What If...? Hybrid Heroes: T'challa as Star-Lord

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.

Cap with Mjolnir - Protection

Iron Raccoon - Aggression

Black Suit Spidey - Justice

And now it's time to do something in blue.  Here are those design guidelines of mine for the last time...

1. 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. 
   
   
2. 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
   
   
3. 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.

BLACK PANTHER AS STAR-LORD

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)

Obligation: Affairs of State /// Nemesis: Star-Lord

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)

If you've not seen/played one of my Strength in Numbers decks the basic formula is:

1. LOTS of allies.  I want to quickly build up 4-5 allies in play so I play like a dozen of them
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. FINISH HIM!

Because I'm trying to keep allies in play rather than attacking with them I don't have loads of recursion effects - a couple of Make The Call, a Rapid Response.  I like Ready For Action to give somebody Tough and hold off a villain attack without losing a body.  Anything to keep warm bodies on the table so that I can exhaust them to draw more warm bodies!

In the past I've found that my Strength In Numbers decks pretty quickly hit a point where they just lash out and kill the villain with a huge damage turn, like a Blaze for Glory or loads of Panther Claws attacks from multiple Wakanda Forever, or even a Hulk Smash and Avenger's Assemble out of my Hulk deck.  But I set out to make this deck play differently to existing decks so none of those are available to my hybrid hero and without that rapid win condition all the encounter cards that Star-Lord gives himself start to become a much bigger problem.

What I found was that games with this Star-Lord felt like epic battles as both the heroes and the villain were swinging huge turns around - you'd routinely be facing 3 or 4 encounter cards every turn then having to weather the storm as best you could and push back onto the front foot.  Eventually once my board position got strong enough I got to the point where I was drawing through my whole deck every two turns and that alone was a win condition as that many Wakanda Forevers, Daring Escapes and Sliding Shots raining down was enough to win the game even if you were giving the villain 3 or 4 encounter cards every turn!

But man, there was some fantastic battles on the way... even though I followed a familiar track by using Strength in Numbers I think I succeeded in making it feel different to how I've been squashing villains with Star-Lord's Blaze of Glory up to now.

And that about wraps it up for my first wave of Hybrid Heroes.  As I finished writing this I literally just received confirmation that my copy of Mad Titan's Shadow has been despatched so all this What If...? craziness has perfectly filled the gap until Thanos and Loki arrive to entertain me with a new challenge.

But I doubt I'm going to be leaving them behind entirely.  I've really enjoyed my time pretending to be Uatu the Watcher and I expect I'll be back.  I've still got some great ideas to explore in how to merge heroes I don't use much, and I have a nagging sense that I played Black Panther/Star-Lord too close to my comfort zone.  I want to see what he does if I don't use Star-Lord's Helmet and Strength in Numbers, make him a Guardian not an Avenger, and really try to lean into the space theme some more.

I think you may not have heard the last of T'Challa as Star-Lord.  I just may have to deal with a Mad Titan first.

What If...? Hybrid Heroes: Black Suit Spidey

After my first two Hybrid Heroes - created by mixing cards and abilities from existing heroes to make something new - I'm back with another one, and this time it's one that's close to my heart.  But if you're just tuning in now, let's have a reminder of what my guidelines are for making a Hybrid Hero.

1. 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. 
   
   
2. 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
   
   
3. 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.

And now for the exciting bit... I get to be Black Suit Spidey!

BLACK SUIT SPIDEY

I'm an old man now and little things like Venom and Carnage happened after I stopped really reading comics properly, but back when I was just a little kid in a set of Spider-Man pyjamas I lapped up the first Secret Wars series.  It introduced me to a whole world of heroes and villains beyond the pages of my neighbour's vintage Spider-Man collection, and then my mind was blown wide open as it went on to introduce me to a new black Spider-Man suit.

Like, seriously... this was the coolest thing.  (It was the 80s.  Life was simpler then.)

