Dr. Strange Supreme: Puppetmaster

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Dr. Strange As One 1 0 0 1.0
Dr. Strange AGRESIVIDAD 0 0 0 1.0
Dr. Strange Supreme: Puppetmaster 1 1 0 1.0
Decked Halls 2022: Day 8 - Inconsequential 6 5 0 1.0

dr00 · 38765

puppetmaster

What if Dr. Strange lost his heart Wong instead of his hands?

Dr. Strange: Puppetmaster

A lot of Dr. Strange decks kind of play themselves: play invocations, get chump blockers, ???, win. This deck suggests a slightly different strategy. Instead of playing most of your invocations, you'll generally focus on Seven Rings of Raggadorr, and instead of chump blockers, you'll build strong attackers dealing massive damage and lots of keywords like overkill, piercing, and ranged. One major change to other Dr. Strange decks is you'll hard ever play Wong.

In this write-up, I'll explain the general strategy, card choices, and some other options to make the deck your own.

General Strategy

This deck is able to hit with strong ally attacks and build quickly thanks to Dr. Strange's fast setup and reliable safety. The general strategy for this deck is building your allies with strong attachments and keeping them healthy and swinging throughout the whole game. In general, you'll want at least one Avenger and one Guardian ally on your board, usually one Avenger and two Guardians. Try not to chump block with allies, but as you're building up early, it might be necessary to do so. Try to lean hard on Seven Rings of Raggadorr to keep yourself and your allies healthy while building up and also into the mid-game as you have a giant attacks with high consequential attacks soaked by tough.

Most Doctor Strange decks use all invocations equally (well, lookin' at you, Vapors of Valtorr). Seven Rings of Raggadorr is usually a stronger option in most situations, but it's by far the strongest for this deck. You don't need to use Crimson Bands of Cyttorak because tough can usually handle your problems, and you won't need the damage as much since your allies can punch so hard for you. After that, Winds of Watoomb and Images of Ikonn can help accelerate your deck my drawing cards and flipping with the security of confuse. Flipping helps you accelerate by drawing with Sanctum Sanctorum and shuffling Spiritual Meditation back into your deck (more on that in the next paragraph) and burn through to your better invocations with Natural Talent.

There are a few things to keep in mind when playing any Doctor Strange deck. The Sorcerer Supreme accelerates your deck so much, so definitely take it with every mystic hero. Even if you are competing for Sorcerer Supreme with another mystic hero, Spiritual Meditation is still one of the best acceleration cards in the game. Always play this as the first action you can on your turn, throw away something useless, and give yourself some new options. If you draw another one, be sure to play it before doing anything else. Whenever you use Sanctum Sanctorum, remember that it's a spell card and shuffle that back in your deck if you can.

Ally Boosts

This deck utilises many options to help buff your allies. Attachments include Energy Spear, Enraged, and Sidearm, further boosted by Boot Camp. Additional support arrives from As One! and Seven Rings of Raggadorr to keep your allies healthy.

The first step is building your allies' ATK as much as possible, up to around 6-8. Energy Spear and Enraged each add +2 ATK, and Sidearm and Boot Camp add a further +1. Energy Spear's piercing helps clear tough from your enemies to get the full value from your attacks. As One! adds an overkill option for clearing disruptive minions and advancing damage onto the villain.

There are many pathways to keeping your allies healthy throughout the game. The main option will be constantly giving tough statuses, through Seven Rings of Raggadorr and Throg, which ignore consequential, including the boosted consequential from Enraged. Sidearm additionally helps by ignoring retaliate. And finally, As One! deals damage equal to two of your allies' ATKs by simply exhausting them and protecting them from retaliate and consequential.

Avengers

Avengers allies include Hulk, Thor, and Wasp. You'll want to have at least one for As One! and generally, you're just trying to play the first one that comes to your hand, but each of them have their own subtle advantages. Hulk has 5 HP and can easily tank hits without tough and can soak a large amount of indirect damage with or without tough. Wasp can't soak any damage, but has the same ATK as Hulk for 1 cost cheaper. Generally, just play Wasp for 1 and start building. Thor from the latest Valkyrie set offers a wonderful aoe attack for a single ; remember to give him a Sidearm to avoid all of the retaliate.

