Welcome to Cooperative Comics Month! This month, we take a look at a bunch of cooperative games from comic book worlds! We’ll look at DC Comics! Marvel Comics! Image Comics! Space Comics! We start the month with Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances, a brand new game from the Marvel Comics universe!

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances is a cooperative miniatures game for 1-4 players; this is set in a Spider-Man universe, if that’s wasn’t clear! This is a super-hero game! Spider-people cooperatively fight the Green Goblin people!

I ordered this directly from the manufacturer; it arrived about a month ago (late August/early September 2026). It just released! I’ve been messing with for about a month now. It was kind of expensive: I paid around $100 of my own money (like we do for every game here at CO-OP Gestalt), so it wasn’t “cheap”.

I tried getting into the original Marvel Crisis Protocol quite a while ago! I even bought the introductory set years ago! I had heard there are a “cooperative scenarios” online, and my friends Jeremy and Ralf expressed interest in trying this! Jeremy and Ralf got promoted and became super busy, so we never got to play! Part of the problem for me, at least, is that at its core, Marvel Crisis Protocol is a competitive game! Red Skull and bad guys vs Captain America and good guys! So, the original Marvel Crisis Protocol languished in my collection for years … never opened … (and it’s still in shrink today: see above).

BUT! The new Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances is fully cooperative! And plays solo too! I was able to justify getting the newer version to the table very quickly! Spider-people (players) fight together against the Green Goblin (who is run by the game).

What did I think of this?

If there’s one phrase that captured the essence of this game, it’s the phrase “Green Goblin’s Head Fell Off A Lot!” See above.

Unboxing the First Time

The first time I opened the box brand new, I saw … this!! Where are the miniatures? Oh, in case it wasn’t clear, you have to assemble them yourself!!

The instructions aren’t great: they assume a lot of knowledge! They show pictures (see above), but they don’t discuss many things! Do you need glue? What kind of glue? How do you separate the pieces? Are there tools you should use? I was so depressed after opening the box the first day, I pretty much just stopped. I had NO IDEA what I am supposed to do.

By the way, you might hear the term “sprues” associated with these miniatures: they are holding the minis pieces. Technically, a sprue is “a channel or waste piece in manufacturing and casting”, which describes the leftovers and plastic frames holding the minis.

I guess most people probably already knew you’d have to do assemble the miniatures : I did not. I just saw the advertisements on BGG and thought “Oh! A cooperative minis game!”. Don’t get surprised like me!

(Avengers Assemble has a VERY different meaning in this game!)

Replacements

I have to admit, I was scared to death of assembling these minis. The assembly instructions are minimal (arguably, there should be much more in the instructions), and it’s unclear what tools you need. I have a friend who loves craft projects, so I asked her to help me assemble the miniatures. While waiting for her to help me, I still wanted to try the game, so I found some … replacements.

It turns out Marvel United has a a lot of the miniatures I needed!

Basically, Marvel United: Enter The Spiderverse has all the good guys I need and the main Green Goblin! See above!

Unfortunately, Black Cat comes from the Stretch Goals (Season 1) (see above), which a lot of people may not have (I do). If you only have Enter the Spiderverse, you can cheat and use Spider-Ham mini for Black Cat.

The minis look great for the heroes!

.. and they even fit well on the board.

What about the bad guys? Well, Marvel United is the wrong game to use for the bad guys: there’s like 18 bad guys total, spread over three types (see above).

Marvel Zombies: X-Men Resistance to the rescue for bad guy minis! These aren’t quite as good a fit as the Marvel United, but they still worked reasonably well.

See above as the three different type of zombies “kinda” work for the three different bad guys. Green Goblin is perfect from Marvel United. If nothing else, the colors of each set of bad guys are distinct.

While waiting for my friend to help me assemble the minis, I was able to play the game and get a sense of everything using Marvel United minis (for the good guys) and Marvel Zombicide (for the bad guys)! See above as everything is set up and works pretty well!

Solo Mode

So, Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances does have a solo mode! Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law!

Unfortunately, this is not a true solo mode. The solo character must operate all four characters in the game! In fact, the game ALWAYS requires all four characters to be in play! So, the solo mode is simply the cooperative mode, overlaid with how many people operate the four Spider-People!

I gotta be honest: this is a rough solo mode. Why? Because each character has a lot of things to consider when they operate! What’s their special powers? How do I take best advantage of my character’s position? There is a LOT of context switching between characters as you play. Each character turn requires significant amount of thought (what do I use, what are my powers, do I have enough power, where do I end up), and then completely resets for the next character!

And, as you can above, that the solo game basically takes up the entire table!! This is a big solo mode with lots of work to operate.

Now, if you like puzzles, if you like really taking your time to figure out what each character can do, this might be a perfectly cromulent solo mode for you. For those of you are worried about the context switching cost between characters, let me just say that the context switch cost is non-trivial.

