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Take command as Captain Marvel! You’ll be using energy resources for damage and leveraging card draw, ensuring you and your teammates have extra options when you need them. As Carol Danvers, you can use your Commander ability to let any player draw one card. Not only is this great for boosting your own hand, but you can use this extra card draw to help teammates dig into their deck if they are looking for a particular card or needing more resources. Adding to your options, the Alpha Flight Station support lets you discard a card you don’t want, drawing two cards to replace it when in alter-ego (one card if in hero form). While she doesn’t have any upgrades that generate resources for her, Captain Marvel has Energy Absorption, a resource card featuring a massive 3 energy resources. As Captain Marvel, you’ll have built-in healing with her hero ability, Rechannel. You can spend an energy resource and heal a damage to draw a card, meaning you actually benefit from not being at full health! Her Cosmic Flight upgrades give her Aerial, as well as giving you the ability to discard them to prevent damage. A few other Captain Marvel cards rely on Aerial to get the most out of them. Captain Marvel’s Helmet boosts your DEF by one, or two if you have Aerial. To help manage threat, Captain Marvel has Crisis Interdiction, an event that can remove two threat from two different schemes as long as you have Aerial. For damage, Captain Marvel has her Photonic Blast, an attack that will let you draw a card if you use at least one energy resource to pay for it. Finally, her signature ally is Spider-Woman. Despite her low health, Spider-Woman is a powerful ally due to her ability to confuse the villain when she enters play. This will help you go to alter-ego without much consequence, taking advantage of Carol Danver’s card draw abilities. And if you find any extra cards in hand with energy resources, you can spend them to charge your Energy Channel upgrade, a powerful attack that can be charged and stored until you’re ready to release it. Through her hefty resource cards and card draw capabilities, Captain Marvel has fantastic resource generation. However her events and upgrades reflect that by being more expensive than some other heroes. It can be helpful to lean into your included aspect cards to take full advantage of Captain Marvel’s resources. Deck-Building with Captain Marvel Aggression With the number of resources available to Captain Marvel, you can run a strong set of allies. Try out Valkyrie, Wasp, and Brawn, and boost their attacks with Boot Camp. If you want to focus on minions while also building up your threat management, try events like Into the Fray and Chase Them Down. Or, if you want to focus on just laying the damage on thick, try out Dive Bomb, Clobber, and Melee. Justice Justice will really let you lean into Captain Marvel’s alter-ego card generation. If you want to spend more time in alter-ego, take cards like Sonic Rifle, Quake, and Beat Cop. If you want to handle a lot of threat at a time, try using Spider-Man and Crisis Averted. Leadership Despite lacking dedicated upgrades for direct resource generation, Captain Marvel’s card draw abilities means she has access to more resources and options than most other heroes. Captain Marvel excels at playing allies and buffing their stats, letting them handle the heavy work while she is commanding. If you want to run a wide spread of allies, try Avengers Assemble, Mighty Avengers, and a roster of Avenger allies. If you want even more card draw, try out White Tiger, Nick Fury, and Kaluu. And if you’re looking to help buff other players, try Maria Hill and Lead from the Front. Whatever you're running, consider bringing Beast along to get the most out of Energy Absorption. Protection Protection features a wide range of strong, but expensive allies. With Captain Marvel’s access to extra resources, she can lead an entire crew. For a wide spread of allies, check out Iron Fist, Luke Cage, or Multiple Man. Another ally is Nova, who builds on Captain Marvel’s love of the energy resource. Use Nova alongside defensive cards like Side Step to get extra use from all the energy resources. Bring along Med Team with any of these allies to keep them (and yourself) fit for duty. Once Captain Marvel has Aerial and her helmet out, she has 3 DEF. If you want to build on that to defend for yourself and a couple friends, bring Nerves of Steel, Desperate Defense, and Indomitable. However, this defense boost relies on the single copy of her helmet, so don’t let it go by you. And if you want to take advantage of Aerial once it’s out, you can do some additional threat management with Ever Vigilant. If you liked this post, check out my other Hero Debriefs!

You. Are. Iron Man! As the billionaire, genius, superhero Iron Man, you’ll assemble your suit and take to the skies, with each piece of your suit increasing your power until you’re nigh unstoppable. As Tony Stark, you are one of the richest identities in the game. Your starting hand is amplified by your Futurist ability which lets you draw three cards and keep whichever one suits your needs best. In addition to that, once Stark Tower is in play, you can allow any player to return the topmost tech upgrade from their discard to their hand. While handy for others, this will be extremely helpful for you, as each of your suit pieces are tech! Finally you have Pepper Potts, who can generate the resource on the top card on your discard pile. This includes resources from cards like Genius, Energy, and Strength, generating two resources! As Iron Man, you are beholden to how much of your suit is in play. You start with a hand size of only 1, but you get +1 hand size for every tech upgrade you control. This can bring your hand size to a maximum of 7, which means along with Pepper Potts, you really can feel like the richest player. Because your hero hand size is dependent on tech upgrades, it’s important to use your mulligan to help draw them in your starting hand. Key pieces of your suit are the Arc Reactor (readies you once per turn), Power Gauntlets (deal 1 damage to an enemy), and Rocket Boots, which give you +1 HP as well as the ability to gain aerial. Spending a mental resource will activate your boots, giving you aerial for the round and boosting many of your cards. Power Gauntlets deal 2 damage instead of 1. The Mark V Helmet removes 1 threat from a scheme, or 1 from each scheme if you have AERIAL. Iron Man’s attack event Supersonic Punch deals 4 damage, which is boosted to 8 if you have aerial. The final piece of the suit is the Mark V Armor, an upgrade that gives you an additional 6 HP. Which means once your entire suit is in play, you’ll have a maximum health of 17! And let’s not forget the classic Repulsor Blast, an attack event that starts at 1 damage, but gets boosted by 2 for every energy resource revealed by discarding the top 5 cards of your deck. Which means you can get up to a maximum of 13 damage with some lucky card pulls (or some strong deck building). Finally your kit rounds out with Iron Man’s signature ally, War Machine. While he is expensive, his ability can deal damage to every enemy on the board, meaning the more enemies around, the better it is. Deck-Building with Iron Man Iron Man wants to get tech cards out early to build his hero hand size. Regardless of which aspect you choose, Basic cards like Plasma Pistol are a great inclusion. Ingenuity and Quincarrier are other great additions to any Iron Man deck, because they can help you pay for Aerial each round. Moon Girl and Nick Fury are great basic allies, as they can draw cards and help Iron Man find his tech upgrades. Aggression If you’re looking to add more tech from Aggression, Hand Cannon can help. It has limited uses, which means when it’s discarded, you’ll be down a tech upgrade. However, as the game progresses, you’ll have enough of your suit out, it won’t have an impact. You can combine it with Combat Training and Skilled Strike for some extra hefty hits. If you want to focus on minion control and overkill damage on the villain, bring along Relentless Assault and Moment of Triumph. Justice If you’re looking to add more tech from Justice, use Sonic Rifle. Confusing the villain can let you go back into Alter-Ego to access Tony Stark’s strong card draws and build more of your suit. If you need to spend more time in Alter-Ego right from the start, check out Under Surveillance, Counterintelligence, and Foiled! for keeping the main scheme from thwarting out. Leadership Why keep all the tech to yourself? Tech upgrades attached to the allies you control also count toward your Iron Man ability. Reinforced Suit gives +2 HP to any ally, making the upgrade generally useful. If you’re bringing some Guardian allies, Comms Implant and Laser Blaster are both stat boosting Tech upgrades. If instead you brought along some Avengers, Power Gloves will help out by pinging damage onto enemies. It helps to have allies that can help manage threat and minions while you’re building your suit. Allies like Maria Hill, Ironheart, and Ant-Man are great choices, because they are inexpensive (leaving you resources for your suit). Another great choice is Ronin, who gets increased stats just for having an upgrade attached to them. Protection Protection offers some solid tech cards for Iron Man with Energy Barrier, Forcefield Generator, and Electrostatic Armor. Energy Barrier almost always finds some use, but Electrostatic Armor will only trigger if you are defending, either through your basic defense or defense events. If you want to add some thwarting ability, Ever Vigilant offers a ready and main scheme threat management when Iron Man has Aerial. If you’re looking to add some extra damage, Nova is an ally that deals damage for energy resources, something Iron Man should have in good stock. Last, but certainly not least, Repurpose discards tech cards to boost the basic stat of your choice. This makes Iron Man incredibly flexible, especially with his ready from Arc Reactor.

