The streets are filled with the Green Goblin's minions, too many for one hero to handle. So you need to team up and fight your way through to face him, learning new skills along the way and learning how to work best with your fellow heroes. Can you defeat the Green Goblin in time? We find out in our MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin review.

We've covered Marvel Crisis Protocol for years, starting with the Core Set, which I previewed in 2019, and Giaco, who has MCP as one of his favourite games, has continued coverage with more recent releases like Abomination, the Wrecking Crew, and the Asgardians Affiliation Pack.

The Original Protocol

Marvel Crisis Protocol (MCP) is a superhero wargame first released in 2019 that has grown to include a huge cast of heroes and villains to battle with, letting you recreate your dream roster of heroes. The full roster includes all of your favorite heroes from the Avengers, Asgardians, X-Men, and more, and including big bads like Ultron and Thanos. Some of those even came with Ultimate Encounters, a cooperative multiplayer version of MCP, that let you and your friends take on a threat together, rather than battling each other.

MCP Alliances is a new way to play Marvel Crisis Protocol, formalising the Ultimate Encounters style in a single box, with themed heroes and enemies, and also tweaking the rules slightly to play on a board, rather than using rules on an open battlefield. This makes it all a lot more beginner-friendly, whilst still using the core MCP rules. 

Alliances is a campaign-style game, so character stat cards are unique to Alliances. The heroes in Alliances come with additional full MCP stat cards so you can use them in standard games of MCP. But because of the unique stat cards, it does mean that MCP heroes can be used in Alliances, only those from Alliances products.

MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin stage cards can be mixed to create a variety of 3-part campaign games

For the rules, some of them will be familiar to existing MCP players, the stats for the characters, the different types of attacks and their defence, the 8-sided custom dice with hits, blocks, wilds, criticals, and failures. What is different is:

• Campaign-style play in stages - MCP Alliances games consist of 2 stages from those available plus a boss battle, which gives you 3 games to play through, with the characters levelling up and gaining skills in between
• Rounds - Rather than activating twice, each hero takes an activation, then enemies spawn and activate, then players and enemies take another turn, before the round cleanup phase. Dazed counters get removed during the cleanup phase, so heroes can miss a turn if dazed early
• Levelling Up - Alliances' heroes don't start like they do in full MCP games, and have to level up between stages to gain access to all their abilities. There are 3 skill cards at levels 1 to 3, and 2 for level 4. Characters randomly draw 2 of the 3 cards, and choose one when they level up (including at game start for Level 1). This adds some variety if playing through the campaign again, as characters will gain different skills and combinations each game.

What A Night

The first Alliances product is MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin, where 4 heroes battle the Green Goblin and his minions. The full box contents are:

• 4 Character miniatures
  • Spectacular Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
  • Ultimate Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
  • Black Cat (Felicia Hardy)
  • Ghost-Spider (Gwen Stacy)
• 1 Boss Green Goblin miniature
• 18 Enemy minion miniatures
• 2 Double-sided stage boards
• 4 Character dashboards, plus Alliances character stat cards and character level-up cards
• 5 Stage cards plus Boss Battle card
• Boss and minion stat cards, plus enemy modifiers and pitfall cards
• Tokens and cubes for tracking and objectives
• 10 Custom MCP dice
• Rulebook plus rules reference cards
• 5 MCP stat cards (4 heroes plus Green Goblin) so that you can use the 5 miniatures in full MCP games

The miniatures are all push-fit, which is great for players new to the hobby as there's no glue required, and they are also coloured thematically so that even without painting, they look decent on the tabletop. The custom dice and boards for movement and range all make it easy for new players, what isn't easy is the rulebook.

MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin uses the same custom dice as MCP.

The rules are all presented well, as is the setup for missions, but with each mission having a variety of different rules, the enemies activating, and the heroes having their own abilities and different types of attacks to track, it's a lot to get your head around in your first few games, on top of the MCP rules, which have different types of attacks and defences unique to those attacks. I came from playing MCP, so I already knew the rules and just focused on picking up the changes and how the game's AI controlled the enemies, but new players could really benefit from a simple 'the first few turns of your first game' guide, showing how movement and attacks work. 

As characters level up in MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin, they gain 1 skill at each level, upgrading existing skills, or gain new ones.

The rule examples are also poor. There are rule examples in the book, but they're just pure text, with no context or images to bring them to life. There's also no index, so you have to look through the entire book to find any rules queries that might arise. This means that while a perfect product for new players, to introduce them to skirmish wargaming, or act as a gateway to MCP, the rules don't make it that way. Veteran MCP players will be straight in, creating their 3-part scenario and then taking the fight to the Green Goblin.

