Marvel Champions Leadership Archetypes and Aspect Guide

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

What is your favorite leadership archetype?

[@tylerjromeo]

I love voltron-ing carol Danvers in a spider woman deck. You can use med teams to keep her alive, and all the leadership goodies to make her powerful, plus she draws a card for every activation!

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

@@tylerjromeo oh that sounds like such a cool build!

[@TAC3O]

Really helpful, can't wait for 2 more aspects and their archetypes :)

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Hoping to get them out soon!

[@dhdoc_h8839]

Thank you! I love how you kept the strokes broad so that future cards can fit into your taxonomy.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Thank you!!

[@Sentidodelamaravilla]

Excellent video! I learned a lot. Thanks so much and keep them coming!

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

So glad it helped!!

[@Sentidodelamaravilla]

Really looking forward to the protection video. It's the aspect that I find most difficult to play with.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

@@Sentidodelamaravilla I’m hoping to have it up in the next few weeks!

[@Sentidodelamaravilla]

Excellent, thanks!

[@markzsombor6059]

I know the focus here was Leadership, but the best heroes for Voltron decks personally are Spiderwoman and Adam Warlock. Being able to grab either the Aggression upgrades and/or Protection healing makes for more powerful and harder to kill super allies.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Oh so so very true!! Good call!

[@VillainTheory]

Something cool about Adam is that he can heal allies through his Battle Mage (his hero card ability) and discarding Protection card. The best thing is that it doesn't even have to be his ally if, rather than Adam himself, another player at the table is running a Voltron deck.

[@heroicskeleton1566]

Spider woman is definitely one of the best for this. You can also voltron her Captain Marvel signature ally, which is really good since it draws you cards. Go with protection/ leadership to keep her alive.

[@heroicskeleton1566]

She can also do leadership/Justice SHIELD, which is pretty cool

[@CoryLovec14]

Avengers assemble + mighty avengers + strength in numbers + lead from the front = game over for many villains. Flexible too. Drawing 6 cards, then Having 6 allies each doing + 3 damage or thwart is amazing. Extra fun if multiplayer and Storm is involved. Recursion is fun with the Web Warriors too. Get the web out, then recur, you can a bonus on the way out and on the way in with many of the web warriors! Voltron Iron Man is so fun, especially with energy-poor heroes since the upgrades are all free. But Voltron Cosmo is both hilarious and fun with Infinity gauntlet, playing as Doctor Strange, etc. You’re right, x-men really focus on allies across the board, but actually with any aspect, not even just leadership. Honorary X-men, to me my x men, and the various supports make for a great combo. I do love Storm with X men ally strategy (leadership or aggression) since she can get even more damage out with thunderstorm or protect better with blizzard. I like “no ally” buff strategy with the easy form flippers. Wasp, ant man, Shadowcat, etc. Bad feeling to draw moxie as a non- form flipping hero. Do you happen to know - can you sneak attack Lockjaw with Ms Marvel from the discard pile? Or does the “paying his resource cost” supersede the sneak attack? Just random thought I had.

[@VillainTheory]

Always fun to hear someone else's takes on aspect archetypes! Just wanted to say that, to me, I think Ally Swarm is a separate archetype to a Strength in Numbers deck. Or at least, Strength in Numbers is a sub-archetype. Ally Swarm to me is as simple as spamming cheap allies. The regular version wants to use the allies, the SiN version wants to use them as card draw batteries. Then there's Avengers Swarm as a hybrid combination between Ally Swarm and an Avenger Tribal archetype. On the topic of Voltron decks, Star-Lord is a great Voltron hero as he can automatically make Iron Man a Guardian and give him both Guardian and Avenger upgrades. Also Cyclops can also voltron-up Wolverine while playing Leadership! For Sneak Attack decks, Command Team is almost a must-have card, letting you reliably get extra juice out of allies' hp before they leave play. Especially for heavy-hitters like Goliath and Giant Man. This can then combo with Rapid Response. If a Sneak Attacked ally is defeated through consequential damage, it's still a defeated ally and Rapid Response can bring it in permanently albeit with -1 hp. Important archetypes not included here are the Tribal decks, with Avenger, Guardian, and X-Men decks each having their own unique flavours! I think each could be worth talking about individually if you were to revisit the topic. There is also a less-talked about archetype I have coined "Burst Allies" - you bestow temporary stat boosts on your allies and spam readies to get extra value from their stat boosts while dealing massive output. You can combine this with Sneak Attack, but it's not essential in any way. I honestly haven't seen anyone else really do this but it's very effective. Key cards are Goliath, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Effective Leadership, Command Team, Get Ready, Psychic Kicker, and - in a Guardians version (hello Star-Lord again) - Blaze of Glory. I have two published decks for this archetype on MarvelCDB, one for Phoenix called Power Overwhelming and one for Star-Lord called Cosmic Commander if anyone is interested in checking out a very unique and viable way to play Leadership! (Yes, I like Star-Lord... :D )

