Warlocked and Loaded

What's that another Adam Warlock deck designed around abusing Summoning Spell? Oh an it uses oddball allies like Beta Ray Bill and Martyr - what are you doing KennedyHawk? The answer is: gettin' crazy with deck building.

Adam Warlock is super fun. He is a combo players dream and at the same time nightmare. You can put together insane 3-4 card combos but it's much hard to make them consistent. There's been a lot of combo voltron decks with Warlock focused on Yondu or Iron Man and Ronin but here's a new take - what if you could build a minion eating machine that does it all?

Overkill? Check

Piercing? Check

Ranged? Check

Removes Threat? Check

Defeats nearly every minion in the game in one blow? Double-Check

Enter the real heroes of this deck Beta Ray Bill and Martyr.

The Combo

The goal of this deck is to build one of these two allies up in a way that makes them nearly unstoppable. First let's look at the Martyr. She comes with a reliable 2 ATK body and an amazing ability that gives her a tough after taking consequential from defeating a minion.

Now we can lock her spot on the board using Summoning Spell or using many of the discard tricks (e.g. Gamora, Karmic Blast, or Cosmic Awareness) and Quantum Magic. Then we load her up with Energy Spear, Inspired, Laser Blaster, and Sidearm. Heck maybe we even throw down a Boot Camp later in the game. Martyr now has her base 2 ATK +2 (Spear) +1 (Inspired) +1 (Laser Blaster) +1 (Sidearm) +1 (Boot Camp). That's a slappin' 8 ATK ally that gives itself tough when it defeats a minion. Her attacks have piercing, ranged, and overkill - so you still push villain damage and can ignore tough and retaliate on those minions (well you are probably defeating them so MODOK's retaliate doesn't matter anyways. It's also an ally other players are unlikely to be running in multiplayer. She can take down almost every minion except Ronan the Accuser.

She's very self sufficient. She can take out a minion and gain tough - then swing with tough into the villain. Then go after another minion and gain tough and rinse and repeat giving you 5 uses before she falls. On top of that we can use Adam Warlock's Battle Mage ability with protection cards to keep healing her and with the tough status we have two turns to find a protection card to trigger this!

Now - that's cure but what about Ronan - 9 health per player? Can we take him down in solo - yes! Do the exact same stack-up but with Beta Ray Bill. You'll need to throw an Honorary Guardian on him to do this but you end up again getting 5 uses out of him at 9 ATK (AKA 45 damage) and if you hit a minion with each attack you get 10 threat removal on top. You really want to abuse that Battle Mage ability to keep these allies in play.

How to Pilot

This deck like all Adam decks can be difficult to pilot - we aren't simply throwing in the best 20 aspect cards with low costs. Follow these steps to ally Voltron success.

1 Burn Your Deck - You need to blaze through your deck. Use Summoning Spell when you can you are likely to get a useful ally. Nick Fury and Gamora can be used to cycle your deck faster. The worst case ally you get is Pip the Troll who can soak some attacks while you get set up. You want to drump both Mystic Senses, The Sorcerer Supreme and your ally choice Beta Ray Bill or Martyr in this first deck pass.

2 Do a Little Magic - Make good use of Karmic Blast and Cosmic Awareness to deplete you deck and consider holding on to Quantum Magic for when you need to grab combo pieces. This can work one of two ways. Either to bring out your ally - or to grab the one of ally upgrades at the right time. It makes it less costly to use pieces of your combo knowing Quantum Magic can bring them back at the right time.

3 He Protec - Make sure to protect your combo ally at all costs. Adam has a stout 2 DEF and jumps to 3 with Armored Vest he and Pip the Troll should be taking hits while you get your combo set up. You can Hard Knocks and Stealth Strike to control minions until your mega ally is ready to go!

Hot Swaps

I always like to offer a few swaps you can do to change the deck up a bit.

Moar Minions

-Summoning Spell -Boot Camp

+Angela +Command Team

This swap gives you more cards to summon minions but you end up with a second dead target for Summoning Spell so we drop this in place of Command Team to really allow the mega-ally to go wild.

Healing

-1 Hard Knocks -1 Deft Focus

+1 Med Team +1 First Aid

This swap gives you some more healing control over your mega-allies. You need this if you want your ally to stick longer without counting on Battle Mage to proc green.

That's all for this write-up I should have some games up with different variants of this deck soon but I hope you give ally voltron a try with someone other than Yondu at your table soon!