[Tim] We’ve only done one of these style of articles before, way back in August, so we thought that it was time to revisit this pair.  The card pool has expanded for the Aggression aspect with the recent release of the Wasp hero pack, and the villain pool has opened up significantly with The Rise of Red Skull.  In this article we are going to take Captain America and Thor through the new villains using only the Aggression aspect for both decks.

We made both decks using only one collection, so there wouldn’t be more copies of cards in total than could be had from one of each product.  For example, we couldn’t both include three copies of Drop Kick in our decks (Captain America got priority on that one!).  After a bit of chopping and changing, below are the decks we ended up using.

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Captain America’s Deck

In this pairing, Captain America would be the main source of threat removal.  Thor was still expected to contribute, but that wouldn’t be his focus.  Brawn always makes the cut in Aggression decks, but threat is why the questionable To the Rescue! was included in Cap’s deck.  If nothing else, it has a physical resource.

Gareth went for a lot of allies, as Steve Rogers’ Living Legend ability would make them a little easier to play.  Gareth was adamant about including Lockjaw, which is fair enough as I’m also a fan, and then put in a decent-sized selection of other allies, including the new Ironheart basic ally.

For events, Drop Kick was added to help dish out even more stun effects to go along with Heroic Strike.  A couple of copies of Relentless Assault (great card) and Piercing Strike were also included, the latter being very useful against a lot of the harder scenarios in The Rise of Red Skull.

For resources, the usual three double basic resources were included, but Gareth opted not to go for The Power of Aggression, as he reasoned that the Super-Soldier Serums would make up for it.

The deck was quite light on support cards, only including the (in my opinion) mandatory when playing multiplayer, Avengers Mansion and Helicarrier.

For upgrades, Jarnbjorn was included even though Gareth wasn’t keen on it (last time we played he kept on discarding it to pay for other cards, something I think he did just to wind me up!).  Martial Prowess would also help play the ten attack events included.  As for Down Time, with a Recover of 3 it would most likely prove useful.

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Thor’s Deck

I would be using Thor again and my main task would be clearing the field of minions and then smashing the villain as much as possible.  My kind of job!  Since we’d just had an influx of new cards, I decided that I wanted to include as many as them as was reasonable.

For allies, Wasp had just been released and looked perfect for a Thor deck (with his preference for energy resources).  War Machine was an ally that I hadn’t really tried out before.  I was put off by his cost of four, but I was going to include the new resource card, The Power in All of Us, so I thought, why not?  Heimdall isn’t new, but with the aforementioned new resource card as well as Team-Building Exercise, I thought that I’d be able to play him reasonably often.  Tigra and Valkyrie are excellent anti-minion allies, so were easy choices for inclusion.  Finally, Sentry is just too good of an ally not to include.  Gareth didn’t have room for him in his Captain America deck, so I felt obliged to include him (even though he’d be hard to play without The Power of Aggression).

Moving onto events, I’d just got hold of full-art copies of Get Over Here!, a card that I was going to include anyway, but having fancy new versions meant that I was absolutely going to use them.  It’s good for Thor in multiplayer anyway, so it was a no-brainer.  Into the Fray was a new event from the Wasp pack that I was looking forward to testing out.  It would help me defeat minions and also allow me to chip in with a little bit of threat removal.  Win-win!

For resources I went with the usual double basic resources, as well as the previously mentioned The Power in All of Us, opting not to use The Power of Aggression as well.

For supports I of course included Avengers Mansion and Helicarrier, and won the guilt trip to snag Quincarrier for my deck (Cap would be fine without it).  I also included two copies of Team-Building Exercise, as this would let me play my Asgard and Avenger cards a little bit cheaper.  Also, I wanted to give the card a try.

For upgrades, I took the usual Down Time, as Thor is usually taking hits to the face and needs all the recovery he can get.  I also went for two copies of Lie in Wait.  I think that this will work well with cards like Get Over Here! or Thor’s Defender of the Nine Realms.

