Marvel: Crisis Protocol Breakdown: Star-Lord

Marvel: Crisis Protocol players will soon have the opportunity to add Star-Lord to their roster. Marvel: Crisis Protocol is a brand new miniature skirmish game starring the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe. Players form rosters made up of any combination of Marvel heroes and villains, and then deploy them in scenarios ranging from saving innocent civilians to managing evacuation efforts. Marvel: Crisis Protocol releases new Character Packs each month, and ComicBook.com has an exclusive first look at Star-Lord, the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Star-Lord comes in his very own Character Pack (most Character Packs contain two miniatures) and brings with him two new Team Tactic cards, a new Crisis card, and most importantly, an Infinity Gem, a powerful new type of card that we detailed earlier this year.

Star-Lord has a Threat Level of 3, with two attacks and two superpowers. As the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, he also has a Leadership ability that can benefit his entire team. He has three defense against physical, energy, and mystical attacks, and he has a Medium movement speed. When Healthy, he has 6 Stamina, but he drops down to 5 Stamina once he's been injured.

Star-Lord's two attacks are his Element Gun, a 5 Strength attack with a range of 4 that serves as his default 0 Power attack, and a more powerful Full Auto attack with 7 Strength and a range of 4. Star-Lord's Full Auto attack costs 3 power to use, and has the Elemental Blast wild ability that can cause a target to receive multiple conditions in a single attack. For each wild rolled during a Full Auto attack, players can give the defending character Bleed, Shock, Slow, or Stun.

Interestingly, none of Star-Lord's two superpowers cost any power to use. Star-Lord has the ability to fly and bear the Power Gem, and his Plucky Attitude superpower allows him to re-roll all of his attack or defense dice if he had no hits or blocks in the initial roll.

Star-Lord's Leadership ability is Winging It, and allows him to choose an allied character to gain the ability to re-roll dice. By discarding a Team Tactic card, Star-Lord picks one character to gain three "Winging It" tokens (tokens with a picture of the Milano on it) that allow that character to re-roll up to two dice per token. The re-rolls work on any Attack, Defense, or Dodge roll, but they must be used by the end of the round.

Star-Lord also has access to the Power Gem, an Infinity Gem that increases his Threat Level by 1. When Star-Lord is equipped with the Power Gem, he gains 2 Power during the Power Phase instead of the normal 1 for having an Infinity Gem. When coupled with the normal 1 Power per round generation, this means that Star-Lord gets 3 Power per round. While Star-Lord doesn't use a lot of Power, equipping the Power Gem guarantees him the ability to use his Full Auto attack every turn, which means that he can dish out a lot of Status Conditions to opposing players.

Star-Lord's two new Team Tactic cards are both pretty handy. The Crew of the Milano allows any allied Guardians of the Galaxy character to spend 1 Power to remove all special conditions and makes them immune to special conditions for the remainder of the round. The Rocket Boots?! card gives players the Flight superpower for 1 round, but at the end of the round players have to roll a single dice. If they roll a blank, they become Stunned, and if they roll a failure, they become both Stunned and Staggered. Any other result lets them advance an additional Small movement.

Star-Lord seems like a fun miniature to use, a medium-range attacker that can move across the battlefield without worrying about terrain obstacles. He's the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, so you'll see him in a lot of games, and his Full Auto attack gives him the ability to be a total pain for opponents, which feels very much in character.

The Star-Lord Character Pack will come out later this year for Marvel: Crisis Protocol.