Turn the Tide, Vol 3: Ultron

Turn the Tide Vol 3: Ultron

I. Welcome to Volume 3 of Turn the Tide!

Greetings all and welcome to Volume 3 of Turn the Tide! This is a series where I build decks designed to face off against a specific villain. The format for each volume will begin with an overview of the villain’s deck before transitioning to the hero deck I designed to defeat it. This series is a hobby and I don’t know how regularly I’ll be able to upload. However, I plan to upload this series on weeknight evenings (hopefully bi-weekly), US Eastern Standard Time. I’ll be aiming for Wednesday/Thursday, real life permitting. Unless stated otherwise, I am facing all villains on the Expert I difficulty, with their recommended mod sets.

In this volume, we’ll be squaring off against Ultron. Ultron is final villain in the core box and he is, once again, a step up from the previous villain. On the surface, Ultron is the prototypical “minion” villain that covers the board in a swarm of drones. These drones can complicate your hero turns by boosting his attack, giving him minions with the guard trait, and deviously makes your deck less consistent. So let’s figure out what makes this android tick and get to the decks!

II. Villain: Expert 1 Ultron

Mod Sets: Under Attack, Standard 1, Expert 1

Stats: 22/27 HP, 2/2 SCH, 2/4 ATK

Villain Card Effects:

Ultron II: Forced Interrupt: When Ultron attacks you, put the top card of your deck into play facedown, engaged with you as a Drone minion. Until the end of his attack, Ultron gets +1 ATK for each Drone minion engaged with you.

Ultron III: Each Drone minion gets +1 ATK and +1 hit point. Ultron cannot take damage while a Drone minion is in play. When Revealed: Search the encounter deck and discard pile for the Ultron's Imperative side scheme and reveal it. Then shuffle the encounter deck.

Traits: Android

Villain Schemes: 3 schemes, 3/10/5 threat, 1/1/1 escalation per player

Main Scheme Effects:

• 1A: Setup: Put the Ultron Drones environment into play. Shuffle the encounter deck. Advanced to stage 1B.

• 1B: When Revealed: Each player puts the top card of their deck into play facedown, engaged with them as a Drone minion.

• 2A: When Revealed: Each player puts the top card of their deck into play facedown, engaged with them as a Drone minion. Advance to stage 2B.

• 2B: Forced Response: After placing threat here during step one of the villain phase, each player must choose to either place 2 threat here or put the top card of their deck into play facedown, engaged with them as a Drone minion.

• 3A: When Revealed: Each player puts the top card of their deck into play facedown, engaged with them as a Drone minion. Advance to stage 3B.

• 3B: Threat cannot be removed from this scheme. If this stage is completed, the players lose the game

Environment: Ultron Drones: Each facedown Drone minion engaged with a player has a base SCH of 1, a base ATK of 1, and a base hit points of 1. Forced Response: After a facedown Drone minion is defeated, place that card in it's owners discard pile.

Deck Stats (including mod sets and Standard1/Expert 1): 33 Card Deck

Boost icon distribution (0/1/2/3): 13/7/10/3

Avg Boost Icons/card: ~1.09

Boost Star Effect icons: 8

Deck Breakdown (Minions/Side Schemes/Treacheries/Attachments): 3/4/21/5

Minions: 3x Advanced Ultron Drone

Side Schemes: 1x Drone Factory, 1x Invasive AI, 1x Ultron's Imperative, 1x Under Attack

Treacheries: 3x Android Efficiency, 2x Rage of Ultron, 2x Repair Sequence, 2x Swarm Attack, 2x Concussive Blast, 7x Standard I, 3x Expert I

Attachments: 1x Vibranium Armor, 1x Concussion Blasters, 1x Program Transmitter, 2x Upgraded Drones

Cards of Note: 2x Upgraded Drones, 1x Drone Factory, 1x Under Attack, 1x Vibranium Armor, 2x Concussive Blast, 1x Gang-Up

III. Villain Threat Overview

What Can Go Wrong? Ultron is based around drone spam and forcing you to discard cards from your deck. On their own, the drones are about as unmenacing a minion as they come with just 1 HP and 1SCH/1ATK. However, Ultron can put out a lot of them on the table, boosting his attack (directly and indirectly), indirectly boosting the amount of threat he can place on the main scheme each turn. A single drone is hardly a threat, but it can be easy to either fall behind or have “treadmill” turns where you struggle to do anything other than kill drones and thwart for the bare minimum, with the promise that Ultron will throw more drones at you the following turn.

Discarding from your deck is a funky challenge to play around. Your first time playing, this may initially seem like a weak villain effect, as it doesn’t directly affect your turn. Ultron doesn’t snatch resources from your hand the way Radioactive Man does in in the Masters of Evil mod set, and Radioactive Man is just a minion. However, it does make your deck less consistent, and it is very possible for Ultron to turn your deck-defining cards into drones you won’t have a chance at playing until your next deck cycle.

I haven’t had this happen in any of my playthroughs, but Ultron has a devious (and thematically fun) answer to players who flip down to alter-ego to avoid his drone spam. Ultron’s scheme has three phases, and the final phase cannot be thwarted. 3 phases means it’s okay to let him scheme sometimes but watch those Advances when he’s in phase 2.

The Under Attack mod set gives Ultron a couple of answers to allies. Retaliate and treacheries that damage all of your characters can eat into voltron strategies.

In short, Ultron demands you have consistent answers to his challenges while making your deck less consistent. Let’s talk about how to do that.

