Magneto Wins Evo 2025 with Team MSP

Marvel vs Capcom 2 is a legendary fighting game for both its enormous roster and its storied history at the Evo fighting game tournament. MvC2 is returning as a main event game to this year's Evo after a long absence. I wanted to celebrate this by recreating the game's most famous team, MSP, in Marvel Champions. MSP stands for Magneto-Storm-Psyclock. It's an aggressive team, taking full advantage of Magneto's speed and combo game. Psylocke gives Magneto additional chances to open up his opponent and convert stray hits into combos while Storm gives Magneto a lot of extra damage with her powerful supers. Her hailstorm super is especially good at tagging an opponent right as they call for an assist from their partner.

Aggression Magneto allows for all three of these characters to be in the same deck -- but is that enough to create a viable build? And is there a way to translate a fighting game's zippy, combo-y feel into a card game? Let's give it a shot!

In order to recreate Team MSP in Marvel Champions, we'll need to do the following:

1. Get all the characters in the same deck.*
2. Give Magneto strong combos.
3. Give Psylocke her anti air assist.
4. Give Storm her hailstorm super.
5. Build team synergy worthy of a Capcom Vs game.
6. Master the mindgames, so we always make the right plays.
7. Have a team super, because it's Marvel vs Capcom 2.

So how are we gonna do that? Well...

1. Get all three characters in same deck -- Hey! we already covered that! Magneto Aggression is the only deck hero + aspect combination currently allowing all three characters to exist in the same deck.

2. Give Magneto strong combos, to drain our opponent's health bar -- This deck has a lot of re-readies in it and multiple ways to boost Magneto's basic ATK. Magneto's Cape, Utopia, and (with some silly card draw luck) Professor X all give Magneto re-ready opportunities. Combat Training boosts Magneto's basic ATK to 3 and his Armor can boost it to 4 with a lucky discard. This Magneto can do a lot of consistent damage with persistent supports and basic attacks, allowing him to spend his resources elsewhere.

3. Give Psylocke her anti air assist -- In MvC2, Psylocke's anti-air assist controls the skies defensively (it's invincible in the game) and gives Magneto easy combo opportunities offensively. The Pyslocke ally card already does a pretty good job recreating this on its own, with her basic attack doing decent damage when you spend a psionic counter (offense) and allowing you the flexibility to flip down without worrying about scheming (defense). I also added Colossus to the deck, as toughness + 3 ATK combines those offensive and defensive characteristics.

4. Give Storm her hailstorm super -- Probably the most challenging part of the deck, thematically. Storm is a decent, if costly, ally but her card doesn't capture her role on team MSP in the same way Psylocke's does. It doesn't help that MvC2 Storm is an all-around powerful character. Enter Sunfire and Dust. Sunfire's response simulates Magneto tagging into Storm's Hailstorm super and interrupting your opponent during a key play. Dust's minion ability allows her to hit multiple minions at once, echoing Storm's ability to hit an opponent and their assist character with a quick tag into her hailstorm super. A part of me wishes the Storm card did these effects itself, but it's thematically accurate, in a way. Storm has a big effect on a MvC2 match even when she isn't on screen.

5. Build that team synergy worthy of a Capcom Vs title -- This deck is very upgrade and support heavy, which can make it a bit slow. Forge and Build Support are in here to bring those powerful cards into play sooner. I would prioritize the X-Jet, for its free resource each turn, followed by Boot Camp for a buff to every ally. This will give you the setup to consistently play powerful allies.

6. Master the mindgames -- Three psionic allies means we have great Cerebro access. Psylocke's confuses make this especially valuable as it prevents the villain from scheming while we're in AE using Cerebro (or the Danger Room). Combined with Danger Room and Attack Training and we'll always been able to tag in the right ally at the right time.

7. Have a Team Super -- Team Strike simulates the true MvC2 experience of having all your characters on screen together doing either their assist or a super attack. This combined with Game Time and re-readies can give us some big swing turns.

That's all of our requirements for a Team MSP deck! This deck went through multiple versions, in testing, and I considered several other options, which I'll briefly discuss.

Wolverine is a natural fit for this deck as he benefits a lot from the training upgrades, Game Time, Cerebro, and re-ups with Utopia. If you want to make the deck more powerful, you should definitely add him and I even had him in earlier versions of the deck. I removed him because he stole the spotlight from the deck's MSP theme. Additionally, Wolverine is a character in MvC2 (hilariously, he takes up two character slots). He's not on team MSP, he's not a very good character in MvC2 (neither version of him), and he doesn't really add anything to the deck thematically. I considered removing Colossus for similar reasons. He's in MvC2, not on team MSP, and is considered to be lower tier. However, Storm has three allies capturing her ability and I wanted the deck to feel a little "Psylocke-y" even when she's not in play. Colossus has a little bit of that.

Early versions of the deck also contained Team Building Exercise and more X-Men supports (ex: Moira, X-Mansion). TBE's discount is potentially powerful, with the deck having 12 cards with the X-Men trait. However, I found Magneto to be rich enough to afford the key upgrades and allies without TBE and the other supports and those extra cards effectively just slowed the deck down. Deft Focus was similarly tempting, but less so, as it only applies to 7 cards. I also considered adding Digging Deep, for extra energy from the Magnetic Pull action. However, this did not consistently trigger the way I hoped and the Digging Deeps were frequently just worse versions of the double energy cards.

A bonus, funny, thing this deck does: Boot Camp and Attack Training means Professor X has 2 ATK. I like to imagine he attacks with a spinning clothesline but maybe he gives the villain a wicked migraine.

Overall Verdict -- Strength-wise, this isn't that different from many other X-Men Aggression Ally decks out there and those are strong and popular for a reason. I wasn't overly surprised when this beat Expert Klaw and Expert Ultron. X-Men + allies is powerful, Magneto's not a bad hero himself, and he has the resources to consistently afford the "big" cards. Thematically, upgrade and support heavy decks tend to start a bit slow and this one is no different. That clashes a little bit with Team MSP's high-speed start. However, the deck only needs a couple of key upgrades to really take off. I was also quite happy when, against Ultron, I was able to have Magneto ATK, re-ready with his cape, ATK again, re-ready with Utopia after playing an ally, and then do Team Strike to finish off Ultron. The Team Strike was absolutely overkill, but KOing your opponent with flashy, unnecessary combos is VERY fighting games. Really a thematically perfect way to end the game. I'm overall very happy with this deck's combination of theming and effectiveness.

This is the first deck I have ever published. I picked up Marvel Champions in December and I instantly took to it. I hope you enjoy this deck, can appreciate its funky theming, and I welcome any feedback! : ) I had a lot of fun putting it together and thinking of different ways to translate one of my favorite old hobbies into what is fast becoming my favorite new hobby. Thanks for reading!

*I'm intrigued by the prospect of creating sets of several decks, designed to be played together, in order to form an effective and thematic "deck set." For instance, instead of trying to jam MSP into a single Magneto deck, I could create decks for Magneto AND Storm AND Psylocke that are a) designed to be played together and b) thematically feels like MSP in MvC2. That sounds very challenging, though, and like a problem for future Mango or maybe someone braver (more deranged?) than I am. Marvel Champions is designed for multiplayer and many of cards have multiplayer effects. There may be some fun deck(s)-building design opportunities here, if they haven't been explored already.