And the Legend of the Steve, was WAY HARDCORE

Well, you're not hardcore, unless you live hardcore. So this deck is all about making allies hardcore.

Overview:

There's quite a few high cost Avenger allies in the deck, and there are quite a few ways to get them played easily. Once one of them are out, you add upgrades to them, and keep them out with Rapid Response. Once you've assembled the team, you've got late game punches ready to go. At a five ally limit, you can use Strength in Numbers or Avenger's Assemble (or both) to their greatest potential.

Tactics - Early Game:

First off, as a Living Legend Steve knocks off the cost of an ally. If you get a chance to get Avenger's Tower or a Super-Soldier Serum early, do it. With two Super-Soldier Serums, an Avenger's Tower, and Team-Building Exercise. A lot of the time, you'll just be playing allies for "free" or with a single Dual-Resource card. Steve makes it easy to invest in your board, since he basically has three defense with the shield, and can Shield Block pretty often, and if you're in a pinch on threat let ol' Cap eat a card so that he can untap and thwart again. Preferably Iron Man gets to the table early. That way when you start drawing ally upgrades you can just add them on for free. Ronin is a good second pick as him with a Reinforced Suit, gets nice and beefy for only one resource. If you're able, Team Training is great to get out early game. It doesn't have an immediate punchy effect, but overtime it has tremendous value.

Tactics - Mid / Late Game:

You'll start to gain beefy allies and turn by turn uses their basic attacks, Typically you'll be thwarting with Cap to save ally attacks. Keep in mind that playing Agent 13 is not an Avenger, playing her can be nice for short term removal of threat, but in the long run maxing out at five Avenger allies is typically better from what I've seen. Keep in mind that you can keep allies on the board through First Aid as well.

Once you have some resource generation on the board, you'll hope to see Giant-Man. This guy can punch. If you get at least a Reinforced Suit on him, he can do 18 damage. With both Inspired and a Reinforced Suit it can be 24 damage.

After getting 5 allies, don't be afraid to use them all for Strength in Numbers, even though they are hardcore beef-cakes now. After adding a lot of your Upgrades and Support to the board, and what's left are your Event cards, which includes Avenger's Assemble. So not only are you getting more options with cards in your hand, but you can untap everyone since they are all Avengers and essentially start your turn over again. I'll typically get a villain on their last stage and realize that with a maxed-out set of allies, I can typically attack rush my way to victory.

Final Thoughts:

I'm not a big Cap fan in term of the comics and such, but the versatility of his toolkit with Living Legend trait, Shield Throw, Shield Block, the Heroic Strike stun, I Can Do This All Day in combination with Fearless Determination make him a very compelling character to play in Champions just for his hero cards. Now that we have more interesting allies, and new Leadership geared tools like Team-Building Exercise, Leadership has become overwhelmingly the best aspect.

Here's hoping that the Justice, and Protection aspects continue to get filled out a bit more so that this deck isn't the only one that lives hardcore.