The Long and Short of It: I'm playing through every hero using decks suggested to me by other players. Here is who I'm covering today:
and...
Hawkeye Justice
Suggested By: ScarletRhodey
Created By: ScarletRhodey
Encounter: Taskmaster, Red Skull
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I (both), Standard (Red Skull)
I really enjoyed this deck! The theme was solid, and it was a nice pregame for the upcoming S.H.I.E.L.D. box. I really enjoy Hawkeye’s arrow system, but it always feels a little at odds with building and using whatever aspect cards you bring. This deck definitely felt a lot more build-oriented than I usually play. It breezed through Taskmaster, so I decided to stress test it on Expert Red Skull. It didn’t have quite enough threat management to keep up while building, but switching over to Standard Red Skull made for another great game. Surprisingly, despite seeing the rockiness of some of his kit again, this made me excited to revisit Hawkeye with my own deck building. (Feel free to insert your favorite "I can fix him!" meme.)
Ironheart Leadership
Suggested By: BandofSirens
Created By: VillainTheory
Encounter: Zola
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
Deck: Beast of Burden
Leadership is ridiculous. Ironheart is ridiculous. And Ironheart Leadership is absurd! This was a fun deck, with tons of card draw. The card draw available made it easy to compensate for the low hand size in the early game. Zola’s retaliate was a non-issue with Ironheart’s Maximum Efficiency action that lets you spend her counters for ping damage. The game really felt like it had two parts: "Upgrade and Control", then a single turn of "Burn, Baby, Burn!". Weirdly enough, I don't actually love the one turn rush down for Stage 3 on a villain. It always feels like I'm doing my absolute best to ignore the game I just set up. That's really what keeps Ironheart down in my personal preferences, though I do have fun with her. I had a good time with the deck, and Ironheart is as strong as ever!
Quicksilver Aggression
Suggested By: VJakson
Created By: VJakson
Encounter: Mutagen Formula
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
It’s been a long while since I’ve played Quicksilver. While he started out pretty high for me, he has slowly made his way toward the bottom of my preferences over the years. That said, I had a good time playing this deck. What this showed me was that I probably should revisit Quicksilver in some modern settings, and that I shouldn’t play Quicksilver with Standard III. His nemesis set is incredibly brutal, and it becomes impossible to avoid with Standard III. That alone dragged out my game with Quicksilver, pushing to 17 rounds to get a win. I think to really enjoy Quicksilver, I'll need to play him in multiplayer, and lean into some deck-building that overlaps a little less with some of the more recent designs (looking at you X-23).
She-Hulk Justice
Suggested By: corbintm
Created By: corbintm
Encounter: Sandman, Sinister Six
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
Deck: Reverse Lawyered
She-Hulk has grown on me a lot since the Core Set, especially with the rules changes that allow her to keep her Superhuman Strength upgrades out longer. This deck looks to capitalize on that using a plethora of stuns and confuses. The write up to this deck is quite thorough, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you are interested in She-Hulk.
Sinister Six actually gave me a bit of a run for my money. It took a long time to stabilize. I really liked Deft Focus here, especially since it can pay for Limitless Stamina to make your readies cheaper. With lots of flipping, you could really crank out some damage. In cases of a lot of threat, like you see in Sinister Six, it was pretty tense trying to keep the main scheme managed as well as the side schemes that came out. All in all it was a fun game, but I didn’t really feel like I had the deck figured out.
I ended up taking it against Sandman, and I really enjoyed this match-up. I felt a little less tension from the threat, and I was able to keep pace better. The boosted stats were nice for managing sand counters, letting me double dip a bit on the boosted stats. This was an interesting She-Hulk deck, and it is worth checking out. By the end of my plays here, I was really hoping for some similar mechanics on a new design. I love her card draw, flipping abilities and cards, and threat prevention in AE. I would love to see all those mechanisms revisited.
Star-Lord ‘Pool
Suggested By: Boomguy
Created By: Boomguy
Encounter: Escape the Museum
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
Player Count: Solo, 2-player (Captain Marvel Justice)
Deck: Galactic Pool Cleaner
This is an interesting deck, that I was somewhat familiar with before it was even submitted. I saw it played at Con of Heroes last year, and even played alongside a slightly different version. Because of that, I was well aware of the shenanigans that it could do in multiplayer. That said, once I hit the table solo with it... I didn’t love it. Let me clarify... “It’s not you, it’s me” and all that. I really like Star-Lord. I don’t love the ‘Pool play style. I really don’t like them mixed. In solo, there was just too much pressure to afford the big allies and do everything else. Trying it in multiplayer opened a lot more options. It’s still not my preferred way to play, but there was room to lean into the deck. I think the route of spending all your resources in order to mulligan is really clever, and that was my favorite part of the deck. If nothing else, it made me want to revisit a few heroes to try that out.
Contusion
You thought I was going to make the conclusion joke again, didn't you! But nope... instead, I just wasted a small moment of your time wondering if "Contusion" was a typo or not. Wait, wait! Where are you going? There's still five more heroes to cover!
