Welcome to the first of our multiplayer articles! As you might have guessed by the title, in this article we use Captain America and Thor both with the Aggression aspect.
With the recent release of the Hulk hero pack, there are now a good amount of Aggression cards and we wanted to see if we could make two decks with the same aspect without having to make many compromises. Let’s take a look at the decks.
Captain America’s Deck
In this character team up Captain America’s main job would be to deal with threat more reliably than Thor. Thankfully, he doesn’t need much help to be good at dealing with threat (Agent 13 and Fearless Determination, along with Cap’s two Thwart and ability to ready himself are all great), so we only included two copies of Chase Them Down (particularly as Thor would focus on minions).
This deck aims to make the most of easy access to physical resources (through cards like Super-Soldier Serum) to use cards such as Jarnbjorn and Drop Kick, as well as getting the kicker on Relentless Assault and the extra damage effect from Hulk.
I can’t remember which podcast it was said on (although I think it was Alter Egos), but one of them said that if you are playing multiplayer games of Marvel Champions it is your duty to include Avengers Mansion and Helicarrier even if you don’t need them for yourself, as they can really help out your team-mate. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with. That extra card or resource will sometimes make a big difference. We included the double resource cards (Energy/Genius/Strength) as well as Down Time and Endurance.
Dividing up the allies between the two decks was interesting. We are making the decks from one collection (i.e. one of every product) so couldn’t include cards like She-Hulk in both decks. We could have included Nick Fury and Mockingbird in both decks (as there are a lot of extra copies of these), but we decided to keep them to one copy across the two decks.
In hindsight, we would probably switch up the distribution of allies between the decks, but more on that later. The main thing is that we decided not to include Hercules or Heimdall in either deck (initially Hercules was in the Captain America deck, but Gareth vetoed him).
One of the new Aggression cards from the Hulk pack that we also wanted to make use of was Martial Prowess. This is going to be particularly handy in this Captain America deck as there are a few events that need a physical resource for an enhanced effect.
We put Combat Training in as Cap can easily ready himself so could get an additional benefit from it. We were just about to get started playing and realised that we hadn’t put Hall of Heroes in either deck, so we threw it into Captain America’s at the expense of one copy of Chase Them Down. Hall of Heroes is better suited to Thor’s deck, so in retrospect this was definitely a mistake.
Thor’s Deck
Thor’s role in this team up would be minion control and big damage when possible. We built Thor’s deck was built with a focus on energy resources where we could as this fuels big Lightning Strikes (which are great fun!). This meant that he grabbed the sought-after Quincarrier!
Playing with more than one hero meant that it was especially worth including Get Over Here! so that you can engage minions from off other characters. This would trigger Thor’s card draw ability but also be useful for getting Guard minions out of Cap’s way so that he can Heroic Strike or Drop Kick the villain.
A card that I’ve been looking forward to using is “You’ll Pay for That!” and I think it will slot nicely into a Thor deck, as he’d be happy to trade Hit Points for threat removal and it also has an energy resource on it.
Mean Swing is an easy include in this deck as Thor will almost always have Mjolnir in play (not just for the +1 Attack, but also for Hammer Throw and the ignore Tough effect on Lightning Strike).
Tigra and Valkyrie are both great allies and would help Thor with minion control. Brawn was included here as he always wants to be attacking so that he can trigger his threat removal ability; he’d be handy for getting rid of Tough statuses.
Battle Fury is another card that will help Thor dish out the damage, particularly as he would be focused on smashing minions. Taking one damage to ready after killing a minion is a small price to pay for another attack (particularly if it’s backed up by a Mean Swing!).
Gameplay
We played the usual gauntlet of scenarios on Expert difficulty. I was using Thor and Gareth was using Captain America. So how did we get on?
| Scenario | Module | Result | Rounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rhino | Bomb Scare | WIN | 8 |
| Klaw | Masters of Evil | WIN | 12 |
| Ultron | Under Attack | WIN | 11 |
| Mutagen Formula | Goblin Gimmicks | WIN | 10 |
Pretty well, it turns out! The results in the table above don’t show the full story though. In our Rhino game we were actually under quite a lot of pressure from the main scheme. Perhaps we were being a bit too cocky by focusing on the damage and ignoring the threat, but at one point Rhino nearly schemed out.
We were on 12/14 threat on the main scheme when we flipped over Advance for our encounter card. At that point we thought it was game over, as only a card with zero boost icons would mean that we didn’t lose. Thankfully, we turned over an Assault, breathed a sigh of relief, then beat Rhino down for the win. But we learned a lesson; don’t be flippant with the main scheme!
Klaw can always be tricky, particularly when backed up by the beefy Masters of Evil. He took the longest out of the scenarios for us to beat, but it was a grind rather than a challenge.
Ultron was a lot of fun and Thor drew lots of extra cards! However, he did meet his demise in this scenario. After a particularly harrowing Villain Phase, Thor was left on two Hit Points. Rather than using his Recover in the very next Hero Phase, Thor did his duty and cleared a few minions before flipping back to Alter Ego with the aim of recovering on the next round.
