Hey everybody! In an attempt to pad out Roster Doctor / The Clinic’s weekly content schedule, I’ve decided to do a weekly post every tuesday covering a tier list of an Affiliation!
In these tier lists I will rate all affiliated characters from S to D (in no particular order inside of each tier), where S is “build your roster around these pieces, and can build around for a strong second affiliation inclusion”, and D is “You can make this work if you try but its not worth it unless you like the character”. Leadership will be sidestepped/ignored in rankings for affiliations that only have one leader because, well, you have to run them if you want a leadership bonus so you’re taking them no matter what. Once the tier list has been unveiled, I’ll go through the characters in listed order and give some quick thoughts.
The goal of this is to try and inform players of the roles certain characters fill in your affiliation, which ones you should be looking to build a second affiliation splash around and which you can afford to cut. That said, Marvel Crisis Protocol can be a VERY subjective game. A lot of your effectiveness is about building specific synergies between your characters, tactics, and crises. So even if something is low tier that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work, just that it requires you doing specific stuff to get that character to work when it would probably be just easier to slot in a character that takes no effort to fit. So, without further ado, let’s show off the A-Force Tier List!
I’m guessing there are very few surprises in this tier list, Shuri, Okoye, Valkyrie have all been meta defining characters, and She-Hulk + Angela have been generating hype on their own merits for a little while now.
She-Hulk – S – The leader of the Defenders of Arcadia, she’s obviously going to be in literally every A-Force roster by necessity. That said, she has a lot of legs in other affiliations. Avengers in particular is a nice home, she has proactive and reactive ways to take advantage of Cap’s leadership, and loves Avengers Assemble. Generally she fits anywhere people were trying to fit Hulk before her release as ignoring affiliation and base size differences she’s basically a “fixed” version of what Hulk does. If you want a top end beatstick/raid boss to round out your roster it basically comes down to her, Angela, Magneto, and M.O.D.O.K. right now (honorable mentions to Doctor Strange and Thor).
Angela – S – The long foretold angelic assassin herself has been making splashes for a couple months at this point due to some number of lucky european players accidentally getting her box far earlier than intended. It can be a bit of a hard ask fitting in a 5 threat next to your 6 threat leader but in the current meta where 17+ threat crises are VERY common (looking at you, Panic!) she often makes the cut for the final team. Special Delivery-ing the two onto your opponent’s Gamma Shelter is absolutely brutal if a bit risky. Similar to She-Hulk, Angela is a very attractive expensive beater for pretty much any affiliation though in particular has affinity for Asgard and Guardians where she can take advantage of their tactics.
Shuri – S – A lot of similar points to Okoye but she fills a different role – rerolls and displacement. She makes your tanks tankier, your punches hit harder, and makes your character throws go the extra distance by adding even more pushes on top. You can keep her consistently filled up in the back with She-Hulk’s leadership as need be so she’ll always be relevant.
Okoye – S – I’ll keep this and Shuri/Valk short as their praises have been sung over and over and OVER again. She’s a very tanky 2 cost bodyguard that does surprisingly good damage. And man, having 2 bodyguards is super annoying to pick apart from personal experience, especially when She-Hulk’s leadership is handing out power to make even more bodyguard possibilities. With Shuri and Valkyrie likely picks for an A-Force roster anyways it is super easy to fit Wakanda Wave in for the situations where you’re playing low threat if you prefer Wave to A-Force on gamma. She should always make your 10, she’s a super flexible affiliated gap-filler, what’s not to love!
Wasp – A – The discount Special Delivery enabler, Wasp is great for when you don’t want to shell out for Angela. Bonus points if you go with an unrelated piece first to entice your opponent to attack and give Wasp a second power to transform forwards a bit and Special Delivery with her tiny form, leaving a potential action open for a Stinger Blast with some good placement. She’s also a solid piece in any team too reliant on physical damage as she’s all energy, and even has a throw to boot. Her biggest downside right now is that she doesn’t have any great synergies (outside of the Special Delivery combo discussed) so she’ll do the job her card says she does and there’s no side affiliation you can slot in to make her shine.