Drax Protection
Suggested By: VillainTheory
Created By: VillainTheory
Encounter: Kang
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
Deck: Welcome to the Bub Club
I’m a sucker for the Guardians, and Drax is no different. I really liked "Come Get Me, Bub!" in this deck, especially with Leading Blow alongside it. It made it easy to get the heal and tough, take out the minion, and still have a few cards to do other things. The healing in this deck was actually preferable to using What Doesn’t Kill Me, in my opinion. What Doesn’t Kill Me makes for some awkward hands, especially before you have Dwi Theet Mastery out. However, with this deck, you either used a Med Team sitting on the board or "Come Get Me, Bub!", which still left you plenty of cards and resources to get other stuff done. I only found myself wasting an unused card in one hand through the entire game. This deck was really smooth, and I bet it would do even better in multiplayer. It was a nice boost to my already positive opinion on Drax.
Jubilee Aggression
Suggested By: VJakson
Created By: VJakson
Encounter: Morlock Siege
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
I haven’t played a ton of Jubilee, but I did think this was a fun deck. The Aggression hooks were solid, giving you a way to pay for big events, then follow them up with decent damage from her sunglasses. There was a lot of confuse available, so I could flip often. The hardest part was dealing with the indirect damage from Harpoon. I am sure I capitalized on the extra Morlock ally you get in solo in order to survive the scenario. That said, Boom Boom was the real star here. I was able to get her out early and build some solid damage on her. Avoiding retaliate while dealing area-of-effect damage was extremely satisfying. I would absolutely run this deck again, hopefully in a multiplayer game. It left me on a positive note for Jubilee.
Magneto Protection
Suggested By: AndyN
Created By: AndyN
Encounter: On the Run, Mutagen Formula, Unus
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
This deck had limited itself to no Basics by design. I have been enjoying challenges like that, but I was still surprised to find how much that impacted the game play here. "Come Get Me, Bub!" never felt like a good play, because I was constantly struggling to manage minions. The economy felt just a little off. The allies themselves were all expensive, the tech was expensive, and his resource generator in kit only cares about Magnetic cards. I had a good time with the deck, but I think I really would have preferred it in multiplayer. The Magnetic Missile and Wrapped in Metal combo just felt very rough to put together. Part of that was due to On the Run still seeing traits on the Maurader minions. I couldn’t let the minions sit, because it meant that the villain was scheming. Mutagen cleaned that up a little bit, though I did have the bad luck of naturally pulling Monster and Goblin Knight back to back, which are the only two elite minions in the scenario. I ended up winning the match, but still felt I wasn’t fully grasping the deck. I tried once more against Unus, and again, "Come Get Me, Bub!" just never felt good to play. I think maybe I just had barely enough thwarting to stay in the game, and just barely enough damage in the kit to mostly manage the board. But I didn’t feel like I excelled in either. It was tough getting Repurpose to fire as well with how taxing the set up was.
That is all to say, I enjoyed my plays with the deck. I just either I don't understand it well enough to pilot it, or it isn't my play style. I need to play around with Magneto more to pin down what exactly I feel I am missing. This is one I would have liked to run in multiplayer before posting, but I ran out of time (I've got to meet those deadlines set by my terrible boss... me). For now though, I feel pretty neutral about Magneto.
Spider-Man (Miles) ‘Pool
Suggested By: Caldias
Created By: dr00
Encounter: Loki + Sci-Fi + Guerilla Tactics
Difficulty: Standard I + Expert I
Player Count: 2-player (Storm Aggression)
Deck: What's Up Danger?
The write-up for the deck mentioned it was meant for multiplayer, so I figured I would take it directly to a multiplayer game. I paired up with my friend tjjj (of Marvel Jesus fame) who piloted a Storm Aggression deck alongside me.
This was a really smooth deck. It’s all the goodies from Basic Web-Warriors, while tapping into just five ‘Pool cards. The ‘self-X’ resources were great for supporting the aspect cards. They were consistently two or three resources. Get Rage-y was a really nice way to increase the tempo on some of the allies. And Rock, Paper, Scissors was a really solid card draw engine. Loki is no slouch, and he gave us some tense moments through our game. Cell Phone had some solid moments of letting characters activate out of turn. It was extremely helpful for cleaning up turns. All in all, I was left with a solid reminder of how much I enjoy Spider-Man, and this also gave me a bit of a boost on 'Pool.
Spider-Woman Aggression/Protection
Suggested By: Astrodar
Created By: VillainTheory
Encounter: Klaw + Band of Badoon
Difficulty: Standard III + Expert I
I like to call this combination Mono-Spider-Woman (thanks genetics!), and it’s actually one of my favorite color combos for Spider-Woman. This specific deck has been on my play list for a long while. When I decided to feature multiple Spider-Woman decks, I figured I might as well toss it into the mix. I really enjoyed the Pinned Down/Bring It combo, and between What Doesn’t Kill Me and Contaminant Immunity, I could let minions sit a little bit to help with the timing of drawing into Pinned Down. Compared to the other two Spider-Woman decks featured, this one felt like the ready effects were a lot more valuable. With cheap options of cards to play, it was easy to get 3-4 counters built up on a turn. I had a bunch of fun with this, and I highly recommend it.
Conclusion
That's it! 11 articles (some doubled up) with 5 heroes per article. That's 55! Well... except I did do some extra Spider-Woman decks. So I still haven't covered Rogue or Valkyrie. To be honest... there's a reason they keep getting pushed back. I'll be back for one final article in this series covering Rogue, Valkyrie, Spider-Woman (again?!), and a quick conclusion for the entire experience. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and I'll see you next week!
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