Whether delivering justice in the courtroom or doling it out with her fists, She-Hulk is a powerhouse. As Jennifer Walters, your “I Object!” ability prevents a single threat from being placed on a scheme; a small, but sometimes critical, ability. You can also use your Superhuman Law Division support for the rare ability to remove threat while in your alter-ego. As a last resort, you have Legal Practice. While this event is less efficient than many other twarting events, it is yet again one of the few abilities in the game that allow threat removal from alter-ego. As you flip to the hero She-Hulk, you can trigger your “Do You Even Lift?” ability, dealing two damage to any enemy. If you’re looking for more widespread damage, use Ground Stomp, an event that damages every enemy in play. The more enemies around, the better it gets! In true She-Hulk form, you have access to a massive basic attack (3 ATK) which can be boosted by 2 ATK with your Superhuman Strength upgrade. While this upgrade only lasts for a single attack, it also stuns the attacked enemy! If there’s more to do, you can use One-Two Punch after using your basic attack to ready She-Hulk, giving you additional opportunities to attack. While She-Hulk’s hand size is only four, she can use her massive health pool in conjunction with her Focused Rage upgrades to deal herself some damage in exchange for extra cards. Then, give as good as you get with Gamma Slam, a massive attack that deals damage to an enemy equal to the damage you’ve sustained, up to 15! To round it out, you can use She-Hulk’s Split Personality for an additional form change, drawing up to your hand size along the way! At She-Hulk’s side is her signature ally Hellcat, an ally that provides some additional thwarting, and who features the ability to return her to hand. Deck-Building with She-Hulk To take advantage of both She-Hulk’s large ATK and Jennifer’s massive REC, use Down Time and Ready to Rumble. Aggression She-Hulk has the rare ability to remove threat in alter-ego, but the downside is all her threat removal except her basic thwart is tied to alter-ego. If you build with a focus on minions, you can shore this weakness up with cards like Chase Them Down and Into the Fray. If you want to really lean into massive damage from basic attacks, bring Hand Cannon, Skilled Strike, and Combat Training. Justice With Justice, you can be managing threat regardless of which form you’re in. You can prevent threat with cards like Counterintelligence and Foiled! This will let you spend a few extra turns in alter-ego, building up for a larger hero turn. You can also focus on straight threat removal, taking advantage of Justice’s strong events. Try out Lay Down the Law and For Justice! Leadership While She-Hulk does have two upgrades that draw cards, she can still struggle with resources while in hero form. You can supplement her natural draw with an assortment of inexpensive allies and Strength in Numbers. If you want to focus more on boosting your stats for even bigger attacks, try out Moxie and Morale Boost. Protection She-Hulk can make some large basic attacks, and her cards that ready her require you attack first. To really leverage her ATK stat, use Counter-Punch to deal damage to an attacking enemy equal to your damage. Keep in mind that this will even trigger Superhuman Strength, stunning the enemy! It does require defending though, so try it out with Side Step, Pre-emptive Strike, or Defiance. To take full advantage of both attacking and taking defensive measures, try out Indomitable, Armored Vest, and Desperate Defense. Use Energy Barrier to clean up any little damage that sneaks through in either build.

Swing into action as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man! You’ll be dodging attacks, dealing some big hits, and stopping the villain in their tracks with your handy webs. And you’ll do all that in time to make it back to Aunt May for cookies. As Peter Parker, you’ll gain a free mental resource each round with your Scientist ability. If you’ve taken too many hits as a hero, you have your Aunt May support for big healing boosts. At 4 damage healed a round, she can heal 8 damage off a single trip to Alter-Ego! Then, as you switch into Spider-Man, you’ll dive right into foiling the villain’s plans. Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense ability allows you to draw a card when the villain initiates an attack against you, potentially drawing helpful cards like Backflip. Backflip is a 0-cost event that prevents all damage from an attack, making it one of the best defense events in the game. You can also use Webbed Up to lock an enemy down, preventing their next two attacks. Finally, your Enhanced Spider-Sense event helps you to cancel treachery cards (regardless of who revealed them), preventing extra activations, assorted effects, and even the dreaded Shadow of the Past treachery. Spider-Man’s Swinging Web Kick is an expensive attack event, but deals a whopping 8 damage to an enemy. You can use your Web-Shooters to help you pay for Swinging Web Kick and other cards, but watch out… they can run out, requiring you draw and play them again. One of Spider-Man’s greatest weaknesses is managing threat. His Spider-Tracers will remove threat from any scheme, but they only work once you defeat the minion to which they are attached. Don’t forget to play them out before you or your friends defeat all the minions. As a signature ally, Spider-Man has Black Cat, an ally that not only has the potential to draw you cards when played, but also takes no consequential damage when attacking. She’s a great target for any build focusing on upgrading allies, because she’ll stick around. Deck-Building with Spider-Man Spider-Man has a couple expensive cards, and his resource generation with his Web-Shooters isn’t permanent. Ingenuity, Helicarrier, and Quincarrier are great ways to help boost his ability to pay for things. Aggression While his Swinging Web Kick deals big damage, it’s expensive. Aggression can shore up his damage ability with less expensive attack events and Martial Prowess to help pay for them all. Spider-Man’s threat removal is one of his weakest points, so you need a friend or a plan to help handle it. If you want to capitalize on your Spider Tracers and focus on defeating minions, check out Chase Them Down, Into the Fray, and Relentless Assault. If you want to build a team of allies and use your defensive abilities to keep them out and dealing damage, use Boot Camp to boost the attacks of allies like Sentry, She-Hulk, and Tigra. Justice Threat removal is one of Spider-Man’s greatest weaknesses, and Justice can shore that up. You can use his ability to stay in hero form to just focus on straight threat management. Check out For Justice!, Multi-tasking, or Clear the Area. As another option, Spider-Man’s bonus resource and big heals from Aunt May helps him get great value out of spending time in Alter-Ego. Justice can facilitate the extra time in Alter-Ego, allowing you to really utilize your health as a “resource.” For a scenario with friends, you can bring Great Responsibility and Sonic Gun to take advantage of Aunt May’s big heals. Leadership Spider-Man has some strong built-in defense strategies, meaning he will rely less on his allies for defense. This means he can keep allies out, or do fine on his own without any allies during the villain phase. If you want to run a team with lots of allies, use cards like Strength in Numbers and Avengers Assemble to capitalize on that. If you’re looking for more of a quick cameo, use Sneak Attack on allies with “put into play” abilities like Maria Hill, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel. With Sneak Attack, it helps to bring along cards like Command Team or Last Stand. And if you want to take full advantage of Black Cat’s lack of consequential damage build her up with upgrades and stat boosting events. You can play Honorary Avenger on her, then bring cards like Inspired, Sky Cycle, and Power Gloves. Protection Spider-Man boasts a whopping 3 DEF as well as one of the best hero suites for foiling villain attacks and encounter cards. He’s a natural fit in Protection. If you want to focus on completely blocking damage from an attack, use cards like Unflappable and Hard to Ignore to gain extra rewards. Desperate Defense and Never Back Down will also help with taking no damage by boosting your DEF and rewarding you through letting you ready or stunning the villain.

