No Invocations, Just Vibes

Down with Invocations!

We all know how to win with Dr. Strange – build your favorite readying deck, burn through your invocations, rinse and repeat. While that can be fun in certain situations, I usually don't pull him out of the box because if I execute the strategy correctly, there's not much challenge in the game.

So what if we like, didn't do that? Let's pretend the invocations don't exist. What else in his hero kit makes Dr. Strange unique, and can we exploit it to win?

General Strategy

You've probably guessed the key ingredient: Magic Blast. It's a funny card – it seems strong at first, but it's actually a little underpowered if you hit the wrong resource. A gets you 5 damage and a stun for 4 total cost, which is a little worse than Heroic Strike and Drop Kick. An gets you 7 damage with no kickers – worse than Swinging Web Kick, Giant Stomp and Pinpoint Strike. Obviously a is amazing, but there aren't enough wild resources in the game right now to make it super consistent. It's possible to max out wild resources in Leadership, but that's a deck for another day.

But a ? 5 damage and confusion? No one else can do that. Concussive Blow comes close, but the key synergy here is with Sanctum Sanctorum. With the Sanctum in play, flipping gets you a 7 card hand size and you get to cycle Magic Blast – perfect for a confusion lock where you're in alter ego every other turn. So the design challenge here is to maximize mental and wild resources and focus on confusing the villain whenever you can. Justice is a great fit on both counts.

Deck Construction

Both of our favorite 2 cost Justice allies have mental resources, as do Nick Fury and Ironheart. Sonic Rifle is a must to keep the confusion lock going if you don't draw into a Magic Blast, and Concussive Blow is a good target for The Power of Justice, which is here for it's wild resource along with Determination. Meditation can help play his upgrades and expensive allies, and Spiritual Meditation is essential for getting to those Magic Blasts faster. I think the deck is better in solo or 2 player, since higher counts rely on the Justice player for more threat removal, but you could adapt it for a 4 player game by replacing Concussive Blow with some standbys like Impede, Sense of Justice and Skilled Investigator. I'm sure that your friends will be so grateful for the constant confusion that they won't even miss the invocation deck.

Seriously, it's really fun

I took the deck up against expert Klaw and cleared no problem, only using Spell Mastery once to play Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to get rid of a big minion. Granted, the next invocation card was Winds of Watoomb and I used it to draw cards with Master of the Mystic Arts a couple times. All in all, not a perfect invocationless game, but definitely the most fun I've had playing Dr. Strange in a long time. I hit the confuse every time, there were so many more interesting choices, and I ended up really appreciating some of his underused signature cards, especially the Sanctum Sanctorum and Magical Enhancements. Big minions and especially guard minions can be serious issues, but the extra challenge is kind of the point.

Enjoy!