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Awesome insight as always! I love how I always learn from your comments! Good point on the ally swarm differentiation, that’s a good call out and hope people see your comment to get a fuller picture! Oh that sounds so fun, I’ve never tried the Ironman star Lord build, I’ll need to try that one! Yea tribal decks are really cool! I do think that’s worth digging a bit deeper on! Thanks for the suggestion!

[@Ddwlf27]

@@NelsonAllOverCards I agree with Villain Theory. The SiN deck is what I call Ally Battery with 2 main variants - one that uses the the battery for sig cards, and the other that uses the batter for Avengers Assemble. Swarm decks to me are different and are also generally tied to the different teams- Avengers/Guardian/X-Men Swarm all use different cards, but the same gameplan - flood the board using tribal allies and tribal synergies (Mighty Avengers, Welcome Home, To Me, My X-Men, etc). You can still use SiN here still, but I typically don't so i have the flexibility to chump. The Burst archetype, I agree is a criminally underrated archetype, although i don't really consider it wholely separate from the SA archetype.

[@rolling.reggie]

What an awesome video. I learned a lot and cannot wait to try some of these.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Hope they go well for you!

[@mattvoegtli9928]

Team Player archetype got a big boost with Mission Planning. Now you can actually use those allies instead of just having batteries. Only played it once so far with Cap, but I'm interested in fleshing it out more.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Yes! Excellent point!

[@nickmcdonnell5659]

Wait forget the Allies is a leadership archetype that actually interest me. I’m still pretty new but I had never thought to play that way. May have to pick up iron heart sooner than I thought.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Oooh nice! Hope you enjoy!

[@heroicskeleton1566]

Black Widow is very strong with SHIELD sneak attack decks. Sneak attack into Rapid Response (which is a preparation), recur Rapid Response with the Safe House. She can also do an Avengers version, but I prefer the SHIELD one in leadership, as it's pretty unique

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

That is a really cool idea! I will need to try that out!

[@mattvoegtli9928]

Yeah, she's actually the only hero I've played Sneak Attack with and she does it very well.

[@heroicskeleton1566]

Phoenix is really strong with X men ally decks since she can search your entire deck with cerebro, and she has good economy with her power counters. Doesn't necessary have to be leadership either, it works well in Aggression too. I think X Men make for the strongest ally decks, with things like Cerebro, Danger Room, and X Men Instruction.

[@NelsonAllOverCards]

Yea I really wish I had included the tribal archetype in this video. She is so incredibly powerful there!

[@urloony]

Can Sneak Attack combo with Rapid Response? It seems to come down to whether or not a discarded ally is considered "defeated." When an ally is defeated it is discarded so is an ally that is discarded also defeated? 1.5 states: "If an ally enters play, it remains in play until a card ability or game effect causes it to leave play. If an ally’s remaining hit points are reduced to zero, it is defeated and discarded from play." It seems unlikely to combo. Thoughts?

[@mattvoegtli9928]

Yes, if you can have it be defeated. It's generally done with command teams, to ready the ally multiple times, and I think I've only seen it done on Black Widow, as its a preparation. You can get Dum Dum Dugan off just 2 activations, and it's nice to recur Nick that way to get even more value.