[Crisis Protocol] Competitive Innovations in the Danger Room, April 2026

Greetings True Believers! We've had an exciting start to 2026 in the world of Marvel Crisis Protocol with several big events to kick off the year. lets find out what has and hasn't been working in the competitive scene this year so far.

We are going to look specifically at rated events from January to March 2026 with over 20 players.

Top Affiliations by Win Rate

Hydra

The many heads of the Hydra. Credit Alfred_Pharius

In a surprising turn of events the (joint) highest win rate at the start of 2026 is Hydra with a 59% win rate across 110 games. While not the most popular affiliation, the data shows that Hydra can be a strong affiliation when piloted by a top player.

Red Skull, Master of Hydra is one of the strongest 5 threat characters in the game. His ability to count blank results as successes with empowered gauntlets lets him output a huge amount of damage early in the game. On top of this his Hydra Troopers can stand at the back of the battlefield scoring points essentially for free.

Baron Zemo continues to also be one of the best 3 threat characters in the game and has somehow avoided several years of nerfs. A long mover who outputs a lot of damage and can add rerolls to the rest of your team helps make Hydra's core very strong.

The other 'trick' Hydra have is their tactics card World Domination. If the Hydra player is controlling every secure objective on the map then they get 1 VP and one power for every 2 secure objectives they control. On maps such as 'Wedding Party Targeted in Terrible Attack' and 'Mayor Fisk Vows to find Missing Witnesses' they can secure both objectives potentially with the first activation of the game giving their team a huge advantage.

Dark Dimension

Photo courtesy of Atomic Mass Games

The Dark Dimension tie Hydra this quarter with a 59% win rate over 255 games.

The ability to take any character in the game is always going to be strong. While other affiliations have to take a core with 51% or more of their characters affiliated, Dark Dimension only needs to take Dormammu. On top of this the leadership itself lets characters start on 2 power from round 1 which can put key superpowers such as charge online right from the start of the game.

Dormammu himself recently received several quality of life updates at the end of 2025 which have made him even more viable. While he was previously seen as a 'tax' taking up 8 threat by himself he can (almost) hold his own now. In my mind he still doesn't do as much as two 4-threat characters would but his leadership and ability to take any character makes up for it.

Servants of the Apocalypse

credit: Brushwizard

The Servants of Apocalypse continue to perform strongly at the start of the year with a 58% win rate over 412 games. The same reasons that they were the top affiliation in January still stand here.

The Horseman powers that Apocalypse hands out push some of his affiliated 3-threat characters closer to 4-threat. If you compare Magik with the War horseman power to Ronin you find that they are extremely similar, yet Magik costs a threat less. When Apocalypse is doing this to multiple characters it can feel like playing him is like playing against someone who has 3 or more threat worth of abilities than you do. When you give a character an Infinity Gem they go up by a threat and yet Apocalypse is giving out similar powers without the same tax.

On top of this, the Servants have a number of tricky abilities that debilitate your models, giving conditions such as root, slow and poison out early to prevent your characters from having an effective round 2 or 3 as you no longer have the power to fund your own abilities.

Time will tell if the updated mission pack due out in June will change Apocalypse's dominance in the meta.

Black Order

Thanos' Black Order ready to snap Credit Alfred_Pharius

The Black Order have had a rough time recently in many people's eyes but it appears that some number of people are having success with them; with a 57% win rate across 51 competitive games they seem to be having a small resurgence.

We can make a few assumptions on how some people have done well with the Black Order. Firstly the Death's Agenda leadership used to have different abilities on Thanos' healthy and injured sides. With the latest update his leadership has the same effect on both sides and grants extra victory points for KO'ing opponent's characters. As the majority of games happen with between 4 and 6 characters, there is potential to gain a lot of VPs from this leadership. Even if you start out behind you can leverage your attrition both to win on points and give your opponent fewer options.

SHIELD

Rounding out the top 5 are the (mostly) unpowered soldiers of SHIELD with a 57% win rate across 277 games.

Stacking rerolls under the Invaders' leadership continues to be very strong giving a lot of efficiency to their dice. Even 4 dice attacks from grunts become quite dangerous when Namor and Baron Zemo are giving them free rerolls.

Their core characters of Nick Fury Jr, Hawkeye and Black Widow Agent of SHIELD also received buffs to their health far in advance of the sweeping health changes that we are expecting later in the year.

Best of the Rest

A-Force come in with a respectable 56% win rate across 124 games. The A-Force have a strong roster of affiliated characters and with multiple bodyguard abilities combined a savvy pilot can ensure you aren't getting damage where you want it.

The Inhumans didn't make much of a splash at Adepticon but still appear to be doing well despite the loss of the Great Refuge. A 56% win rate across 278 games shows that they can still put out good numbers though not nearly as oppressively as they did last year.

New Mutants have a respectable 55% win rate across 53 competitive games. They have been my chosen affiliation this year and I've personally had some half decent success with them. The buffs to Emma Frost at the end of last year mean that you can run a core with her, X-23 and Magik splashing whatever else you need and do quite well.



The Guardians of the Galaxy had a 54% win rate across 592 games showing that they are both popular and quite strong. They had some strong new characters released this year with Quasar, Moon Dragon and a new leadership with Adam Warlock. People are still experimenting with some of these new characters so it wouldn't be surprising to see their win rate increase as people get more time with these new aliens.

Rounding out the top 10, the Defenders have had a strong start to the year with a 53% win rate across 533 games. Some of the biggest events at the start of the year had strong showings from the Defenders with both Carlcon and Adepticon having very sucessful Defenders players. The latest tech people are using is combining Blue Marvel and Dr Strange (often with the soul stone) as a defensive bubble that is very difficult to push through. Even when you can put damage into either of these characters Dr Strange can heal it all back and Blue Marvel can hit like a truck when he wants to so often the best counter is trying to out score them rather than fight them.

Though the Criminal Syndicate have had success at top tables their total number sits at 49% win rate, slightly below average. Similar can be said for Avengers and Web Warriors, both popular affiliations that hover around 50%.

Final Thoughts

We know from Adepticon that there will be sweeping health changes across the game to curb the number of times characters can be killed early on. We also know that the crisis pack should be headed our way in June which should further shake up the meta. It's an exciting time to be a MCP player.

Full details on these statistics can be found on Longshanks, where most of the competitive data for Marvel Crisis Protocol is tallied.

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