So those are the decks, how did we get on?

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The Games

We decided to start with what we rated as the weakest villain and then work our way up.  We were playing on Expert difficulty and using the default encounter modules.  We also were not playing it as the campaign.

Villain	Result	Rounds
Absorbing Man	WIN	8
Crossbones	WIN	6
Taskmaster	WIN	10
Zola	WIN	10
Red Skull	LOSS	7 (Threat)
Red Skull	WIN	11

So nearly a clean sweep, but with a slight wobble against Red Skull.  He absolutely swamped us with side schemes and minions, and he eventually schemed out on the seventh round.  It was a good game though!

The decks obviously functioned well (we won 5 out of 6 games), but it’s worth talking about the cards we used.

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The Cards

Lie In Wait was a great addition to my Thor deck!  I’m not sure that I’d increase it to three copies since you can only have one in play at a time, but it was definitely a welcome inclusion.

Into the Fray was another great card, and one that I think will be even better in True Solo play, as threat is something that Aggression and Thor have struggled with so far.

Wasp is another ally to add to Aggression’s ever-expanding list of good allies.  She’s not going to be as good in a deck that isn’t as focused on energy resources, but for Thor she was perfect.

War Machine was a bit lacklustre to be honest, even though I could play him easily enough.  Having Toughness meant that he could absorb a big hit for me, but most of the time I would have rather had an ally that had a more immediate impact.

Speaking of which, Heimdall did a great job!  With Team-Building Exercise and The Power in All of Us, he was very easy to get into play.  I might be tempted to drop Team-Building Exercise down to one copy though, as the second one was often redundant.

[Gareth] With the coming of part two of Maximum Aggression we had a few more cards to play with.

We had a few games and tweaking of decks here and there, Cap settled into the role of dealing with the threat. Let’s face it Loki got all the brains between him and Thor.

This didn’t mean Cap sat back and let Thor do all the work. But he did all of his damage through events. I can say I particularly like Drop Kick, Cap has plenty of physical resources to play with so you can always get the kicker. Piercing Strike deserves an honourable mention as it set Tim up with a beautiful Into the Fray for getting rid of 5 threat.

I had all of the Hulk family in my deck and I must say I really like them all but if I had to pick a favourite it would have to be Brawn.  The point of damage to ping tough is lovely and he gets rid of a threat as well, 3 cost for 5 damage and 5 threat all in packets of one is just divine.

Ended up putting To The Rescue! in to help the team with threat, in a different group I probably wouldn’t include it but Cap’s main job was threat and it did prove useful.

Spider-Girl was a bit of an afterthought and was included because of Steve’s ability to make her 1 cost. I don’t think she’s bad but she doesn’t excite me, I think that’s because she can be a bit situational and not getting maximum value irritates me a little.

Have to like Ironheart effectively being 0 cost for Steve is excellent and let’s face it who doesn’t like card draw.

Nick Fury was fun too, I’ve come to the conclusion he should always be played for the cards with very few exceptions, he ends up being a slightly better Ironheart in my opinion.

Much to Tim’s chagrin I’m fairly meh when it comes to Jarnbjorn, though I think I might change my mind if I was focused on dealing damage rather than dealing with threat.

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Summary

[Tim] That’s it for another Maximum article.  We had fun playing games with both of us using the Aggression aspect, which definitely had the tools necessary to defeat The Rise of Red Skull villains.  For Marvel Champions, I’m not a fan of buying multiple copies of products just to get more of the same cards, so I was pleased to see that one collection (i.e. one of each product) was enough.

With the imminent release of both the Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch hero packs (in the UK at least), Gareth and I are going to pick another aspect for us to max out on.  Leadership is a bit too much of a low-hanging fruit at the moment, so it’ll most likely be either Justice or Protection next.

We hope you enjoyed this article!

Cheers,

Tim & Gareth