I liked the solo game … ish. I was able to play through an entire three game campaign. Each campaign has two intro games (see one above), and a final boss battle against the Green Goblin. That final boss battle is … hard. In fact, it was so hard, I sorta cheated once so I didn’t have to reset everything to retry.

Goblin-People Assemble!

Well, thanks to Teresa, we actually got the minis assembled! To be fair, it took us two sessions (about 1 hour each) to get the miniatures assembled! In the first session, we used Exacto Knives and some Gorilla glue to assemble the bad guys.

First, the Exacto knives “worked”, but they are not the optimal tool for this job. We had to “work hard” to get the Exacto Knives to cut through the Sprues. We were afraid a few times we might either cut ourselves or hurt the minis.

Second, the bad guys are significantly easier to assemble than the Heroes. The bad guys just have a few parts, and we were able to get 18 minis assembled in our first hour-long session.

Thanks to Teresa and her efforts, we were able to use the Bad Guys for our first cooperative game!

We did get Green Goblin assembled, but he head kept falling off. We weren’t sure if we were supposed to glue it?

Summary: Over two sessions at an hour each, me and my friend assembled all the miniatures. Avengers assemble! So, four hours of work total? If it were just me, it would have probably taken 5 hours for everything (if you just go by the workload and my lack of experience with craft projects).

Cooperative Game (3-Players) with Bad Guys minis!

So, for our first cooperative game, we played a 3-Player game! Remember, you must ALWAYS have four characters in play, so Andrew and I “shared” the duty of operating Miles Morales, Teresa operated Black Cat, I operated Spiderman, and Andrew operated Spider Gwen. (I guess we shouldn’t call her Spider-Gwen … that gives away her secret identity!) See above and below as we use the newly assembled bad guys, but still use Marvel United good guys.

We had a fine time, not great, but we got a sense of the game. The game definitely moves a little quicker than the solo game, as each player keeps fewer “contexts” in their mind.

One of my favorite parts of the cooperative game was the use of Player Selected Turn Order (see link here for discussion of PSTO). To be complete: Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances uses coarse-grained Player Selected Turn Order. This means that players can take their turns in any order they choose (they just can’t split up their turns). This was a good part of the strategy of the game, as you could try to plan for who has the Priority token, plan for bad guys coming out, and try to reinforce other player’s turns. I think that worked exceptionally well in this game. To be fair, I am a big advocate of PSTO in cooperative games (as I think PSTO usually makes the games more cooperative).

To a lesser extent, the Heroic Action worked pretty well for the cooperative game. When players defeat a bad guy, they can use a Heroic Action to give another player a move, a power, or a heal. It’s great for making the game more cooperative (“Give Andrew a heal! Spider-Gwen is really far down!!), but it doesn’t seem particularly thematic? Why does me defeating a bad guy give someone else a heal? It’s great, I think it helps balance the game … it just doesn’t feel particularly thematic. It definitely helps the cooperation.

My friends liked the game enough so that we could continue onto the second game in the campaign. Next time. It took quite a while to get into the game and play it. We could only get one session done in one game night.

Spider-People Assemble!

Because the Exacto knives were just “ok”, I found some Sprue cutter on Amazon for like $10. That made a big difference! It was SO MUCH easier to remove the minis using the Sprue Cutters!!! Why wasn’t this in the rulebook??

It was good we waited a week to get the Sprue cutters to help us, because the good guy miniatures are significantly harder to assemble! There’s only 4 good guys (and 18 or 19 bad guys), but it still took us an hour to assemble them!

But the good guys are also a lot more intricate, and unfortunately, more fragile. See Black Cat’s thin thin whip?

It fell off during normal handling!

In the end, we got all four good guys assembled. With a lot glue to keep fixing breaking parts! They took an hour! They were much more complex! If you are reading this and plan to get this game, make sure you get Gorilla Glue and some Sprue cutters or you will hate life!

Cooperative Game (4-Players) with all minis!

So, for our second game, we were able to play with 4-Players! And to be fair, I think that makes the game a lot more fun. I prefer playing when you have one character per player! Then I FEEL like a Superhero! But, if I have to operate multiple heroes, it’s not quite the same experience?

If you do end up getting this game, I would strongly recommend getting a group of 4 players to play it! This game is strongest at 4-Players because each player is a super-hero!

We ended up playing through and winning, but I don’t think my friends want to continue to game 3 (the Boss Battle).

Reactions

The reactions were pretty much, “It was okay, but nothing special”.

The main complaints were two-fold: One, if you didn’t have enough power, you could only do one really useful thing on your turn. There wasn’t a lot of choice?? Second, you can only do one thing on your turn … which is usually move or use a power. Not being to move and do something (move and strike) seemed … less fun?

To be fair, a lot of the powers allowed you to move and strike, but only if you could afford the power cost. It also felt weird that you “get power” usually when someone hits you? The power economy seemed very athematic (“wait, I get power when someone HITS me???”). It seemed balanced and it worked, but it didn’t seem… thematic.