Then I got distracted by Warhammer 40,000, took my eye off the ball a bit and suddenly Spidey was back in blue and red and there was this Venom guy running around.  And then Magic: The Gathering happened and when I next checked back there was a red Venom thingy too, and then it all seemed to get a bit wierd with eight-armed Venom Spideys as villains and I kind of tuned it all out for a decade or so.

But in Marvel Champions I've got a card game with Spider-Man in, and I've even now got the Symbiote suit thanks to the Venom expansion.  I can make it the 80's all over again!

• 2x Backflip
• 2x Enhanced Spider-Sense
• 2x Swinging Web Kick
• 1x Aunt May
• 1x Black Cat

• 1x Spider-Sense
• 2x Grasping Tendrils
• 2x Savage Attack
• 2x Behind Enemy Lines
  (15 cards)

Obligation: Struggle for Control /// Nemesis: Venom

It turns out that the Spider-Man and Venom card pools merge together very nicely indeed, which I'm sure is in no small part due to the fact the Venom hero set was full of callbacks to the original Spider-Man set anyway, which means it's really easy to flip abilities in and out between the two.  For example Spidey has his Web Shooters but his symbiote suit generates its own webs so has the Symbiotic Bond ability built in to create the same effect.  Similarly the original Spider-Sense ability moves off the hero card onto an upgrade, moving in the opposite direction to the Web Shooters, and Webbed Up becomes the Grasping Tendrils, the Spider-Tracers become Behind Enemy Lines, etc.

It also helped that there's only really 7 Venom cards that thematically fit because half of his card pool is dedicated to guns, so when you cut those out the switch into Spider-Man virtually builds itself.  You pretty much just take out the Spider-Man version of something (Webbed Up, Tracers) and put in the symbiote version on almost a like-for-like basis.

That included switching the hero ability for Venom's Symbiotic Bond, and that became a key change for making the Black Suit Spider-Man play differently to the original.  One other change that really added a lot to the feel of character was bringing in Venom's Obligation and Nemesis sets, so now you're dealing with the ramifications of wearing the black suit.

What this combination of original Spider-Man and the symbiote suite from Venom achieves is making a Spider-Man hero who is much faster and more dynamic than the original, with the built-in Symbiotic Bond and no expensive or slow/conditional effects like Webbed Up or the Web Shooters.  Spider-Man flows much more quickly than you're used to.

On the flipside, though, he also suffers for that - he's no longer such an obvious Protection aspect candidate as he likes to hurt himself to play cards and you may have to wait a while to get your defensive Spider-Sense online.  The new Obligation/Nemesis also sets you back a bit, but I'm going to hold my hands up on this one... this is definitely a more powerful Spider-Man than the original, and arguably more powerful than Venom too with the addition of Backflip and Enhanced Spider-Sense making him extra hard to squish.  

He's not wacky over-powered, but to some extent it *is* a Spidey fan's power fantasy.  

Mea culpa, I guess.

I already had a Venom deck I liked that used Justice as it's aspect, so in building a deck around the Black Suit Spider-Man I started there and carried across most of that original template, with ultimately only a few changes - mainly because I was no longer a Guardian of the Galaxy as black suit Spidey.

Justice

• 3x Turn The Tide
• 1x Skilled Investigator
• 3x Clear The Area
• 2x Multitasking
• 1x Heroic Intution
• 1x Wiccan
• 1x Quake
• 1x Agent Coulson
• 2x Sonic Rifle

Basic

• 1x Strength
• 1x Energy
• 1x Genius
• 1x Target Acquired
• 2x Endurance
• 1x Ironheart
• 1x Spider-Man (Miles Morales)
• 1x Quincarrier
• 1x Nick Fury
  (25 cards)

It's ultimately giving you a potent mix of board control tools to deal with both threat and minions.  There weren't many symbiote-Spidey specific decisions to make but I'll call a couple of them out.

