Thor is a hero I've always enjoyed right from his first release. He has never been the strongest hero, but his unique hero ability of drawing cards has always given him a greater potential than other 4 handed heroes. With the release of Valkyrie he's gained a few new tricks and I can't wait to share this new deck I've built for him!

Deck Concept

Thor's greatest strength is undoubtedly his hero ability to draw 2 cards once per phase when engaging a minion. Any strong Thor deck should be looking to take advantage of this. With the release of The Bifrost he now has a clear second strength - Asgard trait synergy.

The basic idea behind this deck is to take as much advantage of these two core unique strengths of Thor in order to make as strong a deck as possible for him.

The Bifrost

The Bifrost is honestly one of the strongest support cards in the game, and I don't mean that hyperbolically. It effectively draws 1 card every turn which makes it comparable to a 1 cost Avengers Mansion. But, better still, the card it draws you get to choose, allowing you to toolbox the perfect ally depending on the situation.

Got a minion to play? Search out Throg or Valkyrie. Need a minion in play? Search out Angela. Got a lot of resources but not got anything to play? Grab Heimdall, Thor or Lady Sif.

Old Thor decks used to play Lockjaw just so that Thor would always be able to play a mediocre ally, regardless of how bad his hand was. The Bifrost takes this to a new level by letting that ally be a one that you choose from a selection, all of which are better than Lockjaw.

Why Thor instead of Valkyrie?

Building a deck around The Bifrost has two notable weaknesses, both of which are somewhat lessened in a Thor deck over a Valkyrie deck.

The first, and most obvious of the weaknesses of The Bifrost is that there are unfortunately a relatively low number of asgard allies in the game so far. This does mean that if you aren't careful you can run out of targets for it in deck until the next shuffle. For this reason I believe any deck built around The Bifrost should play the maximum number of asgard allies allowed. Due to the fact that Lady Sif if herself an asgard ally whereas Annabelle Riggs is unfortunately not, Thor is able to play 6 asgard allies as opposed to the 5 that can be played in a Valkyrie deck.

The second notable weakness is that you may not draw The Bifrost as early as you want it. Thor has access to the perfect card to help solve this issue though - For Asgard! In previous Thor decks For Asgard! was somewhat limited to being used as a way to act as a 4 cost Asgard - but sadly Asgard feels incredibly expensive at this point and will cost heavy amounts of tempo. The Bifrost on the other hand is such a fantastic card that it is still amazing to play even at 2 cost so you are more than happy to search it with For Asgard!.

A further reason to play Thor is that both of these weaknesses can also be solved by digging through your deck faster to get to a full reshuffle quicker. Despite his 4 card hand size, Thor has always had some of the best card draw in the game, and he is definitely capable of zipping through his deck very quickly.

Line 'em up

As mentioned before, Thor's best strength has always been his hero ability. Triggering this as frequently as possible I truly believe is absolutely crucial to his strength. This is why I have maxed out on Looking for Trouble. It isn't the flashiest card, but by playing the full 3 copies you maximise the chance that your 4 card hand becomes a 6 card hand. You also of course have the (searchable) Angela. I think it is important that you avoid searching her with The Bifrost unless you absolutely need to - she's really nice to save for a turn where you have 0 copies of Defender of the Nine Realms or Looking for Trouble in hand.

Another surprising card to help trigger Thor's hero ability is Heimdall himself. He is able to stack the deck for you to potentially engage a minion on the villains phase which can allow two triggers of his ability in the same round!

Knock 'em down

Into the Fray and Chase Them Down are both fantastic aggression cards for thwarting. The only reason these aren't played in every aggression deck under the sun is that they are inconsistent since they rely on you having a minion in play with you. Fortunately, Thor's incredible access to minion tutoring makes him the perfect home for them. His inherent weakness at thwarting also makes them very nice picks for his deck.

