Jarnbjorn Cannon (War Machine Aggression)

This deck is wavy. Love the idea!

Love the Jarnbjorn & Shoulder Cannon combo. That pic is pretty cool too :)

I’m surprised no Quincarrier>Helicarrier for the additional proc!

I feel you on WM needing a partner with THW capabilities. I built an Iron Man partner for him using Sonic Rifle+Stark Tower to confuselock the villain!

@journeyman2 Sadly Warmachine does not have the Avenger trait so he can't use Quincarrier :(

Otherwise I would definitely include it. And I found that I don't always have time to set up Helicarrier since he has so many other priority upgrades, but it can still be pitched for a physical resource which is nice

War Machine's traits are Avenger and Soldier in hero form, so you absolutely can use Quincarrier with him!

@Moby War Machine can play Quincarrier in his hero mode like Eldritch said. He can’t play it in his alter-ego where he doesn’t have the Avenger tag. Once out though, he can use it in either form. The is more useful to this deck I’m sure, especially over the “Enhanced” cards IMO. Canonically he is an Avenger, so it’s appropriate!

I’ve fallen off Jarnbjorn a bit, just because 1-2, 2-4, 3-6 trades don’t cut it anymore, especially if the resource comes from out of hand. You get around this with Enhanced Physique, but essentially that becomes a 3 for 6 trade, a little under curve, I’d rather have the 2 free damage every turn with Quin+Jarn. This deck is super fun though, like you say in the write up and I love combos like this where it’s just set up and dish out! Reminds me of the Quiksilver Jarnbjorn build, another good time.

@journeyman2 @Eldritch OH wow you guys are right. For some reason this website has him incorrectly tagged as SHIELD and Soldier and somehow I missed the traits on his actual card... In that case I would definitely play Quincarrier over Helicarrier.

And I agree Jarnbjorn isn't super efficient. This deck is fun but if you want a streamlined Aggression build I would consider cutting Jarnbjorn altogether, or at least cut a lot of the physical resource build-around.

@journeyman2 I'd suggest that the 1-2, 2-4, 3-6 is pretty good costing. Swinging Web Kick at 4-8 is often considered the benchmark to compare to and that's a hero card. Outside of hero cards, there's very few cards out there that do more than 2 damage per 1 resource (like Magic Blast 5-2, Mean Swing 3-1)

Even in aggression, Uppercut 5-4, Into The Fray 6-4, Relentless Assault 5-3, Surprise Attack 4-2 and others are all just slightly less than a 2-1 ratio or require a kicker that makes it more difficult. Personally, I'd suggest that Jarnbjorn in this build is one of the most efficient card combinations possible in this game as it damages in increments of 1 and 2 which you can stop using whenever you wish to allow for maximum efficiency

Core was a long time ago, and most heroes now have more efficient/nuanced damage. War Machine himself has some of the most efficient attacking cards already in Repulsor Beam and Full Auto, albeit with a small but negligible hoop to jump through. Gauntlet Gun-> Repulsor Beam 4+ times per deck cycle is insanely good. The cost to play Jarnbjorn should have been included in my above comment really.

Enhanced Physique in this deck is a slightly better Tac Team. Jarn+EPx3 = 11 cost for 18 damage. 3 Tac Teams would be 12 for 18. It exhausts after use, so you really want all three out to pull off the Shoulder Cannon combo and not have to discard your entire hand. But really that’s a bit slow and you can’t really pull it off consistently. And for me, I’d rather not pay out of hand for 2 damage when Missile Launcher also gives you a free 2 dam. Again for comparison, Gauntlet Gun+Repulsor Beam is 4 for 4. But with three more Repulsor Beams, you reach 7 for 18, a full Swinging Web Kick cost less.

The big combo turn example is 22 damage, which ends up being all the WM player does on their turn. Great for minion control, great for rushing the villain at the end of the game, which is why I compared it to the Quiksilver OTK deck. But as the author said it needs support. It’s not practical in difficult scenarios, where villain damage is the lowest priority.

That being said, I gave this deck a like because this is a pretty feel good combo that is almost unique to WM due to Shoulder Cannon. I personally would just stick to Quin+Jarn and get the 2 per turn bonus instead of trying for more. But I appreciate the idea behind this and wanted to offer support with my Iron Man build and the Quincarrier suggestion above.

Totally agree this won't play in true solo especially when damage to villains (or even minions) isn't your immediate priority. Different story if you're playing multiplayer where another player can entirely shoulder the thwarting through.

I think there's a huge difference between this and a Tac Team. Tac Team actually does some good damage output for what it costs, but you're trading your pace. Honestly, its also not that different than playing an ally with 2 attack, as you'll get that value back, just paid out over multiple turns. Only downside is you lose that immediacy which some villains require.

Still, after you get past your hero's 15 cards, you still need to add 25 more. Comparing this to the Full Auto, Repulsor Beam, or any other hero's signature attacks just isn't a fair comparison. If you have the option to play Full Auto or Repulsor Beam, you should probably do that first, but there will be some turns where that isn't available and you'll need to use aspect cards. To be fair, this isn't an either or scenario, as Full Auto and Repulsor Beam can be played with resource generators for no extra cost, and no or minimal ammo and then you can still use your remaining cards as fuel for the Cannon/Jarnborjn combo.

Anyways, compared to the other damage that can be accomplished through those remaining possible Aggression cards you may add into a deck though, this is an excellent option. It's cheap and sits on the table until you choose to use it... no forced responses. When the times comes, if you were to channel your resources into playing Relentless Assault, you'd need to play 3 cards to get the 5 damage. Take those exact same three cards and put them towards Jarnborjn and you get 6 damage. Again, not going to work in true solo, but back to the point I started with, this combo is certainly excellent value to spend your resources into. I'm hard pressed to finds something better outside of a signature attack...

