I've had a lot of fun exploring these What If...? hybrid heroes. I've still got some great ideas for new ones - I'm sure there's something in Black Widow and Spider-Woman's dual faction design, and I think giving Cap's Shield to She-Hulk probably creates Captain Carter) but for the time being I think this will be the last one that I share with you all. There's some nice symmetry in leaving it at four heroes with one from each faction.
And now it's time to do something in blue. Here are those design guidelines of mine for the last time...
- I aim for a 7-8 split on the 15 cards in their hero deck, that is to take 7 cards from one hero and 8 from the other hero. The whole point of this is to create fun new heroes who are going to feel new and interesting so a good mix of cards from both is a good way to ensure your new hybrid doesn't just feel like an old hero in a new pair of pants.
- I have a 'base' hero who is the one whose alter-ego and hero card I'm basing myself in. I usually keep their alter-ego ability untouched but try to switch their hero ability with the other hero in the hybrid. I do this because changing 7 or 8 cards in your deck is often not going to make a massive difference to how things feel or play, but hero abilities are always on and can really shake up the experience
- Sometimes a card refers to their original hero/alter-ego by name (eg. Mjolnir reads "Thor gets +1ATK and gains the Aerial trait"). Any names are assumed to refer to the hero whose deck they are now in. The same goes for Obligations/Nemesis cards. Basically: do what the cards are supposed to do, even if that's not exactly what they now say they do.
This might be the last hybrid hero I'm sharing but it's one of the first that occurred to me because the idea of T'Challa being Star-Lord was trailed ahead of the What If...? series airing on Disney+. I'm sure I wasn't alone in wanting to replicate that idea into Marvel Champions... so I did!
Firstly: what a fantastic episode that was... the best I've seen yet. Secondly: it did unfortunately kind of crap on my concept for the hybrid hero I'd made. It turns out that the What If...? episode was "What if T'Challa became Star-Lord instead of Black Panther" whereas this deck is more of a "What If T'Challa became Black Panther and then Star-Lord". C'est la vie!
In building this hybrid hero the trick was trying to balance two hero kits that are quite combo-centric without going overboard. If you take too little of the key pieces from either side of the hybrid you aren't doing them any justice, but if you take too many and make one of the combos too complete then it could be something similar to what I found with my early Iron Raccoon draft with the finished hero pretty much just playing like an unchanged version of one of their parent heroes. I wasn't going to all this trouble just to make 'Black Panther in Space'.
To be Black Panther meant using Wakanda Forever and using Wakanda Forever meant using multiple pieces of the Black Panther suit - but that was 9 cards and I couldn't take the whole set. But on the other hand Star-Lord's whole shtick revolves around taking big risks by dealing yourself encounter cards then managing to pull it out of the bag regardless, so I knew that I had to keep that part of his character intact... but also try and stop it spiralling into a deck that was just going to default to blitzing the villain's face off in 3 turns like my normal Star-Lord deck.
- 4x Wakanda Forever
- 1x Tactical Genius
- 1x Energy Daggers
- 1x Vibranium Armor
- 3x Daring Escape
- 2x Element Gun
- 2x Sliding Shot
- 1x Star-Lord's Helmet
(15 cards)
For the Black Panther section the most important information isn't what's included but what's missing - the Panther Claws. Originally my plan was to keep the Panther Claws in and use Gutsy Move instead of Tactical Genius as my thwarting tool but it took only game with that version to convince me that it was a mistake. With all of my damage coming from the Panther suit and Wakanda Forever it was playing too much like a normal Black Panther deck. The Claws had to go, and to be honest that suited me because it meant I could switch Gutsy Move over for Sliding Shot and make the signature Element Guns a bigger part of the mix.
What you've roughly got is that the Black Panther suit is for board control - healing, sweeping minions away, controlling threat - but doesn't really deal massive amounts of damage. The Star-Lord side is where your big gamewinning punches come from, especially with Sliding Shots. You've got two self-contained combos within the deck but they're serving different purposes rather than battling each other to take control and you'll probably need to get both combos working in order to win.
Note: This configuration has really worked for me but I want to put an asterisk by it: I knew that I was going to be building a Strength In Numbers combo deck so some decisions I made helped with that, like using Star-Lord's Helmet and FOUR copies of Wakanda Forever.
If you wanted a more well-rounded deck I'd recommend switching out 1x Wakanda Forever for 1x Ancestral Knowledge (which will shuffle a 4th Wakanda Forever back in along with other more interesting cards), and then changing 1x Star-Lord's Helmet for 1x Jet Boots (so you're using the face-down cards defensively not to fuel your combo).
The final piece of the puzzle was the hero card itself, and I had a couple of decisions to make. With my Cap/Thor hybrid I gave Steve Rogers the ability to start with both Mjolnir and the Shield in his starting hand. You could do the same thing here and have both the Black Panther upgrade search from T'Challa and Peter Quill's search for the Element Gun. I just felt like it wasn't quite so quintessentially the point of the character to have the guns in the way my whole Cap build was about having hammer and shield together, so I kept T'Challa unchanged.
On the hero side I dumped Black Panther's Retaliate for the fantastic What Could Go Wrong? of Star-Lord as it was a vital part of making somebody feel like you're taking all those extra risks that Star-Lord takes. But I made a deliberate decision NOT to make him a Guardian or carry over the ability for everyone in your deck to be considered a Guardian. That was 100% because I wanted to break the potential to play Blaze of Glory, which would take over everything else I was doing with the deck if it crept in. I flip-flopped on making him an Avenger or a Guardian, and there's a lot of good reasons for making him a Guardian instead to use space-themed cards... so long as you can resist the urge to windmill-slam all the Guardian allies and Blaze of Glory into the deck!
The other 25 cards... well in my case that came very easily. I already had a Black Panther deck I liked... it was a Leadership deck with Strength of Numbers. I already had a Star-Lord deck I liked... it was also a Leadership deck with Strength of Numbers.
I made a Leadership deck with Strength of Numbers.
Leadership
- 2x The Power of Leadership
- 3x Strength in Numbers
- 2x Make The Call
- 1x Ant-Man
- 1x Stinger
- 1x Triskelion
- 1x Ready For Action
- 1x Rapid Response
- 1x Squirrel Girl
- 1x Maria Hill
- 1x Hawkeye (Kate Bishop)
- 1x Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
- 1x US Agent
- 1x Black Knight
Basic
- 1x Strength
- 1x Energy
- 1x Genius
- 1x Ironheart
- 1x Mockingbird
- 1x Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
- 1x Nick Fury
(25 cards)
- LOTS of allies. I want to quickly build up 4-5 allies in play so I play like a dozen of them
- Allies are going to spend a lot of the time exhausted for Strength in Numbers rather than attacking and thwarting, so abilities that trigger on them being played are more important than big stats.
- A strong board position draws more cards which leads to a stronger board position. You should be able to start a snowball rolling that inevitably gives you control of the game.
- FINISH HIM!
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