Captain Marvel Revisited

This deck is the first in a series I'm planning going back to core set and early-cycle heroes and give them a new look in light of the current card pool. I've chosen Captain Marvel for my first go as she was my first deck on here to build up a few likes and I think is still the highest rated Captain Marvel Justice deck, despite being core set only.

(Note: this is a write up of the deck-building process rather than a guide to using the finished deck. I hope you find it interesting regardless)

To start with let's have a look back over her signature card pool and see if we can find some cards to riff off:

Spider-Woman Ally is solid. As the game has developed I think we have a higher rating of Confuse now, and a 2/2 for 3 cost is decent economics, despite her 2hp. With a decent enter play ability, she makes a good case for a leadership deck, but realistically Jess is the only thing leading me down that route, so I'm not sure she on her own is worth building a deck around.

Crisis Interdiction and Photonic Blast now feel somewhat mediocre cards in the current pool. Crisis Interdiction, especially, pales into insignificance next to Multitasking, and photonic blast is nothing more than an Uppercut if you can't power it with .

Now that we have some interaction with aerial, Cosmic Flight becomes something that we could potentially play around with a bit more (and stops Crisis Interdiction from being completely sucky). And while we're talking about being aerial, that potentially makes Captain Marvel's Helmet a bit less sucky, too.

Energy Channel always felt like a bit of a bomb-card back in the day, but now it feels more alike a consolation for having cards you can't play rather than something to specifically build around.

I realise I've skipped over Alpha Flight Station, but I want to talk about that in context of her hero card. Her 2/2/1 stat line remains solid, but she's probably getting more mileage out of thwarting over attacking or defending the majority of the time. Her focus on remains strong, both through her hero ability, and cards like Photonic Blast and Energy Channel. Tied in with this, Alpha Flight Station really allows her to cycle through cards to make sure she's getting her energy resources to fuel everything.

Finally, we come to Energy Absorption. There's no getting around the fact that this card is pretty much always great, but it also means that you want some 3-cost cards in your deck so that you're not using it sub-optimally. You've got to balance the 3 this gives you when it turns up with the regular resource a lot of heroes get to generate each turn from an upgrade. The ability to thin-out your deck by having a bunch of upgrades and supports in play helps this card generate more reliable value.

So, what are the lessons we can draw from this to help us plan a deck?

1. She needs pips
2. She needs a spread of 3-cost cards and remain-in-play cards to get the most out of Energy Absorption
3. She has decent access to aerial

Back in core-set-only days you often chose Justice for her, due to the high number of pips available, but this is no longer the case. As we can now look at any aspect, it strikes me that it is actually protection that provides some of the best interplay with Captain Marvel's suite of cards:

• There are now plenty of cards that don't require you to defend against an attack and will still prevent damage or heal you up.
• Protection also has the best of the aerial cards from the Star Lord set in Ever Vigilant.
• There's also cards like Nova and Side Step that have specific interplay with to increase synergy.

So, decision made: Protection. So let's get down to business:

Allies

For my allies I've gone with Brother Voodoo and Clea which tend to make it into any protection deck on first draft. Iron Fist is too good not to include in a deck that can afford him. Nick Fury is in there because he's really good when you get him in hand with an Energy Absorption, and finally Nova and Martyr are there for the energy interplay.

Supports

Given that I want to thin the deck somewhat, I'm not holding back to begin with on these cards. I've put in the big-3 economy cards (Mansion, and the Carriers), then I've chucked in some med teams as I'm feeling she's going to be blocking damage and healing rather than defending to prevent damage. A copy of The Night Nurse is also useful. She doesn't have enough avenger or guardian allies to make use of Avengers Tower, C.I.T.T or Knowhere, and not enough shred traits for Team-Building Exercise. Defensive Training may prove useful for ensuring she has the right set of defensive events.

Upgrades

As I'm not planning on actively defending, my upgrade suite is limited to Energy Barrier and Nerves of Steel (which is a real no-brainer in this deck), and I'll throw in some Defensive Stance on first draft.