Black Widow – A – The core box Black Widow has been outshone by other 2 threat choices recently (I’m looking at you, Okoye), but A-Force has given her a new lease on life. Having multiple 2 threat in-affiliation characters is MASSIVE in terms of team building options – being able to turn a 4 into two 2s allows you to control whether you’re trying to get first activation or last activation, and generally creates a sense of continuity between threat levels when a 2 can turn into a 3 then back into two 2s as you go up the threat ladder. She also helps more closely tie the roster to Avengers if desired.
Valkyrie – A – I’m betting this is going to be the most controversial take in this tier list. I love her arguably more than Shuri/Valkyrie but I do not see her as a “take always and build a second affiliation around” piece. I see her as a “take most of the time and you can build asgard between her/angela” piece. Unlike Shuri or Okoye she doesn’t have powerful defensive tech or a backline role to limit the ability for her to go pop – if your opponent is facing down She-Hulk, Angela, and Valkyrie, which do you think is going to get targeted first as the easy option? That said she does her job incredibly efficiently and is in the running for one of the best 3 threat characters in the game (a 3 cost with a character throw is cash money) so I never feel bad about running her.
Storm – B – Now we’re down into the Bs which are the start of characters you cut when trying to fit unaffiliated splashes you are excited by. Storm loves extra power to throw and boost attacks and is a flier to be your Special Delivery (and is yet another Wakandan if you want to Wakanda Wave), but a lot of power in her kit is tied up in her Leadership. If you like what she does she will do a serviceable job but don’t feel bad leaving her on the cutting room floor if something else is shinier.
Black Widow, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. – B – I am going to preface this by saying that I like this version of Black Widow better than the core set version as for the same threat she’s basically better in every way except being a bit slower and more likely to be one shot by a single attack (in the case where Martial Artist would be relevant). Her attacks are all very good, parting shot plus stealth is an amazing defensive toolset, and the extra power from A-Force makes interrogate more likely. That said, you unfortunately can’t take two characters with the same alias in a roster together so I have to choose. And if I have to choose at roster building which Widow to take, I’m taking the 2 threat one to open up options. If you really like her, make sure you know your teams for every threat value because you’re giving up a deceptive amount of flexibility without core Black Widow.
Captain Marvel – C – It’s with a heavy heart that I relegate Captain Marvel to C tier – C for Captain :P. If you want a Special Delivery enabler, Angela and Wasp do the job better (and cheaper in Wasp’s case). Her kit necessitates building up enough power to live in Binary Form for the rest of the game, which usually means you need to find ~2 power a round to supplement the 2 power from energy blasts and 1 from start of round. A-Force often generates >2 power/round so its definitely doable. That said its a large chunk of resources turning a normally bad 4 into a character that feels like a 5. If you like the end result, take her and be happy, if you think its too much resources feel fine about cutting her.
Gamora – D – I know this is going to be sad to hear for a lot of people, Gamora is one of the most popular characters in this affiliation from her presence in the MCU. That said, her card in MCP has a LOT of problems. She is very fragile (which doesn’t synergize with the A-Force leadership) and very power hungry (which does synergize with the A-Force leadership). If she was 3 threat she’d probably be a slightly overly efficient glass cannon but at 4 she’s competing with Black Widow + Okoye for the spot which is just such a hard sell. And even if you get her the power she needs, she won’t hit the heights of long range offense and durability that Captain Marvel will. You can make her work and not feel massively behind other players but there are better and easier pieces that can fit into her slot.
That’s going to be it for now for this week’s tier listing. There’s more characters on the horizon with Crystal, Domino, Medusa, and Scarlet Witch on the affiliation list document on AMG’s website, and I’ll probably revisit these rankings once all those have been released. Let me know in the comments or on social media what you think of the article format, this is still early days so I am very open to tweaking the format to making it what people want to read. I’ll see you all back here next week for (an admittedly much shorter) Asgard tier list breakdown!