 

Firstly it's really unusual for me to make a deck with two copies of a card like Endurance but it seemed very important for this deck to have that extra health pool available.  Endurance feeds into the symbiote side of this deck by giving you more health to spend on being quick and aggressive at generating resources from your Symbiote Bond, and it also gives you more headroom to benefit from all the best-in-class healing that you get from Aunt May when you duck into alter-ego form.

Secondly, the symbiote's cards all ask you to pay with specific resources to activate kicker effects so adding Quincarrier (now that I was an Avenger not a Guardian) made a ton of sense.

Beyond those decisions it's just a straight forward whack-a-mole kind of a deck, with answers for almost anything the villain has planned... so long as you can keep healthy enough to let the Symbiote keep the flow of powerful Events coming.  Spider-man's own basic attack/thwart actions aren't much to write home about, it's really all about the sauce you get from having all those fantastic Events in one deck... and I'll be honest, that kind of feels really dynamic and actually a lot more like Spider-Man than the original Spider-Man deck did.

I really like this Hybrid Hero - it may not be much of a "What If...?" scenario but it's ticking a big nostalgia box for me.  And who doesn't like a new black suit?  

You know, it makes me feel... a bit funny... a bit, kinda... kinda, like... like dancing... 

What If...? Hybrid Heroes: Iron Raccoon

Hot on the heels of my Captain America/Thor hybrid hero I'm bringing you a second one.  If you missed yesterday's blog and are wondering what in tarnation is going on then you can catch up here.  

Before we start I want to repeat my principles that I've been working to in making hybrid heroes and which I've found have really helped make the decks successful.

1. 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. 
   
   
2. 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
   
   
3. 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.

Right, who's up next...?

IRON RACCOON

In this hybrid hero scenario the notoriously sticky-fingered Rocket Raccoon has somehow managed to get his paws on one of Tony Stark's Iron Man suits.  This isn't a hybrid born from a specific moment in Marvel or the MCU, more like one that was inspired by a single piece of art I googled, and that the mechanics of Rocket and Iron Man seemed like they could work nicely together as they both pivot around the Tech keyword.

As far as I could google it's never actually happened, although I did find this which suggested Rocket and Tony at least met and talked about the suit once.

When it comes to getting the two heroes working together in Marvel Champions I found that getting the balance right for how their two decks fed into a single block 15 cards was trickier than I thought.  My first pass saw me use virtually the full Iron Man suit but replacing the Rocket Boots with Rocket's Thruster Boots (so I replaced the Rocket Boots with Rocket's Boots.  Jeez, I hope this isn't going to get too confusing...).  I thought I'd nailed it first time but when I gave that deck a couple of games it really felt just like an Iron Man deck because all the cards from Iron Man's deck sat in play and did things every turn, while Rocket's cards all came and went as they were Events and Resources, or big guns I didn't need to bother playing.

Underpinning it all was that Thruster Boots just seemed to supercharge the Iron Man card pool more than I expected.  Being automatically Aerial was great for the Helmet, Powered Gauntets and Supersonic Punches I'd put in, and even the +1THW was great with the Arc Reactor.  I set out to switch back from Rocket's Boots to the original Rocket Boots (oh god, it's happening again) but then decided that gave me two other problems: the upgrades in play already felt Iron Man-heavy and I was just doubling down on that by putting his Rocket Boots back in, and Rocket wasn't an Avenger so without Quincarrier could I reliably activate the Rocket Boots to go Aerial anyway?

I changed direction and put Thruster Boots back in but then took out some of the things that were benefitting from the Aerial trait to try and balance it that way.  I cut the Helmet to make Rocket's 'I've Got A Plan' event more important, I dropped some of the Supersonic Punches for Repulsor Blasts, and finally I upped the Rocket-ness of the final armour by adding Cybernetic Skeleton to replace the Hit Points I wasn't getting from Rocket Boots.  Since making those changes the balance of Iron Man and Rocket Raccoon Tech cards in play has been much closer to 50/50 so you don't look at the table and see a sea of red & yellow that looks just like any other Iron Man deck, and while Thruster Boots is still *very* good for the deck it's definitely been pulled down a bit by losing the Helmet.