Events On a first glance I can identify the following events as fitting the design brief:

• Bait and Switch provides a decent thwart option in protection
• Deflection provides a high amount of damage prevention, and the deck milling side effect doesn't seem particularly problematic.
• Ever Vigilant is just a great card if you can get aerial
• First Hit provides some good protection against minions, whilst also having an pip.
• Muster Courage is a nice 3-cost card (for Energy Absorption)
• Side Step seems like a real no-brainer in this deck
• Subdue is another damage reduction option

This is way too many, so I'm going to to have to trim it down. Bait and Switch is an obvious ditch as there's plenty of thwart in the deck, I feel. I'm also going to ditch Deflection as it is both expensive and doesn't come with an icon. Muster Courage looks good, but I think I'll try it as a 1-of to begin with, especially as it's not got an energy. First Hit I think can cope with being a 2-of. Subdue and Defensive Stance essentially do the same thing, but I think I'll keep the Defensive Stance as it sticks around rather than maybe being stuck in a hand when it can't be used. Finally, Preemptive Strike can be very situational, but given that it is also an energy card, it has other uses in the deck, however, I think I can reduce it down to a 2-of comfortably.

Resources

Finally we come to the resources. There's a lot of 2-cost protection cards, so I think The Power of Protection is well worth including. However, I don't think I need Genius or Strength. I am going to include Preservation as I think this deck is going to rely on healing.

This gets me to 52 cards, so some obvious need to trim! Let's have a look at what I can cut down on. When I'm doing so, I think I want to be focusing on what's likely to be in my hand each turn once I've stripped out all the upgrades and supports. With Avengers Mansion in play that will mean I can draw 6 cards a turn in hero form. However, a lot of my upgrades and supports have spendable uses and so won't stick around.

My current deck has 22 supports and upgrades. I'm thinking that if I try to aim for a 20/20 build, I'll probably be working with 24 cards in deck and 16 in play once I'm up and running. That makes the maths nice in that I have 4 hands of 6 cards to get through. As such I think an ideal hand each round is 1 ally, 2-3 events, 1-2 resource and 1 support or upgrade to cycle back into play. With the extra economy in play. That likely means I can play an ally and 2 out of the other cards each turn.

That means I want to hit the following target umbers for the deck:

• Upgrades + Supports: 20
• Allies: 4
• Events: 10-12
• Resources: 4-6

So let's start trimming:

• I wasn't sure about Defensive Training, so Let's ditch that. That hits the 20 limit for supports + upgrades straight away.
• I need to ditch 3 allies. Brother Voodoo is an obvious first choice in a deck that is going to go down to at most 12 events. Clea I think isn't really playing into the fast cycling idea, so much as she is first on my usual deck list, I think she has to go, too. That leaves me with Nick Fury, Martyr and Nova to pick between (Iron Fist is too good not to include). Of these I think Nova provides too much good synergy, and Martyr sticks around and has an energy pip, so I think, sadly, it's Nick that gets cut here.
• When I think about the balance between resources and events, I'm just going to go down the middle and go for 11 events and 5 resources. This makes Preservation an obvious cut.
• Now on to events. I think I first cut the cards that I felt were situational in the first place: Preemptive Strike and First Hit.

However, at this point I'm starting to worry about getting to this point, and if I don't have enough protection events to keep me alive whilst I'm building, this super-trimmed deck might all be for nought. Therefore I'm going to keep my events at those 13 and try to reduce down a few more supports of upgrades:

• 3 copies of Med Team seems a little excessive, so little excessive, so let's trim one of those.
• The Night Nurse is also bothering me, as it doesn't have a pip, so I think I'll ditch that, too.

And that leaves me with the deck you see. Now let's try it out and see how it plays.

Playtest Notes

As expected, no deck ever survives first contact with the enemy, and the balance of this deck was, unfortunately, well off. Focusing too much on build cards meant that it was too difficult to actually build up in the first place. The deck needs some more events and less supports and upgrades, so out went Defensive Stance to be replaced by subdue, and I also added in Bait and Switch to get some more thwart in there. As a result I needed to trim a few more, so I reduced Ever Vigilant to 2 copies as she can't always be aerial. I also felt I needed standard double resource cards back in there to help build, so I then reduced Energy Barrier down to 2 copies and rejigged some of the other events to try that out.