Now You're Thinking With Portals

As soon as Summoning Spell came out I knew I wanted to make a deck with it, and it was clear that Adam Warlock wouldn't live up to the card's potential. Given how much I love Wanda Maximoff, it was only a matter of time until I threw this deck together.

Let's first talk about Wanda's strengths and weaknesses. Wanda struggles with her economy; Agatha Harkness and Superpowered Siblings (with Quicksilver) is her only innate resource generation; that's not much. In the past, this necessitated that you run cards like Quincarrier with her to make up for her poor economy. This is unfortunate in multiplayer especially where there are typically better Quincarrier users. She struggles with threat; her thwart is completely unreliable (Hex Bolt) and she also struggles with damage. Molecular Decay is too expensive to play early on and the damage is frequently wasted if you need to clear a minion. Scarlet Witch only has 1 ATK herself, so good luck with something as mundane as an Armored Guard.

To Wanda's credit, though, Chaos Magic is the best card in the game to see on turn 1 and she has the Mystic trait, allowing access to cantrips like Spiritual Meditation that effectively allow you to run a 37 card deck. The ROI on Hex Bolt is amazing - 6 thwart for 3 ER is better than For Justice!, 6 damage for 3 ER is much better than Uppercut and comparable to cards like Pinpoint Strike and Gamma Blast, drawing 3 cards replaces itself, and the status effects make you Dollar Store Doctor Strange. Any combination of those effects is usually good and above the efficiency curve with rare circumstantial exceptions. Warp Reality can cancel side schemes and worse.

In the past we relied on Justice to overcome these shortcomings, but today we have better options.

We have White Tiger. We have Kaluu. We have Band Together.

Mulligan Every game begins with the mulligan, and it's crucial to know what we're looking for. Specifically, we need any double resource (Energy/Genius/Strength), Nick Fury, White Tiger, Kaluu, Chaos Magic and Summoning Spell. Spiritual Meditation can be kept if we draw it since it will help us look for those cards. Anything else can be pitched - yes, anything, even cards you would normally be happy to see on turn 1 like Agatha Harkness, although keeping Agatha can be correct in some scenarios. We're after card draw, we want to see as much of our deck as possible to get those cards.

Why?

Living The Dream In a best case scenario, Supernatural Siblings pitches your worst two cards for two better cards. You flip to hero form and Chaos Magic out a Nick Fury, drawing 3 cards (7 in hand). You use an Energy and another card to pay for White Tiger, drawing 2 cards because you play on expert (6 in hand). You use Genius to pay for Kaluu, looking at the top 5 cards of your deck and snagging Strength In Numbers (5 in hand). You pitch one of those cards to play Stinger, then use Strength In Numbers and exhaust all 4 allies (6 in hand). You use Band Together and another card to pay for Avengers Assemble!, or maybe Avengers Mansion...or perhaps Band Together simply pays for Helicarrier and you pitch another card to play The Triskelion or Deft Focus or even Magic Shield. You have 4 allies in play, Nick Fury to block, and you've potentially started developing your economy.

There are other variations that can go well, but this is the top end of what turn 1 can look like. #JustLeadershipThings.

The Overarching Goal We need to shore up Wanda's economy with cards like Band Together so we need a lot of allies; this is why we run 9. We want Chaos Magic and Summoning Spell to give us a moderate to huge discount on allies, so we run beefier allies such as Giant-Man and Goliath. We run all Avengers (except for Nick Fury) to squeeze more value out of these allies with Mighty Avengers and Avengers Assemble!. We rely on Avengers Assemble! for mega wombo combo turns and it's a single copy in the deck, so we depend on having a lot of card draw and cycling (Supernatural Siblings, Spiritual Meditation, Nick Fury, White Tiger and Kaluu) to get to it once we've developed our board.