Protection is the support aspect. There are two avenues of support: selfless (support your teammates) or selfish (support your hero kit). While the lines may blur as time progresses, this delineation helps refine the goal of your deck. Selfless: Support Your Teammates When most players think of Protection, this is the type of deck that comes to mind. Your primary goal is to ensure your teammates are healthy and can stay in hero form longer. This reduces the amount of threat that needs to be handled and prevents the Player Defeat loss condition. Decks focusing on defense fall into this category. The primary build for defense Protection is Take No Damage. This build focuses on card effects that give bonuses when you defend and (surprise twist!) take no damage. Aside: I’m going to be using the phrase “take no damage” a borderline unreasonable amount over the next bit, so let’s just abbreviate it to TND. Unflappable is the keystone card for a TND build. Once per turn, Unflappable will draw you a card if you defend and TND. Hard to Ignore is a stack-able upgrade that gives TND threat removal. Along with this, you have a suite of events that boost your DEF and give you a TND bonus. Desperate Defense: TND ready Never Back Down: TND stun Not Today!: TND threat removal There are a couple ways to build toward TND. First, you can strengthen your basic defense by boosting your DEF stat with cards like Armored Vest and the events mentioned above. Heroes with a naturally high DEF stat (DEF = 3) are great targets for this build. The second way is through ATK reduction abilities. These will be cards like Judoka Skill, Subdue, and Pinned Down (for minions) that directly reduce the enemy’s ATK stat. A couple tangentially related cards would be Preemptive Strike (changes boost icons into damage on the villain) and Defiance (discard a boost card before it is flipped). These effects all take place before damage is calculated, preventing the damage from ever existing. This is important for things like protecting a Tough status card on your hero. A similar but distinct way to build toward TND is by including damage prevention cards. This would include cards like Jump Flip (prevent damage and remove threat), Side Step (prevent damage and deal 1 back), Energy Barrier (prevent 1, deal 1), and Forcefield Generator (prevent 6 total damage). Damage prevention abilities will mitigate incoming damage. However, Tough has timing precedence over interrupts, so you cannot save a Tough status with damage prevention. This should by no means preclude you from running damage prevention cards. It is just worth highlighting that Tough generation and damage prevention are at odds. If you are planning to support your team through defense, you will want to ensure you can pull the villain's attack to you. The easiest and most common way to do this is by using your basic defense. However, you will want to bring ready effects like Indomitable and Desperate Defense if you want to use your basic defense more than once. Another way is to use defense cards that don't require you to already be the target. Cards like Preemptive Strike and Powerful Punch let you become the defender of an attack, even if you're already exhausted. Take No Damage is the epitome of defense Protection. You can certainly build for defense without committing to the TND build, but there is less overall synergy between the cards. More than likely, you would want to make a hybrid build leveraging some mix of the archetypes mentioned here. If you like a bit of offense with your defense, there are “porcupine” cards that allow you to return damage while defending. Some I’ve mentioned, like Energy Barrier, Preemptive Strike, and Side Step. In addition, you can increase your damage output with cards like Counter-Punch (deal damage equal to your ATK), Electrostatic Armor (deal 1 damage after defending), Flow Like Water (deal 1 damage with each defense card played), and Dauntless (gain retaliate 1 if above starting hp). Most of these have triggers tied directly to defending, which make them a natural fit in defense Protection builds. Another way to support your teammates is through encounter deck control. Protection's access to encounter deck control is rivaled only by Justice. Get Behind Me! cancels a treachery card in exchange for the villain attacking you. Black Widow lets you spend a resource to redraw an encounter card. Silk preemptively discards nasty treacheries. For encounter cards you reveal yourself, Spider-Tingle lets you tap into a Web-Warrior’s hp to cancel the When Revealed effects, and Spider-Man Noir boosts his stats by locking treacheries you’ve just resolved out of the discard pile. As a final note for the team support builds, a small but growing archetype for Protection is Healing. Cards like Med Team, Second Wind, and The Night Nurse can help heal other characters, keeping them in play or in hero mode longer. The Night Nurse is such a strong card, that regardless of archetype, you'll need a reason not to include it. The Angel hero pack will be bringing another fantastic healing option with the Render Medical Aid player side scheme. Selfish: Support Your Hero Kit On the flip-side, Protection can be built to support your hero’s natural strengths. While you may use some defense cards, you’re mostly looking to help yourself. For that reason, this style of build is a good fit for solo play. The build is highly dependent on the hero and their kit, so the overall archetype will feel looser. Protection can help a hero get full use out of a high THW or ATK stat. It sports more cards with ready effects than any other aspect. For a Ready build, you have options like What Doesn’t Kill Me (heal and ready), Repurpose (ready and boost a stat), Ever Vigilant (aerial-locked ready and threat removal), and Leading Blow (risk ATK reduction with a ready for payout). The higher the hero stat, the more value each ready gives. If you are in need of more damage in your deck, Protection offers First Hit (attack a minion before they activate), Hard Knocks (deal damage with a Tough on defeat), Momentum Shift (heal 2 damage, deal 2 damage), Powerful Punch (hit them first), and Repurpose (for that juicy stat boost). While less conventional than damage you might see in hero kits or Aggression builds, each of these offers a unique way for Protection to increase the damage available to you. With these “fend for yourself” builds, you can also lean into non-defense Protection by leveraging status effects. As mentioned, Hard Knocks can generate a Tough. Perseverance gives you a Tough for flipping into hero form. Additionally, many teams have Tough access. Muster Courage offers Tough for Avengers, Shake It Off for Guardians, and Polaris for X-Men. Tackle and Iron Fist can generate Stuns, and Thwip Thwip! will do the same if you have Web-Warriors around. Using Protection's stun effects alongside stuns available within certain hero kits can have a huge impact on controlling the villain, especially at low player counts. This build is called Stun-Lock, as you lock the villain out of activating each round. Note that a Stun-Lock build can also be a Take No Damage build, taking advantage of Never Back Down as a source of stuns. Examples Spider-Man: Peter Parker is the classic example for a defense build. He has 3 DEF naturally, and he has a defense card that prevents all damage. These synergize perfectly with Take No Damage builds. Ghost-Spider is another great hero for a defense build. She has 3 DEF, and her hero ability can ready her after playing any one of the many of the defense events mentioned above. Rocket Racoon is an example of a hero who wants to run a kit-support build. He sports a strong THW stat and a plethora of Tech cards in his kit. Those alongside Repurpose make him an incredibly versatile Protection hero, but he won't be defending for anyone. Another kit-support hero would be Thor. While not a traditional Protection hero, he has high ATK, aerial, and a large hp pool. A Ready build can help leverage that high ATK. What Doesn’t Kill Me gives him more access to his basic attack while also healing. Ever Vigilant readies him and shores up his weakness with thwarting. Captain America is the quintessential example of a Stun-Lock build. I'll simply link to Brian-V's Stun Lock deck on MarvelCDB, because his write-up explains it really well. Conclusion This debrief is aimed at highlighting strong synergies and archetypes in Protection. As you become more comfortable and experienced with Protection, you will find plenty of ways to break out of the molds I outlined here. There are plenty of powerful builds that are hybrids of the above. Hopefully this serves as a jumping off point for building your own Protection decks and exploring everything Protection has to offer. Acknowledgements: Thanks to jarrett on the Solo Champions Discord for the pithy names (Selfless/Selfish). It perfectly encapsulates the types of support you build with Protection.

*pssst* If you see an acronym or term you don't recognize, check out our glossary. When you’re looking at which cards to keep and which to mulligan, the primary factor in your decision will be… You know what. Let me start with something else. The mulligan is essentially the first in-game decision that you will make, and it can be a really impactful one. The key to a strong start is leveraging the mulligan. This article dives into some basic principles, the reasons behind them, and when to ignore them. At the end is a list of some heroes denoting which cards are important for their mulligan. Basic Principles of the Mulligan: Dig for keystone/build cards. Good isn’t good enough. Utilize your full hand. Evaluate the scenario. Know Your Deck Before we get into the principles, it is worth noting that you should have a rough idea of what your deck is doing and what the important cards are. At the end of this article, you’ll find a run-through of some heroes highlighting pieces from their kit that are important. There are also some aspect cards/combos listed that can be relevant for multiple heroes. The big thing here is knowing your hero and/or deck at least enough to know your mulligan targets. If you're grabbing a deck from MarvelCDB, check for a write-up. Most of the time the author will note cards to look for in a mulligan. With that said, let's get into the meat of digging into your deck. The Mulligan Primer Let’s kick things off by doing a quick rundown of the mulligan’s reach and some numbers to support it. I swear this isn’t a math lecture, so bear with me. To establish a baseline, we’ll use 6 as the standard alter-ego hand size and 40 as the standard deck size. There’s a reason 40 is really common, but we’ll get into it another time. With 6 cards on your opening draw and up to 6 more from the mulligan, most heroes can see more than a quarter of their deck before anyone takes a turn. This is huge. If you're looking for a particular unique card, you have a 15% chance of getting it in your opening hand, but a 30% chance of getting it once you include your mulligan. An important piece of the mulligan puzzle is knowing when you should do a hard mulligan by discarding most (if not all) of your opening hand so that you can dig this deep. Dig for Keystone/Build Cards Keystone Cards On the heels of how deep you can dig into your deck, we should talk about keystone heroes. Keystone heroes have a single piece in their kit that significantly changes their gameplay. The rest of their kit or playstyle may hinge on this one card. Some examples would be Dwi Theet Mastery for Drax or Friction Resistance for Quicksilver. Heroes with these upgrades will want