Sample Marvels Deck - go all out, or not at all

[Onslaught]

I've noticed that a lot of people on here use The Marvels, but I haven't heard much discussion about strategies that are only made possible by utilizing the new cards. Instead, it seems like a lot of "Marvels decks" take an existing team and add any Marvels cards to the deck as an afterthought. Or, they feature some kind of 1:1 replacement, like taking Spawn out of a deck and adding The Inhumans, or removing Spider-Woman from a deck for Dr. Strange or Silver Sable.

At a cursory glance, I think it's pretty safe to say that The Marvels should be changing up the deck design process to a much greater degree. For starters, eight stat characters are less relevant. They are still powerful and worth basing a deck around, but they are no longer mandatory. In the big scheme of things, you are losing four cards if you don't use an eight stat character: three level 8 powercards and a level 8 teamwork. Previously, these were almost essential to reach 56 cards without having an unsavory amount of duplicates. However, The Marvels has so many insanely good special cards that you can a) get to 56 easily, and b) create lineups that have so much raw power/synergy between the special cards that the lack of an 8 is a non-issue.

So taking those ideas into account, here is an attempt to fully utilize The Marvels in every way possible. Instead of taking a deck concept and then seeing which Marvels cards fit in, I looked for Marvels cards that would interact with other Marvels cards in unique or powerful ways - thus creating an archetype that wouldn't be possible using only the existing cardpool. This deck is meant to play against a theoretical Marvels metagame (which I'll write a primer about at some point in the future).



Doppleganger (Original)/Cable/Thor/Callisto with Fatal Attractions and Department H

Special cards:
With Great Power... x3, Web, Taunt, Arachnid Agility
Gift of the Gods x3, Mjolnir Speaks, Power of Asgard, Unfettered Might, Viking Pyre
Blaquesmith, Really Big Gun, Bionic Eye, Surveillance, Battle Tactics, Askani'son
Caliban x3

Department H:
Beyonder
Alpha Flight: Guardian, Snowbird
Deadpool: Knock 'Em Silly, Distracting Chatter
Maverick: Kinetic Absorption, Legacy Regression, Power Channel
Omega Red: Carbonadium Coils
Wolverine: Tracking Senses, Standoff (OPD)

A-Next, 5i Ally, Down But Not Out, The Best Laid Plans...

Teamworks: 7E + FS, 6E + FS, 7F +ES, 6F + ES, 7S +EF, 6S +EF

E: 1267 F: 33 S: 0 I: 0 M: 2445 A: 567

This deck is unbelievably fun to play, but sometimes it can be difficult. There is a lot of filtering going on here. A lot. For the most part, you are a normal deck that will have artificially strong hands each turn since you can fish out cards best suited to the situation. So, the first layer of the deck is just using it as a normal deck - albeit with an ultra efficient/razor thin powercard count and minimalist defense. The second layer of the deck is properly utilizing the tutor effects. If you don't watch it, you'll spend half a turn screwing around with all your draw power and then have to concede because you didn't start applying pressure to the opponent.

With Great Power... is the choo choo of the deck. It digs for anything and everything, allowing all your combos to come up much more frequently. With Great Power... fetching Caliban, fetching  Maverick for Legacy Regression is a common first turn play. Using Caliban to more quickly access Knock 'Em Silly is also very good. Don't overlook how strong With Great Power... is even in situations where you don't have time to do fancy things. Just using it to get a good attack or block is useful too, and this versatility is what makes it the most useful card in the entire set. Taunt is another card that is good in general, but also faciltates your ability to set up more intricate combos.

Gift of the Gods acts as a junior Caliban. Grabbing one of Thor's beefy attacks (including an AE for certain situations against Any Hero decks) is just fine, as is using it to get another Gift of the Gods to burn turns. However, you once again have something that is strong in the normal flow of a turn for attacking and blocking, but transforms into a devastating combo in the blink of an eye. Viking Pyre has several scenarios where you should agressively set up a near auto win situation. Have an active Legacy Regression on someone? Viking Pyre down to 9 cards and put Down But Not Out with that character's specials and some activators (preferably Wolverine for Standoff). Askani'son shines in this scenario, but so does Thor's 12. Even without Legacy Regression up and running, you can most likely remove all of your deck except for 8 teamworks/powercards and have a game winning Down But Not Out turn.

Speaking of Fatal Attractions, "Best Laid Plans..." is also seemingly custom made for this deck. Besides letting you assemble your combo pieces more quickly, it also has the property of placing cards on top of your deck. Between Best Laid Plans, Surveillance, and With Great Power... (which places itself on the top of your deck after shuffling), you have a lot of incentive to try to draw cards off the top of the deck. Cable's seemingly useless Battle Tactics becomes immensely valuable in this deck, as do Kinetic Absorption and Snowbird.

