Whole Box Deckbuilding:

Why?  Why on earth would I take pains to build out all my decks?

#1 Game Night.  This is super important.  I can't get anyone to play if I have to sit and flip through my cell phone for a deck on Marvel CDB.  This is not Simple Simon deckbuilding.  Friends who show up on game night don't understand the aspects, the cards, the costs, the hand sizes, hero strengths and weaknesses, all the deckbuilding factors.  For my gaming group, I'm competing with Sentinel of the Multiverse, which sets up and plays fast.  No deckbuilding there.  With whole box deckbuilding, we pick a hero, pick a villain, and play.

#2 Multiplayer.  If we were only playing solo, Marvel CDB starts being a fun adventure --only one deck to build, let's try it.  We really don't care about true solo.  The magic of Marvel Champions is how the aspects work together for cooperative play.  On this blog, it's all about pairing.  With economy decks, it's nice to lean into the hero strengths rather than covering weaknesses.  In multiplayer, the heroes can cover each others weaknesses, so you can build decks which feel stronger.

#3 Player Input.  My friends invested heavily in Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Those decks are set.  It sets up fast and plays fast.  I didn't like it because I had too many games where I pretty much did nothing --so many useless cards.  Marvel Champions let me tweak the decks.  I put that into my players hands: at the end of a game, a player might say, "I hate this card,"  and we'll talk about it.  I'll hand them a stack of aspect cards, and we'll tweak the deck.  They get input on the decks, and they like that.

#4 CCG vs LCG Deckbuilding.  True solo players spend all their time deckbuilding.  I want to play.  I have a dozen or so carefully designed decks, but mostly the decks are "tweaked" as I get new expansions and cards, and as we play them.

  

#5 Munchkin vs Economy Decks.  I'm so sick of all those "uber" decks with twelve 2-cost allies which can beat Expert Ronan.  Who cares?  It's basically an ally swarm deck with a hero stuck on.  This gets into the meta-discussion about how allies are OP in Marvel Champions, but if we think of this like a comic book, I want to read about the hero on the cover, not have him waving in the background while his hero friends battle to save the day.  As such, no hero in my box has 12 allies.  A few of my leadership decks have 7 allies, most have 6.  Protection decks have 3-5.  Justice decks have 3-4.  Aggression decks have 2-5.  That's the economy.  If I add an ally to this hero, I have to take one from another hero.  I have six Deft Focus cards, and I have to choose carefully which heroes get them.  

#6 Using all the Cards.  Why have so many cards if only a few get used?  I like the pressure of trying to make apparently terrible cards good.  Many unpopular cards can be used to great effect with the right hero / deck.  Great Responsibility is integral to my She Hulk Justice Heal-Tank build, but few other heroes would like that card...  I have found some of these ideas on Marvel CDB.  I love the Drax Brute Force build idea.  I used that for a Hulk build.  I loved the ideas to use Enraged in certain Voltron builds with Cosmo.  It's a whole different game when you're forced to use most of the cards.  Boomguy's "worst card" videos have been fantastic for thinking about why a card doesn't work, and how it might work.

#7 Economy Heroes.  My hero tier lists are completely different.  I think the uber hero decks are less interesting, and the economy hero decks are more balanced --showing off the hero, and how good they are without all the best cards.  Try rating heroes on how they stack up with economy decks, and many heroes switch places.

#8 Allies are OP.  This has been a long debate about Marvel Champions game design.  One of the changes I like to make to villain scenarios is where they have a card which makes you discard cards, I change it to just give the villain overkill on their next attack --that can nullify the chump blocking with allies, and make them less OP.  In whole box deckbuilding, because allies are a very limited resource, they feel a lot less OP.  In fact, my gaming group hasn't even noticed how powerful they are, because they only get a few.

So it's gotta be tough.  What are some problems / solutions?

#1 Resource Cards.  Not all heroes come with resource cards.  Star Lord was the first hero to come without resource cards.  I went to Kingdom Come Cards to pick up some extras.

#2 Allies.  I have picked up a few cheapo allies like Mockingbird from KCC just to round things out a little.  Some heroes were really thin on allies, and having one extra can really help.

#3 Resource Generators / Discounts.  Some heroes have their own resource generators, so that helps.  Choosing where to put Team Building Exercise and Avenger's Mansion is a tough choice, especially since the two often go together.  Giving Maria Hill a Helicarrier was a no-brainer, but I had to pull it from a different hero --how do I balance that?

#4 Traits.  I wrote the Team Building Exercise and Aerial pages to help with this.  Traits can really stack up and work together.  This is both thematic and economical --you can get more bang for the buck out your cards.  This has even lead me to try to put an aerial hero in every aspect to take advantage of those cards.  

#5 Core Set.  The original box comes with five heroes and four aspects.  I really wanted the opposite: four heroes and five aspects (more basic cards to make a viable basic aspect hero).  For a while, She Hulk and Iron Man shared the same Aggression deck, but I never liked She Hulk in Aggression, so I wanted to build a Justice deck for her. KCC to the rescue.  I picked up enough extra Justice cards + some basics to give her her own deck for game night.

#6 Aspects.  Some heroes came in a non-viable aspect for multiplayer --mainly Protection.  Ms Marvel, Vision, and Colossus are probably great in solo Protection, but they are way too flippy to block for the team.  Likewise most solo players play Spider Man in Justice --to make up for his weakness in thwarting.  I hate that strategy.  I swapped Spidey into Protection early on, and never looked back.  I've taught many games playing Spidey to block for a new player who picked a flashy Aggression deck.  Protection is my favorite, because I love support roles, but many newbies don't understand how to ready to block for others, or how to play responses and interrupts.