to see them as soon as possible, meaning that a hard mulligan is crucial if you don’t see your keystone in the opening hand. Don't worry if you don’t see the keystone card even after a hard mulligan. You’re still a quarter of the way through your deck, and even closer to the card you need. Player side schemes have added a layer of consistency to these heroes, so it is worth considering holding onto something like Super Power Training that will help you “cheat” your keystone card into play. We’ll cover this a little more under Exceptions. Keystone Examples Build Cards Build heroes tend to have a large difference in gameplay between their opening turn and the final turn. These are heroes that have a number of upgrades, supports, and other factors that will increase their power without having a singular piece upon which their kit relies. Some examples would be Iron Man with all his tech and Black Panther with his upgrades. Because some of the cards in our opening hand will be tossed as resources, you’ll have to consider the risk of getting too many of these important pieces at the same time. These heroes are more likely to have a smaller or non-existent mulligan, as you’ll learn to judge if you have a “good enough” hand to avoid losing too many build pieces all at once. Resource generators are a key type here, as they ramp up your spending power right off the bat. Getting resource generators out early can dramatically impact the game, as they snowball the ability to get set up. I'll note that by resource generator I mean cards with a Resource ability (Quincarrier), a discount ability (Helicarrier), or card draw (Avenger's Mansion, Dwi Theet Mastery). Setup Abilities Many heroes come with a setup ability that grabs a card important to their game play. As an example, Black Panther can grab one of his upgrades, while Star-Lord and Venom grab their guns. Other heroes have an alter-ego action that will function the same way: Nova getting his helmet, Thor getting Mjolnir, and Hawkeye getting his bow for example. With these heroes you run less of a risk of having nothing to do after a hard mulligan, because you know you have important pieces coming. However, you may risk losing out on the ability if you draw that setup/action card from your mulligan. If you get the setup piece in hand during the opening draw, you should absolutely discard it, assuming your ability can grab from your discard. You’ll be getting it right back, and it lets you see farther into your deck. If you don’t have these cards in hand, but have a “good enough” hand, it may be worth skipping or reducing your mulligan in order to avoid missing out on the bonus card. Good Isn’t Good Enough If you’re coming from a game like Magic the Gathering, it will seem like someone is stealing cards out of your deck. You will absolutely burn through your deck in a game of Marvel Champions. I mention this, because many times players will get caught up on a really strong card in their opening hand that won’t help them ramp their hero or solve an immediate problem. Smashing face with Hammer Throw is great, but you should almost always chuck it or make it a resource on the opening draw. There are more important things to fish for, and you will see it again sooner than you think. This is a reminder that there is nothing wrong with discarding most or all of your hand for your mulligan. Utilize Your Full Hand One of the considerations that you should have when evaluating your opening hand is whether or not you can fully utilize all the cards. If you find that you would be one resource short, it is worth digging further into the deck to chase a double resource. However, this points us back to our build heroes. You do not want to end up with too many of your important pieces at once, so if you don’t need to mulligan, don’t. Alongside this, you will want to weigh the possibility that you may hard mulligan into nothing. If you have a satisfactory card like an ally, it can be good to hold that as insurance against an unlucky mulligan. You reduce your odds of finding what you want slightly, but you reduce the risk of having nothing to play. Evaluate the Scenario Sometimes the cadence of the scenario is not a slow build, but rather something that requires you to put out fires immediately. In scenarios that give a lot of early pressure, you may want to put more priority into events. In multiplayer games, teamwork is crucial and starts with the opening hands. If one player can forgo setup to manage the board, it can give the other players the time they need to set up quickly. Another thing to consider here are villains that have high attacks or scenarios where you start the game with facedown encounter cards. Allies gain a lot of value here (which is saying something, since they are so valuable already), because they are primed to block an extra attack or flex into what you need to deal with the following turn. Allies are a prime target to hold on to from an opening hand if you’re concerned about having something to play after your mulligan. Exceptions There are two main exceptions to the principles above. First is having a different overall strategy for approaching the scenario by using a rush strategy. Second is the availability of player side schemes, which give you a different path to your same goal (getting the important cards). Rush Strategies While I have been largely basing this mulligan discussion around a control strategy, you often have the first principle flipped when running a rush strategy. In a control style game, you are looking to manage enemy fires while building your board. Once built, you can move toward defeating the villain. In a rush style game, your goal is to ignore all the fires and just defeat the villain as fast as possible. If your goal is to burn down the villain as quickly as possible, you don’t want to waste time playing cards that won’t return their value. Let’s take Quincarrier as an example. This resource generator costs 4 effective resources, or ER (3 cost + the card itself) while granting a wild resource each use. This means that you aren’t fully refunded until the fourth time you use Quincarrier. While anything above the fourth time is pure value, anything less is questionable. It may help you gain the final resource you need for a single explosive turn, or it may be wasting resources since the game will be over before it pays out. It’s an interesting discussion regarding tempo of play. The Enhanced resource upgrades (Enhanced Awareness, Enhanced Physique, Enhanced Reflexes) offer a worse efficiency of 3 ER for 3 resources compared to Quincarrier's 4 ER for infinite resources. However, they have a much smaller impact on your hand and pay out faster. While I am not wholly condoning loading your decks with Enhanced resource upgrades, this example works well to highlight how value considerations are impacted by strategy. When playing rush, events will hold greater import due to the immediacy of their payout. However, you may still be looking at getting high impact pieces (similar to keystone heroes) or combination pieces. This pushes back to "know your deck." Player Side Schemes Player side schemes are a new card in the game that can fundamentally change how some heroes play. If you or a teammate has a player side scheme that can pull an important card from your deck, it is worth considering that scheme as a faux-copy of your keystone or build card. Mentioned earlier was Superpower Training, a player side scheme that allows each player to find an identity-specific upgrade and put it into play. If this card is in someone’s opening hand, you may want to put a higher priority on threat removal, because it will achieve the same goal (get your card) just with a different path. On the deck-building side, player side schemes are a great way to fix the consistency issues that come with having a keystone card. Conclusion Before we conclude by diving into the individual heroes, I want to reiterate that mulligans are an art. While there are some guiding principles that I outlined above, there are a multitude of factors that will impact how you actually go about your mulligan. Some of the skill comes from experience with a hero or deck. Hopefully this writeup has given you some direction and confidence for pursuing bigger mulligans and stronger starts. Keystone Hero Priorities Here I will be looking at the keystone heroes and their mulligan priorities. I'll also note if there are alternative cards or strategies to watch for during the mulligan. Ant-Man Keystone: Ant-Man's Helmet Ant-Man does a whole lot of form changing, and while he still can do work without his helmet, the card draw and healing are game changing. Colossus Keystone: Iron Will Alternates: Titanium Muscles, Piotr's Studio Iron Will draws you a card each time you lose a Tough status card. This is the central piece to boosting Colossus's abilities. Titanium Muscles can do work, but it isn't nearly as central to the kit. Piotr's Studio is noted here, because it can help you dig for Iron Will. Drax Keystone: Dwi Theet Mastery Alternate: Mantis Dwi Theet Mastery is a huge economy card for Drax, and with his reduced hand size, Drax needs all the card draw he can get. Mantis is a good alternate for the mulligan, because she can provide necessary early healing while Drax builds counters. Hawkeye AE Action: Hawkeye's Bow Keystone: Hawkeye's Quiver Alternates: Mockingbird Hawkeye has a fairly independent hero kit where once built, he can fire a free arrow each turn while still having his whole hand to do other things. His arrow kit functions as a problem solving toolkit. However, the usefulness of this toolbox hinges on building up a stockpile of arrows with Hawkeye's Quiver. The disparity between having and not having the quiver is strong enough that Hawkeye lands here instead of in the Build Hero category. Mockingbird is a good alternate card to increase Hawkeye's survivability while he builds. Quicksilver Keystone: Friction Resistance Friction Resistance is the sole source of economy in Quicksilver's kit. It's huge, because it can be leveraged to produce a lot of resources for a hero with pretty inexpensive hero cards. Star Lord Setup: Element Gun Keystone: Star-Lord's Helmet The legendary outlaw makes this list due to his helmet. Counteracting the extra encounter cards you may get by having an increased hand size is huge. The difference between having the helmet and not is game changing. Groot Keystone: Fertile Grounds While this card may not seem like much at first glance, it has a huge impact on Groot's ability to replenish growth counters. 