Drafting Marvel Super Heroes

Last week, I played Marvel for a short period during Early Access. I had some thoughts about the format, and while not much has changed, some things definitely have.

My go-to archetype in Early Access was heavy blue decks with other colors support for removal. I utilized cheap blue creatures with equipment, bounce, and cheap counters to leverage a redundancy in solid aggressive blue one-drops.

The latest development is that the secret's out, and it's no longer that easy to get the good one-drops. Aerial Doombot isn't tabling anymore, and you don't get the desired amount of one-drops to advance this strategy.

The word is also out that white is likely going to be the format's dominant color, which makes a lot of sense.

One of my biggest critiques of the set is that the common two-drops are lackluster. White has a few solid ones in Agent of Atlas and Brave Brawler, as well as Raft Security Officer, which improves as the game progresses. On top of this, there are a few solid white two-drops at uncommon and even some at rare.

White has a premium piece of removal at common in Web Up. This card's interaction with non-creatures is important because of the diversity of other card types to interact with. Sometimes it can simply protect your creature from a Frozen in Ice, other times it's removing an enchantment like The Super Hero Civil War.

Normally, I'm still drafting my decks with a good curve and plans on closing games early. However, there's been some decks where I've found people are avoiding red because it's perceived as the worst color. I'm happy to draft red when it's wide open. Lightning Strike is a premium common, so I'm happy to take what's open.

Here's an example of how I was able to take a wide open red table to my best deck of the format thus far.

4c Red

I managed to put together a pile of busted red rares, opening some and being passed others. This is the reward for finding the open colors. One person's trash is another's treasure.

Red has some high quality uncommons. Even though the common creature suite isn't exciting, I'm happy to play Lightning Strike, as well as Repulsor Blast in a supporting role.

Hawkeye's Bow is another red card that has impressed me. This isn't the deck for it since I'm trying to overpower my opponent and not do chip damage. However, Hawkeye's Bow can quickly close games alongside Hawkeye, Young Avenger. It's also nice equipment to throw on an Aerial Doombot on turn two, or to include in other aggressively slanted red decks. It's more punishing than it initially appears because it can move around and equip creatures with activated abilities. I intend to draft a lot more decks with this card in mind moving forward.

Green is my top candidate for weakest color at the moment, despite stats saying otherwise. Green feels disorganized, and I don't like any of the strategies it's trying to push you into. Self-mill is ineffective and power-up is hardly a mechanic to build around. While you can definitely still win with green, I rarely find myself ending up there.

Of note is that while the format is relatively fast, having mana sinks and access to card advantage, across the board, has been important in all my decks. Not spending mana, even on later turns, is often devastating. Power-up as a mechanic punishes you if you run out of gas because the creature gets large enough to make attacking or blocking impossible, so the game becomes quickly out of reach the instant you run out of cards.

My current front runner for best archetype is blue-white. They're the format's best colors and both work well together. There are efficient creatures, some with evasion, and plenty of removal in white to allow you time to use blue to draw extra cards.

Glorious Azorious

Here's an example of a Trophy UW deck. While this deck is loaded with quality rares, the deck's strength was its ability to spend mana every turn. Between Bruce Banner, The Mindstone, and even Avengers Tower, I had access to mana sinks each turn and never ran out of gas.

Speaking of rares, there are a few rares that are just over-the-top good, such as Doctor Doom, that they caused some of the fun games I played to become lopsided. While I'm all for powerful cards, the gap between the best and worst in this set is too wide. I wouldn't make those cards weaker, but I wish they had made some stuff more powerful. Overall, at common cards are relatively weak, and we see a power spike at higher rarities. However, even a lot of the uncommons are lackluster or undersupported.

There's a strong correlation in my win rate to how many rares I have and how many rares I play against. This is normal, but it's more apparent in slightly more underpowered sets like this. A game can be proceeding normally, but then a rare hits the table, and I'm right-clicking concede as if what happened prior didn't matter.

Regardless, we don't have this set for too long. I intend to grind it quite a bit to help teammates for the Pro Tour and with collector booster Arena Directs, which I'll also grind.

I'll continue to share my thoughts and discoveries. Stay tuned.