It seems to me that Leadership has two different flavors neither of which has all of the pieces it probably wants but has just enough to feel distinct. One is going for a very wide board were you can stack Lead from the Front and Avengers Assemble and any other buffs you can get to get a huge turn where you thwart or attack for 30+. The other is to cycle through allies as fast as possible, using ones with strong comes into play abilities and then throwing them in front of the villain, and then replaying them with Make the Call. I've been testing the former deck and my conclusions so far is that it is stronger with more players who can buy you the time you need to set up your big turn and that ideally you want allies with at least 3 HP but the current Avengers available aren't optimal in that regard.

But the deck that just plays all the SHIELD allies and others that do bonkers stuff when they come into play also seems strong, and it is going to be doing lots of relevant stuff much sooner. Do you all think one or the other is currently better? What do you think is needed to push this deck further? Ideally I would like to see some Leadership or Neutral Avengers with 4+ health, and a Hero with an Avenger ally that is 3+ health and is good for multiattacking. Also better ways to heal allies would be nice. What heros are best for these strategies? I've been trying Captain Marvel, which I'll post below for reference, but I'm also looking at Black Panther.

Captain Marvel Avengers

Upgrades
1x Captain Marvel's Helmet (Core Set)
2x Cosmic Flight (Core Set)
2x Energy Channel (Core Set)

Events
3x Crisis Interdiction (Core Set)
3x Photonic Blast (Core Set)
2x Lead from the Front (Core Set)
3x Make the Call (Core Set)
2x Avengers Assemble! (Captain America)
3x Strength In Numbers (Captain America)

Supports
1x Alpha Flight Station (Core Set)
1x The Triskelion (Core Set)
1x Avengers Mansion (Core Set)
1x Helicarrier (Core Set)
2x Quinjet (Captain America)
1x Avengers Tower (Captain America)

Resources
2x Energy Absorption (Core Set)
2x The Power of Leadership (Core Set)
1x Energy (Core Set)
1x Genius (Core Set)
1x Strength (Core Set)

Allies
1x Spider-Woman (Core Set)
1x Hawkeye (Core Set)
1x Vision (Core Set)
1x Falcon (Captain America)
1x Squirrel Girl (Captain America)

I haven't tried out the Avengers Assemble version yet, but I agree with your assessment. There's a huge difference between the two playstyles. I'm currently playing the 'sacrificial allies' version in Ms. Marvel. I decided I needed something to do on the turns I flipped back to Kamala, with the extra cards I drew from supports. It works pretty well. I imagine she'd do well with the Avengers Assemble version too, since she accumulates cards in hand pretty quickly. I'm also interested in seeing if storing Hawkeye or Falcon under Bruce Carreli for a good Quinjet turn is a reasonable strategy, but might even be better to stuff Avengers Assemble and/or Lead from the Front in there instead.

I was pretty scornful of the original list for Captain America's deck, but that was before I saw how the Avengers Assemble deck was supposed to work, and was still in the mindset of disposing of them sooner than later. However, with his ally discount, innate avenger trait, and ability to thwart well, he should be pretty capable of flipping back and forth efficiently, and I bet he loves the extra card draw from Strength in Numbers to dig for a Shield Block or Heroic Strike consistently. I may throw it back together again to give another shake.

But I bet Captain Marvel's great for this too. She also grabs a ton of cards, appreciates the thwart from allies, and Energy Absorption's just the best way to power out high cost cards like Falcon and Avengers Assemble. The only comment I have for this list is that I bet Maria Hill is worth the slot, even if she's not an Avenger. Even in solo, it's just really efficient Thwart, plus it'll be an ally you DO feel free to toss under the bus. I think you're right about it working best in 2 players, though. No matter what hero you use, you're going to have to flip back and forth for the card advantage, I think, and that's always safer when there are two players.