Another incredible card that benefits from getting minions engaged with you is "Bring It!". "Bring It!" almost always will draw at least 1 card, and even if it draws just 1 card it's still good because it's enabling you to effectively play a 37 card deck and therefore get to the next reshuffle that bit quicker. Where "Bring It!" really shines though is when you combo it with Lightning Strike. Thor's hero ability is unfortunately limited to once per phase, which usually makes the second minion tutoring card a bit underwhelming. When you have a "Bring It!" in hand though it's completely fine. I would happily force myself to engage several minions as I thwart the schemes with my 6 copies of Defender of the Nine Realms only to then draw a bunch and kill them all in one go with Lightning Strike.

In terms of ratios of cards - I decided to play the maximum 3 copies of both Looking for Trouble and "Bring It!" as they offer card draw to search for other cards - it is important these cards are seen in the initial 4 card hand I draw each round. Chase Them Down and Into the Fray however I am happy not to draw in initial 4 card hand and would instead rather draw into them once I have drawn several cards from my hero ability and "Bring It!". For this reason these cards only need to be played at 2 copies each.

Godllike Stamina vs Moment of Triumph

Older variations of Thor decks I have played have included Moment of Triumph. Moment of Triumph is of course a fantastic card for Thor to play. It does however have a very steep combo requirement. It needs you to effectively pull off a 3 card combo - first engage a minion, then kill it with a big event (e.g. Into the Fray or Hammer Throw) and finally do all this whilst you have the Moment of Triumph in hand AND have taken enough damage to make use of it.

Godllike Stamina does not have any of these steep requirements. It instead acts as a really nice card to be able to reliably play once you've checked you can afford to do everything else you want to do. The fact it removes stun/confuse is also a huge bonus since it means Thor almost never has to worry about either of these conditions.

One subtle advantage Moment of Triumph does have is that it does carry the resource icon meaning if you didn't/couldn't use it you had the option of chucking it in for Lightning Strike.

In the future I could see myself mixing up the ratios between these two cards rather than the current 3:0, but for now I see Godllike Stamina as the better of the two.

Weaknesses of the deck

This is not the strongest deck ever because Thor is not the strongest hero ever. What this deck is, is my best effort to capitalise on Thor's strengths to aim to make the strongest Thor deck ever. With that being said, there are of course some big weaknesses here:

1. Low minion encounters

This one should be obvious. The fewer minions in the encounter, the quicker you will burn through the deck and rack up acceleration tokens. In my game against expert Thanos I reached 4 acceleration tokens, and a copy of Family Feud meaning I was receiving 6 threat at the start of every villain phase. Somehow I still managed to win this (because Thor is actually quite good at thwarting given that this deck plays 10 event cards that help thwart the main scheme).

2. High health minion dense encounters

If the minions you are tutoring out are all very beefy and require multiple cards to kill then your tutoring cards all get less value. It's typically still worth playing them all (and you need to for the deck to function), but it feels a lot less powerful.

3. The Collector 1

Honestly this matchup is ridiculously difficult for this particular Thor deck. The deck is designed to chuck minions at you and allies at the villain - both of which get put into the collection. It's really just a huge uphill battle for you.

4. Skill Cap

This deck is not easy to play at all. It requires a lot more thinking than your usual deck so be ready for that.

Alternative cards to consider(EDIT)

Following some discussion in the comments I decided it would be good to dedicate a section to talk about a few strong cards that could go in a Thor aggression deck if you wanted to build it slightly differently. I'm also going to explain why I am personally not including them in this deck:

1)Moment of Triumph

As mentioned above, this card is very good in a Thor deck in general. Thor is the best hero in the game at ensuring he has a minion engaged with him, and he also happens to have a built in way to deal 8 damage in overkill. He also loves the resource as if Moment of Triumph can't be played it can be used for Lightning Strike. Due to Thor's low thwart, he spends a lot of time in hero form, and as such does enjoy the recovery it grants him, particularly because it makes a good use of his high health total.

The reason I'm not playing it though is mainly because I believe Godllike Stamina is too good not to play. In playing the 3 copies of Godllike Stamina allowed, Thor doesn't really need much more healing on top. They also don't synergise particularly well together because Moment of Triumph wants you to have low health so you can heal lots with it, but Godllike Stamina stops you from getting to low health.

