Engaging in a fun conversation with another Darth in the Quicksilver thread and it got me wondering. How do you build your decks? (Specifically for multi-player, solo is a whole different ball of wax. The impenetrable wall Spiderman below would lose every solo game ever, but in our games he often

For example, when I build Captain America I tend towards a "toolbox" build. With his ability to stand twice and do different things, there are games where I use him almost exclusively as a thwarter, often knocking 10-15 threat off turn after turn. Other games when that is not out of control I might defend once, all day to take off a couple HP. And so forth. Due to how I tend to play him, a card like Shield Toss is used as a resource something like 99% of the time. It is seldom his role to clear the board of minions, though he can should the situation call for it.

By contrast, take someone like Spiderman. I built him for a friend who wants to do nothing but defend. And he is built for that role. The deck is built for the Protector role and it is built to sit with some combination of "Backflip", "Spider Sense" and "Desperate Defense" in hand, Webbed Up on the villain, Indomitable, Unflappable, Armored Vest and Electrostatic Armor on the table at all times. Need thwarting? Uh...Spiderman can do 1? Need to get rid of a strong minion? well...if he is up, he can punch for 2 and a Swinging Web Kick he will usually have the resources for, but otherwise he is not going to help there. Need to get rid of tough status? Sorry, not his job and he does not have the tools for it.

Do you tend to build more "take on all comers" or "defined role" decks?

In the defined role, how much do you sell out for it? IE, a card like Quincarrier is fantastic...but if you built an all-Aggro deck around the cheap and 1 cost aggression cards, it has no place in your deck and you might not even include Power of Aggression....

For what it is worth, I tend to take the same build through every currently released scenario at the time, sometimes true solo, sometimes 2 hand solo, I have done 3 and 4 (and once 6 all the way through) and play with a group ranging from 3 to 6 players at any given time. I do a mix. We have one guy who wants to do nothing but attack. He plays a Hulk Aggression deck that essentially reads "do your attack plus pick from these additional ways to do 3-10 damage this turn".

One of my favorite builds was an early version I did with Black Widow Justice where she basically handled ALL the threat for the group and did a ton of damage without ever attacking or playing an attack card. She was seriously competing with the damage dealers of the group some turns. But I would eschew the defense to pop the key Justice cards because that was her role, the defense was just a nice bonus I had not expected, and the damage was even more unexpected.

Might be some great thoughts thrown into this thread by people who build decks more seriously and intensely than I do, look forward to reading your thoughts

To date (Spider-Woman notwithstanding) I have 4 decks, one per class, and mix-n-match with heroes usually 2 at a time. My Justice (yellow) deck is all about thwart, Aggression (red) is about dealing damage, Leadership (blue) is about big allies although is shifting to hero-readying tricks, & Protection (green) has shifted from healing/preventing damage to actual DEF and tricks to ready if you do defend.

Spider-Woman (whom annoyingly I enjoy quite a bit) can't just have one of these pre-built decks slapped on her. Hopefully I'll have enough extra cards to build a small version of each of the 4 decks for her... Or, maybe she'll just run 25 neutral cards and not properly use her ability, Apartment, or 2 copies of Finesse.

For a 2 player game (my most common) 1 character focuses on thwarting while the other deals with the villain/minions. It helps if one or both can overlap. I almost always run Justice & something else.

8 hours ago, darthweasel2 said:

Nee d to get rid of tough status? Sorry, not his job and he does not have the tools for it.

What are you talking about. Spiderman always takes care of my tough status cards, via Black cat. She da best!

9 hours ago, Venompuppy said:

What are you talking about. Spiderman always takes care of my tough status cards, via Black cat. She da best!

she is but I can't count how many times she has died to a "Hulk does everybody one damage, ooh...encounter card, deal 1 damage to everyone you control" combo and inevitably she flips to something instead of coming to hand. Also, in that specific Spiderman build, he does no go through cards much. Myself, I rotate cards every turn and it is rare indeed to hold a card, but the person that plays him likes to hold and be prepared so I built the deck that way for him. I have seen long games where some of us have gone through our decks 4-5 times and he has maybe cycled once...

(I should mention I build all the decks for the group and keep a deck built for every currently released hero so there is also a bit of degradation in quantity. I bought two Hulks but that still only takes care of two Justice decks for Beat Cop, for example...)

Ive mentioned it before, my goal is 8 aspect decks (now 9 to account for Jessica Drew) with 2 of them for each aspect. Each Aspect deck is pretty much shared by two heroes making a total of 17 decks which will work great once the next 4 Heroes arrive.

I just have to decide which 4 Heroes will be Aggression and which 4 will be Protection. Right now I am leaning toward....

...but Im open to suggestions.

I usually build decks with a solo mindset. Yet half of my plays are 3 player games. When I am building for a dedicated multiplayer game I usually will build a "support deck" for myself. 95% of the time this means a Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, or Spider-Man Protection deck. It's intent is to heal players or outright defend for them, while funneling resources and cards to other players so they can have big turns. This is my preferred method of play.

I used to build "modular" aspect decks and just switch out the heroes used in them. After many play throughs I began to play more suboptimal by choice. Now I usually randomly generate my decks.

All decks are 50 cards. I always include 2 copies of the Power of X (matching the aspects being used). I then shuffle all the aspect cards of my chosen aspect together. I deal out the top 23 cards of the stack, revealing one at a time. If I reveal a card that breaks deck building rules I'll set it aside and deal myself a new card. Then I do the same thing with Basic cards. I always include the 3 double resources and deal my self out the top 7 basic cards, revealing new cards if any deck building rules are broken.