2 extra counters and 2 extra cards each time Groot changes to alter-ego is a big uptick in tempo. Build Hero Priorities Here I am going to highlight some of the build heroes and their mulligan priorities. While this list is not exhaustive of all build heroes, the heroes below have a number of high priority targets that help bring their power online. There are other build heroes that are not listed here that may have generic build like resource generators or that pull the majority of their focus from their aspect cards and deck design. Adam Warlock Build Cards: Mystic Senses, Sorcerer Supreme, Karmic Staff While Karmic Staff and Sorcerer Supreme are pretty straightforward ramp cards, the copies of Mystic Senses are what really turn Warlock's economy and power on. Each will draw a card when Warlock uses his Battle Mage ability, meaning you can take your least useful card each turn and turn it into two other options. Note: Take a look at the Spiritual Mediation entry for Mystics below. Black Panther Setup: one Black Panther upgrade from deck Build Cards: The Golden City, Black Panther upgrades, Shuri While many players are looking to build the suit as fast as possible, The value of The Golden City cannot be stressed enough. An early draw will absolutely snowball your ability to set up. Something crucial to note for Black Panther is that his Setup ability (and Shuri) doesn't reach into the discard pile. That means if you have an upgrade you want, don't discard it during the mulligan. Iron Man Build Cards: tech upgrades, Pepper Potts, Stark Tower Tech upgrades are the primary card you should be looking for during your mulligan. You should be aiming to land at least two upgrades on your first turn. Pepper Potts and Stark Tower are both helpful, but rarely should either be taking precedence over playing more tech cards. Ms. Marvel Build Cards: Aamir Khan, Nakia Bahadir, Embiggen!, Shrink, Biokinetic Polymer Suit Ms. Marvel has some of the strongest alter-ego support in the game. This means she has a lot of solid options for kicking off the game. The above are pretty self-explanatory, but I will note that if you're leaning into a role (thwarter / damage dealer), then feel free to chuck Embiggen! or Shrink during your opening hand. Their value largely depends on your role. She-Hulk Build Cards: Focused Rage x2, Superhuman Law Division Focused Rage is the big economy card for She-Hulk, and they help for setting up massive damage turns for Gamma Slam. These are expensive upgrades, so the sooner you get them out, the more likely they are to pay themselves off. Superhuman Law Division is a solid early card as well, as it is essentially the only efficient thwarting in her kit beyond Hellcat. SP//dr Build Cards: Interface cards, All Systems Go!, Aunt May & Uncle Ben, SP//dr Command SP//dr is a hero that I could do an entire write up on just her mulligan and opening hand. Suffice it to say that while she has a lot of setup, she can do it fast. You have a 90% chance of hitting at least one interface upgrade in your opening sequence. You have roughly 30% chance to hit two or more interfaces in your opening sequence. While your mulligan may be small with only 4 cards, you can then draw an additional 2 cards with the SP//dr Suit support. Then you have Aunt May & Uncle Ben that give you further reach into your deck. Despite the small hand size, SP//dr can reach just as far into her deck as most heroes. Thor Action: Mjolnir Build: Asgard, For Asgard!, God of Thunder Thor's biggest limiting factor is his economy. Once set up, it's plenty strong. However, you have a lot of cards to grab, and they aren't particularly cheap. Asgard is the big one, as it will increase Thor's hand size in both hero and alter-ego. For Asgard! is a decent draw in your opening hand if it is drawn alongside a double resource. If you have both, you can grab Asgard and play it while also playing Mjolnir. God of Thunder is generally useful, but they also power Lightning Strike to help manage the minions Thor may produce. War Machine Build cards: Shoulder Cannon, Gauntlet Gun, Munitions Bunker, Missile Launcher War Machine has some powerful cards, but they are dependent on his ammo counters. For this reason, his Gauntlet Guns are helpful for powering his events, and they can help you do more with your ammo ration from flipping. Shoulder Cannon is a fantastic upgrade that will help you drain your ammo counters before flipping, and Munitions Bunker is essential for building up more explosive turns. Venom Setup: one weapon from deck Build cards: Multigun, Spider-Sense, Venom’s Pistols, Project Rebirth 2.0 You'll be getting a weapon from your deck during setup, but Venom is a hero where I think digging for Multigun is worth the risk of losing out on your Setup ability. The rest are pretty straight forward economy and build cards. Ebb-and-Flow Hero Priorities These are build heroes that I colloquially call Ebb-and-Flow Heroes. They tend to have a lot of setup, but it is with cards that will be discarded through play. You end up with this ebb and flow feel as you build toward big turns, then fall back to rebuild after that big turn. Essentially you'll want to grab at least one of their focus cards during your mulligan and then the rest will be dependent on what deck you run. I'm not going to go into these heroes at this point beyond just listing who they are. I'll also note there are other Ebb-and-Flow heroes that derive the feel from building counters or the like, but they'll be addressed another time. Black Widow (preparations) Nebula (techniques) Rocket Raccoon (tech) The reason I bother mentioning Rocket here is that you can use his alter-ego action to ditch an early tech and dig deeper into his deck. Everyone Else The rest of the heroes have minimal setup. Most of them will just want resource generators given either by their kit or aspect cards. One that I will call out is Ironheart. She seems like a build hero at first glance, but initially you're looking to upgrade your suit. This is an event focused path for the most part. Her build pieces largely come later. Aspects I wanted to pick out two aspect suites that can really change how a hero builds. X-Men: The X-Men have a really strong suite of cards that can turn any X-Men or Mutant hero into a build hero. Some combination of Cerebro, Danger Room, Utopia, X-Jet, and X-Mansion can all make for a solid deck and be strong choices for mulligans. These will be deck dependent, so again... Know Your Deck. Mystics: All the mystics will want to take Sorcerer Supreme, and it will be one of your important mulligan pieces. However, mystics can also take Spiritual Meditation. I wanted to highlight this card regarding the mulligan, because it can be a little unintuitive. You want to keep Spiritual Meditation during your mulligan so you can reach farther into your deck. If you discard Spiritual Meditation during the mulligan, you will only see 12 cards in your deck. If you hold Spiritual Meditation, you see 11 cards and then see 2 more when you play it. You'll be resource neutral (no gain or loss), but you will have dug deeper into your deck. Thanks Thank you again to everyone who chatted with me about this topic. In particular, thank you to Journeyman2, Jossero, and MegiDolaDyne.

Since the game's genesis there has been an ongoing conversation in which the community evaluates and discusses cards and effects, comparing them one to another. This conversation can be overwhelming to join, as it not only builds on everything released since the Core Set, but also pulls jargon, mathematical proofs, philosophies, and more from older gaming behemoths like Magic the Gathering. You’ll hear values quoted for what rates are good for damage or bad for threat removal. Players will make vehement declarations that 40 card decks are the only correct choice. You’ll see reviewers and content creators break down hero packs, passing judgement card by card. And in some very dark corners of the discord community, leaked cards will be lamented before they even have a chance to be released. (I say that last bit lovingly. We're an incredibly passionate bunch.) Premise The point of this article is to lower the hurdle of joining the Great Marvel Champions Conversation by bringing players up to speed on the discussions involving efficiency. The goal is to give players a point of reference for the values used throughout the community, as well as give them the tools needed to understand how and when those values are applicable. A lot of the evaluation of efficiency is not something that needs to be done constantly. However, it is a part of learning the value of a card and how it fits into the wider card pool. It is not the sole measure of a card, but a valuable gauge nonetheless. These efficiency benchmarks matter more for out-of-game discussions as opposed to in-game decision making, as the in-game evaluation is entirely board dependent. If the main scheme is only one threat away from you losing the game, almost* any thwarting is efficient (*see below). In this article we want to establish some rough benchmarks for what is currently an efficient use of resources for a variety of effects. Benchmarks For some players this article will feel like a math lesson. If you’re interested in the results, but don’t care to see how the sausage is made, feel free to skip to the end. I have all the benchmarks outlined there. That said, there are a lot of caveats that a list can’t contain, so I highly suggest diving into the article if you want a wider picture. Point in fact, we’re going to start with a massive caveat. We are working with small, whole numbers. Decimals are meaningless in the game, because there is no way to remove half a threat or deal partial damage (unless you’re talking about the partial damage dealt to my soul every time I draw Advance). Because of this, there is a lot of wiggle room on how ratios get rounded or on what constitutes efficiency. I find the following rule of thumb valuable: Any benchmark can have both its resource and expected value increased or decreased by one and still be on par with the original benchmark. By that I mean 2 resources for 3 threat is on par with both 1 for 2 and 3 for 4. The difference in rounding is essentially accounted for within the conditions and restrictions placed on the card. Effective Resources To evaluate cards against each other, we need an indication of the true value of a card. It points to how well designed the game is that it is so difficult to compare the true costs of abilities and effects. One difficulty in comparing different abilities derives from their different types of costs. One may require an additional cost of exhausting your hero, while another may require dealing damage to your identity. How do you compare the value of the exhaust to the value of the damage you took? Another hurdle is that some non-resource costs come with an opportunity cost. For example, if you have to exhaust your hero for a card ability, you’re giving up the opportunity to use their stats with a basic activation. Despite these hurdles, we can still get to a rough baseline comparison point by simplifying the value of each effect to something called “effective resources” (ER). This is an estimation of the resources needed to get a particular effect. First, let’s discuss playing a card with no additional costs in the ability. When playing a card from hand, you lose both the cards spent to cover the cost and the card you just played. If you start the game with 6 cards, you will only have 3 cards in hand after playing a 2 cost card. The effective cost of playing the card was 3, as you are now down 3 resources. When playing a card from hand, its effective cost is one higher than its resource cost. This will be a foundational part of the ensuing points. Damage Next, let’s hit the two fundamental pieces of the game: damage and thwart. Swinging Web Kick is essentially the center for all damage discussions. It has a cost of 3 and deals 8 damage. Since it is an event you’re playing from hand, you have 4 ER for 8 damage, which reduces to 1 ER for 2 damage. A good benchmark for efficient damage is 1 ER for 2 damage. We can see this value show up across a number of abilities like Jarnbjorn and Plan B. However, these are not only more conditional than Swinging Web Kick, they also have upfront costs to put them into play. This conditionality must be factored into the wider conversation regarding the value of a card, but the examples given do well enough to point out our benchmark. A more realistic rate you can expect for low or non-conditional damage outside of hero kits is something around 2 ER for 3 damage. Cards like Clobber and