I'll share my Ms Marvel deck below for comparison, but I don't think you'll find any surprises in the difference

Ms Marvel Disposable Allies deck:

15x Signature Deck

1x Genius
1x Energy
1x Strength
2x Power of Leadership

1x Helicarrier
1x Avengers Mansion
3x Haymaker
1x First Aid
1x Endurance
1x Avengers Tower
3x Make the Call

1x Hawkeye
1x Squirrel Girl
1x Falcon
1x Vision
1x Wonder Man
1x Maria Hill
1x Mockingbird
1x Nick Fury

I tried a CM Avengers deck a couple times the past couple days and honestly, I wasn't that impressed. You have to just jump through so many hoops to make Avengers Assemble worth the 4 cost. Both Avengers Assemble and Strength in Numbers are highly situational and frankly, mediocre on their own, and both are only good when played together, and you are taking up so many slots in your deck that could be used for other great leadership cards.

Honestly, I prefer a hybrid approach of the above, preferring the base leadership cards like get ready, and lead from the front (using both Lftf and AA is overkill). Certain cards are good with certain heroes (like morale boost in Captain America) and I like the new allies but Avengers Assemble, Strength in Numbers, and Quinjet are overrated imo.

Here is my Captain America Leadership deck
https://marvelcdb.com/deck/view/6813

The only hoop you need to jump through is having 4+ Avengers out , which does seem to mean not playing the really good non-Avenger allies. SiN is situational in that the situation is having 2+ allies and not going off this turn. As for overkill:

Just AA: 24 Thwart or 26 Attack base

LftF and AA: 36 Thwart or 38 Attack

With 2 players the former won't one hit kill many villains especially on Expert. With 3 or 4 players the health just goes up more. So I think being able to deliver a massive knock out punch has value. The ideal goal I think would be to get the first stage down low and then go off and basically skip the second phase by killing it in a single turn.

The issues are:

1) How many turns does it take to set up?

2) How much can you do while setting up?

3) Once you go off, how long until you can do it again?

Just played a really long game against Norman Osborne. While he gives you plenty of time to set up, he was frustratingly easy to flip back to Norman Osborne from encounter cards. We had quite a few turns where he'd remove 3 counters from boosts or All in a Day's Work, so every turn we'd have to flip him again and take the Green Goblin damage. Times like that, I'd really appreciate the merits of an Avengers Assemble deck. Flip him once and get it over with.

1 hour ago, HamHamJ2 said:

The only hoop you need to jump through is having 4+ Avengers out , which does seem to mean not playing the really good non-Avenger allies. SiN is situational in that the situation is having 2+ allies and not going off this turn. As for overkill:

Just AA: 24 Thwart or 26 Attack base

LftF and AA: 36 Thwart or 38 Attack

With 2 players the former won't one hit kill many villains especially on Expert. With 3 or 4 players the health just goes up more. So I think being able to deliver a massive knock out punch has value. The ideal goal I think would be to get the first stage down low and then go off and basically skip the second phase by killing it in a single turn.

The issues are:

1) How many turns does it take to set up?

2) How much can you do while setting up?

3) Once you go off, how long until you can do it again?

Counting on playing both Avengers Assemble and Lead from the Front in the same turn doesn't seem very practical. It would be amazing, I'll give you that but would be very hard to actually pull off.

Imo, unless playing in higher player count games it is rare that you will get good value out of the extra 2 cost compared to lead from the front (unless you specifically pair with strength In numbers). The Avengers deck also seeks to keep allies in play longer rather than throw them in front of attacks, so you take more damage than you normally would.

Avengers decks looks better on paper than it is in practice.

That said, it is cool that there are options for different decks within the aspect. That isnt really the case for the others.

1 hour ago, Deadwolf said:

Counting on playing both Avengers Assemble and Lead from the Front in the same turn doesn't seem very practical. It would be amazing, I'll give you that but would be very hard to actually pull off.

Imo, unless playing in higher player count games it is rare that you will get good value out of the extra 2 cost compared to lead from the front (unless you specifically pair with strength In numbers). The Avengers deck also seeks to keep allies in play longer rather than throw them in front of attacks, so you take more damage than you normally would.