Another complaint was that forces were “overwhelming”. On your turn, you might defeat 6 bad guys, but they pretty much all come back next turn! Andrew argued that it almost didn’t matter that we had this cool hex board, because the bad guys just came back out next turn! And it was very random! Doing a bunch of damage to bad guys is the only way to “move forward” (get power, get heroic actions, get experience), but they all just came back. It didn’t seem like there was a lot of strategy: the bad guys just always come back. It was also sort of depressing: you’d defeat a lot of bad guys, but it didn’t matter.

What I Liked

PSTO: The Player Selected Turn Order worked very well in this game; for me, it was almost the highlight of the game that it worked so well.

Power-Ups: As the game progresses, you get power-up cards when you go up a level! That was very cool, that you felt like you character was always getting more powerful. By the time you get to game 3, your Spider-person is pretty powerful!

The Rulebook: The rulebook had some problems (where is my Index? How do I assemble the minis?), but it was decent for the rules (but … it really needs an Index). It also had a good form factor, and gets a B+ on the Chair Test (it works well on the chair next to me).

Cooperation: With the PSTO, the Heroic Actions, power-ups, and the theme of the game, the cooperation came out pretty well.

What I Didn’t Like

Miniature Assembly: I had NO IDEA what I was getting into with the minis when I got this game! Assembling the miniatures is its own mini-game! Be aware of what you need to assemble the minis: get Sprue cutters and glue or you will hate life!

Fragile: These miniatures are fragile. Green Goblin’s head kept falling off, Black Cat’s whip broke off during gameplay, and the Goblin Army’s crowbar broke off during assembly. As a direct juxtaposition, I have NEVER had any problems with my Marvel United miniatures … and I have 100s of those miniatures and have played Marvel United so many times!!

Storage: How the hell am I supposed to store these miniatures? Right now, I just set them up standing in the box, but this solution is so fraught with peril! See above! Any slight bump, and these “already fragile” minis will go everywhere! I can’t store this sideways? This just seems like a major failing!

Compare that to my Marvel United minis! They always fit well back into the box well … with a storage solution.

Four Characters: there’s only four characters in the box. And you always have to play with four characters. There’s not a lot of variety (but I hear more Alliances are coming out). The solo game is really rough, especially as the characters get more and more powers: by the time each character is level 4, the number of powers for the solo gamer to keep track of is mind-bending!

Gameplay: The “constant pressure” of the game made it so it felt only tactical and not strategic. Everything depends on the dice you roll for where the enemies spawn: you don’t really know where the enemies will end up. You sort of get tired of they way they spawn: “what’s the point in defeating a bunch of bad guys when they just come back?” I know a lot of super-hero games do this, but it feels like you are making more progress in other games?

Random. At the end of the day, this is a dice game. The dice decide if you get hit, the dice decide if you hit, the dice decide where the bad guys spawn, the dice decide if enemies frenzy. It can be random and it can be frustrating if you wanted a more strategic game.

Conclusion

Where you end up on Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances depends on a lot of things.

The constant pressure of combat feels more like an intense video game: you may love that, or you may hate that. Enemies spawn and just constantly put intense pressure on the heroes! The game is very very tactical and much less strategic than you might assume … I don’t know about you, but if I see a game with a hex-map, I assume it’s quite strategic? (I guess that makes me a hexist).

The solo game is rough as you have to operate four Spider-People! If you love that slow solo game and context-switching between complicated characters, then this might be perfect for you. It’s a puzzle? It’s just .. a bit more random because everything depends on how well you roll the dice.

The best version of this game is the 4-Player cooperative game, as each player gets to be a Super-Hero! I think 2-Player is probably the next best (as each player operates 2 heroes). The cooperation that does emerge via PSTO, Heroic Actions, powers, and the theme shows this to be a good cooperative game.

Be aware of the miniatures experience! If you aren’t expecting the sprued miniatures, Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances can be overwhelming! If you are interested in this, make sure you pick up some Sprue cutters and some Gorilla glue (as Green Goblin’s Head keeps falling off!!) The miniatures are cool, but they are fragile. And I have no idea how you are supposed to store them.

If you want a simpler super-hero game with miniatures, Marvel United might be a better choice. Marvel United is a better game, has a better experience with miniatures (they actually have a storage solution), is significantly cheaper ($25 for the base Marvel United game vs. $100 for the base of Alliances), has more variety, and is significantly easier. Be aware that some people blanche at the minis in Marvel United because they hate the chibi look.

If you like the experience of dissecting, assembling, and painting miniatures so you can then play with them, then Marvel Crisis Protocol: Alliances might be the perfect choice for you! The game does work, and it is a pretty good cooperative game.

The final grade is divided:

Sara and Andrew give it a 6/10: it’s okay and it works, but there are better games.
Rich gives it a 6.5/10 : Rich liked the cooperation and superhero theme, but the random nature of the dice brought it down just below recommendation. It could be a 7/10?
Teresa gives it 7/10. Teresa liked the minis; she helped assemble them, so she is aware that she may have a vested interest.

So, on average 6.5/10? Hopefully you can figure where you end up based on this write-up