Cheat sheet of some sample plays this deck has made:
With Great Power... for Gift of the Gods for Viking Pyre
With Great Power... for Caliban for Legacy Regression
With Great Power... for X, Kinetic Absorption or Battle Tactics to redraw With Great Power...
Surveillance putting X on top, then get X with Songbird/Battle Tactics/Kinetic Absorption
Best Laid Plans... for X, draw it in the middle of the turn with Songbird/Battle Tactics/Kinetic Absorption/With Great Power...

Of course, just using Best Laid Plans for future turn setup is also strong, and so on and so forth. This section would go on forever if every possible interaction was listed, so this is what I meant about the deck being a bit hard to play. It's fun to use Caliban for Maverick, Surveillance putting With Great Power on top, Maverick for Kinetic Absorption to draw With Great Power, use With Great Power to find Gift of the Gods, Gift of the Gods for stuff, and so on - but that may not be the best course of action for a given situation. You have to react to the current state of the game, while also poking for openings to put your opponent in a position where he has to allow one of your big tricks to go off.

In general the deck is just really damn cool. I love how it only uses thirteen powercards. Did you ever think you could see the 23 point behemoths Cable and Thor in the same lineup? Not to mention it has the ability of playing like a normal deck, but it does it in a very fun and powerful way. You can go along using all your combos to more efficiently attack/block, but as soon as the opponent provides you an opening you can go for the jugular with one of many possible tricks.

This is the kind of synergy I think is possible in the potential Marvels environment. There are several other decks with this level of power made possible by effects that augment each other to create a snowball effect of interaction, so I hope this provides some inspiration to go beyond simply adding one or two new Marvels cards to whatever deck you would already be running in a non-Marvels environment.

[drdeath25]

Wow, It has been great to see the innovative decks being posted on the forum this past week. It just goes to show you, 15 years later, there are still new creative deck idea's being come up with everyday. Overpower in my opinion is by far the best CCG ever created. When you think about it, every single Overpower set that came out changed the game mechanics and deckbuilding strategies, it almost seems like THE MARVELS was the one that nobody seemed to take advantage of in this way, when it probably has the most potential for changing the game since IQ.

I remember reading in the "Unbeatable Deck" thread that was posted a few weeks ago that the best decks seem to be decks that have a game winning gimmick, but can also hold its own if you are unable to pull the gimmick off. This deck fits that description 100%.

I agree a lot of people using THE MARVELS cards in their decks on this forum seem to create the basic decks, and supplement them with THE MARVELS cards, but don't seem  to build their strategies around THE MARVELS cards. We really haven't seen too many people build decks based solely around the unique strategies THE MARVELS set can offer to a deck. Not only does this deck have one gimmick, it has MANY different gimmicks, so you are almost surely going to be able to pull off at least one or two during almost every game.

When I first looked at this deck, I thought "Wow, if this deck has a Draw 3 card in it, that you could combo "With Great Power" mixed with "Surveillance", that would be devastating. And thats not all, if you pull of the Viking Pyre, with a Legacy Regression on someone, there are so many EVENTS that would make it game over, if you were able to bet for the win. Down but Not Out probably being the first that comes to mind.

Using THE MARVELS as an entire concept for building new decks based on brand new strategies is a great thing. Finding wew strategies, and new innovative decks 15 years after a game has "died" is a great thing. And just imagine, this is only ONE concept, think of all of the many other concepts people thinking outside of the box can come up with over the next few days/weeks/months/years.

Overpower never died, even though new cards aren't being released, it seems new strategies, concepts, and deck idea's are created everyday. God, I love this game so much!

Thank you for posting this Onslaught, you have inspired me to see what I can come up with using THE MARVELS cards, since I have almost exclusively been playing only using the officially released cards.

Great deck idea. I would love to face it, and help you test it first hand. Thank you for sharing your brilliant idea's with us, i am sure everyone here appreciates them! I can't wait to see what someone can come up with next...

Until the next time we venture,
Doc Death

[Onslaught]

When I first looked at this deck, I thought "Wow, if this deck has a Draw 3 card in it, that you could combo "With Great Power" mixed with "Surveillance", that would be devastating. And thats not all, if you pull of the Viking Pyre, with a Legacy Regression on someone, there are so many EVENTS that would make it game over, if you were able to bet for the win. Down but Not Out probably being the first that comes to mind.

The first version of this deck had Muir Island instead of Department H, with Shadowcat's Draw 3 and Colossus' Marvels card for two more ways of drawing off the top of the deck after setting something up. Viking Pyre is just so good in general, I mean even without Down But Not Out you can just set up an amazing eight card hand (with no overlapping duplicates to whatever you currently have placed), and just that is probably enough in most cases to be able to bet for the win. So, another version of this deck could easily drop Fatal Attractions for Infinity Gauntlet and use Muir Island.