Uppercut point to these values. Thwart Threat removal is more expensive. It tends to be more conditional than damage, meaning there are either more modifiers through kicker abilities (like For Justice!) or there are smaller windows in which to play it (Lay Down the Law). A good benchmark for efficient threat removal is 2 ER for 3 threat removed. Some examples are Cable Arrow and Crisis Averted. As a reminder, these small, whole numbers widen the uncertainty of our benchmark. The 3 ER for 4 threat removal on For Justice! is essentially on par with the 2 for 3. Ready Next we can visit another common and potentially valuable effect: readying your hero. A good benchmark for an efficient hero ready is 2 ER. This is based on cards like Always Be Running, Justice Served, Battle Fury, and Ready to Rumble. I really want to emphasize here that this is an efficiency benchmark for a hero ready, not a value statement for exhausting or readying your hero. The opportunity cost of exhausting your hero is the loss of the ability to use their ATK, THW, or REC with a basic activation. The value of these are inherently different based on hero, build, and game-state. As an example, Spectrum exhausting in her Photon form has a 3 threat removal opportunity cost, whereas Ms. Marvel has a 1 threat removal opportunity cost. Yet their opportunity cost for damage in this same game-state is the same at 1 damage. The value of the ready or exhaust is part of that wider conversation beyond direct card comparison. Status Effect I hope you're not confused at this point, but if you are, I likely only spent 2 ER. A good benchmark for an efficient status effect is 2 ER. There are a lot of sources here, so to make things simple, I’m just going to bullet list it. I’ve broken out the status effects from the rest of the abilities to show that we are left with effects that match our other efficiency benchmarks. Sonic Rifle (4 ER for 2 Confuse) Wrist Gauntlets (2 ER each status) “Think Fast!” (2 ER and a damage for 1 Confuse) Concussive Blow (2 ER for 1 Confuse, 2 ER for 3 villain damage) Electric Arrow (2 ER for Stun, 1 ER for 3 damage) Tackle (2 ER for Stun, 2 ER for 3 villain damage) Hard Knocks (2 ER for Tough, 2 ER for 4 damage) Perseverance (2 ER for a Tough) These are all either conditional, have additional effects, or are restricted in some way. However, they all point to a rough benchmark of 2 ER for a status effect. Again, it is worth noting that the value of the status effect is entirely separate from the efficiency benchmark of the status effect. A Confuse is often more valuable than a Stun due to the ability to access alter-ego’s larger hand size and alter-ego effects. However, that is again something that will be scenario and hero dependent. Healing Healing is surprisingly hard to evaluate in Marvel Champions. Much of identity healing is tied to alter-ego Support cards that have no additional costs beyond exhausting them once they are in play. However, a few of the cards we can look at here are First Aid (2 ER for 2 damage), Med Team (4 ER for 6 damage), Second Wind (4 ER for 5 damage), and Momentum Shift (3 ER for healing 2 and dealing 2 damage). These are a bit harder to nail down, but they show us we should be looking roughly around 2 ER to heal 2-3 damage. A good benchmark for efficient identity healing is 2 ER for 3 health. Allies I will note that ally health is more expensive at 1 ER to heal 1 damage. Inspiring Presence, First Aid, and Reboot point us to this rate. A good benchmark for efficient ally healing is 1 ER for 1 damage. It is the same rate to ready an ally. Get Ready and Command Team both point this rate. A good benchmark for an efficient ally ready is 1 ER. General Trends In addition to the benchmarks listed above, there are some trends regarding efficiency that are worth pointing out. Hero cards tend to be the most efficient and least restricted cards. Aspect and Basic cards tend to be balanced against the benchmark by either locking the efficiency behind some condition (a la Multitasking), being more restrictive on who can use it or how it can be used (such as "Thinking Fast!"), or by reducing the overall efficiency (like with Uppercut). In addition to the impact of a card's classification, the card's efficiency will be impacted by how general the ability is. The more general it is, the less efficient it is expected to be. The more conditional or restricted the ability is, the more it is expected to have higher efficiency. As an example, Always Be Running is a hero event. It is exactly 2 ER to ready your hero, and it can be played any time you can play an Action ability. Ready to Rumble is a Basic upgrade that also readies your hero for only 2 ER, hitting our benchmark. However, you can only trigger it immediately after changing to hero form, meaning the ability to trigger it is more conditional. With that said, the above ratios are effectively the benchmarks that are referenced when comparing and evaluating cards. Now that you know them, throw them away. Context Matters These are not the end-all-be-all values for what makes an effect efficient. In fact, these benchmarks have extremely limited use regarding actual gameplay. While they give us a comparison point when evaluating cards, they are being compared in a vacuum. When building your decks, your hero and deck strategy will inform you on if a conditional effect will be useful or not. Lay Down the Law has great efficiency that is conditional on changing form. If you’re not changing form often, it’s not a good fit for your deck despite its efficiency. Crisis Averted is a poster-child for efficient thwart removal in an aspect, but if you are playing solo, you will rarely need 6 threat removed from a scheme all at once. Multitasking and Clear the Area have the same efficiency when their full effects are realized. Yet one requires two schemes and benefits more from boosting effects (like Shrink!), while the other cycles your deck, giving you access to more of your cards sooner. Which of these is better? (It's Multitasking, because you should be playing more Ms. Marvel). Conclusion In a future article we'll dive deeper into card and ability evaluations. We'll look at the wider picture of what makes a card valuable beyond its efficiency. For now, I hope this article helps give you a strong basis to begin evaluating cards as well as give you a foundation for joining discussions in the community. I look forward to seeing you out there! . Summary Here is a quick summary of the benchmarks established above. It is important to remember that these are a small part of the picture when it comes to evaluating cards. It is worth glancing above to see some of the caveats. These are loose benchmarks. Efficiency Benchmarks 1 ER to deal 2 damage 2 ER to remove 3 threat 2 ER to ready your hero 2 ER to heal 3 identity damage 1 ER to heal 1 ally damage 1 ER to ready an ally Efficiency Caveats ±1 ER and ±1 statistic is on par with the benchmark Efficiency is expected to go up as restrictions and conditionality go up Hero kits tend to be the most efficient and least restricted. Aspect and Basic cards tend to maintain balance relative to the benchmark by one of the following: Increasing conditionality Increasing restrictions Reducing overall efficiency Thanks Thank you to the discord brain trust and everyone who helped to poke and prod at the assumptions here. In particular, thank you to Fernafalej, Josseroo, journeyman2, MegiDolaDyne, Schmendrix, Theorel, and VJakson. Thank you to Unicorn for allowing me to use the scans from his Cerebro project.

The title is meant to get your goat, but what I want to cover in this article is how to elevate your play by leveraging... the rules. While we're not actually breaking the game itself, we are looking to break the norms of the game. Before we get going, I want to address two things. First is the fact that a decent chunk of what we discuss in this post will rub some players wrong. For some, these things can feel like "rules lawyering" or ruining the thematic side of card design. That is a totally valid complaint, and there are no hard feelings if this isn't a part of the game you want to engage with. I will note, however, that everything discussed here is in fact legal within the current rules. Second, I don't want anyone to feel weird about playing Doctor Strange or feel like they shouldn't enjoy him. He is simply the best vessel to discuss these rules, as a lot of his power derives directly from their application. Understanding why his cards function the way they do can help you apply the same concepts across the card pool to similar cards. So with those disclaimers, let's get to "breaking" the game. There are a couple "norms" that I want to address right off the bat. These are things you may hear said or alluded to colloquially, but are not rules accurate. Removing threat is thwarting. Dealing damage is attacking. Triggering the ability on an event is playing it. If an ally entered play, you played it. These are all actually quite close to the truth, but completely wrong. I want to rephrase them to accurate statements. When you thwart, you generally remove threat. When you attack, you generally deal damage. When you play an event, you trigger the ability on it. When you play an ally, it enters play. These may seem like obtuse restatements, but they are actually quite important. We can see why when we look at Doctor Strange's Invocation deck. This is a deck of cards unique to Doctor Strange that always has the top card face up. Doctor Strange can use his hero ability to exhaust himself, pay the cost of the face up card, then trigger it's special ability. The Invocation Deck Winds of Watoomb (Draw 3 cards.) For this card, I want to reinforce the value of having access to cards outside your hand. When playing a card from hand, you lose the card itself as part of the process. If you start with 5 cards and play a 2 cost card, you end with 2 cards in hand. You have effectively spent 3 resources. (I discuss effective resources in this article on efficiency!) When using a card from outside your hand, like an event grabbed by the Black Panther ally, an ally on Med Lab, or even Lockjaw being played from your discard pile, you only have to pay the resource cost. As a direct comparison for Winds of Watoomb, we can look at One Way or Another. While One Way or Another gives you 3 cards (in addition to a side scheme to deal with) you had a net gain of only 2. With Winds of Watoomb we have an ability that allows you to gain 3 cards with no disadvantage beyond the exhaust. Leveraging abilities that store playable cards outside your hand can give you a strong resource advantage, letting you do more on your turn. Images of Ikonn (Confuse the villain and remove 4 threat from a scheme.) Right off the bat, we can see this card is fantastic value. In general, threat removal is considered efficient at roughly 2 effective resources (ER) for 3 threat removed. Here you spend 1 resource and exhaust Strange for 4 threat removed and a Confused status on the villain. Since Strange could have just exhausted to thwart for 2 anyway, we essentially end up with 1 resource for 2 threat and a Confuse. Even without the Confuse, that is on or above par for threat removal. The real neat bit here? Note the absence of the (thwart) label on the ability. This is not a thwart, so it bypasses Confuse and Patrol. The only thing that stops it is a Crisis icon, and that only affects the main scheme. Cards and abilities that can remove threat without thwarting can be helpful for high Confuse/Patrol scenarios. Just keep in mind that these cards won't combo with cards like