Today I had two games of Marvel Crisis Protocol. Actually, I had my first two games.

I don’t quite have a play-by-play, but I do have my thoughts and some highlights.

My force consisted of the heroes above. Groot, Rocket, Thor, Spiderman, and Venom.

My opponent ran Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and… one of the supports from Black Panther whose name I can’t seem to recall.

The first game was a painful experience for me. The rules are fine, but there’s a lot of tokens and every character has 4-6 unique abilities and attacks. There’s quite a learning curve off the cuff, but by the end of your first match, you’ll be fine.

What I’m saying is: give this game 2-3 tries before you judge it. That’s quite the ask, but I honestly really enjoyed my second match. It was a blast.

The important difference is in the second match I had a handle on the mechanics and understood each of my characters. Here’s an example of a maneuver I tried to pull off:

I had Venom pull Captain America off an area objective, then smash his face in. Spiderman swang in to grab the objective token Captain America had been holding before Venom knocked him out, then Spiderman went off to web Black Panther off of another objective.

I scored 2 points for that, and denied my opponent 2 points. Not to mention it was super thematic.

Here’s another fun instance. Thor flew across the board and slammed Captain Marvel into the yellow car, dazing her (which flips her card over and takes her out for the remainder of the turn). She got back up, picked up the Daily Bugle stand, and smashed it into Thor and Spiderman, following up with a laser beam to the face. Both Thor and Spiderman were dazed.

…THEN Thor gets back up and smashes Captain Marvel into a dumpster, defeating her for the match.

I don’t recall if I scored any points there, but man was it satisfying.

The game encourages positioning and creative uses of your powers. There’s a lot of movement going on, and points are only scored from objectives. You can go in and smash things, but you need to also consider how to position yourself and reposition your opponent to maximize your score. As a competitive game, it is fascinating.

I admit to disliking the number of tokens, and also it uses a non-true-LOS, but the way the second match flowed has me sold on the game.

I just wish I had more cool pictures from the match–and I didn’t even get into how Groot and Rocket interact with each other and make for a very fun combo!

It earns its place in my pantheon of games–that much is for sure.