My last few blogs have all been about exploring creating new heroes from the existing cards by blending things together, with T'Challa as Star-Lord being my last one.
Supposedly.
Here definitely is the last one. Honest. Probably. Maybe.
CAPTAIN CARTER
This final hybrid hero draws direct inspiration from the first What If...? episode on Disney+. In that episode we are back at the point where Steve Rogers receives the super serum and becomes Captain America, only this time the Hydra agent attacks a little earlier and Steve is wounded. As the experiment teeters on complete failure only one person can fill Steve's gap in time: Agent Carter. Peggy receives the full dose of the super serum that was originally meant for the man who would be Captain America and history is changed forever...
I probably wasn't the only person watching that episode and thinking the new amazonian Captain Carter was like a mix of She-Hulk and Captain America, so those are the two heroes I've mixed together with She-Hulk's strength and intelligence complemented by Captain America's shield. I've used pretty much exactly the same 'shield' set that went into my Mjolnir Cap but the other half of the deck now brings in the two sides of She-Hulk's nature.
By day Peggy works as Agent Carter, with Superhuman Law Division standing in as her version of Allied intelligence (or S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ in modern day settings) and I used Split Personality to show her versatility in going undercover, but by night she throws a good old-fashioned Nazi-slapping One-Two Punch as Captain Carter.
- 1x Captain America's Shield
- 2x Shield Block
- 2x Shield Toss
- 2x Super-Soldier Serum
- 1x Superhuman Law Division
- 3x One-Two Punch
- 2x Superhuman Strength
- 1x Split Personality
- 1x War Machine
(15 cards)
One little kicker, which seemed to fit perfectly, was to steal War Machine from the Iron Man hero set to be the prototype Iron Man suit: Hydra Stomper. We've got to get Steve Rogers into this war somehow!
The final piece of the puzzle was Captain Carter herself. I based her Captain America's hero card and kept his alter-ego ability unchanged, but I changed the hero ability to Do You Even Lift? from She Hulk. I really enjoy the constant flipping between hero and alter-ego that you do in She-Hulk and I wanted to bring that to Captain Carter so that she didn't just play like a gender-swapped Captain America on the table.
One thing I did do for Captain Carter that I hadn't done for my other hybrid heroes was I tinkered with the hero card art a little bit more than usual. My photoshopping skills are virtually nonexistant - mostly I'm just cropping bits of cards and overlaying them over each other in Powerpoint - but I stretched them to breaking point to change the artwork over from Captain America and bring Peggy more to life.
Anybody else could have done a better job, I'm sure, but it was good enough for me to quickly print off and tuck into a sleeve to play with.
That was Captain Carter's hero cards sorted, now I needed the rest of a deck for her. Looking at her hero pool it was clear what the main weakness was: Superhuman Law Division was the only thing she had that could thwart! I pushed her into Justice to cover that weakness and started by just bringing over the Justice cards that I'd successfully played with for Black Suit Spidey.
That was my start point but things quickly changed as Captain Carter immediately she wasn't Spider-Man, and in particular I found that the more I leaned into flipping her into Alter-Ego regularly the better she seemed to flow. That meant going all-in on Sonic Rifle to confuse the villain and buy Peggy turns in Alter-Ego, it meant taking Lay Down The Law as both fuel for Superhuman Law Division and a great thwart event in its own right, and it also meant swapping out the 2x Endurance that were in Spider-Man's deck to use 2x Crew Quarters instead (also fuel for Superhuman Law Division). The final piece of the puzzle was adding Lockjaw so I could take better advantage of Peggy's Living Legend ability to play cheap allies.
Justice
- 3x Turn The Tide
- 3x Clear The Area
- 2x Lay Down The Law
- 1x Spycraft
- 1x Wiccan
- 1x Quake
- 1x Heroic Intuition
- 1x Agent Coulson
- 3x Sonic Rifle
Basic
- 1x Genius
- 1x Strength
- 1x Energy
- 2x Crew Quarters
- 1x Ironheart
- 1x Mockingbird
- 1x Lockjaw
- 1x Nick Fury
(25 cards)
The end result is a deck that loves to flip forms as often as possible and is often just as comfortable playing as Peggy Carter and being an intelligence officer working undercover as it is suiting up and flinging the shield at bad guys. It certainly felt nothing like a Captain America deck and much closer to She-Hulk, although again with some key differences. Without She-Hulk's 3ATK the strength of One-Two Punch is less about dealing lots of damage as it is tagging something while readying to be able to thwart as well, and you don't have a Hulk's health pool to fall back on either. What you *do* have is 5 card hand in hero form, though, which is nice, and some better economy cards from using Super-Solider Serum instead of Focused Rage.
It's more like a more well-rounded She-Hulk deck than anything else, really, with Cap's cards replacing the mediocre ones that sit in She-Hulk's pool like Ground Stomp and Legal Practice. The one minor disappointment is that defending to benefit from the +1DEF of the shield is a bit of a non-bo with One-Two Punch, but she can't have everything and I think it suits Captain Carter to be more aggressive than sitting back and defending all the time in Protection aspect anyway. I've had a few games with this deck and really enjoyed them - with Sonic Rifle and Superhuman Strength she's well equipped to control the villain's activations, and she's got plenty of attacks and thwarts to deal with minions and side schemes too.
And finally, I'm going to leave you with this shot of how she defeated Klaw, despite being exhausted by a Sonic Boom...
- Play Nick Fury and draw 3 cards, including Split Personality
- Play Split Personality to flip into Alter-Ego and draw 6 cards
- Flip back to Hero form and deal 2 damage with Do You Even Lift?
- Respond with Lay Down The Law to clear the main scheme of threat
- Swing 2x Turn The Tide at Klaw's face for the win
That sounds like a good time to me!
PS. Although this has been built as a Captain Carter deck you could easily avoid that reskin and treat it as "What If...? She-Hulk became the new Captain America?". If I did it that way I think I would cut War Machine from the hero pool to add She-Hulk's signature Gamma Slam finisher, and I think I would reverse the hero card process - I'd use She-Hulk's stats but then I'd switch BOTH her Alter-Ego and Hero abilities for Cap's, just to shake up how she plays away from a normal She-Hulk. Having 3ATK and Cap's automatic ready is really good, but having to discard a card to ready hurts a lot more when you only have hand size 4 so I think it would balance off.
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