Overwatch, which require a thwart. Crimson Bands of Cyttorak (Stun an enemy and deal 7 damage to it.) While these bands won't give you the power of Juggernaut, they will stun an enemy and deal 7 damage to it, all for a measly 2 resources and an exhaust. Doctor Strange could have attacked for 1 damage, so we're really looking at 2 resources for a Stun and 6 damage. Damage is generally considered efficient at 2 damage for 1 effective resource. As with Images of Ikonn, this is efficient even before the status effect. Again I will point out the missing label. Without the (attack) label on the ability, this damage bypasses Guard, Retaliate, and Stun. You can leverage other non-attack damage dealing abilities in your own decks to similarly bypass these keywords. Seven Rings of Raggardorr (Give up to 3 characters each a tough status card.) Tough status reigns supreme. For 2 resources and an exhaust, you get 6 effective resources worth of Toughs. That's a whole lot more defense than Strange would have gotten with his 2 DEF, and it doesn't care if the villain is Steady or Stalwart. This one doesn't really have any wider picture notes. It's just a bonkers card. If you want a take-away, find ways of incorporating Tough access into your builds. Vapors of Valtorr (Choose a status card in play. Replace that status with a different status card.) Very few abilities in the game let you manipulate status cards on an enemy, and most of the ones that do aren't working in your favor. The ability to swap a Tough for a Confuse or Stun is huge. You could have exhausted Strange to deal one damage and clear the Tough, so this is effectively a free status of your choice if they already have one on them. It's also a great way to help a teammate (or yourself) by turning an annoying Stun or Confuse into a free block the next villain phase. Now you do have a hiccup here is when you have a Stalwart villain, as you can't change the Tough. However, the ability to manipulate existing status effects is quite strong. This is another card that doesn't have much of a wider picture, but it is far more valuable than many see. Spell Mastery (Playing vs Triggering) There are a couple things to touch on with Spell Mastery. First, it is an Action, meaning you can use it on other players' turns. While this is not unique to this ability, it is extremely powerful when at any given moment you have access to one of your seven best cards. A few cards worth mentioning that let you break norms for what you do off turn are Team-Building Exercise and Meditation. Both of these allow you to play something to the board that you would usually have to wait to play until your turn. This can even let you sneak in an ally off turn! Jumping back to Spell Mastery, we want to take a look at the verbiage. Doctor Strange doesn't ever play the invocations. They are all events, but you are simply resolving their special ability. It's for this reason that Strange's obligation and nemesis set are so lackluster. Physical Toll (his obligation) does not impact the Invocations, meaning you will not have to deal with the additional cost for them specifically. Counterspell also doesn't impact you triggering the invocations at all, as you aren't playing them. Play vs Put into Play As a follow up to 'playing vs triggering,' I want to touch on a powerful card available only to Mystics. Summoning Spell allows a Mystic hero to discard cards from the top of the deck until an ally is discarded. Then put that ally into play. Let's back up a bit and look at Summoning Spell's restriction. It is only playable by identities with the Mystic trait. This kind of play restriction is fairly common in the game, and in general the restrictions lock some heroes/alter-egos out of using certain cards. If you do not meet the play restrictions, you simply cannot play the card. However, putting a card into play is not playing the card. Instead, it is simply making it enter the in-play area. This means you can get allies and cards that you normally couldn't use into play and under your control. There are a number of cards that allow you to do this, such as Make the Call or Call for Backup. Player side schemes like Build Support can even help you get trait-locked supports like Weapon X into play for non-mutants. Not only does this bypass traited play restrictions, this will also bypass things like Requirement. These restrictions only care whether or not you are playing the card, so utilizing 'put into play' abilities can help you make non-traditional plays. As an added bonus, this applies to encounter cards as well. If an ability causes you to put a minion into play, you don't need to trigger Surge, Incite, or any When Revealed abilities. Double the Resources, Double the Fun A final point worth bringing up is how The Power in All of Us works regarding cards like C.I.T.T. and Across the Spider-Verse. This isn't specifically related to Doctor Strange, but it will be important for my next section. Directly from the FFG Rules Specialist, Alex, we have: "Yes, the resources generated by The Power in All of Us can be applied to an ability cost on a basic card like C.I.T.T." This also applies to the second part of Across the Spider-Verse. Not only can you use The Power in All of Us as a double resource for playing the card, you (or another player) can use The Power in All of Us as a double resource for the ability cost to repeat the ability. Prove It Now that we have access to all this power, we might as well use it. To prove how powerful Doctor Strange and these "cheats" are, I built a Doctor Strange Leadership deck that utilizes all of these principles. Here it is on MarvelCDB.com This is a bit of a silly deck as many of the allies you can't actually play outright. However, a lot of power is packed away by leveraging the rules we covered above. First and foremost, you have all the Invocations. Then, we've got Make the Call, Call for Backup, and Summoning Spell to cheat in allies. Rapid Response puts these allies back into play from the discard pile, again avoiding the restrictions. Black Panther can grab Summoning Spell or Make the Call so you have a freebie card outside your hand. The Power in All of Us can be used alongside Make the Call for the Basic allies in addition to being used for Across the Spider-Verse, Web of Life and Destiny, and The Sorcerer Supreme. Build Support will help you skip the cost of Web of Life and Destiny if you don't have a Web-Warrior ally yet. Last but not least, we have Vivian, the queen of breaking things. I won't go into a full list here, but watch for ways that she can mute an ability or effect in order for you to bypass any play restrictions (like ignoring a Crisis Icon, Guard, or Patrol). Feel free to give the deck above a run to see if you can master these norm-breaking abilities. Or, feel free to check out this list of all the player cards that are non-thwarting threat removal, non-attack damage, or put into play abilities. Thanks Thanks to Chocobo, Journeyman2, josseroo, and theromeo3517 for suggestions and discussions on the deck!

In this series, I am going to highlight cards that I am currently enjoying. These are by no means the most powerful cards. They aren't even necessarily my all-time favorite cards. They are simply cards that I am really enjoying right now. At the end of the article you'll find a decklist that I've enjoyed using them in and a slideshow that displays all the cards. Call for Backup Hot off the press, it's the new player side scheme for Leadership. Defeating this side scheme will let you put one ally from your deck or discard pile into play. It's powerful... and a whole lot of fun. There is something quite cinematic about Call for Backup being completed in a larger multiplayer game. A team of three or four allies swarm the board, turning the tide of the game. The reason that I really enjoy it though, is that it has breathed some life into expensive and forgotten allies. This leads me to my next card. Beta Ray Bill Hailing from Star-Lord's hero pack, Beta Ray Bill is the hunter of minions. After he attacks and defeats a minion, you can remove two threat from the main scheme. That 5 cost is hefty, but now that Call for Backup offers alternative ways to get him into play, you can drop him in, keep him healed, and be handling multiple problems at once. E.V.A. (and Fantomex) Another set of cards from NeXt Evolution, I couldn't include one without the other. There is something fantastic about Fantomex entering play and immediately dropping another card on the board. That said, E.V.A. is the real star to me. I really like having ping damage and threat removal, because it makes it a lot easier to set up other abilities to trigger (like Beta Ray Bill's ability). It also helps you ensure you're not wasting damage or threat removal on dealing with a Tough or clearing a 1 threat side scheme with your powerful basic activation or event. As a bonus, E.V.A. doesn't thwart or attack, so you can sidestep some nasty effects. I've enjoyed both loading Fantomex up with upgrades to power him up and just keeping him around to run E.V.A. and power up cards like Band Together. Band Together While sometimes touted as a 'win-more' card, I have found Band Together to be a really strong tempo card, especially in the NeXt Evolution scenarios and campaign. The main concern with the card is that it can be unusable without allies, but in NeXt Evolution you will often have access to campaign allies that help power it up. It makes it really easy to bump it to a double or even triple resource. While it's not something that I would put in any deck, it has really been singing alongside the big allies that I've been keeping out on the board. Adam Warlock Adam Warlock might be one of the most fun allies in the game. He looks a tidge wimpy with a small 1 THW and 1 ATK, but his strength comes from his ability. If you can set it up to have a single resource type left in your hand before he activates, you can choose what effect you will get. 3 non-attack damage, 3 non-thwart threat removal, or 3 identity healing is massive and a highly efficient use of your cards. As a bonus, if you can trigger him with something like Jackpot! or Salvage, you can even trigger multiple of the effects. (Just note that it doesn't work like that for something like Strength or Genius). Try Them Out If you want a quick and easy way to try these five (technically six) cards out, I just took this Spider-Man deck through all the NeXt Evolution scenarios and had a blast! If you're taking it through NeXt Evolution, I would suggest swapping United We Stand for First Aid during the first two scenarios. This is the deck on MarvelCDB.com. Featured Cards