Spider-Woman changes this basic recipe but you just do the same thing adjusting the formula.

I will then eliminate any irrelevant cards and redeal new ones. Examples- if I am dealt a Spycraft I will take it out if the deck doesn't include any spies. Or take out Sorcerer Supreme if I'm not using Doctor Strange (Or a future Mystic hero).

The purpose of this is not only to challenge myself, but to include cards I wouldn't normally. This has lead to some interesting combos but this game isn't very "hard" so I've never found playing this way an impossible task.

I am usually building to play true solo decks and so I tend to build my decks tend to attempt at least a little of everything. I do try to build with a theme and a role in mind but sometimes in the current card pool this doesn't translate as well as I'd like.

That being said, I do believe most of my current solo decks would pair well with one or more players in a multi player format. My Hulk Aggression is a great smashing deck and if paired with someone who can thwart I believe they will get the job done. My Black Widow Leadership deck has a ton of Avengers allies, but if someone else wants to run Iron Man or Hawkeye I can swap them out for other effective allies real easily.

I wonder if part of that is that some aspects are more suited for solo play whereas some aspects are designed for multiple players. That being said with each character's unique cards it is possible to kit each character out several ways even with the current smaller card pool. I think my aggression Hulk could be just as effective (maybe even better) in the protection aspect, and I can't contain my excitement to start building dual-aspect decks with Spider-woman (I'm already thinking about Leadership/Justice just to quinjet Spidey in - assuming the cards come out right).

I think a character's role has a lot to do with which aspect you are pairing them with. In solo you need a little of everything but if you are pairing up with one or more other people I think the game is at a point where you can specialize a character just enough, and could even run the same aspect as someone else with minimal overlap concerning unique cards and allies.

I am leaning towards (when able) a themed deck. By this I mean trying to only have cards that have the hero in them or are support or ally cards. Now this is easy for some heroes. Captain America Protection or Leadership; Hulk or Thor Aggression are easy to do. Captain America Protection can nearly be just Captain America cards given how many he appears in. Where that is not possible I still try and select as many where they do appear as a priority. Captain marvel and Iron Man, my favourite heroes are a problem. Iron Man so far really only appears in one Justice card plus a few background basic and leadership cards but I select all three of the Justice cards. Captain Marvel is also now present in any real numbers although she is in all four decks and it looks like with Ant Man she'll have 9 Aggression cards with her in them. Its not a hard and fast rule but it adds a bit of fun and flavour to my decks.

I don't have any decks built in advance. Whenever I pack up the game, all the cards go back into their Aspect Decks, and whenever we get together to play, we discuss what we're going to play, choose heroes and aspects, then give a brief description to each other of what we're going to be playing for the next game (or series of games as we tend to use the same decks multiple games in a row), and then we build.

We almost always have a Justice player, but the Justice player doesn't always carry the roll of keeping the Threat under control. Aspects more determine the card pool we have access to than role. As an example, in our game last night:

Iron Man Leadership (me): I took on the roll of mainly keeping the Threat low. Our Justice player gave me an extra Thwart, so with I was easily able to clean up 7 Threat a turn without Allies or cards. I also constantly had Allies in play, so when side-schemes came out, I was able to clean them up in a single round.

Spider-Man Justice: Focused on supporting the others and keeping the Villain Stunned and Confused. This player got the Helicarrier and Mansion out very quickly, and I don't actually ever recall them using them, they always offered it to whoever else needed it. This character also handled their own defense and healing when needed, as well as took out the majority of the minions that came out.

Captain America Defense: This character took care of any negative conditions we had, and handled the Blocking for the Aggression player and himself, and sometimes even me (Leadership) every round. He also provided healing.

She-Hulk Aggression: Just constantly laid down the damage. Had big hands almost every turn as the healing from Cap meant she could constantly draw those extra cards, as well as the benefit of the Justice player's extra cards and discount. She never had to defend, and so her character was always ready to deal the damage. She also only included the cards that deal damage as didn't have to worry about stunning, and so pretty much every turn she was dealing out 12+ damage, and sometimes quite a bit more.

With this combination, the only time we ever flipped back to Alter-Ego was when our obligation made us (and She-Hulk, but she flips to Alter-Ego and straight back in the same round with her cards). We've played very different roles with Different Aspects before. The time before we played, I played Black Panther Leadership and my role was to protect the Allies and was able to do so.

I usually build as a solo deck and use that while playing multiplayer and really appreciate themed synergies built into each character.

I had a ton of fun running an aggression deck with Captain America using cards from the Hulk pack. He's more resilient than Hulk (despite the higher HP) and many of those new cards require exclusive use of fighting energy and that's easy to generate with some of his other cards like Super Soldier Serum. Shared this in another post, but one of my favorite moments with it was exhausting Martial Prowess for Toe to Toe then using Shield Block to prevent all damage from the villain's attack before dealing out 5 damage for a low cost. Moments like that when synergies flow is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Doctor Strange is another favorite and I think his greatest strength (as to be expected) is in his own skillset: the invocations. I run him with a solid protection deck to buy him the time and space he needs to control the board and I've been pretty successful with him.

Others, like Hulk, sometimes feel like they need other characters in the game to be effective and I haven't found a great solo deck for him.

Now, Spider-Woman has been a pleasant surprise. Did not expect to like this character as much as I have but she is really good. The deck construction is all over the place though with all four aspects represented in some form or fashion and it would be tough for me to deviate from her preset deck. It's the only preset deck I haven't seen the need to tweak much to be effective anyway.