Guardians

Guardian allies include Angela, Cosmo, and Throg. You'll generally want at least one so you can play As One! with one of your Avengers allies. You'll usually have two of these because the second will be Cosmo (more on that later). Angela comes into play easily, and if you can start building right away, can allow you to deal with the minion that she fishes out. Alternatively, you could bring out Throg, who enters play with his own tough status if you have a minion engaged with you.

Guardians love to break the rules, and there are few better examples than the interactions of this deck. Cosmo's ability lets you choose and discard a card from any deck and predict the type of card that will be discarded whenever he thwarts or attacks. If you guess correctly, he takes no consequential damage. This is important in this deck for two reasons. First, Dr. Strange's invocation deck is a legal deck target for Cosmo's ability. By using his ability, you can cycle the invocation deck and can avoid consequential damage. Second, you avoid all consequential damage, even the extra damage from Enraged. Just remember to attach Sidearm to avoid any consequential and be sure to use As One! when you don't want to cycle your invocations just yet.

Customisation

There are a lot of lateral options for this deck. The skeleton basically is basically the same.

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoy the deck. Dr. Strange is a fairly polarising hero, but I find this build is not only quite strong, but also really fun to pilot. Give it a chance if you're looking for something new from the master of the mystic arts.

strange supreme

11 comments

Dec 14, 2021 KennedyHawk · 17216

Seeing this deck in action last night - wew what a great game. Kang wasn't prepared for this :p

Dec 14, 2021 neothechosen · 9806

Very cool! I like it when decks turn a hero into something new, it's fun to see Doctor Strange like this instead of an endless leadership - chomp block hero.

Thanks!

Dec 14, 2021 teamcanadahockey2002 · 6591

Love it! Always good to see a new way to use Dr Strange.

Idea/question... have you considered using Honorary Avenger on Wong instead of using Thor/Wasp/Hulk? He still has 2 ATK, but you could also possibly use him to cycle the invocation deck faster to find those toughs...

Dec 14, 2021 dr00 · 38765

@KennedyHawk thanks for all the help with threat haha

@neothechosen glad you appreciate it!

@teamcanadahockey2002 to be honest, i didn't test the Honorary Avenger build much, but i think it could do really well! i'd love to hear your experience with it. i'll be sure to test it out!

Dec 14, 2021 Brian-V · 41977

@dr00 Such a clever concept using Dr. Strange! I love to see decks that make great use of afterthought cards like Enraged and make them shine. I wonder if this concept could be applied to Scarlet Witch as well (Magic Shield, Hex Bolt). Always a treat seeing your new ideas for decks, dr00! -- (accompanied by entertaining write-ups, of course).

Dec 17, 2021 Schmitty · 474

You took my favorite build and made it even better! Great job as always,@dr00!

Played in a 2p game against The Hood with this a few days ago. It wasn't even fair for our red-caped foe.

Dec 17, 2021 dr00 · 38765

@Brian-V yeah, i think Scarlet Witch is a great hero to try this with, especially considering you've still got access to Spiritual Meditation, the most broken card in the game lol, and The Sorcerer Supreme

hey @Schmitty, thanks for the kind words! glad you enjoyed it :D

Dec 29, 2021 99neil99 · 22

You could add in Bug or Groot or other self healing allies.

Dec 29, 2021 dr00 · 38765

hey, thanks for trying out the deck! unfortunately, those don't really fit here for two reasons: we don't need healing because the deck tries to mitigate damage altogether with tough. second, they only heal when doing things we don't want the allies to do: strange making basic attacks and defending with allies. i also don't want a lot of setup, so 3 cost is only an option for Thor because he can attack in AOE

May 21, 2022 paradox22 · 1

Any updates you'd make to this deck for 2022?

May 22, 2022 dr00 · 38765

Hi @paradox22! I don't think there many, but Honed Technique is interesting. It would give +2 damage for As One, which is quite decent. Many of the aggression allies that have come out recently have been trait-locked however. Really excited for Shadowcat though! Gatekeeper and Wolverine look really fun. I might have to make a much different deck, since As One relies on Avengers and Guardian characters.