Learning To Crawl

After about about 8 months of intense play, I've decided to publish my first decks. This is the first deck in a series I'm starting to make, all to serve a very specific purpose: to teach the game to a new player in a 2P game. The tutorial is structured as follows:

• 4 scenarios (core box + 1), each with increasing difficulty, played to victory. If you lose, you repeat the scenario with the same decks
• Each scenario will see the new player try a new aspect, while observing you use another to support them
• Each subsequent scenario will see the new player taking up the aspect they observed you using in the prior game in the following order: Aggression, Justice, Protection and Leadership

This tutorial starts with Spider-Man because he is the most straightforward hero to use. None of his cards have extra requirements or conditions, his signature ally, persona support and hero ability are all very powerful and his base stats are solid. While introducing a new player, there's a ton of upfront info they have to learn to get into the game, and adding extraneous things like conditional effects or card synergies is only going to make it harder to get over that hump.

In support of cutting the fat for a new player, I've set Spidey up as an event-based aggression hero. In a super-hero-vs-villain situation, it's a very natural notion that you can win by attacking the villain, so this deck leans heavily into that: the new player already knows what to do. This deck just lets them do it.

The basic cards are all basic staples, nothing leaning in any direction. We have the double resources, strong supports and straightforward, useful allies. I won't dwell on these.

The aggression cards are where I really leaned into the "play a card, do the damage" theme of this deck. The resource cards are in there just so a basic familiarity can be built for what kinds of resource cards exist, and all the allies are low cost. While you can maybe drop a couple of these if you wanted a leaner deck, Sunfire is in there specifically because Rhino (the encounter this deck will face) can get some nasty attachments that he can deal with. This effect (as well as the discarding of Brute Force and the returning of Clobber to your hand) is something that will give the new player a taste of something slightly more than "play a card, do the damage" without making them feel overwhelmed with all the options and choices. These effects are also confined to the turn they use them, so there's minimal forethought to worry about as well. Finally, a few things like Combat Training and Martial Prowess can show the new player the value of building out.

It should go without saying that, as a tutorial deck for beginners, this deck has some serious drawbacks. Since the new player will be focusing on doing damage and little to nothing else, you (the teacher) will need to pick up the slack and do more than your normal share of the work. I've selected Ms. Marvel as a good all-rounder with a strong thwarting game, and the specifics of how she manages this can be found here (https://marvelcdb.com/deck/view/675066). The deck has 42 cards, so close enough to 40 that they're still going through quickly, but I've put more emphasis on a set of cards that are instructive rather than optimal. If you wanted to drop it to 40 I'd recommend dropping Hulk (as the most complicated ally) and an Aggressive Energy (as a less necessary example of resource cards).

This deck pair has been tested on Standard Rhino (plus an additional Shadow of the Past from Standard II and Seek and Destroy from Kill 'Em All Expert) with an extra module (Hydra Patrol). The Guard minions were a nuisance since they all came out on Spidey, but there should be no issues taking on Standard Rhino, even if you let the new player do all the damage.