My finished 15 card deck is like this...

• 2x Powered Gauntlets
• 1x Arc Reactor
• 1x Mark V Armor
• 2x Repulsor Blast
• 1x Supersonic Punch
• 
  
• 2x I've Got A Plan
• 2x Salvage
• 1x Thruster Boots
• 1x Cybernetic Skeleton
• 1x Rocket Launcher
• 1x Particle Cannon
  (15)

Obligation: Crisis on Halfworld /// Nemesis: Rocket Raccoon

One card that I'm sad I had to leave on the sideline is Schadenfreude just because it's so much fun, but I think with Powered Gauntlets around it was a little too easy to pump it to the moon anyway.

The hero side of the equation was very straight forward, though, and I simply transplanted Iron Man's hand size ability over onto Rocket's statline, which was basically the same as Iron Man's to begin with.  You definitely notice losing Tony Stark's Futurist ability to dig through the deck looking for your key Tech cards but that's compensated for a little bit having an extra Tech card in your hero deck than before anyway.  TBH it's only writing this blog that I've thought it could have worked just as well the other way around, with Rocket's alter-ego gaining Futurist but keeping the Murdered You! way of drawing extra cards instead of the Iron Man hand size.  All the abilities on these two guys are about hand size and drawing more cards so they're pretty interchangeable... I may have to try that out too!

While I spent a fair bit of time on the mix of hero cards for Iron Rocket, the other 25 cards didn't change for me very much.  I started out by lifting my Hulkbuster Iron Man deck pretty much wholesale and applying that template here.  The main thing that I tweaked was removing the Hand Cannons (because I already had two Restricted weapons in Rocket's cards) but adding some great new Guardians-only cards like Booster Boots and Groot, which are a perfect fit for the deck, and keeping an eye on wanting Energy resources for my Repulsor Blasts.  The much cheaper card pool and addition of Salvage also removed my need to use The Power of Aggression so a few more changes were made, but it's still basically a very recognisable Hulkbuster variant.

Aggression

• 2x Looking For Trouble
• 2x "Bring It!"
• 2x Moment of Triumph
• 1x Lie in Wait
• 1x Angela
• 3x Relentless Assault
• 1x Martial Prowess
• 1x Bug
• 1x Spider-Girl
• 2x Into The Fray

Basic

• 1x Energy
• 1x Strength
• 1x Genius
• 2x Booster Boots
• 1x Endurance
• 1x Ironheart
• 1x Plasma Pistol
• 1x Groot
  (25 cards)

It's a fun deck that loves to be aggressive and pro-active, but really the heart of the deck is assembling all of the parts of your armor suit as quickly as possible then using that to control the table.  My advice for playing this deck is basically the same as it was for the Hulkbuster: 

1. Mulligan anything that's not a Tech card 
2. Stay in Alter-Ego on turn 1 so that you can build your hand size quickly
3. Stabilise the table and build your suit
4. Shoot stuff that moves until it stops moving

Without the Futurist ability I added an 11th Tech card in Plasma Pistol, just to pump my odds of seeing four Tech cards by turn 2 (and it's an Energy resource for Repulsor Blast).  The deck has worked so well and has felt just about wanton and reckless enough to be Rocket, so I'm very happy with it as it stands.  It's a neat blend of the old (Iron Man) and the new (Rocket) both in the upgrades you get in play and the powerful events you are playing.  I really enjoy the feeling of dominating the table that I get from my Hulkbuster deck so it's not a big leap for me to enjoy playing another deck heavily inspired by it, but dare I say that I'm actually enjoying this one a little bit more?

I've still got a couple more Hybrid Heroes to share in the near future, so look to the skies!