Avengers decks looks better on paper than it is in practice.

That said, it is cool that there are options for different decks within the aspect. That isnt really the case for the others.

I have gotten it off 2 out of 3 games so far. In one of the heroes that can dig it's not very hard at all unless you just see both copies of each in the first couple hands and have to spend them for energy. Black Panther might have an edge in this regard with Ancestral Knowledge to reshuffle any combo pieces you lose. But if you draw one copy early you can spend it, and then when you see the second copy you can save it. The game I didn't get it I did a Strength in Numbers into Avengers Assemble instead and it was very strong also.

It's true that you don't have allies to chump in the early game. I think having a Protection deck to provide that defense is the best partner for the deck. I just beat Expert Ultron with Protection Captain America and Avengers Black Panther. The fact that the drones just run in and die on either hero helps a lot but also Cap can tank attacks all day long while also keeping threat down. The first scheme completed on turn 2 from a dumb 3 boost on a scheme, but then stalling out the second scheme wasn't hard, aside from one turn where an Advance coming down could have been dicey. Then I had the five allies out and did Lead & Assemble and cleared all the threat on the board, killed Killmonger, and used a Wakanda Forever to finish off the first villain stage. The second stage didn't live long enough for me to assemble the combo again after I had a turn where I Wakanda Forevered 4 times for 20 total damage.

I’ve yet to pull off an AA strategy, rather I’ve been recycling allies, this is especially fun with 2 player leadership and 5 make the calls available - Maria Hill gets to work even harder 💃🏻

Here's the Black Panther deck: https://marvelcdb.com/deck/view/9284

I played Mutagen Formula on Expert with this deck and a Captain America Protection deck. It was basically the perfect game. I had no trouble keeping the scheme empty while killing all the minions that came out, and Green Goblin was basically always either swinging into a defending Cap and dealing no damage, hitting Cap's allies, or stunned. Or scheming which I could safely let him do because the scheme could go to 10 and then I could remove it all the next turn. I got Goblin II down to 3 health and at that point my biggest worry was that he would flip a bunch of attacks and kill himself on my Retaliation before I was ready. I then had a turn where I used Ancestral to shuffle my finishers into my deck, SiN and the City to draw the entire deck, and then I actually discarded down to my hand size at the end of turn for the first time in this game to go into the next turn with the perfect hand of 2xLftF, AA, and two double resources. Next turn I drew a bunch more cards, flipped, and played double Lead and killed Goblin II. Goblin III dealt his encounter cards, which were completely irrelevant because the following attacks and second round with AA burned through his 40 HP in one turn.

I tried Avengers Leadership again and I take it back, I think the deck is pretty good and pretty fun to play also.

I played BP Protection and CM Avengers Leadership and while it does take a while to set up, it can produce a pretty incredible turn.

Now, I'm still not completely sure I would call it better than a traditional leadership deck, but yeah, I think they both get the job done. I think I agree that your really do need a protection ally for support for it to preform its best.

I tried out a BP leadership deck with Avengers Assemble, and think it's a strong option as well. Using Strength in Numbers to cycle a few extra cards lets you Wakanda Forever a lot, and he has the Vibranium and card draw from Golden City to set up a big hand that can Lead from the Front + Avengers Assemble pretty easily. I've only tested him against expert Rhino so far solo, and while I don't like how he very much depends on getting your upgrades + double resources before Wakanda Forevers, he seemed to do ok when his draws were alright. He's probably safer in multiplayer where you can rely on someone else to buy you some time, but the Big Turns were very real.

Edit: Here's the decklist I'm working on, but the numbers could use some fiddling. I might want to squeeze in another Lead/Avengers Assemble to increase consistency of pairing them up, and I think Wonder Man is honestly worth testing. I hate the discard/double discard on him, but a cheap avenger is nice for Strength in Numbers, and sometimes you just do have the cards for him.

https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/318/the-avengers-go-to-wakanda-1.0