Wakanda Forever and Ever 2: Electric Boogaloo

Hello, and welcome to my combo Leadership Black Panther deck, an update to the one I posted just over a year ago. If you're new to this one, it's very simple: play allies, draw all the cards, play Wakanda Forever! And Ever, and Ever, and Ever... until the villain is dead.

This write-up will cover the card choices for the deck, some core strategies, and then conclude with some suggestions for changes to fit your personal taste. Also, in the first version of this deck, I suggested a priority for what kinds of cards you should play, and put Panther's upgrades at the top. However, I'm going to be changing the strategy a bit for this one, so be sure to read everything, not just about the new cards.

Cards

As you should know by now, the most important card is Strength In Numbers. Often it can allow you to double your the cards in your hand, and there have been some nice improvements in the last year, namely this next card:

Stinger has been such a wonderful addition. She has two great qualities: low cost (only 1!) and doesn't count towards your ally limit. Along with The Triskelion and Avengers Tower, that's now up to 6 allies you can have on the board at once. Additional allies include 2-3 allies so they won't cost too much to build your draw engine. Another great ally is Ant-Man, who can cost 1-4, depending on how many resources you have; early game, he's an easy 1-cost ally like Stinger who can simply help build your board state cheaply.

Resource builders include Avengers Tower (which doubles as a way to increase your ally limit) and Quincarrier, both of which can be played for a discount with Team-Building Exercise. TBE can also provide a discount on every ally (except Ant-Man but including Shuri), and The Golden City, a wonderful resource accelerator if you have a scenario that allows/requires flipping to alter-ego a lot, like Kang. And finally, there is one copy each of Enhanced Awareness and Enhanced Reflexes, but these two could be any of the resource if you prefer something else. I simply chose and because it has a lot of already. These are particularly good because they can be used on anything, unlike Avengers Tower and Team-Building Exercise, the main target being Wakanda Forever.

Outside of that, Call for Aid is included for two reasons: to find allies to play and help cycle your deck faster. Additionally, TBE doesn't work with Make the Call, but I'll talk about that later. And finally, Endurance is included because you'll be taking a lot of damage.

Strategy

The first thing you should do is decide which Black Panther upgrade you want to play. If you have a minion-heavy scenario, Energy Daggers might be helpful; focusing on the villain? Perhaps his Panther Claws instead. If you're really worried about threat, Tactical Genius might do some work, but might I suggest instead Vibranium Suit? The main reason for this is because you will often not want to use your allies as chump blockers unless you have another ready to go. This can be ok, but you will be chump blocking less often than decks normally do, and the Vibranium Suit can really help your longevity. If you draw it in your starting/mulligan hand, you can make a decision about any of the other three to grab with T'Challa's setup ability and remember that you can simply use it as a resource.

In fact, please don't be afraid to pitch any further upgrades as resources early. Just get one upgrade down so you can use your Wakanda Forevers as you draw them. By the end of the game, you'll be drawing so much and will have so many resources that you will often be able to play your extra panther upgrades easily while still affording to play Wakanda Forever.

The main early game strategy is essentially playing all the allies you can and Strength in Numbers will help you dig a bit faster. Even if you're only using it for two cards, it's still helping you dig, just make sure that you stay on top of the threat on schemes and any minions and things you'll need to deal with. Don't be afraid to aggressively play Call for Aid to cycle your deck more quickly, even in the early game. Additional early game priorities are your resource generators, especially Avengers Tower, since it helps you with your ally limit as well. Additionally, The Triskelion will help you increase your ally limit as well.

Once you have reached mid-to-late game, you should have cycled through your deck (or have come close to it) and will be able to start playing Strength in Numbers for particularly powerful turns. Remember that you will often be able to play not only Wakanda Forever, but also some of his Panther upgrades you didn't play earlier. You can additionally play Avengers Assemble! and actually use those allies to help burn through side schemes, minions, or the villain. Alternatively, play more Strength in Numbers because drawing cards is really fun. When you have 6 allies in play, a Call for Aid can help cycle your deck more quickly to get your Strength in Numbers, Wakanda Forevers, and anything else back into your deck and into your hand.

Customisation

There are a lot of moving parts to this deck, and you may not like all of the cards, but often just taking out one card for another isn't always the best option. Additionally, some cards can stand in for others that might not seem so obvious.

Rapid Response is honestly just there in case you need an emergency block and don't want to impact your next turn in case you don't have another ally. A cheaper alternative is Ready for Action, but it will exhaust your hero to defend, so it won't be available for Strength in Numbers on the following turn. That in and of itself isn't the worth thing, but if the whole reason you're taking RFA is to save resources, it doesn't necessarily save you resources, so it just depends, and they just kinda even out in the wash.

You may prefer not to use the Enhanced cards, or you may prefer Make the Call over Call for Aid. In either case, I would suggest making the following changes: -2 Enhanced (Awareness, etc.), -2 Call for Aid; +2 Make the Call, +2 The Power of Leadership

Maybe someone at your table is planning to use Quincarrier. Don't worry! And don't think you have to run to Helicarrier, which won't work with Ant-Man or Make the Call if you swapped those. You can instead replace it with Avengers Mansion instead since it can be played for three with TBE and has a better effect anyway.

The single Avengers Assemble! could be All for One, a newly released card from Wasp. It works a bit differently though, so the decision is based on how you want to use your allies. Avengers Assemble is often going to be a last-turn ditch effort by your allies to sacrifice themselves to defeat the villain. All for One, however, will be used during the game itself on turns where you did not draw Strength in Numbers (or perhaps want to save it for next turn) but still want to use your allies for some value. I ultimately did not include it because I often found that I didn't have difficulty finding Strength in Numbers almost every turn since you're drawing so much of your deck every turn. Additionally, All for One doesn't help late game when you have many cards and not much to spend all those resources on. AA helps turn those Vibraniums into more cards to dig for what you want or even good uses from your allies and fellow players on the board.

One final comment on Honorary Avenger, a card that has not been included. Although Shuri can dig for it, she will not be an Avenger until after she enters play. If you have an increased ally limit from Avengers Tower, Shuri will force two ally discards. If you don't have the increased limit, it doesn't matter if she's an Avenger anywayy. So late game, you're not going to play her anyway, and early game, it often doesn't matter if she's an Avenger or not. One final point is that if you draw HA first, Shuri can't really dig for it since she only checks your deck and not your discard pile. However, all of that said, if you prefer to include it, she can fish for her own Honorary Avenger, and that's a wonderfully memeable moment. If you'd like to include it, I would suggest drop either Avengers Mansion, Enhanced Awareness, or Rapid Response.

Final Comments

A special thank you to @OldMr1Up, who asked for an update on this deck and inspired me to finally sit down and work on it again. I have spent the better part of the last couple of weeks playing this deck almost exclusively through an entire Red Skull campaign, Kang, Mutagen, as well as Klaw and Ultron, all on expert. It has been a blast to play again with all of the new tools from the releases in the past year. I hope you enjoy the new and improved Wakanda Forever and Ever.