“Beat Your Swords into Plowshares” (and vice versa!)

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” — Isaiah 2:4

”Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.” — Joel 3:10

These two verses are in different contexts and are intentionally related. But, you didn’t come here for a Bible Study! You came here for a Marvel Champions’ deck!

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This deck is themed around turning “swords/spears” (i.e., minions) into “farming equipment” (i.e., card draw), and then turning that “farming equipment” into damage!

The key combo is Pinned Down with "Bring It!". Bring It is also an energy resource, so you can heal 1 and get +1 ATK while (generally) drawing 2-3 cards.

The one big downside of having 2-3 Pinned Down minions is that they’ll all scheme if you flip down, which means you can’t utilize those sweet Sunglasses. To offset this, we’re running 2 each of Ready for a Fight and Practiced Plan.

Ready for a Fight requires a physical resource, and we’re intentionally running heavy on energy. This is where Quincarrier comes in. This is already a great card for Wonder Man to hit more overpay with energy kickers. But, here, it also covers that tricky requirement! And, it’s perfect because we don’t really want to flip down with this deck until we have the Sunglasses out, and we have Build Support and even Evaluate Threat to help find it pretty quickly. Ideally, we want to use Build Support on it and save Evaluate for an ally, who is very likely to be Nick Fury (for more farming and damage!).

This brings us to another little combo in this deck. In low player counts (especially solo), I’ve found Active Altruism and Everywhere All at Once to provide plenty of ways to manage threat, especially so once you get Mr. Hollywood into play, which is my personal favorite of his cards. No exhaust, and it gives every card 1 free overpay! Seems fitting for a movie star to have lots of money to spend on extravagance! With all that threat removal, we can clear schemes (including Player Side Schemes) pretty consistently, especially when the Sunglasses can get us what we need when Ready for a Fight flips us up on the villain phase. With all this access to threat removal, Turn the Tide becomes a very solid, cheap way to deal some damage (while also healing 1 and getting +1 ATK, thanks to the resource type).

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My favorite way to play Wonder Man so far is to run cheap energy events (ideally, that work well together) and to basic attack almost as soon as Ionic Physiology is full. That way, you open it up for more healing!

This deck runs an intentionally low cost curve. We don’t need nor want any more resource cards with this low of a cost curve, and the ones we have specifically work well with his overpay events (Active Altruism and Ionic Blast).

It’s also worth noting that Energy Siphon can be a great way to pay for our allies. If you can get it in your opening mulligan, you can start tucking and healing right away!

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For allies, we have the aforementioned Nick Fury, who’s great to dig for combos and/or upgrades. Brother Voodoo is very nice in such an event-heavy deck, and he can find us "Bring It!" for more draw (note the limit of once per turn though). Finally, we have Patriot, who combos really nicely with "Come Get Me, Bub!". The deck doesn’t necessarily rely upon him, but it’s very nice to have access to a tough ally in high damage scenarios or a steady source of 2-damage a turn in minion heavy scenarios. "Come Get Me, Bub!" may not have an energy resource, but it already heals 3, gives a tough, and helps set up your farm equipment!

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Other options to consider are a 3rd copy of "Come Get Me, Bub!". I’ve found 2 to be the perfect number for me because once I have 2-3 Pinned Down minions, I don’t really want any more. You could also consider Face the Past. Grim Reaper is one of the best targets for Pinned Down (especially with Ready for a Fight, which can be triggered on a minion if you want to avoid the villain’s attack). If Grim Reaper is pinned down, it effectively shuts down the whole nemesis set! I’ve personally preferred to let him come out naturally because I want to keep the option open with this deck to attack the villain on any given turn.

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I hope you enjoy this deck! I’ve been having a lot of fun fine-tuning it to this point.