General Strategy: Ultron demands lots of snappy answers to his encounter deck and he punishes plays that rely on single, powerful, cards that just do one thing. Allies are great, as they always are, for their versatility. Allies or event cards that can do something else on top of killing minions will serve you well. Aggression has a lot of these, but all the aspects at least have good allies, and many hero kits do too.

There are a couple ways you can play around Ultron swiping cards from your deck. Having multiple copies of key support or upgrade cards can provide some useful redundancy, as can recursion abilities or cards that let you play or seek cards directly from discard.

Ultron never gains steady or stalwart and he doesn’t produce drones when he schemes. Flipping down when he’s confused can cut down on the number of drones you’re facing while letting you benefit from alter-ego bonuses. Lastly, Ultron’s scheme has three phases. Ultron is likely to scheme out of phase 1 pretty quickly, and while the consequences for that are immediately pretty minor, Ultron’s summons a lot more drones in phase 2. It can be worthwhile to stay in phase 1 as long as possible, to build up your board while there are fewer threats on the table. Then, when you absolutely need to flip down, put all of your resources towards making the best of your last turn before Ultron enters phase 2. Phase 3 is unthwart-able, so do everything you can to stay in phase 2, unless you’re absolutely about to win the game.

IV. Hero Deck: Psylocke (Aggression)

Ultron’s goal is to drown you in drones and deny you the tools to keep your head about water. Our goal with this deck is simple: deny both parts of Ultron’s plan. This deck has 10x cards capable of inflicting confused, 17x psionic cards Psylocke can recur with her AE ability (including two allies), 5x skills she can recur with Training Regimen, 2x copies of Mutant Education to recur her whole hero kit, and Cerebro to call in nearly any ally still in your deck.

The plan is confuse Ultron, flip to AE, get rewarded with a bunch of cards and benefits, flip up to hero, and confuse Ultron again while dealing damage and keeping threat low. Psylocke’s weapons and hero cards give her a lot of flexibility to modify her hand to fit exactly what she needs. Mental Detection is a great tool in this match-up. All the confuse means threat should be low, allowing you to use the card to thwart small amounts of threat while getting to see more cards. Utopia’s re-ready gives even more flexibility, letting you switch your weapon forms twice within a single turn, whenever you play an ally. Playing an ally and an event is very possible with this deck six double resource cards, no shortage of targets for The Power of the Mind and Team-Building Exercise, and Psylocke’s psy weapons for extra resources.

Early and mid-game, you will have to intelligently use Psylocke’s modular abilities to address immediate needs while setting up your board. Psionic Redirect can let you safely stay in hero form a turn longer while you build up your board. Telepathic Suggestion can similarly shield you from a treachery card. While you generally want to deck cycle, it’s worth considering holding on to these cards if you’re stuck in hero form without a confuse or an ally. Consider using your AE ability to cycle these cards back in if you draw or discard them early.

In late game, Psylocke’s AE ability, Professor X, and Cerebro becomes a powerful combination, ensuring you have on demand confuse and thwart. Put the good Professor on speed dial and let him do his thing while you throw damage at Ultron. Once you reach this stage, victory should only be a turn or two away!

V. Side Decks and Alternate Strategies

Alternate Hero Ideas: Just about any of the “anti-minion” heroes (ex: Thor, Rocket, Winter Soldier, etc. Tigra in a few weeks, as of this writing) will have a strong matchup against Ultron, though be warned that cards which seek minions in the encounter deck will have relatively little value.

Other Deck Strategies: Aggression decks are absolutely spoiled for choice against Ultron. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to use aggression staples like Relentless Assault, Into the Fray, and Chase Them Down. The aggression upgrades (Marked and Suppressing Fire and Surprise Move work great, too. Ultron is also one of the best villains to face with a No Quarter + Follow Through deck, as drones provide opportunities for big overkill numbers. Honestly, it’s probably easier to list the aggression cards that are bad in this match.

Justice can execute the confuse-lock strategy very well and can combo it with Float Like a Butterfly for additional damage. I actually tried that in an earlier version of this deck, but I thought aggression would be more fun. Regardless, Justice can pursue an alternate strategy, in phase 2, of letting Ultron place more threat on the main scheme, rather than place drones. Justice has naturally great thwarting, which it can use to combo with the “0 threat” attacks like Turn the Tide or Waylay to attack Ultron after you thwart down the main scheme.

VI. Conclusion

True to his robotic nature, Ultron has a plan and he sticks to it. By turning your own cards into drones, he tests players for their deck and gameplay consistency. Ultron has a way of turning small stumble on turn 2 into a death spiral by turn 4. Like the other Core Box villains, he’s fully vulnerable to the game’s status cards and these can allow solo players to set the tempo and eventually outpace him. Getting to that point is the challenge. As an aside, this is the most fun I have had playing a deck I’ve made for the series. I know it’s only Volume 3, but I really enjoyed the puzzle of figuring out what I need to do now while setting myself up for success in future turns. That’s arguably every game of Marvel Champions, but Psylocke’s recursion and Psi-weapon manipulation made each turn delightfully think-y. I’ll definitely be saving this deck. : )

That’s all the villains in the Core Box, but we’re not done with it yet. The box comes with two villain modular sets, The Doomsday Chair and Legions of Hydra, that are unused in all the default villain encounters. The extra mod sets can be pretty fun and, incidentally, the Core Box mod sets are quite challenging. Volume 4 will be a rematch against Klaw with these mod sets swapped in. I plan to do a similar rematch at the end of each expansion box.

Speaking of Volume 4, you can expect that later this week. I already have deck and have successfully taken it through the ringer. Until next time and I hope you enjoy some Marvel Champions! Thanks for reading.