There are ups and downs either way. For example, my favorite play I've made with this deck so far was when I had bet for the win, dug through my deck all turn and finally found Viking Pyre, then removed everything left in the deck except Cable's 9S (the biggest attack left), and used Snowbird to play it and win venture. It was a lot of work just to play a 9, so it illustrates how none of the characters in the deck have any specials that generate real card advantage. Web falls in this category, but is avoidable. Both Deadpool and Wolverine's cards from the Marvels can be card advantage, but again they are avoidable. So, if you want to use your superior searching power to dig out something that generates card advantage, the Muir Island version is the better choice. It's so easy to find a Shadowcat activator whenever you want one, which can get pretty nasty when you play it after Surveillance.

[BigBadHarve]

I don't know if it's art, but I like it! 

Welcome to 'The Marvels' Bandwagon!   

Cheers!

-BBH

[CoS]

I'm not sure how many people missed this in light of the blinding light of Dual 23 point power houses & cable front line, but when was the last time you saw 3-stat Doppleganger used in a powerhouse deck?  Seriously, this small nuance if using this completely obscure promo hero MADE me want to dust him off and BUILD the deck! Thank You Onslaught, always a pleasure to be shown the individual tree that is Doppleganger when I have been staring at the forest of IQ and forward.

[Hot Rod]

Findind a use for Snowbird and Battle Tactics should warrant a medal or something.  Haha!

Is "With Great Power" a non OPD?  I've seen the non OPD verion off that justabgkid site, but the version I have here from the last OP tournament at Metro Hall (2000/2001 vintage) is a OPD?

The use of Callisto in reserve is really nice here.  I've always felt she was underrepresented as a tournament worthy reserve hero.

I think I would have to see this deck in action to better critique it.  My experiences with Yu-Gi-Oh style search decks have ended mostly in dissapointment.  Due to weaknesses agasint H4H, the KO and a general lack of defense if Devourer comes up while playing all the search cards; they've just never been consistent enough.

This deck has solid win strategies, so maybe it will have that needed consistency.  The questions will be: can it stand up to a deck with H4H while having a max 6 on the frontline with 6 specials?  The KO event?  Beyonder chain deck?  Lack of a negate agasint Mega Draw/Mega Discard?  I don't know, but I'd love to see it in action!

[Onslaught]

Welcome to 'The Marvels' Bandwagon! 

No thanks, I still prefer playing the real version of game. This was just to provide some inspiration to those of you who do use Marvels since there hasn't been a ton of strategies posted that take full advantage of the new cards.

@Hot Rod

Yeah With Great Power... is non OPD on the checklist. In theory it's self regulating, because it always puts itself back on top so it will lead to some quick unavoidable dupes. This deck can Callisto or Gift of the Gods after playing it though to shuffle and prevent the guaranteed dupe situation, which is another nice perk.

Regarding DoW, KO event, etc - well, these are problematic for every deck of course, and most decks have a way to mitigate them. Since this deck is so fast from all the searching, you can attempt to outrace their unsearchable OPD event, DoW, etc. For the KO event you can nuke Cable and most of your engine is still intact, and if you have the chance you can Viking Pyre his specials away. You can also Viking Pyre away your activators and Callisto if an early DoW hits, but you'd probably be better served just removing everything in that situation and clutching out a Down But Not Out/lots of teamworks turn to win. Mega-Draw has been the easiest matchup yet, it looks like it's playing in slow motion compared to this deck and it has very little offensive pressure to apply. Anything that doesn't put you under immediate duress is a great matchup because you can try to get Legacy Regression going without worrying about much else.

[Hot Rod]

After thinking about it, I can see how LR + DBNO will get you around most things.  Vikiing Pyre to remove all your activators if DoW pops up is pretty reasonable as well.

Have you tried it against an aggro H4H deck or Beyonder chain deck?

[Onslaught]

Beyonder is way more of a problem for this deck than H4H, just by nature of the KO event (but H4H + Hulk is another story in Marvels environment...). Beyonder is more susceptible to a random/no setup Down But Not Out though. Either way, it's probably the worst matchup for this deck - but Beyonder decks should comprise a smaller amount of the potential Marvels tournament decks than it does in the current game. When I get around to writing a theoretical Marvels metagame article thingy, I'll have to remember to mention the Tier 1.5 floodgate theory.

[Supermartin]

What are The marvels cards??? I have been out of touch with the game for so long??

[chuu]

here you go:

http://overpower.ca/mv.php

Marvels have been out since like 2001.. though