It's also worth noting that Atomic Mass Games are also going to be releasing additional scenarios that you can mix in with this set's ones, for additional variety in campaign games. You can find the first additional scenario card on the MCP blog. This is great for the longevity of Alliances, expanding before even having to pick up any new sets.

Truly Villainous

Enemies in MCP Alliances don't attack heroes individually, but add their strength to attacks against all heroes within their attack range. This means that an enemy can attack multiple heroes. Each enemy also adds in their own ability to the mix, with a trigger that brings them thematically to life.

MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin includes 4 different enemy types:

• The Green Goblin - This set's big bad has 2 versions, Boss and Mini-Boss. The mini-boss can appear in the standard stages, and the boss only during the final boss battle. The stats are mostly the same across both, with the Boss Green Goblin moving further and having over triple the health. Both have the ability that any heroes damaged by the Green Goblin also gain the Incinerate condition due to the pumpkin bombs, which reduce their defence dice on the heroes' next roll.
• War Goblin - These Brutes add the most strength out of the minions, and after any enemy spawns (so twice per round), all War Goblins also advance 1 space towards the characters, bringing more into range.
• Spider-Slayer - These Sentries have the longest range of all the minions, and after they attack the characters, they advance towards objective tokens, trying to lock the board down.
• Goblin Army - These Goons aren't strong or fast, but there are a lot of them, and when enemies frenzy, which happens if enemies need to spawn and there are no spawn spaces available, the Goblin Army all move 3 spaces towards the heroes.

MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin boss and minion stat cards include the values they add to combat, plus their unique rules.

Each boss also adds some extra rules to all the minions, which can give some variety when more sets are released, if using different bosses with minions. The Green Goblin adds the Oscorp Weaponry modifier, which deals 1 damage to a hero if they roll any failures when attacking enemies. 

Bosses also have their own unique Pitfall card, a double-sided card depending on if it's a mini-boss or boss scenario. The pitfall comes into play for the first failure result rolled during the enemy spawn step, each failure or blank result thereafter spawns an enemy. The Green Goblin's standard pitfall spawns the mini-boss himself, and then the enemies frenzy, the full boss pitfall card removes all special conditions and then moves him, cutting through web-lines that are part of his final boss battle scenario.

Heroes

The 4 MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin heroes all offer their own unique playstyle, even between the 3 similar spider characters:

• Spectacular Spider-Man - Peter's standard strike is range 2, 5 strength physical that can move Peter 1 space for wilds rolled. He has a more powerful Maximum Web-Head attack that has 7 strength and can move Peter and his target 3 spaces each. Peter's spider-sense lets him reroll 2 defence dice against physical and energy dice, and can use his Witty Banter reaction ability to stop enemies' attacks and gain himself experience.
• Ultimate Spider-Man - Miles' standard attack is range 3, 4 strength physical that can move the defender 2 spaces. His upgraded attack is Venom Blast, an energy attack with range 2, 6 strength that gives the target the shock condition, with wilds able to deal damage to other nearby enemies. Miles can also boost his standard attack, once per turn (twice per round), by spending 2 power to move himself 2 spaces and adding 2 dice to the attack roll, gaining XP if they KO an enemy.
• Ghost-Spider - Gwen's standard attack is range 4, 5 strength physical that can push the defender away 1 space with a wild. Her upgraded attack hits all enemies within 1 space with a 6 strength attack that pushes the targets away 1 space. Gwen also has a 2 power cost reactive ability that can pull a hero that's within 4 spaces, 2 spaces towards her if they're within 1 space of an enemy before they attack, also gaining her XP when used.
• Black Cat - Felica's standard attack is range 1, 5 strength physical, and her power cost attack is a range 3, 6 strength physical that can place Felica within 1 space of the target, and then throw the defender 2 spaces away. She can also interact with objectives that are contested by minions due to her Master Cat Burglar ability, which also gains her additional XP when completing objectives.

MCP Alliances stat cards are different to standard MCP stat cards, but both are included in alliances boxes. MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin Final Thoughts?

MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin is a fantastic system in a well-designed box, massively let down by its rulebook and lack of onboarding for new players. It's almost the perfect set to bring new players in, with all components, including board for easy movement and range, and hero levelling system designed for them, but left on their own working out the core mechanics, AI control, and scenarios without easy-to-find rules or examples. MCP players will pick it up easily, giving them a great campaign system where they can watch their characters grow as they move through stages. The variety of character upgrades, plus small variety in scenarios, means there's repeat play out of the single box.

The enemy attack system is simple and works very well, with thematic abilities added in by the boss and enemy stat cards that keep it from simply feeling like every enemy just adds a value to an attack. The backwards compatibility with MCP is welcome, letting you take your characters into full games, but you'll have to wait for future sets for more heroes and villains to add to Alliances.

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The copy of MCP Alliances Night of the Goblin used to produce this review was provided by Asmodee UK.