2)Smash the Problem

This card takes advantage of Thor's high attack and tries to convert it into high thwart.

My issue with Smash the Problem is that it exhausts your hero, which is a really heavy cost. If Thor has 3 ATK then Smash the Problem thwarts for 3, but in doing so you are sacrificing 3 damage or 1 thwart.

Thor has fantastic synergy with Chase Them Down, Looking for Trouble and Into the Fray which are all really efficient thwarting cards. To make this point clearer I've included this example that I made in the comment section:

Let's say you play Smash the Problem to remove 3 threat. If you had Chase Them Down instead then you can thwart for 2, and then also exhaust Thor to get the same total of 3 threat removed, but for a cost of 0 instead of 1. Now, obviously Smash the Problem does get better once you add in Combat Training, but I still don't think it's as good as the alternatives until you start hitting 5+ atk with other buffs.

3)Non Asgardian Allies

The aggression aspect has some really powerful allies in it, many of which work great in a Thor deck. Brawn and Sentry are both insane value, Bug can thwart for 1 the entire game, Wasp converts each resource into 3 damage making Energy Channel and Jarnbjorn look like a joke, and even Hercules has a lot of synergy with this deck.

All of these cards could be included in this deck without any real issue given their individual power levels. The reason they aren't included is mainly because of the attempt to maximise the power of The Bifrost. The goal is to use The Bifrost every turn, and if you are playing an ally from deck you often won't also have enough resources to play a second one from hand. Also, surprisingly this deck does hit the 3 ally limit quite often. Another key reason not to play them is that it is very important this deck stay at 40 cards - as mentioned earlier The Bifrost is at its best when you draw through your entire deck quickly so you can shuffle back in the 6 asgardians.

4)Team-Building Exercise

This was mentioned a few times in the comments - and I'll be honest when I first saw it mentioned it seemed like a no-brainer auto-include. However, as was pointed out, it doesn't work in combination with The Bifrost. If you use The Bifrost to bring out an ally you can't reduce its cost with Team-Building Exercise.

For me this is enough of a reason not to include it. The goal with this deck is to avoid playing the asgard allies from hand if at all possible. You want to play them from deck with The Bifrost and if you do that, they get taken out of the deck quickly anyway so you don't draw them that often regardless.

The other Team-Building Exercise targets aside from the allies are the 7 upgrades and supports. It is somewhat debateable as to whether these are reason enough to play it anyway. Personally, I think that since (apart from Mjolnir) these get played only once all game, there just aren't enough targets to justify it having one of the 40 slots.

5)Deft Focus

Another similar card is Deft Focus. This can be used to help cheapen Hammer Throw and Lightning Strike. Both of these cards are very powerful but are slightly overcosted, so the chance to cheapen them is actually quite nice.

However, they aren't early game cards really. I personally find that by the time I want to start playing these cards regularly, I usually have a fairly full setup anyway. It's also unfortunate that Deft Focus only reduces the resource cost of Lightning Strike, but can't be used as a resource for its effect. Overall, the more expensive Quincarrier feels like its the better card.

Closing thoughts

This is honestly one of my favourite decks to play in all of Marvel Champions. Each turn you are presented with several choices to make, and they all matter. Do I use The Bifrost at the start of my turn to avoid drawing the ally I want to play or do I play my Looking for Trouble first to see if my draws change my plan? Do I play my second copy of Looking for Trouble just so that I can draw an extra card with "Bring It!"? Do I keep engaging minions this turn and hope to draw Lightning Strike off of "Bring It!" or do I play a lower value "Bring It!" now and try to kill what's already in front of me. How many minions has the villain been through so far, can I afford to play Angela or will it likely miss?

Honestly the options just go on and on. I really suggest you give it a try for yourself and I promise you won't be disappointed!

Thanks for reading, I'm out of here - "Heimdall! Open the bifrost!!!"