Great Interactions There's some things that always feel fantastic when they happen:

• Quicksilver exhausts to Strength In Numbers, then readies for free.
• Deft Focus and Helicarrier play the first Hex Bolt of each turn for "free".
• Summoning Spell mills until it lands on Nick Fury which draws you into practically a second turn.
• Band Together pays for something that's ordinarily too expensive to feel good playing such as Molecular Decay.
• Spiritual Meditation or Supernatural Siblings discards a dead Band Together (no allies in play) and completely eliminates the potential downside of running Band Together.
• Hex Bolt puts a bunch of Tough on your allies, or digs for your Avengers Assemble! or Strength In Numbers or Band Together that you needed this turn.
• Magic Shield can keep an ally alive who chump blocks and gets hit for less than expected, although it's often preferable to leave it on the table to thin the deck.

Feels Bad Man Not everything can go according to plan though:

• Summoning Spell lands on Stinger (suboptimal value) or White Tiger (whiffs on the card draw).
• Summoning Spell mills Chaos Magic or Avengers Assemble! on its search for the next ally.
• Nick Fury disables Mighty Avengers upon entering play and doesn't ready or benefit from Avengers Assemble!.

The Wombo Combo

Generally, you'll have built into a board of 3-5 allies leading up to this, but it's not strictly required; I've done it from turns where my only ally in play was Quicksilver. I'll throw out one example of a wombo combo turn, I've done many, you'll get the point.

For this one we'll assume we have Kaluu, White Tiger, Hawkeye, Stinger and Quicksilver in play from previous turns.

Start in alter-ego, pitch 2 cards to Supernatural Siblings to draw 3 thanks to Quicksilver. Use Agatha Harkness and Avengers Mansion to draw 2 cards. We're up to 9 cards in hand. Use as many Spiritual Meditation as you have to pitch the worst cards and fish for more double resources or Band Together. Flip to hero form, use Deft Focus and Helicarrier to play your "free" Hex Bolt; use Chaos Control and Scarlet Witch's Crest to prioritize 2 pips for the card draw (10-11 cards in hand). Swing with your weakest ally who will die to consequential damage, probably something like Kaluu. Damage numbers will assume Mighty Avengers, so 2 damage dealt. Use Band Together and a card, or two double resources, to pay for Nick Fury (hand size neutral). Use Strength In Numbers and exhaust everyone (15-16 cards in hand). Use Chaos Magic on Giant-Man and replace Nick Fury to reactivate Mighty Avengers (13-14 cards in hand). Swing with Giant-Man (7 damage total). Use Band Together and something else to pay for Goliath and replace White Tiger or Hawkeye. Activate Goliath's ability and swing for 6 (13 damage total). Exhaust your hero and hit something (14 damage total) or thwart. Use your best resources in hand (you should have some more double resources or Band Together left at this point but it's not required) to play Avengers Assemble!. Ready everything. Giant-Man adds 6 more damage, Goliath adds 7 more damage, Stinger adds 3 more damage, Quicksilver adds 4 more damage then uses his innate ready and adds 4 more damage again, and whichever ally you had left adds another 2-3 damage, so we're at 40-41 damage dealt so far and we're down to 8-9 cards in hand after that Avengers Assemble!. Use Molecular Decay twice to push damage dealt up to the 50+ range and call it a day. Avengers were assembled. Oh wait, that's Captain America's line isn't it? With 5 Avenger allies and Scarlet Witch in play, he's free, so he could show up for an extra 4 damage at any time. Add Boot Camp from a friendly Aggression player and put up even bigger numbers, or take advantage of the fact that Voltron Iron Man doesn't share any allies with this deck and convince them to drop a single copy of Honorary Guardian to hit you with Lead from the Front.

If you needed to thwart at any point instead of doing damage, all of your allies are doing 3-4 THW between Mighty Avengers and Avengers Assemble!, so pushing out Justice-tier thwart is also manageable if necessary. It isn't though, because the villain's dead. You killed him. Good job!

Flex Spots Captain America can swap out for the new Black Panther ally coming with War Machine to ensure you have Avengers Assemble! or Strength In Numbers when you need it, and Hawkeye is better off as U.S. Agent if you don't need the arrow counters to keep minions under control. U.S. Agent scales better with Mighty Avengers and he can potentially soak two villain hits, which is always impressive.