My initial response got deleted, so here is a worse version of that :/

I’m comparing this to the signature cards for three reasons

1) When you are playing the deck, you will naturally be making this comparison already when prioritizing your plays

2) If the hero has reliable damage options, adding less efficient damage is discordant rather than harmonic (even if the damage is more efficient than other aspect options, though this is also not the case here)

3) You mentioned Swinging Web Kick :p

In a deck with great signature damage options, I would prioritize those plays over the Jarnbjorn+EP plays, as you acknowledged. WM has excellent damage AND the ability to recur it. I’d rather include cards to expand the decision making space rather than always picking GG+Full Auto over discarding my hand for Jarn+EP. Which brings me to the next point:

Aspect cards should either improve a hero’s capabilities or shore up a hero’s weaknesses.

Deciding whether to add one set of aspect damage cards over another creates a redundancy with WM. I’d rather add cards that provide a wider set of options. My plays of War Machine have led me to think his weaknesses are card draw, survivability, and threat; so adding cards to deal with that has proven more beneficial over additional damage. Why have someone carry the WM player, when both players can contribute and not lose anything?

The Relentless Assault comparison is incorrect. Jarn+3 discards is 5 for 6. It takes Jarn 10 discards to equal 4 plays of Relentless, their lowest common denominator, and 11 discards to exceed it in terms of pure efficiency. As you said, Jarn’s strength is the flexibility, but WM already HAS flexible damage

I’m going to ignore the Tac Team praise as I haven’t run or seen a deck running it in forever :p

All of that said, I didn’t want to suggest any radical changes because I don’t want to turn this deck into something it’s not. What it is is a novel idea. This game aims to have fun and this deck does just that. I offered the one change only, with the caveat of my personal opinion (as a slave to efficiency).

I appreciate the discussion. It helped formulate my thoughts. I don’t want to detract from the deck any further though.

I appreciate the discussion! Those are a lot of great points I hadn't thought about. I definitely noticed when playing the deck that there were turns where I had Full Auto or his other events, that I usually just ended up playing those instead since they were better than pitching everything to jarnbjorn. And with War Machines alter ego ability I was able to recycle those events fairly often.

BUT on the other hand, pitching your entire hand for the example 22 damage turn could defeat most villians in just a handful of turns.

And this reminds me of a discussion I saw here, where a lot of players will focus on keeping the board clear each turn, when they could pretty easily rush down the villain if they just focused on that instead. Which might be the ultimate goal of a build like this - just getting down Jarnbjorn, Shoulder Cannon, and then pitching everything for 15+ damage per turn after that until the villain is defeated.

But like I said, its a more of a fun (meme) deck rather than a purely efficient one. I think its the only deck I have ever played Enhanced Physique lol!

I also really appreciate this discussion. I don't believe it detracts from the deck; I think it helps to explore the nuance of characters. As long as this thread doesn't turn into the Wild Tutor thread ;)

I really agree with you on nearly everything you said above. I have almost the exact same vision for deck building. Really loved the line: "Aspect cards should either improve a hero’s capabilities or shore up a hero’s weaknesses." - that's exactly how I evaluate characters when I'm building a deck too!

When I evaluate Jarnbjorn from a mathematical model, I'm using the function f(x) = 3(x - 2) and with Relentless Assault it's f(x) = 5x / 3. So I agree, they become equivalent at 20 damage total, which is 11 plays of Jarnbjorn. So Jarnborjn has it's uses, but with it not exhausting for uses like pretty much every other weapon, we're looking to use it as many times as possible.

Here's why I value Jarnbjorn here though... if you choose to sell out for it, you CAN get 11 plays of Jarnbjorn in, in as low as two turns if you use all the cards in your hand after starting in Alter-Ego. With nearly every other hero you can't get that many plays in to be able up the efficiency. Some noteworthy cases include Black Panther and Quicksilver, but most other characters would never trigger it 11 times in a game. But War Machine can do that in a typical Hero/Alter-Ego cycle, which he naturally wants to do anyways, so it's an interesting mechanism to build a deck around and really lean into. And as I said earlier, it doesn't ever come at the expense of playing his own signature attacks, but in addition to.

Anyways, I do see this deck as being a way to increase your hero's capabilities, just as you said. Just so long as you're playing multiplayer with a dedicated Justice Deck... and get the Chassis down :)

Edit: Typo ^ as Jarnborjn's function is f(x) = 2(x - 2)

One more thought here... I think this is the sort of deck that would be invaluable in a 4-player game against Thanos or Loki, where you need to do 80+ damage over multiple stages. Having one player who can ideally take care of themselves when they defend (Tough from Chassis) and then do a regular 22 damage, just by discarding everything in their hand... there's a place for that type of deck in this game. Especially as it can nuke all the minions along the way.

Just played this into tower defense. It was SUPER fun! Thanks!

Back after a nice break! Hope everyone had a great holiday season.

To expand on the previous points, I don’t think you can include the damage provided from Shoulder Cannon in the Jarnbjorn combo, because you can do that with or without Jarnbjorn. So really you go from 16-18 damage per turn to 10-12 damage per turn. And this is only given that you draw into all physical resources and discard all for Jarnbjorn and then can only be done every other turn (so really only 5-6 dam per turn), since you need to flip down for more counters to ready Shoulder Cannon with. So while WM can rush the villain, Jarnbjorn doesn’t really help a rush strategy. Many heroes can do 10-20 damage consistently in a turn if every resource is spent on damage. Not really a rush strategy, but can be a game ender for sure!!