Buried Treasure – A Guide to Core Box Red Skull in MCP

Hankering for some world domination? Welcome to an in-depth guide on using Red Skull as your leader in Marvel Crisis Protocol. If you enjoy optimizing teams and breaking mechanics on underappreciated models, then you will find from this guide that Red Skull1/RS1 can win you not just style points, but most of your games as well.

Editor’s Note: Red Skull is nota Nazi. He just uses the Nazis, and any anybody else he can manipulate, to further his world domination agenda. As must you if you truly expect to win with this character.

According to Longshanks, Red Skull is sitting at the bottom of the pack with a measly 37% win rate over the last year. How is he going to fulfill you world domination dreams?

Behold my 59% Red Skull win rate! And pay attention as I show you how.

The main thing to keep in-focus is that Red Skull’s leadership gives one power each time you damage an enemy with an attack. Simple? Aye. For simpletons? Nay.

On a high level, Red Skull’s Cabal offers a pure attrition gameplan. Despite Red Skull1 himself being one of the worst 4-threats in the game, when unlocked, his leadership is actually the #1 most effective. I have had activations where single models got an additional 9 power! So it’s all about breaking his leadership to offset the anchor that is RS1. The hidden challenge about him is that he has a “win more” leadership that rewards you for getting damage through. MCP is a dicey game, so if you roll poorly with Red Skull, especially at the beginning, your odds of winning can spiral down faster than other leaders. This is as opposed to a leader like Shadowland Daredevil, where the leadership helps bad dice push damage through in the first place, or Steve1 which helps with power regardless of dice.

RS1 synergizes well with more characters than most leaders, so RS1’s stock goes up as more characters are released. Cabal also has many of the worst models in the game (including RS himself), so as balance updates come out, RS1 will rise higher and higher!
Read on for the wisdom of how to be the hipster effectively fielding a RS1 Cabal list. 

Dark Contract: With Mephisto as my lawyer, any worlds you conquer with this advice require a 10% tax to boblikesoup, so stop reading now if you’re not okay with that.

✅ Do’s

• Take models with rapid fire, beams, area attacks, and other sources of multiple attacks.
  Because you get power per attack, you want to spam many attacks. Other sources of multiple attacks can include models like Warriors Three who can buy an additional attack, and also get a reactive clap back.
• Use control to set up attacks
  Sources of control with damage are less important since they are not giving you extra power, but generally you want to control enemies to be in range to double tap or hit in AoE’s. Control is also important to remove enemies from Secures to slow the scoring down so you have time to attrition them.
• Take models with cheap spenders.
  Cheap spenders and attacks that only cost 0-3 power refund 1 power on-damage, so are a cost-effective way to put down your enemies. Nick Fury’s howling commandos, for example, have a spender that costs 3 that can also trigger an additional attack with a gainer. With some dice fixing, the entire spender can refund by the time the attack is finished.
• Take models with gainers.
  Many models with gainer attacks, such as Spectrum and Echo, are designed to be power throttled for balance. Red Skull takes those guard rails off, effectively breaking those models.
• Seek damage consistency / dice fixing.
  Due to the downward spiral of attacks failing, it’s extremely important to have dice fixing. Baron Zemo is a perfect example of this with his Strategic Genius offensive rerolls. Remember, you only need ONE damage to get the extra power. Incineration and Hex are great conditions to improve consistently getting damage through.
• Consider these TTC’s
  Victory Assured is amazing to get power and daze multiple models with a single beam attack, but only when opponents are ignoring RS (often because of how weak he is). Sacrifice is also a great card because you often want to take damage to fund your attrition, so this can save an activation while also powering up someone else who is being ignored. Cosmic Invigoration is hard to pull off, but giving an extra activation on a strong, tanky model like Immortal Hulk can be back breaking.
• Take models with long range or high action economy.
  Bias towards models that will consistently let you attack twice per turn with strong threat projection via things like places, charges, and long range.
• Play on tight fighty maps
  Because your leadership encourages fighting, and works well with beams and aura dice-fixing, tight low-scoring maps are your ideal. Back in the Researcher/Gamma days, this list was winning tournaments and near unbeatable. Even after, I took down Apocalypse 8 of 9 times against 6 different players. The attrition potential is real. The loss was from exceptionally bad dice, which happens which again is more punishing with this list and taught me the value of dice fixing in it.
• Take large-based Kaiju’s
  Red Skull has a Turn 1 ability to use the cube for power, then immediately teleport an ally up the board. Thus you can bring beaters into double attack range turn 1. Small based allies don’t move very far, and weak/cheap models aren’t worth him spending an action and potentially hurting himself. A model like Sentinel Prime can be teleported up the board then provides reroll dice consistency and control. He also gets extra power when he activates again with Cosmic Invigoration. 
• Run Mephisto
  Mephisto is essentially an auto-include. He gets three attacks per turn with How May I Be Of Service, which also leads him to Place to set up nice Range 4 Beams. His incinerates also help push damage consistency. Just make sure to not try to get Devil’s Deal tokens from characters that can reduce damage to 0. And especially seek out dice fixing and low mystic defense opponents. Failing to get early Devil’s Deal tokens can be crushing since you lose power every turn the rest of the game, in addition to RS1 leadership power. An AMAZING turn 1 play is to play Up the Ante for a 2nd activation to steal an extract and stock up on tokens. Just make sure he has a bodyguard because he goes down quickly with Physical Defense 3 and no other defensive tech.

❌ Dont’s

• Stand back and shoot with RS
  If the Secures are in the middle of the field, Red Skull is more effective getting up in the action. Remember he can Hail Hydra off onto allies, especially ones like Dracula or Warriors Three. His cheap ranged attack is too bad and dicey to be worth using if he isn’t camping an objective, and it generates power too inconsistently.
• Dual affiliate with other attrition gameplans
  If you are going to dual affiliate, make it with an objective-based gameplan like Kingpin. Web Warriors are an example where this can be better since it is hard to push damage through their defenses. Two gameplans with the same objective just results in an overall worse game plan.
• Play wide.
  As with most attrition plans, it’s better to play tall or medium so you can have Priority to remove key activations.
• Pick low threat Crisis
  They are fine to have fewer scoring models in an attrition gameplan, but because RS1 runs area attacks, it’s also fine to play on high threat crisis as it means there are more enemies than can be hit per attack. What mattes more is having a compact shape. Wedding Party is a great example.
• Choose high scoring Crisis.
  You will, more often than any list I have seen, completely kill an opposing team given enough time. So pick Crisis with low or medium scoring. 
• Over-kill
  Clap back, priority manipulation, and feeding power are real. Just because you CAN attack doesn’t always mean you should.
• Only invest in attrition
  Bring some bodyguard, tanky, or protective models so you don’t just get clap backed on a high attrition turn, or spiked off the table.

Remember, Red Skull is an anchor slowing down your team, so to succeed you really have to play around breaking his leadership to accumulate Power. With enough Power, the world will be yours!

To find a good sparring partner who matches your vibes and playstyle, check out GameTree. There is also the Scout Discord bot to make it easier to LFG and coordinate gameplay with your friends, communities, and players you are predicted to like. 

I make more content for gamers you can check out here.

And, for badass MCP dice, check out Baron of Dice.