In this Card Highlight series, I highlight cards that I am currently enjoying. These are by no means the most powerful cards. They aren't even necessarily my all-time favorite cards. They are simply cards that I am really enjoying right now. At the end of the article you'll find a deck list that I've enjoyed using them in and a slideshow that displays all the cards. Shake and Bay...ke Groot Groot may be my all-time favorite ally. I really love his ability to defend and heal, taking massive hits and staying on the board. He can be a great ally to build survivability for Guardian heroes or anyone able to cheat him in with something like Call for Backup or Make the Call. I love taking a big hit from the villain (5 damage or less!), then healing back up by blocking a 1 ATK minion over and over. He really is one of a kind when it comes to allies. He's a unique defensive Voltron ally, so feel free to let your friends in other aspects dump upgrades on him. Each health makes it easier for him to take bigger attacks, so Honorary upgrades, Reinforced Suit, or Training upgrades are great for making him even more durable. Shake It Off Shake It Off is great for any Guardian, but it absolutely sings with the Groot ally. He can take a hit up to 5 damage, heal 2 of that, then you can put a Tough on him. This means the next time he blocks a full attack, he'll be left with only one damage on him, ready to take more hits. Shake It Off is super flexible, and works best when triggering it off a small minion attack. Hangar Bay Shake It Off and Groot have always been good, but they are a bit slow. Hangar Bay blows this wide open by letting Groot defend multiple attacks in a round, taking quick advantage of his healing or Shake It Off. Charlie-27 As much as I love him, Groot isn't always around. Charlie-27 is a nice backup. He comes with a Tough and retaliate. This means your first block is free, and he'll deal a bit of extra damage along the way. He's not my top choice, but he works well alongside Groot. Pinned Down This isn't mandatory to the above combos, but it can be helpful for harvesting minion attacks. Even if you reduce the minion's ATK to 0, it is considered to attack, meaning Groot can defend and heal or Charlie-27 can defend and retaliate. If you reduce the minion to 1 ATK (and make sure it doesn't have nasty activation abilities), you can also use it to trigger Shake It Off. Honorable Mention: Med Team What's this? A surprise entry? You've only done two of these Fabulous Fives, and both went over the limit? Yes. I am cheating again. Really this is just an honorable mention. It's super flexible, it can speed up Groot's healing, and it can keep Charlie-27 around. If you're running into some minions with rough activation abilities, I'd swap Pinned Down for this. Try It Out My favorite place for this is with Rocket Raccoon. The other Guardians can run it plenty fine as well, but Rocket and Groot are such a thematic matchup. On top of that, it sets up Flora and Fauna, a fantastic Team-Up card. Here is a deck that I enjoyed with NeXt Evolution scenarios. While it can be run solo, I prefer it with another teammate or two, because it makes hitting the Shake and Bay...ke combo easier. You can find it on MarvelCDB here! You could easily swap some things around. Moon Girl is always great with Rocket, especially when he can flip down often. You could drop Pinned Down and just rely on naturally occurring attacks. There are enough 2+ cost Protection cards to justify running The Power of Protection, but I find Rocket to be pretty resource rich as is. If you give it a run, I hope you have fun with it! Featured Cards

We've rebranded! After the first two articles in this series, I decided that keeping it locked to five cards was a little more restrictive than what I wanted to do, so I'm moving away from Fabulous Five and to Card Highlight. And what do you know? This is the first time I've actually hit five cards. In this Card Highlight series, I highlight cards that I am currently enjoying. These are by no means the most powerful cards. They aren't even necessarily my all-time favorite cards. They are simply cards that I am really enjoying right now. At the end of the article you'll find a deck list that I've enjoyed using them in and a slideshow that displays all the cards. Render Medical Aid Another fresh off the presses card from Wave 7, Render Medical Aid is a new card from the Psylocke hero pack, and it is amazing. You can toss this onto the board, and you and your friends can all get some heals. This card alone is what has really solidified the healing package for me, and I think it is a fantastic use of player side schemes. The Night Nurse A classic Protection card hailing from the Doctor Strange hero pack, The Night Nurse is a staple for any Protection deck. In addition to healing 1, you remove a status effect from the hero you're targeting. There are three important things to note here: You can only target a hero. This isn't usually a big deal, because you can call for this action off turn. However, there has been the occasion where this has mattered for me. You must remove a status card if you can. Don't throw this heal around, because if a hero only has a Tough status on them, it will be removed. Don't leave home without it. Your friends will thank you for it. Second Wind Tucked away in the back of Thor's hero pack, Second Wind is often overlooked. I really love that this is an Action, as it can be played in alter-ego. In fact, the deck that I am sharing at the end is an alter-ego focused Protection deck. I have had plenty of times when a hero was low on health, but they can't afford to use their basic activation to recover. Second Wind is a nice bulk heal that can push heroes into another round. It's particularly nice during NeXt Evolution with all the retaliate and overkill floating around. Med Team A classic from the Core Set, Med Team has been one of the most helpful cards since the game began. Use it to heal allies or heroes, and trigger it in whatever form you are in. Meditation Another back-of-pack card, this event comes from Vision's hero pack. This card isn't specific to healing builds, but it is to the one that I've been enjoying for some time. Notice that both Med Team and Second Wind are 3 cost cards. If you have an alter-ego focused build or have little use for your basic activation and will be in alter-ego a decent bit, this is a great way to get a discount on another card. Keep in mind that it is only a two resource discount, because you could have just used Meditation as part of the payment playing it normally. This is also an action, so you can use it to sneak out allies, supports, and upgrades off turn. Try It Out Below you'll find two decks. One is an updated version of a deck I ran at Con of Heroes this year that leans heavily on Basic cards, and the other is more Protection card focused. The first published deck that I remember running a variation of this was created by Schmendrix. You can find their deck here! G.I.R.L. 'n Heals If you're a big fan of working from home, you may find this support deck a lot of fun. The focus of the deck is to use Wasp's G.I.R.L. ability to recur powerful cards and support the team by healing, providing blockers, and sharing Avenger's Mansion and Helicarrier. There will certainly be times that you flip up to hero form in order to play Pinpoint Strike or other hero actions, but otherwise you can use your basic activation in alter-ego with Meditation or to heal overkill damage from blocking with your allies. Just ensure that you are providing enough benefit to make up for the scheming threat you're generating! G.I.R.L. 'n Grey Heals Here it is on MarvelCDB! G.I.R.L. 'n Green Heals Here it is on MarvelCDB! Really this G.I.R.L. 'n Heals framework is easily customizable. Just toss in the package from the article, pick out which allies you want to run, then grab the Power Of cards that best suit your ally choice. There are a lot of fun combinations. Featured Cards

In this series, I highlight cards that I am currently enjoying. These are by no means the most powerful cards. They aren't even necessarily my all-time favorite cards. They are simply cards that I am really enjoying right now. At the end of the article you'll find a decklist that I've enjoyed using them in and a slideshow that displays all the cards. This card highlight isn't as cohesive as some of the others, but each of these cards are making for a lot of fun at my table. Let's dive-in! Foiled! I have been a sucker for this card since I started playing Marvel Champions. Back in the day, I loved running this with Iron Man to give some space for early building. If you're running a deck low on status cards or are up against Stalwart villains, Foiled! can really open up the ability to flip down. It is not a Hero Interrupt, so you can use it in both alter-ego and hero form. While it feels best drawing into it at just the right time, don't be afraid to strategically hold it from one turn to another if you know the villain will be scheming. I generally run three copies to improve the odds of having it when I need it, but I generally also run it alongside other non-status threat prevention like Counterintelligence. Personally I prefer it in multiplayer games where there is more opportunity to use it. Making an Entrance A boosted thwart with healing potential is nothing to scoff at. Healing two damage is really helpful for staying in hero form, and this 2 THW boost can help clean up schemes in order to trigger other cards like Skilled Investigator and Turn the Tide. This card does require you make a basic thwart, so keep that in mind when considering it for your decks. It's great alongside heroes like Captain America or SP//dr who have easy access to ready effects. Spider-Man: Pavitr Prahbakar The Protection Web-Warrior suite is so strong that I think the Justice suite is often overlooked. I love dropping Pavitr into play for some bulk threat removal. He's still great if you're low on Web-Warrior cards, but having him clean up 4-5 threat in the late game is a huge momentum swing. His Avenger counterpart Peter Parker is far more limited due to cost, the play from hand restriction, and less overall synergy for his trait available. Pavitr hits a really sweet spot for this ability. Great Responsibility Oh no! Avert your gaze! Surely it is criminal to enjoy such a card as this. While I wouldn't toss Great Responsibility into any deck, it is a neat tool for threat management. There are few ways to interact with threat during the villain phase, and this is one of them. If you want to get particularly cheeky, you can run it alongside some Tough generation to block some massive threat placements. Who needs to thwart Stryfe's Grasp when you can simply defeat Stryfe and Great Responsibility away all the threat that started on it? Thanks to MCGamora and royal7 for bringing that interaction up in the Solo Champions League discord. It inspired me to toss it into my deck! Assess the Situation I love this card so much that it is sneaking into a Justice list. To me, this is the perfect Basic card. Some heroes can really leverage it (see below), while for others it is simply a great tool for smoothing hands and avoiding leftover resources. I try to keep Assess as the last card in my hand each round. If I need to spend it, no worries. However, if it looks like I'll have a card leftover, there's no reason not to pass it to my next turn. Try It Out Below is a Ghost-Spider deck that I took through NeXt Evolution in two player games. With George Stacey being able to store cards and Ghost-Spider's ability to ready off interrupts and responses, Foiled! and Great Responsibility gain huge value. You can tuck them away and use them when you need them. Assess the Situation is also great here, as early in the game it helps smooth your hands, and late in the game it can be used in conjunction with Ticket to the Multiverse to help Ghost-Spider with a massive turn. Here it is on MarvelCDB! You could easily make some swaps in this deck to tune it to your preferences. If you're not going to be attacking much, swap Turn the Tide for some more thwarting events. If you can't justify The Power in All of Us for limited targets, drop them. Though note that SP//dr and Across the Spider-Verse make for many more targets than it seems at first glance. If you feel you're not seeing your Web-Warrior allies enough, toss in Chance Encounter to help grab them sooner. I have been having a blast with these cards, and I hope that this encourages you to look at some of them as well! Featured Cards