Marvel Crisis Abomination Pack Review — I'm gonna wreck it!

Marvel Crisis Protocol gets better every time I check it out, and the recently released Abomination & Wrecking Crew character pack is more of the same, by giving players 2 tanky models that can cause a lot of damage, destroy terrain, and cause a lot of extra damage. Let’s dig in!First off, this package includes 2 models that are actually 5 characters. Abomination, or Emil Blonsky, is a Hulk level villain, and the model certainly is, being absolutely massive. The Wrecking Crew, who are a team of c-level Thor villains who have a magic crowbar, are 4 characters on one base. Comparing the models to each other, you can really appreciate Atomic Mass’s devotion to comic-book realism.

Which brings me to another point. With these models, once again, whomever is doing sprue and model design at Atomic Mass deserves a raise. These were incredibly easy to put together, with minimal cleanup. I’ll dive into painting them in a future article, but these models are awesome.

Now to the gameplay. Both cards are beefy, and do a good job of representing their comic book characters. Abomination comes in at a 5 Threat with 7 Life, and the Wrecking Crew comes in at a 4 Threat with 6 Life. 

Abomination is explosive. A medium movement means he’ll get around the field very quickly. Immunity to poison and a damage reduction by 1 means he can take a hit very easily. Pair this up with his Strike ability and Radiation Zone, and he’s able to poison other characters on the field yet stay immune…this can be deadly.  So that he’s not overpowered, he does only gain 1 power from his strikes and Hurl Debris attack, which also feels underpowered. Moving fast and poisoning the competition is the strategy you should take with him. Personally, I’m going to focus on creating poison conditions and utilizing Radiation Zone (afflicts damage and poison conditions as an AOE) and then using Gamma Bomb (pulls characters in closer).  For fun, he can throw a terrain feature that has a size of 4, so go ahead and hurl a garbage truck at Iron Man. 

The Wrecking Crew brings some different flavor by being 4 characters together, so naturally, their attacks make sense by integrating thematic elements of each character, whom on their own, probably wouldn’t sell as well. One thing to note is that despite their base, they count as a size 2, so they can utilize size 2 terrain (like a taxi). Looking at the card, combos are important. Indestructiball & Piledriver benefit from each other by setting up Stuns and Staggers. Then, if you’re lucky or a smart planner, you can use “Let’s Take em Down Boys”, which will allows for the Wrecking Bar fling, which will be a beam attack of 4, ensuring you can hit multiple targets and multiple terrain pieces, just wrecking up damage (see what I did there?). Bulldoze rounds out the card by allowing the Crew to get pushed Medium instead of Small. This allows for them to destroy terrain, hurt opponents, and power up for the next round. 

Lastly, the pack comes with 4 Team Tactics cards, and some of these feel on point for the characters but I wonder if they’ll get used. Abomination gets a team-up card with MODOK, which is fun thematically, but it’s just a way to throw Abomination. His second card, Gamma Burst, allows Abomination to clear the area around him by pushing poisoned characters away, and dealing damage. I can see this working well with the normal combo, and feels on point.

The Crew gets Mystic Menace and Stronger Together. The former takes advantage of dazing opponents by giving them the Hex condition (this removes Crits on dice rolls, an evil condition), and the latter takes advantage of ganging up on an opponent by allowing them to be thrown, depending on attacks made. Like Abomination, one of these cards is awesome, and the other, while fun, might not get used as much. 

Affiliation wise, put them both in Criminal Syndicate. They can benefit from the leaders in there, namely Kingpin or Shadowland Daredevil, and from what I’ve read, pairing up Abomination with another beefy thrower, like Omega Red, means you’ll be tossing yourself around the table.

I think this pack is gonna be great for anyone wanting to build out a beefy force, fans of the Criminal Syndicate, or those who want to spend time creating conditions and AOE attacks. Give it a shot!