Captain Marvel - Some Assembly Required (GMW Campaign)

Alpha Flight and the Galaxies Most Wanted

Like everyone else that managed to get their hands on a copy of the latest Campaign box set I've been pretty much obsessed with it since its release last weekend. I settled in to play the campaign solo on expert difficulty and pulled out my old faithful deck for heroic 1, Captain Marvel Justice. Drang and his Brotherhood of Badoon went without a hitch, so on to scenerio 2. Our playgroup had been weary of Infiltrate the Museum when it was first spoiled as cards can find their way into the collection at a rapid rate. But seeing the encounter in action is something else. I won't go into too much detail but needless to say 25 losses later, with a variety of hero and aspects and I was feeling rather dejected. After an evening (and most of the next day too) consumed with reevaluating everything I thought I knew about the game and I found a plan formulating in my mind. Against Infiltrate the Museum you need very few cards in your deck that send themselves to the discard pile from play. Adding to the pressure from minions, side schemes, and the encounter cards collecting your cards is just too much. This brings a significant problem with it, namely getting value out of your allies. I don't know of many decks at this difficulty level that can get away with running fewer than 12.5% to 25% allies, so I needed to find a new way for them to pull their weight. Enter Captain Marvel, again, and an archetype I've written about before, Reinforced Suit + Team Training Leadership. Previously I was running a similar deck with Iron Man, but Carol builds upon the goals of this deck by being able to easily afford Avengers Assemble!. So I enthusiastically built this deck, sat down to play the campaign, for the 26th time, and to my shock, beat the Collector first attempt. The deck then went onto beat Escape the Museum before being defeated by Nebula twice in a row.

The deck has been through several iterations, playing through a standard 2 player campaign (and losing to Ronan) with my 6 year old son, a 2-handed solo standard campaign (defeating Ronan) with Captain America Justice, and completing a grueling 4 player expert campaign game against Brotherhood of Badoon. So today I settled upon a final version and started another solo expert campaign. It was a lot of fun and the results were as follows;

• Brotherhood of Badoon: Win (1st attempt)
• Infiltrate the Museum: Win (2nd attempt)
• Escape the Museum: Win (2nd attempt)
• Nebula: Win (2nd attempt)
• Ronan the Accuser: Loss

I'm pretty excited for the deck and I plan to return to Ronan to see if the game is winnable. It's a nightmare of an encounter and I only managed to last 8 rounds before a scheme activation of 8 from Ronan ended the game.

12% of a Plan

Having played the campaign a few times now I'm starting to formulate an overall approach that seems to be working out. I noticed that not all the achievements that earn you units are equally beneficial to you and some are in fact beneficial to future scenarios in the campaign. With this in mind, this is my strategy;

• Get maximum Units from the Brotherhood of Badoon scenario. This allows you to purchase the Tactical Screen or Mounted Laser upgrades granting the ability to remove threat and deal damage for the whole campaign.
• Ignore the Badoon Headhunter for the rest of the campaign. The more times you defeat the Headhunter the more encounter cards get added into future encounters. Each one is particularly nasty and the side scheme is devastating and I wanted to avoid this at all costs. His attack and scheme can feel rough but to paraphrase Drax “you can take it”.
• Against Infiltrate the Museum go for maximum Units (except for the headhunter). This is much easier said than done and your main priority should be removing every player card from the collection.
• Against Escape leave every Artifact side scheme in play. Nebula gets so much tempo from you defeating them and they get shuffled into her deck.
• When you get to 4 Units purchase Heavy Cannon or Hyper Thrusters, for the reason stated above. The upgrades are fantastic against Ronan.
• Against Nebula keep the Evasion counters low as you can all game, but try to time defeating her when there are 3 or more Evasion counters. The more evasion counters the less threat Ronan’s acceleration side scheme starts with in the next game.
• Also against Nebula allow her to keep the power stone when you defeat her. This means you will not be dealt the treachery against Ronan.

This approach has been somewhat successful, allowing me to reach Ronan twice now.

“Don’t you ‘lady’ me, son. I’m an avenger.”

Onto the deck itself. It plays as a hybrid between ally swarm, controlling the board with allies and having them defend for you on their last hit point before recurring them with Make the Call, and a voltron deck, where you upgrade your allies to build a more permanent board. Reinforced Suit and Team Training are at the heart of this deck, granting your allies with extra hit points to continue swinging long after they should have stopped, as well as adding much needed energy resources for Rechannel and Energy Channel. Your prime targets for Reinforced Suit should be Giant-Man and Ronin. Another bonus of the extra hit points for your allies is that it becomes far easier to activate them twice on the turns you play Avengers Assemble! allowing you to deal upwards of 20 damage in a round. Captain Marvel does what she does best in this deck, drawing an insane amount of cards and paying for everything with an impressive amount of resources.

As always if you like the deck and give it a try let me know.