wanted to use my superpowers. But with Instant Recovery and focusing on more defensive play I was able to keep both Man-Thing and Werewolf alive through the round 2. Loki and root taxed Valkyrie a lot, and I was able to mitigate Shang’s impact on the fight through the noble art of running away from him.

I did get lucky with Werewolf; he was able to deal with Ghost Rider pretty effectively despite eating a Penance Stare, and he hit the wild triggers he needed to help him fight and reach the point without any trouble. I'm not sure that fight always goes so strongly in Werewolf's favour and if Shang had been able to get into him it would've been a disaster!

New Strange is an interesting character – his pierce on a shield came up a couple of times and helped push a little more damage through, but even with the soul stone the Loki aura and root made it tough for him to have a huge impact – especially as I wasn’t particularly trying to damage his characters, I just needed to hold my points. This game definitely gave me a lot of appreciation for how tough Werewolf and Man-Thing can feel when they are able to use their healing factor a couple of times and have instant recovery to deal with the first hit – though in Werewolf’s case that probably means not using the Midnight massacre in return. In this case, since I wasn’t worried about Wong and I didn’t want to let Ghost Rider use Penance Stare, that felt like the right move – but it might not always be.

Final Score: 17-8 to A Goose

Round 3: A Goose vs Tom Green

Scenario: Skrulls Infiltrate - Deadly Meteors
Threat: 20
Priority: Tom Green

My Squad: Elsa, Loki, Voodoo, Werewolf, Man-Thing
Tom’s Squad: Dormammu, Clea, Baron Zemo, Captain Marvel, Okoye

This was an interesting setup – I haven’t played against Dormammu in years and he was never exactly popular. I decided to go with the same squad as my last game because that had worked out well and felt pretty tough. It’s amazing how a team that can feel tough into one squad feels remarkably not-tough into another!

My strategy was to try and ignore Dormammu as much as possible and play for points and to kill the rest of his squad, figuring that I could try and limit the impact of the big guy. That was somewhat hampered when Dormammu walked up and one-shot Loki at the end of round 1 then took him off the table at the top of turn 2.

Voodoo and Man-Thing did incredible work into Captain Marvel, Baron Zemo and Okoye. Man-Thing soaked up a lot of attacks from a Binary Form Carol over three rounds and didn’t really mind. Werewolf went into Clea who was in the back lines, but I misplayed a skrull push quite badly and put her in a position where she could hit him and he couldn’t Midnight Massacre back at her.

The Dormammu attrition was punishing, though. The big guy himself picked up a lot of my models. This was also the first time I played Survival, trying to keep a 2 health Voodoo alive – but I had to spend all his power to do it, which meant that his actual activation was fairly anaemic and it may have been better for him to eat a final Dormammu attack instead of letting Dorm put poor Man-Thing down instead.

I was able to keep things relatively close for three rounds, ending 12-15 in his favour there. But going into round 4 I only had Werewolf and Elsa left on the board. Elsa failed to daze Dormammu (I don’t think she even came close) and Dorm one-shot Werewolf, leaving him open to pick up every point remaining on the board which swung things very heavily.

In retrospect I think there were a lot of better ways to have approached this matchup. My opponent was expecting iHulk – which is why he brought Clea – but I think iHulk could have done much better work into Dormammu himself. He’s immune to Hex and he can leap back after being pushed away. His spender can throw Dorm himself and he could have used some of the terrain (something I felt the lack of in all of my games!). I also think I should’ve chosen 17 rather than 20 which gave Dorm all the points to do what he wanted with.

This was still a fun game, and the biggest learning was that Loki is incredibly central to this gameplan so if I’m going to try and run it I need to work much harder to try and keep him safe. Losing Loki in Round 1 and Round 3 felt so much worse than when he was around being a nuisance through the whole game in Round 2.

Final Score: 22-12 to Tom

Round 4: A Goose vs MajorVonRob

Scenario: Super-Powered Scoundrels – Montesi Formula
Threat: 18
Priority: Tom Green

My Squad: Elsa, Loki, Voodoo, Bast Panther, N’Kantu
Rob’s Squad: Amazing Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Ghost Spider, Moon Knight, Spider-Woman

In the final round I got to play the organiser! We are both Midnight Sons and Web Warriors enjoyers, so this was bound to be a fun game. I figured that bringing as much mystic-based murder as I could would give me a good shot where the attrition was concerned, and I knew I would need it because Scoundrels is a pretty tough crisis when you don’t have a huge amount of control. (Or, as I realised when I put the squad down on the table, really any reliable control at all).

Rob didn’t grab the centre exact right away – he instead grabbed his home one with Spider-Woman and moved her to a back point. I figured the play here was to move Loki up to the middle and try to take an extract advantage – which I had kind of written off as a possibility, honestly!

In response, Amazing Spider-Man walked up and dealt 4 damage to him with a spider-strike.

This was quite bad but it wasn’t a total disaster. Loki ran away when Miles came up to finish the job, retreating to within sacrifice range of Bast Panther. The disaster was that I hadn’t anticipated just how loaded on power ASM now was.

Top of round 2 he web swung in and I could have used giant’s blood to get Loki back out of there, but I figured it was better to consider him lost already since he only had 1 health remaining and I had no way to heal him. Might as well make them work for the extract.

What I didn’t see coming was that ASM had enough power to play All Webbed Up and was positioned to hit the entire team except N’kantu.

Round 2 saw everyone except N’Kantu dazed, and in the process gaining enough power that the entire ‘power tax plan’ was no longer really viable. Ouch!

If I was going to come back I needed to hit just as hard. On the bright side, I did bring a team with a lot of mystic attacks to do that with.

Round 3 I opened up with Siege of Darkness and I did do a lot of damage; Voodoo took out Spider-Woman, Elsa and Panther took out Ghost-Spider, and I made a bit of a comeback – but not quite enough. Going into Round 4 it was 12-14. Never has a 2 point gap felt wider.

Again, Loki needed to survive one hit so he could Giant’s Blood away because a Trickster would still leave him get-able. But alas, it was not to be, even with his improved aura. We were able to finish off Spider-Woman and Gwen with Voodoo and Elsa, but ultimately we didn’t have a hope of stopping ASM and he had one of the books. so... it was always going to be tough.

This might have been my favourite game of the day! I don’t think I have laughed as much as I did when I realised just how beautifully set up the All Webbed Up turn had been, and suddenly the Midnight Sons found themselves going from the fighting team to desperately trying to hold on to points.

Final Score: 17-14 to Rob

This was a great tournament and I had an absolute blast. Huge thanks to Rob for putting it on, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next one!

On top of all the awesome swag (pictures below) I also got the award for best sportsmanship throughout the day, which completely blew me away! Honestly, if I had to pick between taking first place and that, I’d choose sportsmanship every time. Huge thanks to everyone who voted for me for that, I was (and still am) absolutely stunned! Thank you so much!

Everyone got to take away these cool speckled dice, neat sticker and the latest card update which saved me a ton of work! Thanks!

The 'token gesture' Rob gave me for best sportsmanship. Very cool!

Finally, I had a few folks ask me where I got all the cool Elsa/Midnight Sons stickers that now grace my carry case. Very happy to shout out Midnightbloodstone over on Red Bubble, who has a wonderful selection over here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/andisadoily/shop?artistUserName=andisadoily&iaCode=all-stickers

I think that’s enough honking for me for one Sunday morning. There are definitely a lot of options I’m now weighing up for my roster and where I want to take it – I’ll probably do a write-up on that and some more thoughts on running Elsa specifically as a leader soonish.

HONK!