Fate conspired against him, as both copies of Concussive Blast were revealed in the Villain Phase, the first one as Ultron’s boost card for scheming and the second as an encounter card. Thor was defeated, but Captain America soldiered on, defeating Ultron three rounds later (stunning him during each of those rounds).
Mutagen Formula was a bit of an anti-climax as we calmly and efficiently dealt with minions and schemes, beating Green Goblin in ten rounds.
Deck Change Discussion
[Tim] Straight off the bat, I’d move Hall of Heroes from Cap’s deck to Thor’s as he was defeating a lot more minions and could always do with the card draw. What do you think?
[Gareth] Yeah in this match-up Cap was more focused on managing the Villain’s threat than smashing up the minions which spawned. Both contributed to dealing damage to the Villain, with Cap throwing down the stuns as well after Thor had taken a Guard minion off of him. I would also possibly ditch Chase Them Down, what do you think, Tim?
[Tim] I agree with that! It didn’t seem like you needed it or had much opportunity to use it. I think that Sentry should make his way over to Cap’s deck. He can play him more easily and helps with the thwarting side of things. I also think that we could probably get away with having Nick Fury in both decks due to how quickly he leaves play.
[Gareth] That’s true with Mr Fury he doesn’t hang around long, he gets it done and leaves. Certainly would not complain about playing him effectively for free with Cap (if you draw three) and it would have meant us taking less hits from the Villain which is good. Wouldn’t complain at getting Sentry, I noticed Cap didn’t always have a lot of friends around.
For the last slot to replace I would be tempted to put Counterattack for that extra bit of damage output, though Cap and Thor hardly struggled on that front. What do you reckon?
[Tim] Cap always had his best friend, Lockjaw, around though! But with regards to Counterattack, it’s not a bad choice, but have you thought about Honorary Avenger just to put on She-Hulk? It would put her to five hit points which means that you could get a second thwart out of her then a big attack. At the very least, it has a physical resource on it, so wouldn’t upset the flow of your deck.
[Gareth] Lockjaw is a very good boy and always keeps Cap company. Yeah I can see the use of Honorary Avenger getting an additional attack or thwart out of She-Hulk or Sentry would be awesome. Physical resources would be good, might even use it with Jarnbjorn at some point, though it was amusing watching you gently simmer about me never playing it!
[Tim] I did find it baffling that you never used Jarnbjorn (and I know it will annoy a few readers!), but fair enough we won all the games. One other card I wanted your opinion on was Combat Training, did you think that it earned its spot in your Cap deck?
[Gareth] I think in this team up it might have been better in Thor’s deck or I should have played it on Thor as he was doing a lot more basic attacks than Cap was. I was using Cap’s actions more to keep the threat off the scheme, so I don’t think we got as much value out of it as we could. Not having it in would allow me to have two Honorary Avengers so I would be happy with that!
You’re replacing Sentry with Hall of Heroes do you feel there were any cards which didn’t pull their weight in Thor’s deck?
[Tim] I actually think that the two copies of The Power of Aggression aren’t needed, as there are only four Aggression cards in the deck that cost two or more. I think that I’d like to replace them with two copies of Enhanced Reflexes. It’s not a fantastic card but could be used to help power up bigger Lightning Strikes. What are your thoughts on that?
[Gareth] You did manage some very nice Lightning Strikes and they would let you have more consistency for getting off a big one when needed. I also think they would help Thor set up. I did notice when you were playing solo that Thor had a bad time of it until he had his board set up and then he started to dominate. What did you reckon to “You’ll Pay For That!”?
[Tim] I think it goes well in Thor’s deck as he can leverage his high Hit Points to good effect. I did find it amusing that the first good opportunity I had to use it was against Klaw and he then only hit me for one damage. Inconsiderate git!
Speaking of new cards, how did you find Drop Kick? Was it much effort to ensure that you paid for it with only physical resources?
[Gareth] I think its an ideal card for Cap especially if your looking to try and stunlock the Villain, with both of his Super-Soldier Serum and either a Helicarrier or Martial Prowess, hitting the requirement of just paying with physical was super easy. Very helpful when someone gets knocked out and Cap is left to finish the Villain off…did you enjoy that double Concussive Blast by the way?
[Tim] Double Concussive Blast is my favourite! I like to think that Thor had helped enough that it wasn’t too much of a strain for Cap to finish defeating Ultron by that point…
These all seem like good changes to our decks though. The Rise of Red Skull adds a few new Aggression cards (as well as five new villains!), so we’ll probably have to do a quick revision before we pick these guys up again (Spider-Girl looks spot on for a Thor deck).
Unless you can think of anything else, we’ll leave it there.
[Gareth] Yeah I think that’s covered it certainly looking forward to when these two decide to team up again!
Revised Decklists
Summary
This pairing worked really well and the decks are looking great after we made those changes above. The Rise of Red Skull is released in less than a week after this article’s publication and it has some Aggression cards in Spider-Woman’s deck, so we ‘ll make a few adjustments for next time.
We will definitely be doing another Cap n’Thor Maximum Aggro team up with the new scenarios. We also plan to do other team ups involving only one aspect. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any feedback, please feel free to let us know!
Cheers,
Tim
Tabletop Timesinks 